Hitchhiking Through the Fire

Ten years after the outbreak of an aggressive, fast-acting virus that kills then reanimates those infected, the world has become a bleak, hostile place. Water and food are scarce, valuable commodities, and survivors cluster together for safety in isolated enclaves where life is cheap and debauchery is king. In the middle of this grim hell-on-earth, Huxley, a young boy, lives with his idealistic father. When the father is killed, Huxley falls in with Bracken, a rugged gun-forhire, a desperado in every sense of the word. Against his instincts, Bracken is compelled to deliver Huxley to safety, all the while being pursued by a ruthless warlord of the wasteland. Through their association, Bracken discovers that he still has the capacity for feeling, emotion, and empathy, something he thought long dead

Hitchhiking Through the Fire

Ten years after the outbreak of an aggressive, fast-acting virus that kills then reanimates those infected, the world has become a bleak, hostile place. Water and food are scarce, valuable commodities, and survivors cluster together for safety in isolated enclaves where life is cheap and debauchery is king. In the middle of this grim hell-on-earth, Huxley, a young boy, lives with his idealistic father. When the father is killed, Huxley falls in with Bracken, a rugged gun-forhire, a desperado in every sense of the word. Against his instincts, Bracken is compelled to deliver Huxley to safety, all the while being pursued by a ruthless warlord of the wasteland. Through their association, Bracken discovers that he still has the capacity for feeling, emotion, and empathy, something he thought long dead

Developing Dynamic Capabilities in Environments of Persistent Disturbances

Dynamic capabilities explain how firms adapt to environmental dynamism by modifying their underlying resources and capabilities. However, despite a robust understanding of how dynamic capabilities are influenced by different dimensions of environmental dynamism (eg. velocity), scholars have not explained how dynamic capabilities develop in the presence of different configurations of environmental dynamism. Common configurations of environmental dynamism include environmental shifts, which pertain to discontinuous environmental change, and ongoing environmental change, which depicts hypercompetitive environments. In this thesis, I explore how dynamic capabilities develop in the context of a configuration of environmental dynamism that I call persistent disturbances, defined as repeated temporary events confronting firms. My research investigates how firms build and further develop dynamic capabilities in the presence of persistent disturbances. In my research, I engaged in an inductive historical case study to build new and to elaborate on existing dynamic capability theory. I chose the North American automotive industry for my context, focusing on the time period between 1965 and 2010, during which the industry was confronted with persistent disturbances in the form of labour difficulties, economic cycles, competitive pressures, energy challenges, and government regulations. I focused my analysis on three firms: General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. I created a longitudinal dataset consisting of both qualitative and quantitative data obtained from archival sources including annual reports and the Ward’s Automotive Yearbooks. I analyzed these data in three iterative stages. First, I focused on identifying the persistent disturbances that had impacts on automotive firms. Second, I explored how the firms in my study responded to those persistent disturbances. Third, I built new theory and elaborated existing theory pertaining to how dynamic capabilities develop over time in the presence of persistent disturbances. My analysis yielded important findings. First, I found that, in response to persistent disturbances, dynamic capabilities developed through a process of capability layering. The result was a dynamic capability architecture that comprised layers of capabilities that functioned to facilitate change. Dynamic capability development proceeds from early periods of coping towards increasing technical fitness as firms build new dynamic capability layers by adding and modifying the capabilities that functioned as building blocks supporting the dynamic capability. My research also distinguished persistent disturbances from other configurations of environmental dynamism and offer insights regarding how different configurations of environmental dynamism influence dynamic capability development. Overall, this thesis makes important contributions to dynamic capability theory and to understanding the role of environmental dynamism in strategic management scholarship. My thesis also has important implications for practice

Keeping Secrets: The Unsettled Law of Judge-Made Exceptions to Grand Jury Secrecy

