The Blackstone Group: A Case Study

The Blackstone Group, Inc., located in Beaumont, Texas, is a full-service advertising agency providing design, media, and marketing support for clients in southeast Texas and the Lake Charles, Louisiana, area. The agency was founded April 15, 1978, with its first offices above owners Lawrence and Samantha’s garage. They began with three accounts. Prior to beginning their agency, Lawrence worked for two other agencies, serving five years as Art Director of the first agency, and four years as Creative Director for the second agency. Samantha was employed as a bookkeeper in a third agency. Lawrence began as a freelance designer, doing project work. Shortly thereafter, Samantha joined him in the business. They moved out of the garage, and established an upscale business address located quite near their major clients. Once they became an agency, they “pitched” every opportunity. As a result, they captured a wide variety of accounts, requiring that they become knowledgeable in every aspect of the business. Whatever it took – media buys, copywriting, radio scripts, design, television sport, photography – they did it, and learned as they went. Currently, employing five people plus the principals, the agency is the market leader in the Beaumont area with an estimated 25% market share in those service markets in which they compete. They are recognized as the quality leader in their market, and have garnered an impressive collection of local, regional and national awards for design in both print and other media. Gross billings in 1998 were $3.9 million. Capital billings, the measure used in the industry to report agency size, approximated$4.7 million. (Contact author for a copy of the complete report.)Entrepreneurship

Lone Star Productions

Lone Star Productions (LSP) is a concert promotions business that was started in 1981 by Bill Oldman. Since 1986, this company has been the exclusive provider of concert promotion materials for 75% of the top grossing national tours. In 1997, Bill Oldman sold the company to a group of investors headed by Mike Sims. With a background in banking and investments, Sims took over a LSP’s president. Bill Oldman remained as the Chief Executive Officer of the company. Lone Star Productions’ business encompasses several segments, including concert promotions, audio and video production, production staffing, video editing, web site development, and equipment and suite rental. Currently, concert promotions account for 90% of the company’s revenue. Efforts to build business in the areas other than concert promotion have been mildly successful, but LSP considers the further development of these business areas to be critical to the long-term profitability and financial stability of the company, LSP is currently considering buying the largest video production company in the Dallas, Texas area.(Contact author for a copy of the complete report.)Small Busn. Mgmt

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 21, No. 1

• The Fraktur of Monroe County • Minutes of the West Grove Housekeepers Association as Source Material for Folklife Studies • The Searight Tavern on the National Road: An Archaeological Study • The Brown Sugar Game in Western Pennsylvania • Bread Baking in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania: Commentary for the Documentary Film in the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica • Notes and Documents: Literature for the Allegheny Frontier: The Huntingdon Literary Museum and Monthly Miscellany (1810) • Hunting and Food-Gathering: Folk-Cultural Questionnaire No. 21https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1045/thumbnail.jp

Effects of perceptual learning on local stereopsis and neuronal responses of V1 and V2 in prism-reared monkeys.

Visual performance improves with practice (perceptual learning). In this study, we sought to determine whether or not adult monkeys reared with early abnormal visual experience improve their stereoacuity by extensive psychophysical training and testing, and if so, whether alterations of neuronal responses in the primary visual cortex (V1) and/or visual area 2 (V2) are involved in such improvement. Strabismus was optically simulated in five macaque monkeys using a prism-rearing procedure between 4 and 14 wk of age. Around 2 yr of age, three of the prism-reared monkeys ( trained monkeys) were tested for their spatial contrast sensitivity and stereoacuity. Two other prism-reared monkeys received no training or testing ( untrained monkeys). Microelectrode experiments were conducted around 4 yr of age. All three prism-reared trained monkeys showed improvement in stereoacuity by a factor of 7 or better. However, final stereothresholds were still approximately 10-20 times worse than those in normal monkeys. In V1, disparity sensitivity was drastically reduced in both the trained and untrained prism-reared monkeys and behavioral training had no obvious effect. In V2, the disparity sensitivity in the trained monkeys was better by a factor of approximately 2.0 compared with that in the untrained monkeys. These data suggest that the observed improvement in stereoacuity of the trained prism-reared monkeys may have resulted from better retention of disparity sensitivity in V2 and/or from learning by upstream neurons to more efficiently attend to residual local disparity information in V1 and V

Binocular deficits associated with early alternating monocular defocus. II. Neurophysiological observations

Experiencing binocularly conflicting signals early in life dramatically alters the binocular responses of cortical neurons. Because visual cortex is highly plastic during a critical period of development, cortical deficits resulting from early abnormal visual experience often mirror the nature of interocular decorrelation of neural signals from the two eyes. In the preceding paper, we demonstrated that monkeys that experienced early alternating monocular defocus (-1.5, -3.0, or -6.0 D) show deficits in stereopsis that generally reflected the magnitude of imposed monocular defocus. Because these results indicated that alternating monocular defocus affected the higher spatial frequency components of visual scenes more severely, we employed microelectrode recording methods to investigate whether V1 neurons in these lens-reared monkeys exhibited spatial-frequency-dependent alterations in their binocular response properties. We found that a neuron\u27s sensitivity to interocular spatial phase disparity was reduced in the treated monkeys and that this reduction was generally more severe for units tuned to higher spatial frequencies. In the majority of the affected units, the disparity-sensitivity loss was associated with interocular differences in monocular receptive field properties. The present results suggest that the behavioral deficits in stereopsis produced by abnormal visual experience reflect at least in part the constraints imposed by alterations at the earliest stages of binocular cortical processing and support the hypothesis that the local disparity processing mechanisms in primates are spatially tuned and can be independently compromised by early abnormal visual experience

