The First World Trade Center Project: A Historical Tribute to a Great Mega Project

The tragic collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 could not erase the memory of one of the most successful projects in history. The project set standards of excellence in project management for years to come. Using a retrospective look at the construction management of the WTC during the 1960s and 1970s, we show how the vision of great leadership and a determined organization transformed the economy of one of the most important cities in the world

Quality Assurance Issues in the Delivery of Assistive Technology Services

This independent study report provides an overview of the current state of the field of assistive technology for persons who have significant disabilities. The field is extremely broad, and encompasses both low and high technology. Personnel working in field are diverse as well, representing nearly a dozen different disciplines. Two key issues confronting the collective field are professional education and credentialing. In general, pre service professional programs do little to prepare students to deal with technological interventions. Some professionals who want to improve their competence in this area are doing so through graduate or post-graduate study, workshop attendance, or clinical traineeships. Given the diversity of assistive technology, and the professionals who practice in the area, the subject of credentialing seems daunting. Professional organizations concerned with the application of assistive technology are working toward a system of individual and program credentialing. The rationale for such efforts is sound--consumers with disabilities and payors have a right to know what constitutes a professional qualified to provide assessment and assistance in procuring assistive technology devices. This report will examine these issues and provide the reader with the current state of the field

Illinois Felony Sentencing: A Retrospective

This research bulletin provides an overview of forces that have influenced the number of felons under the supervision of Illinois\u27 justice system, including crime and arrest trends, sentencing policies and practices related to probation and prison sentences

A bibliography of physical, chemical, and biological studies of rings in the world's oceans

This bibliography marks the end of several years of sporadic attempts to put together a set of references on rings. The scope of the effort encompasses the chemistry, biology, and physics of the long-lived, coherent features which are commonly referred to as rings after Fuglister (1972). There is a vast literature on the mesoscale eddy field in different parts of the world. The present set of references includes a subset of this body of work. The basic criterion used in the compilation of this bibliography is fairly narrow compared to the range of eddies found in the world's oceans. The emphasis here is on the highly nonlinear features formed due to the instability processes in boundary currents and in the planetary scale jet which surrounds the Antarctic. The nomenclature "ring", refers to the strong encircling current which forms a kinematic trap in which the core of the ring is embedded

Protein-Protein Docking with F2Dock 2.0 and GB-Rerank

Rezaul Chowdhury is with UT Austin; Muhibur Rasheed is with UT Austin; Maysam Moussalem is with UT Austin; Donald Keidel is with The Scripps Research Institute; Arthur Olson is with The Scripps Research Institute; Michel Sanner is with The Scripps Research Institute; Chandrajit Bajaj is with The Scripps Research Institute.Motivation -- Computational simulation of protein-protein docking can expedite the process of molecular modeling and drug discovery. This paper reports on our new F2 Dock protocol which improves the state of the art in initial stage rigid body exhaustive docking search, scoring and ranking by introducing improvements in the shape-complementarity and electrostatics affinity functions, a new knowledge-based interface propensity term with FFT formulation, a set of novel knowledge-based filters and finally a solvation energy (GBSA) based reranking technique. Our algorithms are based on highly efficient data structures including the dynamic packing grids and octrees which significantly speed up the computations and also provide guaranteed bounds on approximation error. Results -- The improved affinity functions show superior performance compared to their traditional counterparts in finding correct docking poses at higher ranks. We found that the new filters and the GBSA based reranking individually and in combination significantly improve the accuracy of docking predictions with only minor increase in computation time. We compared F2 Dock 2.0 with ZDock 3.0.2 and found improvements over it, specifically among 176 complexes in ZLab Benchmark 4.0, F2 Dock 2.0 finds a near-native solution as the top prediction for 22 complexes; where ZDock 3.0.2 does so for 13 complexes. F2 Dock 2.0 finds a near-native solution within the top 1000 predictions for 106 complexes as opposed to 104 complexes for ZDock 3.0.2. However, there are 17 and 15 complexes where F2 Dock 2.0 finds a solution but ZDock 3.0.2 does not and vice versa; which indicates that the two docking protocols can also complement each other. Availability -- The docking protocol has been implemented as a server with a graphical client (TexMol) which allows the user to manage multiple docking jobs, and visualize the docked poses and interfaces. Both the server and client are available for download. Server: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~bajaj/cvc/soft​ware/f2dock.shtml. Client: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~bajaj/cvc/soft​ware/f2dockclient.shtml.The research of C.B., R.C., M.M., and M.R. of University of Texas, was supported in part by National Science Foundation (NSF) grant CNS-0540033, and grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01-GM074258, R01-GM073087, R01-EB004873. The research of M.M. was additionally supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The research of M.S. and A.O. of TSRI was supported in part by a subcontract on NIH grant R01-GM073087. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Computer Science

Self-Study as Self-Knowledge: Integrating Shared Governance and Planning Structures in the Self-Study Process

Preparing for the Higher Learning Commission’s accreditation visit at Minnesota State University, Mankato entailed several challenges that arose within the three years prior to the visit: recent turnover in top administration posts, new initiatives in strategic planning, and plans to offer the institution’s first doctoral degrees, all of which had to be dealt with in the context of the HLC’s new criteria for accreditation. Thanks to the strong support of the new administration and established systems of self-governance, the Self-Study Committee was able to integrate and document the efforts of the administration, faculty, staff and students in meeting these challenges. The document became a focus for summarizing an array of new initiatives, assessing continued challenges, and preparing to address those challenges