A Whistling Girl and a Crowing Hen: Changing Productivity and Gender Expectations

This paper explores two conflicts encountered by the author as she earned her Ph.D. in medieval history. First is the conflict the author feels when working on her craft—can written history be considered a credible occupation that results in something useful in contrast to the farm production of her youth? The second theme explores the tension the author encounters when challenging traditional gender roles of both farmers and historians

Assessing the credibility of organized volunteer crisis mappers

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. "September 2013."Includes bibliographical references (pages 36-38).In the past decade humanitarian crises have been occurring with increasing frequency. As of 2013 the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) is involved in 27 countries, monitoring the response to natural disasters or violent conflict (Where we work n.d.). Over the same period the internet has seen a deluge of new, interactive website and tools. Social media sites that allow users to share their own content with a digital community have led to an explosion of user-generated content online. Meanwhile, internet-based mapping tools, such as Google Maps, make it easy for almost anyone to make maps online. These developments converge in the form of a recent trend: volunteer crisis mapping. Since 2008 individuals have started making maps and collecting spatial data related to humanitarian crises -both violent conflicts and natural disasters. While the role of social media and web-mapping in humanitarian responses has been praised for creating a participatory space in humanitarian responses, the people volunteering to do the crisis mapping remain largely unexplored. Drawing from the neogeography literature which explores the impact amateur mappers in general, this paper seeks to define who the volunteer crisis mappers are, and how they are forming institutional connections to the 'formal' humanitarian sector.by Elizabeth Resor.M.C.P

Exploring Pre-Service Early Childhood Education (ECE) Teachers' Experience with Nutrition Education

This study aimed to understand early childhood pre-service teachers' thoughts and experiences with nutrition education in their undergraduate program and how these experiences play into their perceptions and future use of nutrition education within their own classrooms. Using phenomenology, eleven in-depth telephonic interviews were conducted with early childhood pre-service teachers from two public universities in the state of North Carolina. All participants were females. Eight participants were White/Caucasian and the remaining three participants were Black/African American. Their ages ranged between 21-46 years (mean age 29 years). Six participants were enrolled in a face-to-face licensure degree-seeking program, while five participants completed their licensure degree program through online education. Only two participants were Licensure Only/Licensure Add-On students, who already had a bachelor's degree in a different or related field to education, and were seeking a Birth through Kindergarten license. Six participants planned to include nutrition related activities during student-teaching. Four emergent themes were familial and life experiences, academic experiences, food choices and mealtime, and strategies. Implications for teacher education programs and the early childhood education field are discussed

Positive Train Control (PTC): Calculating Benefits and Costs of a New Railroad Control Technology

The purpose of this analysis was to quantify the business benefits of Positive Train Control (PTC) for the Class I freight railroad industry. This report does not address the safety benefits of PTC. These were previously quantified by the Rail Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC), which identified nearly a thousand "PPAs" (PTC-preventable accidents) on U.S. railroads over a 12-year period, and determined the savings to be realized from each avoided accident. The RSAC finding was that avoidance of these PPAs was not, by itself, sufficient (from a strictly economic point of view) to justify an investment in PTC. Examples of potential business benefits include: * Line capacity enhancement * Improved service reliability * Faster over-the-road running times * More efficient use of cars and locomotives (made possible by real-time location information) * Reduction in locomotive failures (due to availability of real-time diagnostics) * Larger "windows" (periods during which no trains operate and maintenance workers can safely occupy the track) for track maintenance (made possible by real-time location information) * Fuel savings This paper presents the results of the analysis. It is important to recognize, however, that the state of the art in making these estimates is not sufficiently mature to make exact answers feasible. Presented here are the best estimates now possible, with observations as to how better information may be developed. Benefits were estimated in the above areas and the cost of deploying PTC on the Class I network (99,000 route miles and 20,000 locomotives) were calculated. The conclusions of the analysis were as follows: * Deployment of PTC on the Class I railroad network (99,000 route miles, 20,000 locomotives) would cost between $2.3 billion and$4.4 billion over five years * Annual benefits, once the system was fully implemented, were estimated at $2.2 billion to$3.8 billion * Internal rate of return was estimated (depending on timing and cost) to be between 44% and 160