The Evolution of the Stock Market as a Financial Institution

The stock market had been the driver, and has now become the servant behind the increasing efficiency, complexity, and advancing technology of the corporation. The seemingly simplistic purpose of these markets to facilitate trade, makes the complex history surrounding its evolution even more interesting. In early times of commerce, large hierarchical organizations arose to monopolize trade to bring about a prosperous city, country or nation. As individual units within these organizations became more successful, prominent, and powerful, they sought out an identity of their own. The result was the recognition of the corporate entity. Now with this new power and identity, the corporation turned to an intermediary to raise capital to continue their growth. Brokers served this purpose and founded a stock market to facilitate this financing in such a way that remained flexible to meet the changing functionality of the corporation. Consequently, the stock market is a representative entity of the corporation, flexible enough to evolve with and for the corporation

Global Design and Building Practice: A Case Study of Hearst Headquarters, New York, NY

This paper describes aspects of "Global Design and Building Practice”, a research started at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2002. The objective of this investigation is to provide design and building professionals and researchers with a better understanding of the impacts of globalization on practice. In this research, the impacts of globalization on practice are examined both in breadth and depth. Processes involve qualitative analyses of interviews with design and building professionals and researchers, quantitative analyses of project data, and in-depth case studies of recent and current "global building projects”, i.e. projects for which spatial extensity of actors extends beyond the local. This paper presents a diversified analytic framework of four distinct global project types. It analyzes the principles behind the transformation of practice and demonstrates the correlations between different global project types and the impacts on practice based on "project DNA”, an innovative concept that acknowledges that it is not only the characteristics of each configuring actor that matters in a global project, but rather the configuration as a whole and the position of each actor within it that determines the its characteristics and impacts on practice. Both global project type and project DNA are illustrated with the summary of an in-depth case study of Hearst Headquarters, a recently completed global project in New York, NY

Ethnic Variation of */tʕ/ in Aswan Arabic

This study aims to provide some acoustic documentation of two unusual and variable allophones in Aswan Arabic. Although many rural villages in southern Egypt enjoy ample linguistic documentation, many southern urban areas remain understudied. Arabic linguists have investigated religion as a factor influencing linguistic variation instead of ethnicity. This study investigates the role of ethnicity in the under-documented urban dialect of Aswan Arabic. The author conducted sociolinguistic interviews in Aswan from 2012 to 2015. He elected to measure VOT as a function of allophone, ethnicity, sex, and age in apparent time. The results reveal significant differences in VOT lead and lag for the two auditorily encoded allophones. The indigenous Nubians prefer a different pronunciation than their Ṣa‘īdī counterparts who trace their lineage to Arab roots. Women and men do not demonstrate distinct pronunciations. Age also does not appear to be affecting pronunciation choice. However, all three variables interact with each other

Evaluating the improvement process of a teacher onboarding program in a large, urban, Midwestern school district

Employee onboarding is the first opportunity an organization has to create space for individuals to acclimate to their work environment, helping them adjust to the social, operational, and performance aspects of their roles while building the individual tools necessary to contribute to larger organizational goals. In education, particularly in schools characterized as low income, onboarding is all more important due to the difficulty schools often have in recruiting high quality teachers and retaining those teachers after their first 5 years. It is important, then, for school districts to hire highly-qualified candidates and ensure that those candidates are adequately prepared to assume their new teaching positions, thus improving their chances of becoming effective educators within their new district. Through the development of efficient processes for administrative onboarding, districts can provide opportunities for new teachers to steep in the vision, core values, and norms of the organization and engage in meaningful opportunities to practice essential skills prior to day one in the classroom. Through a lens of organizational socialization and uncertainty reduction theories, the purpose of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate a new onboarding process in a large, urban Mid-western school district. Using mixed-methodological approach, the researcher evaluated the effects of this onboarding process with respect to three key outcomes increased novice teacher self-efficacy, increased investment in the career (intent to stay), and increased feelings of support and connection to the district office (perception of service culture). Study findings reveal that the interventions in this study failed to improve intent to stay and perception of service culture over the study period. They did, however, appear to increase novice teacher’s perception of self-efficacy over time

