Evaluation of the Valley Transportation Authority’s DO IT! Program A “Ladders of Opportunity Initiative” Program Funded by the Federal Transit Administration

The U.S. Department of Transportation has increasingly demonstrated interest in developing programs that will enhance the workforce capacity of future transportation systems. To that end, the Department sponsored the 2015 Innovative Public Transportation Workforce Development program, directed by the Federal Transit Administration. This program sought to enhance the availability of skilled workers from targeted groups, including the underserved, underemployed, and/or minority groups into possible transit-oriented career paths. One of the 19 programs selected for funding was the “DO IT!” project proposed and developed by the Valley Transit Authority (VTA). VTA proposed to create an innovative education and training program that focused on attracting and ultimately hiring underserved, underemployed, and/or minority groups in its service area of Santa Clara County. The program was created with two major goals in mind: (1) to enable VTA to work with local youth who may not otherwise have the opportunity to be exposed to a career in public transportation – specifically in the area of transportation planning; and (2) to provide a ladder of opportunity into the middle class which will help strengthen our workforce and our intercity communities by building the critical skillset needed to maintain a competitive and efficient public transportation service. This report provides an evaluation of the “Do It! Program and presents recommendations for program replication or improvement

Переклад у галузі електроенергетики. Методичні рекомендації до практичних занять з дисципліни для студентів спеціальності 7.030507 «Переклад» напряму підготовки 035 «Філологія»

Методичні матеріали призначено для самостійної роботи студентів спеціальності 7.030507 “Переклад” напряму підготовки 035 «Філологія» для організації практичних занять із дисципліни «Переклад у галузі електроенергетики». Рекомендації орієнтовано на вдосконалення навичок перекладу науково-технічних текстів

GEORGE WHITEFIELD CHADWICK AND ROBERT AYRES BARNET’S TABASCO

Until recently George Whitefield Chadwick’s burlesque opera Tabasco (1894) had been largely forgotten. In 2018, however, conductor Paul Mauffray completed a reconstruction of Tabasco that has brought renewed attention to this seldom heard work. Set to a libretto by Robert Ayres Barnet, Tabasco was commissioned as the third in a series of comic operas by the Boston Men’s Army Cadets as fundraiser for the construction of a new armory. This thesis explores the history of Tabasco from its inception through the national tour produced by Thomas Q. Seabrooke’s Comic Opera Company, which would eventually lead to the withdrawal of the work by its creators. As a result of the multiple changes the work has undergone, it is often difficult to establish authorship with respect not only to the presence of added material, but also in terms of what Chadwick and Barnet approved. During the initial production of the work, additional musical numbers were added at the behest of the producer, Thomas Q. Seabrooke. These numbers mentioned in programs from the professional tour attribute “Lola’s Song” to composer Ludwig Engländer. Although, an examination of the source material provides overwhelming evidence to suggest it was composed by Chadwick with lyrics by Barnet. While the work was popular with audiences, Seabrooke failed to pay the required royalties which led to Chadwick and Barnet threatening legal action. Seabrooke revised and opened the show as The Grand Vizier (1895), making few changes in the music and script, leading to his incarceration. Although short lived, Tabasco has a compelling history and might have become the cornerstone of an American musical repertoire had it survived. Although Barnet was no William S. Gilbert, the libretto speaks to the influence of Barnet’s Victorian predecessor

Local Support Assembly of the ATLAS Pixel Detector

The barrel part of the ATLAS pixel detector will consist of 112 carbon-carbon structures called "staves" with 13 hybrid detector modules being glued on each stave. The demands on the glue joints are high, both in terms of mechanical precision and thermal contact. To achieve this precision a custom-made semi-automated mounting machine has been constructed in Wuppertal, which provides a precision in the order of tens of microns. As this is the last stage of the detector assembly providing an opportunity for stringent tests, a detailed procedure has been defined for assessing both mechanical and electrical properties. This note gives an overview of the procedure for affixation and tests, and summarizes the first results of the production.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure

The Influence of Psychological Safety and Personality on Technology Acceptance of Team-Based Technology in Global Virtual Teams

Collaboration platforms for teams, such as Slack, are increasingly used in virtual teams. Conventional wisdom suggests attitudes about adopting these types of platforms is primarily driven by their affordances. Our project emerged from the premise that psychological safety and personality traits can also significantly influence attitudes related to technology adoption. This research of roughly 300 global virtual teams showed that psychological safety influences views of collaboration platforms in terms of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and hedonic motivation. In addition, this research showed that personality traits influence views of collaboration platforms. These findings about psychological safety and personality traits suggest a team-development approach is an integral component of the technology adoption process. Recommendations for future research are provided

Efficient CRISPR-rAAV engineering of endogenous genes to study protein function by allele-specific RNAi.

Gene knockout strategies, RNAi and rescue experiments are all employed to study mammalian gene function. However, the disadvantages of these approaches include: loss of function adaptation, reduced viability and gene overexpression that rarely matches endogenous levels. Here, we developed an endogenous gene knockdown/rescue strategy that combines RNAi selectivity with a highly efficient CRISPR directed recombinant Adeno-Associated Virus (rAAV) mediated gene targeting approach to introduce allele-specific mutations plus an allele-selective siRNA Sensitive (siSN) site that allows for studying gene mutations while maintaining endogenous expression and regulation of the gene of interest. CRISPR/Cas9 plus rAAV targeted gene-replacement and introduction of allele-specific RNAi sensitivity mutations in the CDK2 and CDK1 genes resulted in a >85% site-specific recombination of Neo-resistant clones versus ∼8% for rAAV alone. RNAi knockdown of wild type (WT) Cdk2 with siWT in heterozygotic knockin cells resulted in the mutant Cdk2 phenotype cell cycle arrest, whereas allele specific knockdown of mutant CDK2 with siSN resulted in a wild type phenotype. Together, these observations demonstrate the ability of CRISPR plus rAAV to efficiently recombine a genomic locus and tag it with a selective siRNA sequence that allows for allele-selective phenotypic assays of the gene of interest while it remains expressed and regulated under endogenous control mechanisms

Variation in DNA methylation patterns is more common among maize inbreds than among tissues

Chromatin modifications, such as DNA methylation, can provide heritable, epigenetic regulation of gene expression in the absence of genetic changes. A role for DNA methylation in meiotically stable marking of repetitive elements and other sequences has been demonstrated in plants. Methylation of DNA is also proposed to play a role in development through providing a mitotic memory of gene expression states established during cellular differentiation. We sought to clarify the relative levels of DNA methylation variation among different genotypes and tissues in maize (Zea mays L.). We have assessed genomewide DNA methylation patterns in leaf, immature tassel, embryo, and endosperm tissues of two inbred maize lines: B73 and Mo17. There are hundreds of regions of differential methylation present between the two genotypes. In general, the same regions exhibit differential methylation between B73 and Mo17 in each of the tissues that were surveyed. In contrast, there are few examples of tissue-specific DNA methylation variation. Only a subset of regions with tissue-specific variation in DNA methylation show similar patterns in both genotypes of maize and even fewer are associated with altered gene expression levels among the tissues. Our data indicates a limited impact of DNA methylation on developmental gene regulation within maize