“A Montana Ski Town and Solutions to its Persistent Housing Crisis”

Ski towns across the Rocky Mountain West are facing the inter-connected problems of rising housing prices and shortages of labor. These local issues have led to severe challenges associated with the lack of affordable housing. My study focuses on three key elements that contribute to the problem of affordable housing in the booming ski town of Whitefish, Montana. These elements include: (1) the geographical and historical context that makes this community similar to other ski towns in this region; (2) the economic and land use planning factors that constrain the affordable housing market; and (3) the limited sustainable solutions to this housing crisis. As part of this study, I propose a site plan to convert a city-owned parcel (known locally as “The Snow Lot”) into a multi-family use community. My site design is guided by the objectives of affordability, sustainability, practicality (e.g., meeting parking needs), and energy efficiency. I employ collaboration with the town of Whitefish and data collection through site visits and planning documents. The intention is that my site design will help the City of Whitefish expand its low-cost sustainable affordable housing solutions in the future

Energy-detection based spectrum sensing for cognitive radio on a real-time SDR platform

There has been an increase in wireless applications due to the technology boom; consequently raising the level of radio spectrum demand. However, spectrum is a limited resource and cannot be infinitely subdivided to accommodate every application. At the same time, emerging wireless applications require a lot of bandwidth for operation, and have seen exponential growth in their bandwidth usage in recent years. The current spectrum allocation technique, proposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a fixed allocation technique. This is inefficient as the spectrum is vacant during times when the primary user is not using the spectrum. This strain on the current available bandwidth has revealed signs of an upcoming spectrum crunch; hence the need to find a solution that satisfies the increasing spectrum demand, without compromising the performance of the applications. This work leverages on cognitive radio technology as a potential solution to the spectrum usage challenge. Cognitive radios have the ability to sense the spectrum and determine the presence or absence of the primary user in a particular subcarrier band. When the spectrum is vacant, a cognitive radio (secondary user) can opportunistically occupy the radio spectrum, optimizing the radio frequency band. The effectiveness of the cognitive radio is determined by the performance of the sensing techniques. Known spectrum-sensing techniques are reviewed, which include energy detection, entropy detection, matched-filter detection, and cyclostationary detection. In this dissertation, the energy sensing technique is examined. A real-time energy detector is developed on the Software-Defined Radio (SDR) testbed that is built with Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) devices, and on the GNU Radio software platform. The noise floor of the system is first analysed to determine the detection threshold, which is obtained using the empirical cumulative distribution method. Simulations are carried out using MATrix LABoratory (MATLAB) to set a benchmark. In both simulations and the SDR development platform, an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signal with Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation is generated and used as the test signal

Compliance agreements at the INEL: A success story

The Radioactive Waste Management Complex (RWMC), located at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), is the storage facility for approximately 135,000 containers of radioactive mixed waste that must be stored in accordance with Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) requirements. Collectively, the compliance and safety basis documents governing the operation of the storage facility contain approximately 2,500 specific, identifiable requirements. Critical to the compliance with these 2,500 requirements was the development of a process which converted these requirements to a form and format that allowed implementation at the operator level. Additionally, to ensure continued compliance, a method of identifying and controlling implementing documents is imperative. This paper discusses the methods employed to identify, implement, and control these requirements

Comprehending Collegiate Volunteer Experiences Post-September 11, 2001: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States ignited a profound increase in undergraduate-volunteerism on college campuses until 2006. Since then, a national decline in student volunteerism has occurred; simultaneously, scholars have focused on recruitment and utilization of student-volunteers instead of undergraduates' retention in civil service projects. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to investigate the lived volunteer experiences of alumni and undergraduates of the Scholarship Program for Volunteer Service (SPVS) at a private, Catholic college in western New York State. The alumni group had matriculated in the SPVS from 2001-2005, at a time when the national average of collegiate-volunteerism was higher than the undergraduates' group matriculating since 2006. Nine alumni SPVS participants participated in a focus group session. Ten undergraduate SPVS participants were interviewed individually. These data were analyzed by Groenewald's (2004) five-step approach of phenomenological reduction, which modified Hycner (1999) and Moustakas's (1994) original structures of phenomenological reduction. Data analysis included (a) bracketing and phenomenological reduction; (b) delineating units of meaning; (c) clustering of meaningful units to form themes; (d) summarizing each interview, validate, and modify; and (e) making a composite summary. The three thematic findings of this study were (a) motivation, (b) religious application, and (c) pre-service learning. Conclusively, the two surrounding phenomena working not in isolation were collectivism and individualism. Collectivism was best supported by Strauss and Howe's (1997) generational theory. Individualism was best supported by Bass's (2008) economic theories of organization. Future research should focus on how economic factors influence human motivation

Idiopathic CD4 lymphopenia associated with neuroinvasive West Nile disease: Case report and review of the literature

Idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia is a very rare condition resulting in an immunodeficiency disorder that may or may not result in opportunistic infections. Since its description in the early 1990s, the reason for this immune deficiency has remained unclear. Its association with viral illnesses, such as West Nile virus infection, has yet to be described. We report a 26-year-old patient who presented with fever, ascending paralysis, and progressive weakness of the upper extremities. To our knowledge, this is the first case of neuroinvasive West Nile virus occurring in the context of a diagnosis of idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia. Keywords: Cd4 lymphopenia, West nile viru