Putting it all Together: Bus Rapid Transit-Oriented Development for the Brainerd Road- Lee Highway Corridor of Chattanooga, Tennessee

Chattanooga has a long history as a transportation hub, for railroads, trucking, and streetcars. One need look no further than the 1943 hit song, “Chattanooga Choo-choo” for evidence that, until the mid-20th century, Chattanooga was closely associated with trains and transportation. In addition to this legacy as a hub of transportation, the Chattanooga area is currently experiencing robust population growth. Chattanooga is a small metro area of about 530,000 people (about 170,000 in the city limits) in southeast Tennessee. The city grew 7.8% between 2000 and 2009, which is comparable to the county, which grew by 9.3% in the same period, and the metro area, which grew by 10.8% (US Census, 2010 and 2000). This represents a gain in the city over the 1990s, when the county’s population grew by 7.8% and the city’s grew by only 2.0% (US Census, 2000 and 1990). While some of this is due to Chattanooga’s aggressive annexation policies, the convergence between city and county is still significant. This suggests that the city is once again a hot market . Journalists have written in the local paper that this dramatic shift in growth priorities would not have been possible if not for investments made in downtown Chattanooga in the 1990s, mainly the opening of the Tennessee Aquarium, but also including the opening of the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge, additions to the Hunter Museum of Art, and the making of the Tennessee Riverwalk, a riverside trail that connects parks that dot the Tennessee River the city of Chattanooga (Chattanooga Times-Free Press, 2011). Chattanooga has also recently gained a reputation as a creative Mecca, with its own typeface, fiber-optic high-speed Internet, one of the greenest car plants in the South (which, among other things, turns paint waste into cement), and a recently implemented (thought still somewhat buggy) bikeshare program (Phillips, 2012, Hightower 2012)

Depressed youth, suicidality and antidepressants

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.Robert D Goldney, Peter R Mansfield, Melissa K Raven, Jon N Jureidini, Joseph M Rey, Michael J Dudley, Duncan Toplis

Strategic Niche Management (SNM) beyond sustainability. An exploration of key findings of SNM through the lens of ICT and privacy

Recently the governance of socio-technical transitions to sustainability is gaining attention in the field of innovation studies. One particular approach is that of Strategic Niche Management (SNM), which advocates the creation of protected space to experiment with radically new sustainable socio-technical practices. This paper contributes by asking whether this approach is also useful for analysis and governance of other types of socially desirable change. This question is addressed through a review of six key-findings of Strategic Niche Management and an original case study in the field of Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies for mobile payment. The social value at stake in this case is not sustainability but privacy. We draw three main conclusions. First, we find that the key-findings and concepts in SNM for sustainability are helpful to understand and interpret much of the data collected for the NFC case and privacy. However, there are notable differences in each of the key-findings, i.e findings related to a) the local-global distinction in SNM, b) expectations, c) social networks, d) learning, e) protection, and f) niche-regime interactions. Second, in relation to governance, the role of sustainability values (being a promising value to pursue) and privacy values (being a bottom-line value to defend) are notably different. Third, these differences result in different roles of public bodies in niche development. The paper ends with discussing the consequences for SNM for sustainability research and future research topics.Strategic Niche Management, sustainability, NFC, mobile payment, privacy

DEVELOPMENT OF VIRTUAL EVENT MARKETING

In the last few years the Pichia pastoris expression system has been gaining more and more interest for the expression of recombinant proteins. Many groups have employed fermentation technology in their investigations because the system is fairly easy to scale up and suitable for the production in the milligram to gram range. A large number of heterologous proteins from different sources has been expressed, but the fermentation process technology has been investigated to a lesser extent. A large number of fermentations are carried out in standard bioreactors that may be insufficiently equipped to meet the demands of high-cell-density fermentations of methylotrophic yeasts. In particular, the lack of on-line methanol analysis leads to fermentation protocols that may impair the optimal expression of the desired products. We have used a commercially available methanol sensor to investigate in detail the effects of supplementary glycerol feeding while maintaining a constant methanol concentration during the induction of a Mut+ strain of Pichia pastoris. Specific glycerol feed rates in the range of 38-4.2 mg × g(exp -1) × h(exp -1) (mg glycerol per gram fresh weight per hour) were investigated. Expression of the recombinant scFv antibody fragment was only observed at specific feed rates below 6 mg × g(exp -1) × h(exp -1). At low specific feed rates, growth was even lower than with methanol as the sole carbon source and the harvest expression level of the scFv was only half of that found in the control fermentation. These results show that glycerol inhibits expression driven by the AOX1 promoter even at extremely limited availability and demonstrate the benefits of on-line methanol control in Pichia fermentation research

