Amphibian Mortality on Roads: A Case Study in Santa Cruz Long-toed Salamander Habitat

Amphibian populations have been declining at higher rates than bird and mammal populations. Agriculture, urbanization, including roads, and resource extraction continue to put pressure on all species. Roads in particular, are major sources of mortality. The Santa Cruz long-toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum croceum), one of the most critically endangered species in the US, is one amphibian that is declining as a result of anthropogenic impacts, especially habitat loss and fragmentation due to urban development. Migration across roads puts these salamanders at risk from road-related death. This thesis quantified the rate of road mortality to these salamanders and other common amphibians during two A. m. croceum breeding-migration seasons in 2011-13 in a portion of the subspecies\u27 range. Vehicular traffic was a major source of mortality to the salamander. Through traffic doubled the overall vehicle load on roads where the A. m. croceum migrated to and from breeding ponds. The Pacific chorus frog was also killed on the roads. This common species can be used as an indicator of road mortality risk for rarer amphibians. This study indicated that measures to reduce road mortality to the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander could include restricting vehicular traffic on roads adjacent to salamander ponds by limiting traffic to residential use only during breeding migrations, installing structures to protect A. m. croceum while crossing roads, and potentially assisting animals crossing roads at nighttime during the breeding migrations

Health and Healthcare: Designing for the Social Determinants of Health and Blue Zones in North Nashville

Owned by North Nashville’s First Community Church, a now empty site in the Osage-North Fisk neighborhood of North Nashville has been identified as a potential site for a new location of The Store, in addition to a community-centric architectural development based on the social determinants of health and informed by the principles behind Blue Zones, the locations with the highest lifespans in the world. Opened by Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, The Store is a free grocery store that “allow[s] people to shop for their basic needs in a way that protects dignity and fosters hope”, for which North Nashville has indicated need. Design proposals from Architecture Studio 6 explored how architecture focused on the social determinants of health could augment The Store’s positive impact within the community. While considering all of the social determinants of health, this proposal focuses on Health and Healthcare by examining the implications that health equity, physical activity, health education, rates of disease risk, food access, and trustworthiness in healthcare providers have on North Nashville specifically. Following the Belmont Data Collaborative’s Dilemma, Data, Insight, Action - or DDIA - framework, this project outlines the research-based foundation for our design proposal. Learning from individuals within the community contextualized the Osage-North Fisk neighborhood’s severe statistical information and emphasized its rich history, vibrant character, inspiring resilience, and existing community organizations that can be supported through this architectural proposal. Combining these insights with the principles behind Blue Zones yielded the holistic, wellness-centric pursuit of designing for the 100% and taking a preventative rather than reactive strategy toward health. Through research-based, designed functionality, this architectural proposal can transform the empty site into a supportive and uplifting development that promotes self-sufficiency and builds on the strengths of the North Nashville community

Project management office models: a review

Organizations are facing competitive and globalized markets, as well as constant environmental changes that often require an organizational restructuring of the business models in order to boost performance. Project management practices can help to achieve strategic goals and increase value of projects in organizations. The Project Management Office (PMO) is an organizational structure created in order to promote and improve project management practice, by adopting appropriate methodologies to achieve high levels of efficiency and effectiveness. In recent years several models and functions of PMO have been proposed by many authors, varying from the PMO with a sole function of reporting project execution, to the one who participates in the definition of organizational strategies. The main purpose of this article is to present a review of the typologies of PMO. Since the importance of PMO is increasing in organizations, the results of this work are useful to provide guidance to organizations on implementing or restructuring their own PMO

Assessing The Success of The 2020 Kansas State Research and Extension Summer Research Program: A Virtual Research Experience

Ethnic minorities, and specifically African American students are not participating in graduate programs at the same rate as non-minority students. In 2006, Kansas State University College of Agriculture Diversity Programs Office (DPO) established the Kansas State Research and Extension (KSRE) Summer Research Fellows Program to expose African American and other ethnic minority students to the agricultural sciences graduate research opportunities. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 KSRE Summer Research Fellows Program was held virtually to protect the health and safety of participants. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the virtual program. Data from five 2020 participants were collected using a 5-point Likert scale assessment and analyzed as a case study and by descriptive statistics. As a result of this case study, participants successfully gained knowledge of graduate school and careers in agriculture. Findings will be utilized to further enhance student experience in the program

The arctic circle boundary and the Airy process

We prove that the, appropriately rescaled, boundary of the north polar region in the Aztec diamond converges to the Airy process. The proof uses certain determinantal point processes given by the extended Krawtchouk kernel. We also prove a version of Propp's conjecture concerning the structure of the tiling at the center of the Aztec diamond.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117904000000937 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Reliability Analysis of Emergency Telephone System Models

Several alternate systems for use in implementing the 911 emergency system in Orange County, Florida were investigated. The proposed systems were compared with the already existing systems on the basis of reliability, response time, and cost. System reliability was the prime consideration of the study. Flow charts of each system were formulated in order to determine the functions required of equipment and humans. The reliability was then determined by examining the difficulty of the tasks that each was required to perform. Reliability models of the present and proposed systems were constructed. By examining these models and comparing the reliabilities, response times, and costs, the most advantageous system configurations were determined. Two systems, Emergency Operator Call Transfer and Emergency Operator Call Relay, were selected as the most desirable; there were no appreciable differences in their reliability, response time, and cost