Developing a Cohesive Urban Agriculture Policy for Burlington, VT

A growing interest in urban food production has prompted many North American cities to revise their municipal policies regarding agricultural activities. In March 2011, the City Council of Burlington, VT, created the Urban Agriculture Task Force to investigate and recommend policies to provide city officials with tools to effectively govern urban agriculture. In coordination with the Task Force as a community partner, I used a governance framework and participatory action research (PAR) to analyze: (1) the needs of local stakeholders, including urban agriculture practitioners, the general Burlington community, and government officials; (2) the policy tools available to the City of Burlington, including the direct provision of services, regulation, public information, and partnerships with other organizations; (3) the actors and relationships present in Burlington’s urban agriculture governance network; and (4) policy approaches used in other cities. Based on this analysis, over 50 policy recommendations were developed for the City of Burlington, ranging from ordinance revisions to the development of new urban agriculture initiatives. Key findings include that (1) a balance must be struck between stakeholder needs (e.g. practitioners desire that regulations be minimal, while municipal officials need measurable standards to ease implementation); (2) a legal basis for governing some aspects of urban agriculture, such as the humane treatment of livestock, is needed, but other aspects, such as managing neighbor conflicts or connecting people to available land, are not easily regulated and require innovative programming; and (3) the City has an opportunity to partner with other organizations that are better suited to provide technical expertise to practitioners. These recommendations lay the groundwork for the City to better govern and support current and future urban agriculture activities

The Mental Approach to the Game of Baseball: A Handbook for the Player/Coach

This thesis will focus on the mental attitude required to succeed in athletics, in particular baseball. Stressing the link between the mind and the body, this paper intends to make practical applications for both coaches and players. Research as shown that in communication information is transmitted through two primary inconsistent and unbalanced methods: content and emotions . Due to the often interaction of coaches in communicating with their players, there is a large margin of error, lost information, from the transmission by the coaches to the reception by the players. It 1s necessary, thus, to explore the link between the mental and the physical aspects of athletics. There have been numerous books written by scholars, coaches, and psychologists on the subject of effective communication . They have stated that the most frequent cause of failure to achieve successful dialogue is related to the frame of mind of the individuals . They hold to the opinion that in order to achieve the transmission and reception of information each participant must make a voluntary eff ort t o concentrate on the process. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the needed development of the single most important skill in effective communication . Specifically, many athletes have experienced the irate coach whom , during intense competition, demonstrate more emotional elements than informational content i n communication . Some athletes will have difficulty focusing on the competitive event or the communication of the coach when the coach\u27s behaviors are inconsistent. Both elements, content and emotions, are important to the communication process but a balance between the two seems to be necessary for effective communication. The results conclude that improving communication skills is an ongoing process, which requires constant attention and effort on the part of the coach and the athlete . Since communication is probably the most important skill that the coach or athlete can possess, effort should be directed toward developing effective communication patterns which not only involve sending messages, but receiving and understanding messages as well

Community noise sources and noise control issues

The topics covered include the following: community noise sources and noise control issues; noise components for turbine bypass turbojet engine (TBE) turbojet; engine cycle selection and noise; nozzle development schedule; NACA nozzle design; NACA nozzle test results; nearly fully mixed (NFM) nozzle design; noise versus aspiration rate; peak noise test results; nozzle test in the Low Speed Aeroacoustic Facility (LSAF); and Schlieren pictures of NACA nozzle

Community noise technology needs: Boeing's perspective

Airport community acceptance of High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) noise levels will depend on the relative noise levels of airplanes flying at the time of introduction. The 85 dBA noise contours for the range of large subsonic airplanes that are expected to be in service in the early 21st century are shown as a shaded area. A certifiable HSCT noise contour as shown, would be somewhat wider along the runway, but about the same in the residential areas downrange. An HSCT noise rule should insure this noise capability

Digital Humanities Techniques for Asylum Studies in the Archive

This project explores the utilization of digital humanities techniques and tools for the purposes of transcription, data analysis, visualization and presentation of archival data pertaining to asylums in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since 2017, the Community Histories Workshop’s Asylum in the Archive initiative has been digitizing and transcribing records relating to the admission and the assessment of people in the Dorothea Dix asylum from 1856 through 1922. My project builds off this work by developing machine learning models to increase transcription efficiency for future records as they become available, and working with the dataset to analyze, visualize and present the data to tell the history of the asylum and psychiatry. The result demonstrates the value of the work already done, leaves examples and models for future scholarship utilizing this dataset and contributes to broader understanding of the emergence of psychiatry and the asylum in the South.Master of Science in Information Scienc

Keeping it in the family: Parental influences on young people's attitudes to police

Prior research finds young people are less satisfied with police than their older counterparts. Despite this, our understanding of youth attitudes to police is limited, as most research has focused on adult attitudes to police. This study adds to our understanding by examining the influence of parent–child dynamics on youth attitudes to police. We predict that youth attitudes to police will be influenced by their parents’ attitudes. A survey of 540 school students in South East Queensland reveals that perceived parental attitudes to police are associated with youth attitudes to police. However, this effect is partially mediated by maternal, but not paternal attachment. These findings suggest that youth attitudes to police are not simply influenced by contact with police and delinquency, but that familial context is important. Consequently, our theoretical understanding of youth attitudes to police must move beyond a focus upon police contact and delinquency

Long-Term Volunteer Leaders in Sustained Positions of Continuous Leadership: A Grounded Theory Study

The purpose of the qualitative study was to develop a theory grounded in perceptions and behaviors of the study participants to explain the ability of long-term volunteer leaders to sustain themselves in positions of continuous leadership. Volunteer and nonprofit organizations provide valuable and essential services to communities, such as volunteer fire departments, homeless shelters, and recreational activities. Long-term volunteer leaders in positions of continuous leadership are critical to keep these organizations viable. A gap existed in research concerning sustaining long-term volunteer leaders in positions of continuous leadership. No theories exist in the literature regarding sustaining long-term volunteer leaders. A systematic qualitative, grounded theory design was used to address this gap in research and theory. Data were gathered from 23 long-term volunteer leaders in positions of continuous leadership at The Mountaineers, a large Pacific Northwest recreational volunteer organization. A total of 46 interviews were conducted. Each interview and the coding process had memos associated with them. Results from the study indicated a number of factors that affect long-term volunteer leaders in sustained positions of continuous leadership. Connectedness to like-minded people sharing a passion was the major sustaining factor. All factors combined to provide the resulting integrated theory. Organizational leaders and volunteer leaders should find the research findings and resulting theory valuable to help long-term volunteer leaders sustain themselves in positions of continous leadership in the vital organizations they serve. Sustaining these leaders is essential to sustaining the social change benefits such volunteer organizations provide to communities