Women in Top Management Positions in the Sport Industry: Breaking Down the Barriers and Stereotypes

Even with the advancements that women have made throughout history, very few women have risen to the top of sports organizations. Previous research cites gender based stereotypes, segregation based on job type, and the “old boys’ network” as causes for this trend. The purpose of this study is to focus on the women currently working in the industry and explore their experiences in the work place. Seven interviews were conducted with women working in leadership positions in the sport industry. Their responses to the interview questions contradict previous findings. The results of this study show that women are overcoming the barriers that were set in the past and more women today are successful in management roles in the Sport Industry

Vegetative Recovery of Military Vehicle Impacts at Fort Lewis, WA

Vehicles driven off-road damage the soil and vegetation on the terrain, which can cause soil erosion and degradation of the landscape. This type of damage occurs on military installations due to training. Military training lands must be managed in an attempt to minimize the overall impacts of training on the terrain. The Army Training and Testing Area Carrying Capacity (ATTACC) is a model used by the U.S. Army to manage their training lands. Methods of determining the impacts produced by a vehicle and subsequent vegetative recovery have been used at Fort Lewis, WA for the Light Armored Vehicle (LAV). The LAV is an eight-wheeled vehicle with a maximum curb weight of approximately 14,000 kg. In June of 2003, the vehicle was operated in spiral patterns (five high-speed and five low-speed), and the impacts of the vehicle were assessed at this time. Measurements were taken at 13-20 points along each of the 10 spirals. The impact measurements taken at each point were disturbed width and impact severity. The impacts were reassessed after six months and one year to determine recovery from the initial damage. Different types of impacts (imprint, scrape, combination, and pile) were determined based on the characteristics of the damage produced. The recovery of these different impact types was also assessed. The study site at Fort Lewis was found to have an overall vegetative recovery of 43% after one year, but the different impact types varied in the amount of recovery. Imprint impact types had an almost complete recovery of 74%, while the scrape and combination showed little recovery (11% and 22%, respectively) after one year. The pile also showed a high recovery of 54%. Areas where the vehicle was operated at low speeds showed high recovery (78%). Recovery was much lower (29%) for areas where the vehicle was operated at high speeds. The damage produced was higher and recovery lower when the vehicle was turning sharply. The data produced by this study will be useful in managing the training with LAVs at Fort Lewis by implementation into the ATTACC model. Further study must be done to determine when these impacts would be fully recovered from the damage. The results found in this study are only applicable to the LAV and Fort Lewis. Other vehicles produce different impacts, and other locations have different climates, soils, and vegetation types that would respond differently to vehicle impacts. The methods used in this study can be utilized at other locations and with different vehicles to provide applications to more sites and a wider variety of vehicles

More than Just Books: Using Fiction to Help Young Girls Relate

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to work in a variety of ministry settings. One such setting brought me in contact with a girl who was in a bullying situation. In her case, she related to me action taken in her classroom by her teacher at the urging of her parents. The situation had been remedied, but she was still dealing with the emotional repercussions of having been a victim of relational aggression. In my acquaintance with the girl, I knew she enjoyed reading. Therefore, she helped to inspire my original thesis idea of learning more about the messages that can be derived from reading fiction, the process of writing fiction, and the possible beginning of my own book to be used in bibliotherapy. My thesis idea originally centered on books that could be used in ministering and counseling; since I want to pursue both as part of my eventual career, but then I began to realize that teachers and parents might also be able to apply whatever I discovered. I shared my thoughts with Dr. Amy Sonheim, who introduced me to the term bibliotherapy. From the first instant Dr. Sonheim mentioned bibliotherapy, defining it briefly as the use of books to help people, I was hooked and wanted to know more. How did bibliotherapy work? Who practiced it? How did one use it? And is bibliotherapy effective? Thus, a research project idea was born. I would research bibliotherapy- what it was, how it was practiced, and what its benefits were to those who used it

Potential for and Barriers to Actionable Antiracism in the Writing Center: Views from the IWCA Special Interest Group on Antiracism Activism

The IWCA Special Interest Group (SIG) on Antiracism Activism “is a group committed to undoing racism at multiple levels: in the immediate context of the writing conference and local writing center, and more widely through systematic cross-curricular and cross-institutional initiatives” (“WCActivism”). This piece features the SIG’s participation in the 2018 online IWCA Collaborative at CCCC: the SIG leaders assembled a diverse panel of scholars and practitioners from different races, ages, institutions, and varying levels and types of writing center experience, but with useful and firm beliefs in action. Using Rasha Diab et al.’s 2013 article “Making Commitments to Racial Justice Actionable” as a starting point, the panelists drew on their various perspectives to examine the potential for and barriers to actionable antiracism activism within both the writing center and the IWCA. The authors reflect on antiracism action in, through, and by writing centers and those who work in them, situated within writing centers’ local, academic, and institutional contexts.University Writing Cente

