Palimpsest encounters: a baseline study of Federal, Antebellum, and Postbellum New Orleans gardens using the Notarial Archives drawings

The focus of this thesis is to establish a basis for a typology of New Orleans gardens from 19th Century Notarial drawings. Previous inquires of the New Orleans Notarial Archives drawings emphasized elite gardens of the Vieux Carré and Garden District. This baseline study investigates both vernacular and elite gardens of 159 drawings in the three oldest of the city Municipal Districts during the period 1810-1880, and identifies 19 garden templates. It sets the drawings in their social, political, and historical context to inform a critical understanding of the garden types. The inquiry examines 47 spatial and design variables, using the New Orleans Notarial Archive drawings, photographs, maps, and personal accounts as primary source materials. Quantitative data analysis methods, qualitative image analysis, site observation, and interviews with experts are used. Three products were derived from this study: Property Location Map, Property Variable Data Base, and Lexicon of the three Municipal District gardens. The study findings reveal that while individual properties sometimes vary within a particular garden template type variants are not geographically (and perhaps not culturally) dependant. The garden typology determinants are: space dependence, gardener program, environmental and cultural conditions, vegetation availability, resources, and consensus gardenways. All results are consistent with previous research conclusions. The 19 garden templates identified may be applied in period garden rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction

Teaching Negotiation Skills: A Cross-Cultural Hiring Role-Play Activity

As social beings, negotiation skills are important for both our personal and professional lives, from resolving an argument with a spouse to negotiating the terms of employment. Skilled negotiators in business are able to resolve differences before they escalate and are value maximizers for their organizations when dealing with suppliers, clients, and co-workers. Mastering negotiations also leads to better relationships in people’s personal lives as they navigate conflict resolution in a more trustworthy and thoughtful manner. Teaching negotiation skills though role-playing in a safe academic environment allows students to gain much needed confidence, which is critical for success as they further their careers. Negotiations will impact salary trajectory, collegiality and fit in the workplace, and the level of trust built between the employee and her/his organization. The typical student has little to no work experience and inherently enters the workforce with no formal negotiation training. We introduce a novel negotiation role-play which incorporates the resolution of cultural differences in employment practices, which are becoming ever more prevalent as workplaces become more diverse. This case study is meant to provide experiential opportunity to understand diversity in the work place and the need to be sensitive to cultural differences. This role-playing exercise includes a teaching note and handouts for the participants (HR director and a prospective employee) involved in the negotiation

Social Networking Websites and Posting Personal Information: An Evaluation of Protection Motivation Theory

The popularity of social networking websites among Internet users continues to grow, even though social networking remains a risk for users who do not participate with caution. Using protection motivation theory (PMT) as a theoretical lens to provide a research model, and by issuing a fear appeal to social network users about the potential threat to their privacy, this study identified perceptions and beliefs held by users that influence their behavioral responses to the imposed threats. A snowball sample survey measuring the variables conceptualized by PMT was completed by 522 social network users. A time-ordered hierarchical regression analysis of the responses showed that PMT provides explanations for both adaptive and maladaptive responses, particularly for the response of hopelessness. Implications and directions for future research in this area are offered

Designing Emergency Response Dispatch Systems for Better Dispatcher Performance

Emergency response systems are a relatively new and important area of research in the information systems community. While there is a growing body of literature in this research stream, human-computer interaction (HCI) issues concerning the design of emergency response system interfaces have received limited attention. Emergency responders often work in time pressured situations and depend on fast access to key information. One of the problems studied in HCI research is the design of interfaces to improve user information selection and processing performance. Based on cue-summation theory and research findings on parallel processing, associative processing, and hemispheric differences in information processing, this study proposes that information selection of target information in an emergency response dispatch application can be improved by using supplementary cues. Color-coding and sorting are proposed as relevant cues that can improve processing performance by providing prioritization heuristics. An experimental emergency response dispatch application is developed, and user performance is tested under conditions of varying complexity and time pressure. The results suggest that supplementary cues significantly improve performance, with better results often obtained when both cues are used. Additionally, the use of these cues becomes more beneficial as time pressure and task complexity increase

Designing Emergency Response Applications for Better Performance

Emergency responders often work in time pressured situations and depend on fast access to key information. One of the problems studied in human-computer interaction (HCI) research is the design of interfaces to improve user information selection and processing performance. Based on prior research findings this study proposes that information selection of target information in emergency response applications can be improved by using supplementary cues. The research is motivated by cue-summation theory and research findings on parallel and associative processing. Color-coding and location-ordering are proposed as relevant cues that can improve ERS processing performance by providing prioritization heuristics. An experimental ERS is developed users’ performance is tested under conditions of varying complexity and time pressure. The results suggest that supplementary cues significantly improve performance, with the best results obtained when both cues are used. Additionally, the use of these cues becomes more beneficial as time pressure and complexity increase

Factors associated with whole carcass condemnation rates in provincially-inspected abattoirs in Ontario 2001-2007: implications for food animal syndromic surveillance