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e) functionally binds everyone who is present during grand jury proceedings (except witnesses) to secrecy. But questions arise when courts are asked to make exceptions to grand jury secrecy outside those enumerated in the rule, such as exceptions for Congress or for the release of historically significant grand jury records. This Note examines the propriety of judge-made exceptions to grand jury secrecy. Contrary to some courts authorizing disclosure outside of Rule 6(e), this Note argues that the text and development of Rule 6(e), along with limitations on courts’ inherent authority over grand jury procedure, caution against this practice. The tension between the current practice of some courts and the apparent meaning of Rule 6(e) renders the law of grand jury secrecy unsettled. To clarify the law, the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules should add a residual exception to Rule 6(e) that would not only give courts flexibility and discretion but also a clear source of authority on which to authorize disclosures

The Cherokee Indian Fair and the Making of a Tourist Economy

This article examines the history of the Cherokee Indian Fair in North Carolina during the early twentieth century, focusing on the role of agriculture and cultural performance as crucial elements of the fair’s success as a tourist attraction. It argues that the fair laid the framework for the Cherokee tourist economy, a legacy that tourists still see today

Festival Tourism: Advertising the Western North Carolina Tourist Industry Through Cultural Performance in the Cherokee Indian Fair, the Rhododendron Festival, and the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games

With the rise of the American middle class in the early twentieth century, tourist boosters had new opportunities to market attractions to a broader and larger swath of the population than just the very wealthy. Two factors aided tourist boosters’ efforts to build a more robust tourist economy in western North Carolina and cater to the larger group of possible tourists: improved transportation and new forms of leisure. While improved transportation made it possible for the tourists to come and new focuses in leisure provided opportunities into which the tourist industry could expand, officials and tourist boosters in western North Carolina cities still needed attractions and ways to publicize the region to potential tourists. This thesis argues that festivals emerged as an important mechanism to both entertain tourists and advertise the broader region as a tourist destination.Bachelor of Art

Opening Doorways: Connecting Petersburg Students to the World of Health Science Professions

This project creates a strategy to build a pipeline that begins in elementary school and is reinforced through middle and high school. This early exposure and understanding of health career opportunities is needed. Too many communities in Virginia experience critical health care inequities in services and information. To address those inequities, we need to open doorways to investigate health careers. By inspiring students from these communities to enter medical and health sciences professions, there is better representation and services to these underrepresented communities. VCU not only can provide exposure to various health careers, experiential learning and mentoring on how to navigate through academia into a chosen field but also strength community engaged

New loci for body fat percentage reveal link between adiposity and cardiometabolic disease risk

To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of adiposity and its links to cardiometabolic disease risk, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of body fat percentage (BF%) in up to 100,716 individuals. Twelve loci reached genome-wide significance (P<5 × 10−8), of which eight were previously associated with increased overall adiposity (BMI, BF%) and four (in or near COBLL1/GRB14, IGF2BP1, PLA2G6, CRTC1) were novel associations with BF%. Seven loci showed a larger effect on BF% than on BMI, suggestive of a primary association with adiposity, while five loci showed larger effects on BMI than on BF%, suggesting association with both fat and lean mass. In particular, the loci more strongly associated with BF% showed distinct cross-phenotype association signatures with a range of cardiometabolic traits revealing new insights in the link between adiposity and disease risk

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

New loci for body fat percentage reveal link between adiposity and cardiometabolic disease risk

To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of adiposity and its links to cardiometabolic disease risk, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of body fat percentage (BF%) in up to 100,716 individuals. Twelve loci reached genome-wide significance (P <5 x 10(-8)), of which eight were previously associated with increased overall adiposity (BMI, BF%) and four (in or near COBLL1/GRB14, IGF2BP1, PLA2G6, CRTC1) were novel associations with BF%. Seven loci showed a larger effect on BF% than on BMI, suggestive of a primary association with adiposity, while five loci showed larger effects on BMI than on BF%, suggesting association with both fat and lean mass. In particular, the loci more strongly associated with BF% showed distinct cross-phenotype association signatures with a range of cardiometabolic traits revealing new insights in the link between adiposity and disease risk.Peer reviewe