Global Mapping of Citizen Science Projects for Disaster Risk Reduction

Citizen science for disaster risk reduction (DRR) holds huge promise and has demonstrated success in advancing scientific knowledge, providing early warning of hazards, and contributed to the assessment and management of impacts. While many existing studies focus on the performance of specific citizen science examples, this paper goes beyond this approach to present a systematic global mapping of citizen science used for DRR in order to draw out broader insights across diverse methods, initiatives, hazards and country contexts. The systematic mapping analyzed a total of 106 cases of citizen science applied to DRR across all continents. Unlike many existing reviews of citizen science initiatives, relevance to the disaster risk context led us to ‘open up’ our mapping to a broader definition of what might constitute citizen science, including participatory research and narrative-based approaches. By taking a wider view of citizen science and opening up to other disciplinary practices as valid ways of knowing risks and hazards, we also capture these alternative examples and discuss their relevance for aiding effective decision-making around risk reduction. Based on this analysis we draw out lessons for future research and practice of citizen science for DRR including the need to: build interconnections between disparate citizen science methods and practitioners; address multi-dimensionality within and across hazard cycles; and develop principles and frameworks for evaluating citizen science initiatives that not only ensure scientific competence but also attend to questions of equity, responsibility and the empowerment of those most vulnerable to disaster risk

Inflammatory proteins in plasma are associated with severity of Alzheimer's disease.

Published onlineComparative StudyResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tThis is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this record.Markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are being widely sought with a number of studies suggesting blood measures of inflammatory proteins as putative biomarkers. Here we report findings from a panel of 27 cytokines and related proteins in over 350 subjects with AD, subjects with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and elderly normal controls where we also have measures of longitudinal change in cognition and baseline neuroimaging measures of atrophy. In this study, we identify five inflammatory proteins associated with evidence of atrophy on MR imaging data particularly in whole brain, ventricular and entorhinal cortex measures. In addition, we observed six analytes that showed significant change (over a period of one year) in people with fast cognitive decline compared to those with intermediate and slow decline. One of these (IL-10) was also associated with brain atrophy in AD. In conclusion, IL-10 was associated with both clinical and imaging evidence of severity of disease and might therefore have potential to act as biomarker of disease progression.National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Mental Health Biomedical Research Centre and Dementia Biomedical Research Unit at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College LondonEuropean Union of the Sixth Framework progra

Germany and the United States: Reliable Allies. But Disagreement on Russia, Global Leadership and Trade

This Pew Research Center report, in association with Bertelsmann Foundation, examines American and German attitudes toward each other and their respective geopolitical roles. This report is based on telephone surveys in the United States and Germany. In the U.S., interviews were conducted February 26 to March 1, 2015 among a national sample of 1,003 persons, 18 years of age or older. In Germany, interviews were conducted February 24-25, 2015 among a national sample of 963 persons, 18 years of age or older. For more details, see survey methods and topline results

Extending enzyme molecular recognition with an expanded amino acid alphabet

Natural enzymes are constructed from the twenty proteogenic amino acids, which may then require post-translational modification or the recruitment of coenzymes or metal ions to achieve catalytic function. Here, we demonstrate that expansion of the alphabet of amino acids can also enable the properties of enzymes to be extended. A chemical mutagenesis strategy allowed a wide range of non-canonical amino acids to be systematically incorporated throughout an active site to alter enzymic substrate specificity. Specifically, 13 different non-canonical side chains were incorporated at 12 different positions within the active site of N-acetylneuraminic acid lyase (NAL), and the resulting chemically-modified enzymes were screened for activity with a range of aldehyde substrates. A modified enzyme containing a 2,3-dihydroxypropyl cysteine at position 190 was identified that had significantly increased activity for the aldol reaction of erythrose with pyruvate compared with the wild-type enzyme. Kinetic investigation of a saturation library of the canonical amino acids at the same position showed that this increased activity was not achievable with any of the 20 proteogenic amino acids. Structural and modelling studies revealed that the unique shape and functionality of the non-canonical side chain enabled the active site to be remodelled to enable more efficient stabilisation of the transition state of the reaction. The ability to exploit an expanded amino acid alphabet can thus heighten the ambitions of protein engineers wishing to develop enzymes with new catalytic properties