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ontario provincial abattoirs have the potential to be important sources of syndromic surveillance data for emerging diseases of concern to animal health, public health and food safety. The objectives of this study were to: (1) describe provincially inspected abattoirs processing cattle in Ontario in terms of the number of abattoirs, the number of weeks abattoirs process cattle, geographical distribution, types of whole carcass condemnations reported, and the distance animals are shipped for slaughter; and (2) identify various seasonal, secular, disease and non-disease factors that might bias the results of quantitative methods, such as cluster detection methods, used for food animal syndromic surveillance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Data were collected from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ontario Cattlemen's Association regarding whole carcass condemnation rates for cattle animal classes, abattoir compliance ratings, and the monthly sales-yard price for various cattle classes from 2001-2007. To analyze the association between condemnation rates and potential explanatory variables including abattoir characteristics, season, year and commodity price, as well as animal class, negative binomial regression models were fit using generalized estimating equations (GEE) to account for autocorrelation among observations from the same abattoir. Results of the fitted model found animal class, year, season, price, and audit rating are associated with condemnation rates in Ontario abattoirs. In addition, a subset of data was used to estimate the average distance cattle are shipped to Ontario provincial abattoirs. The median distance from the farm to the abattoir was approximately 82 km, and 75% of cattle were shipped less than 100 km.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results suggest that secular and seasonal trends, as well as some non-disease factors will need to be corrected for when applying quantitative methods for syndromic surveillance involving these data. This study also demonstrated that animals shipped to Ontario provincial abattoirs come from relatively local farms, which is important when considering the use of spatial surveillance methods for these data.</p

Managing Dynamic User Communities in a Grid of Autonomous Resources

One of the fundamental concepts in Grid computing is the creation of Virtual Organizations (VO's): a set of resource consumers and providers that join forces to solve a common problem. Typical examples of Virtual Organizations include collaborations formed around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. To date, Grid computing has been applied on a relatively small scale, linking dozens of users to a dozen resources, and management of these VO's was a largely manual operation. With the advance of large collaboration, linking more than 10000 users with a 1000 sites in 150 counties, a comprehensive, automated management system is required. It should be simple enough not to deter users, while at the same time ensuring local site autonomy. The VO Management Service (VOMS), developed by the EU DataGrid and DataTAG projects[1, 2], is a secured system for managing authorization for users and resources in virtual organizations. It extends the existing Grid Security Infrastructure[3] architecture with embedded VO affiliation assertions that can be independently verified by all VO members and resource providers. Within the EU DataGrid project, Grid services for job submission, file- and database access are being equipped with fine- grained authorization systems that take VO membership into account. These also give resource owners the ability to ensure site security and enforce local access policies. This paper will describe the EU DataGrid security architecture, the VO membership service and the local site enforcement mechanisms Local Centre Authorization Service (LCAS), Local Credential Mapping Service(LCMAPS) and the Java Trust and Authorization Manager.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 7 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures. PSN TUBT00

Perspective: Accurate ro-vibrational calculations on small molecules

In what has been described as the fourth age of quantum chemistry, variational nuclear motion programs are now routinely being used to obtain the vibration-rotation levels and corresponding wavefunctions of small molecules to the sort of high accuracy demanded by comparison with spectroscopy. In this perspective, I will discuss the current state-of-the-art which, for example, shows that these calculations are increasingly competitive with measurements or, indeed, replacing them and thus becoming the primary source of data on key processes. To achieve this accuracy ab initio requires consideration of small effects, routinely ignored in standard calculations, such as those due to quantum electrodynamics. Variational calculations are being used to generate huge lists of transitions which provide the input for models of radiative transport through hot atmospheres and to fill in or even replace measured transition intensities. Future prospects such as the study of molecular states near dissociation, which can provide a link with low-energy chemical reactions, are discussed

Multiple adhesin proteins on the cell surface of Streptococcus gordonii are involved in adhesion to human fibronectin

Adhesion of bacterial cells to fibronectin (FN) is thought to be a pivotal step in the pathogenesis of invasive infectious diseases. Viridans group streptococci such as Streptococcus gordonii are considered commensal members of the oral microflora, but are important pathogens in infective endocarditis. S. gordonii expresses a battery of cell-surface adhesins that act alone or in concert to bind host receptors. Here, we employed molecular genetic approaches to determine the relative contributions of five known S. gordonii surface proteins to adherence to human FN. Binding levels to FN by isogenic mutants lacking Hsa glycoprotein were reduced by 70 %, while mutants lacking CshA and CshB fibrillar proteins showed approximately 30 % reduced binding. By contrast, disruption of antigen I/II adhesin genes sspA and sspB in a wild-type background did not result in reduced FN binding. Enzymic removal of sialic acids from FN led to reduced S. gordonii DL1 adhesion (>50 %), but did not affect binding by the hsa mutant, indicating that Hsa interacts with sialic acid moieties on FN. Conversely, desialylation of FN did not affect adherence levels of Lactococcus lactis cells expressing SspA or SspB polypeptides. Complementation of the hsa mutant partially restored adhesion to FN. A model is proposed for FN binding by S. gordonii in which Hsa and CshA/CshB are primary adhesins, and SspA or SspB play secondary roles. Understanding the basis of oral streptococcal interactions with FN will provide a foundation for development of new strategies to control infective endocarditis