Unhappiness, health and cognitive ability in old age

Background To test whether scores on depression inventories on entry to a longitudinal study predict mental ability over the next 4–16 years. Method Associations between scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and on tests of intelligence, vocabulary and memory were analysed in 5070 volunteers aged 49–93 years after differences in prescribed drug consumption, death and drop-out, sex, socio-economic advantage and recruitment cohort effects had also been considered. Results On all cognitive tasks Beck scores on entry, even in the range 0–7 indicating differences in above average contentment, affected overall levels of cognitive performance but not rates of age-related cognitive decline suggesting effects of differences in life satisfaction rather than in depression. Conclusions A new finding is that, in old age, increments in life satisfaction are associated with better cognitive performance. Implications for interpreting associations between depression inventory scores and cognitive performance in elderly samples are discussed

Intercoder Reliability Assessment of Supplemental Document Coding in a Quantitative Content Analysis Study of Police Crime in the United States

Dr. Stinson maintains an object-relational research database in OnBase, Bowling Green State University’s enterprise-level content management system. An analysis of the intercoder reliability of the supplemental articles indexed in OnBase during the years 2012-2014 was conducted to determine and promote reliability among research assistants. This project is important because reliability is the hallmark of any research database, and because the institutional memory is short with annual turnover of student research assistants working in Stinson’s research group. Training recommendations are made from the findings of this study for the purpose of improving the reliability of document coding in the project object database

Digital Video Presentation and Student Performance: A Task Technology Fit Perspective

The article presents findings of a study regarding the adaptation of the Task Technology Fit (TTF) model in the teaching and learning process in the U.S. It emphasizes the three dimensions of fit, which include the Ease of Learning, Task Match and Ease of Use, which were applied in the context of digital video for oral presentations in the classroom environment. It stresses the importance of the digital technology in education, wherein the results of the study showed significant improvements in the oral presentation skills with the application of digital tools

Primary Traits Of Oral Business Presentation: Translatable Use For Assessment In A Virtual Learning Environment

As more and more classes are taught on-line, new challenges for assessment of student learning have come about. In this paper on the use of digital video (DV) as an acceptable means to assess student oral business presentation skills, content analysis was used to test for the presence of primary traits inherent in effective formal business presentation. A specific set of traits was identified through a comprehensive literature review. Primary traits: eye contact or absence of reading, vocal variety, credibility or confidence, appearance of nervous mannerisms, and the purposeful use of the body represented the five independent variables in a one-level experiment. The five factors were accumulated into a survey instrument for use by study assessors experienced in evaluating formal business presentation skills. Study assessors looked at each speaker to determine if they could assess the five traits. Overall results indicated the five primary traits were noticeable 88.8% of the time, thereby rejecting the null hypothesis. This suggests that digital video may offer a technological solution for oral presentation skills assessment. This is an important finding for faculty in time and distance constrained environments. Future research is suggested to isolate quality characteristics in the digital film environment and to examine the impact that digital video has on student learning and skills

An Exploratory Research on the Use of Social Media

Peering years into the future may seem bit hubris, but in today’s uncertain society there seems to always be room for change. Ignoring short and long-term trends of social media could be damaging to a company whose main source of reaching their target market is through social media. Consumers are using social media as part of their daily routine, so why shouldn’t companies try and reach their customers through this platform? Can companies actually keep up with the changing trends demanded by the consumers? How do consumers feel about their social media being used as an advertising strategy for companies? This study seeks to provide an understanding to how consumers are using the social media and their expectations of companies that are present in social media platforms utilizing grounded theory approach