Aswan Arabic : negotiating identity in a provincial capital

This dissertation aims to shed light on the sociolinguistic identity of the historically maligned speakers of Aswan Arabic. Although scholars have comprehensively documented much of Upper Egypt’s (southern Egypt’s) linguistic variation, Aswan Arabic remains a lacuna. Additionally, only three sociolinguistic studies cover Upper Egyptians’ language attitudes. On the other hand, much of the known sociolinguistic stigma and disparagement associated with Upper Egyptians and their dialects can be found in popular Cairene serials. I assert that several Cairene television series further stigmatize the historically marginalized Upper Egyptians and misrepresent some linguistic features. In response to this misconception, I present an empirical study of complex sociophonetic variation of three linguistic features represented in spoken Aswan Arabic and interpret the variable pronunciations in their contemporary context. To that end, I conducted sociolinguistic interviews of 33 speakers of Aswan Arabic during several trips to Aswan from 2012-2015 where I observe unusual, systematic, and variable pronunciations of ṭ, j, and ā, (which are respectively /tˤ/, /d͡ʒ/, and /æ:/). The project also acoustically describes the unorthodox pronunciations of the respective sounds as well as pinpoints the effects of factors like sex, ethnicity, and age on pronunciation choice in Aswan Arabic. Some of these pronunciation choices signify ethnic membership, masculine toughness, and urbane refinedness. These findings endeavor to help provide acoustic descriptions of an under-documented Arabic dialect, and contribute to issues in Arabic Linguistics.Middle Eastern Studie

An industrial application of the JPL ACTS with energy recovery

The JPL Activated Carbon Treatment System (ACTS) uses sewage solids derived from municipal wastewater treatment systems as a source of organic material for powdered activated carbons (PAC). The PAC is used for the COD removal from wastewater and as a filter aid in the recovery of additional sewage solids

Development of a Micro-credential Curriculum: The Interprofessional Dementia Caregiving Telehealth Community Practicum Badge

Purpose: Informal dementia caregiving by family caregivers is a crucial component of the care provided to people living with dementia (PLwD). The numbers of these family caregivers are rapidly increasing at a time, when in the U.S., the availability of formal caregivers is decreasing. Currently, health professional training focuses on providing care to PLwD and not necessarily addressing the caregiver’s needs, and this training takes place within professional silos and not interprofessionally. This study sought to address this issue by: 1) examining the current state of interprofessional dementia caregiving trainings in the US; and 2) developing a micro-credential curriculum called interprofessional dementia caregiving telehealth community practicum badge suitable for health profession students in order to meet the needs of dementia caregivers in Wisconsin. Methods: A four-phase-embedded approach was used. In the first phase, a scoping review on the current state of interprofessional education regarding caregivers of PLwD was conducted. Next, a team comprised of 6 faculty and staff with expertise in dementia care and caregiving, 2 dementia care specialists (DCS), and 2 family caregivers provided their expertise and input into developing the components of a micro-credential badge. These components and details were then assessed/revised based on interviews with 11 additional family caregivers, DCSs, and community leaders. Finally, the micro-credential interprofessional dementia caregiving curriculum was developed. Results: The micro-credential curriculum was named the Interprofessional Dementia Caregiving Telehealth Community Practicum Badge. The badge requires that an interprofessional team of students to: 1) complete five self-directed modules; 2) conduct initial virtual caregiver home visit to assess needs; 3) hold a virtual meeting with an Aging Disability Resource Center (ADRC) specialist to acquire the resources; 4) develop a customized Caregiver Health and Wellness Resource Packet; 5) hold a second/final virtual home visit to present the packet to the caregiver; 6) conduct a debrief session with all involved parties; and 7) finalize/submit the Packet along with reflection as a Capstone Project. Conclusion The micro-credential badge curriculum was piloted in the spring of 2022 while incorporating findings from this study. The completion of the interprofessional dementia caregiving badge counts towards the UW IPE Path of Distinctio

Use of “Entertainment” Chimpanzees in Commercials Distorts Public Perception Regarding Their Conservation Status

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are often used in movies, commercials and print advertisements with the intention of eliciting a humorous response from audiences. The portrayal of chimpanzees in unnatural, human-like situations may have a negative effect on the public's understanding of their endangered status in the wild while making them appear as suitable pets. Alternatively, media content that elicits a positive emotional response toward chimpanzees may increase the public's commitment to chimpanzee conservation. To test these competing hypotheses, participants (n = 165) watched a series of commercials in an experiment framed as a marketing study. Imbedded within the same series of commercials was one of three chimpanzee videos. Participants either watched 1) a chimpanzee conservation commercial, 2) commercials containing “entertainment” chimpanzees or 3) control footage of the natural behavior of wild chimpanzees. Results from a post-viewing questionnaire reveal that participants who watched the conservation message understood that chimpanzees were endangered and unsuitable as pets at higher levels than those viewing the control footage. Meanwhile participants watching commercials with entertainment chimpanzees showed a decrease in understanding relative to those watching the control footage. In addition, when participants were given the opportunity to donate part of their earnings from the experiment to a conservation charity, donations were least frequent in the group watching commercials with entertainment chimpanzees. Control questions show that participants did not detect the purpose of the study. These results firmly support the hypothesis that use of entertainment chimpanzees in the popular media negatively distorts the public's perception and hinders chimpanzee conservation efforts