Cortical effects of brief daily periods of unrestricted vision during early monocular form deprivation

Experiencing daily brief periods of unrestricted vision during early monocular form deprivation prevents or reduces the degree of resulting amblyopia. To gain insight into the neural basis for these protective effects, we analyzed the monocular and binocular response properties of individual neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) of macaque monkeys that received intermittent unrestricted vision. Microelectrode-recording experiments revealed significant decreases in the proportion of units that were dominated by the treated eyes, and the magnitude of this ocular dominance imbalance was correlated with the degree of amblyopia. The sensitivity of V1 neurons to interocular spatial phase disparity was significantly reduced in all treated monkeys compared with normal adults. With unrestricted vision, however, there was a small but significant increase in overall disparity sensitivity. Binocular suppression was prevalent in monkeys with constant form deprivation but significantly reduced by the daily periods of unrestricted vision. If neurons exhibited consistent responses to stimulation of the treated eye, monocular response properties obtained by stimulation of the two eyes were similar. These results suggest that the observed protective effects of brief periods of unrestricted vision are closely associated with the ability of V1 neurons to maintain their functional connections from the deprived eye and that interocular suppression in V1 may play an important role in regulating synaptic plasticity of these monkeys

Glaucoma in primates: cytochrome oxidase reactivity in parvo- and magnocellular

PURPOSE. To evaluate the differential effects of ganglion cell depletion from experimental glaucoma on the relative metabolic activities of neurons in the parvo (P)-and magno (M)-cellular visual pathways of the macaque visual system. METHODS. Monocular experimental glaucoma was induced in monkeys (Macaca mulatta and M. fascicularis) by applying a laser to the trabecular meshwork to increase intraocular pressure (IOP). After other behavioral and electrophysiological studies, the lateral geniculate nuclei (LGNs) and the primary visual cortices were analyzed for functional afference from surviving ganglion cells, indicated by cytochrome oxidase (CO) histochemistry. RESULTS. CO reactivity (COR) indicated a general reduction in neural metabolism with increasing severity of glaucoma. COR in the LGNs was reduced to the same degree in both the P-and M-cellular layers. In layer 4C␤ of the V1 cortex, the reactivity was always reduced more than in the layer 4C␣ division. CONCLUSIONS. Experimental glaucoma in monkeys reduces visual afference to the central nervous system, thereby reducing the metabolic drive as indicated by COR. The detrimental effect of glaucoma did not appear to be any greater for the M-cell, rather than the P-cell pathway in the LGN or in the visual cortex. Both are affected by the duration and severity of the experimental glaucoma. Overall, the alterations in metabolism of neurons in the parallel visual pathways supplied by the P␣ and P␤ ganglion cells do not suggest that tests based on the functional properties of one or the other would provide optimal assessment of glaucoma. (Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2000;41: 1791-180

Evaluating Cumulative Ecosystem Response to Restoration Projects in the Lower Columbia River and Estuary, 2009

This is the sixth annual report of a seven-year project (2004 through 2010) to evaluate the cumulative effects of habitat restoration actions in the lower Columbia River and estuary (LCRE). The project, called the Cumulative Effects Study, is being conducted for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Portland District (USACE) by the Marine Sciences Laboratory of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the Pt. Adams Biological Field Station of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the Columbia River Estuary Study Taskforce (CREST), and the University of Washington. The goal of the Cumulative Effects Study is to develop a methodology to evaluate the cumulative effects of multiple habitat restoration projects intended to benefit ecosystems supporting juvenile salmonids in the 235-km-long LCRE. Literature review in 2004 revealed no existing methods for such an evaluation and suggested that cumulative effects could be additive or synergistic. From 2005 through 2009, annual field research involved intensive, comparative studies paired by habitat type (tidal swamp versus marsh), trajectory (restoration versus reference site), and restoration action (tidegate replacement vs. culvert replacement vs. dike breach)

The Consolidation of the White Southern Congressional Vote

This article explores the initial desertion and continued realignment of about one-sixth of the white voters in the South who, until 1994, stood by Democratic congressional candidates even as they voted for Republican presidential nominees. Prior to 1994, a sizable share of the white electorate distinguished between Democratic congressional and presidential candidates; since 1994 that distinction has been swept away. In 1992, a majority of white southern voters was casting their ballot for the Democratic House nominee; by 1994, the situation was reversed and 64 percent cast their ballot for the Republican. Virtually all categories of voters increased their support of Republican congressional candidates in 1994 and the following elections further cement GOP congressional support in the South. Subsequent elections are largely exercises in partisanship, as the congressional votes mirror party preferences. Republicans pull nearly all GOP identifiers, most independents, and a sizeable minority of Democratic identifiers. Democrats running for Congress no longer convince voters that they are different from their party’s presidential standard bearers—a group that has consistently been judged unacceptable to overwhelming proportions of the southern white electorate.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline