Urban Design of Bristol Waterfront, Lower Thames Street

Collaboration with the Town of Bristol in the fall of 2013 when students in ARCH 415, Advanced Design Studio – Urban, under the guidance of Professor Ulker Copur, studied the waterfront area along the west side of Thames Street, from State Street south to the armory in Bristol, Rhode Island, including the continuation of a public boardwalk through the area linking up with the adjacent properties. The designs created by students would be used to guide the town in developing a master plan for the area and the new Bristol Maritime Welcome Center

The relationship of molecular structure to mesomorphism in some aromatic esters of diphenols

Matter exists principally in three distinct states -crystalline solid, isotropic liquid, and gas. Individual units in both the liquid and gaseous state are more or less mobile, while in the crystalline solid state these units are held in the rigid, three dimensional configuration of a crystalline lattice. Consequently, the crystalline solid is regarded as the most highly ordered of the three states of matter. Heating a crystalline solid increases the thermal vibrations and the ordered arrangement begins to break down. The solid passes from the highly organized crystalline state to the disorganized isotropic liquid. In 1888, Friedrich Reinitzer discovered that, on melting cholesteryl benzoate, the solid collapsed to form a turbid liquid which, on further heating, gave the normal, transparent, isotropic liquid.1 This turbid liquid exhibited properties of both liquid and crystalline forms of matter; the substance was both birefringent (a property of crystals) and fluid. Although Reinitzer is credited with discovering the liquid crystalline phenomenon, Lehmann2 was first to suggest the name "liquid crystals", and to describe their properties. Later, Friedel3,4 proposed the term "mesomorphs" or "mesophases" for substances that were neither isotropic liquids nor crystalline solids. Since both terminologies are generally accepted, the terms liquid crystal and mesomorph, or liquid crystallinity and mesomorphism, will be used interchangeably throughout this thesis

Laboratory testing for wear performance of selected wood floor finishes

Eight wood floor finishes were applied to quarter-sawn, red oak flooring blocks and, along with a factory finished block, were tested under laboratory conditions to determine the degree of wear of each of the finishes. A loss in film thickness of the finish was considered wear. Test blocks included four replicates each of polyurethane, vinyl, epoxy, amino resin, lacquer, shellac, varnish, penetrating seal, and a prefinished specimen. Blocks were tested on the Simulated Human Wear Producing Machine consisting of a treadmill and cam-operated legs and feet developed by Dr. Henry Bowen and his engineering students of the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. A Zeiss Light-Section Microscope was used to measure the film thickness of finishes. Four measurements were recorded from predetermined locations and the mean computed for each test specimen of each finish before testing and during testing at one, two, four, five, six, and eight hour intervals. Blocks were rotated on the machine after each measurement period

The role of costs in tax evasion : non-selfish attitudes or percuniary motivations?

In this thesis we examined the role of non-selfish attitudes in determining tax evasion. We contrasted the argument of the standard approach according to which tax payers choose the amount of income to declare (being motivated merely by monetary considerations) with the idea that some individuals may be inherently honest and would never evade even if it paid them to do so.The first two chapters set the scene for the ideas we developed in the rest of the thesis. We reviewed the standard portfolio model, and drew our attention to three predictions that appeared to be inconsistent with empirical evidence: a) A rise in the tax rate causes a decrease in the amount of tax evasion. This result is counter-intuitive and has little empirical support. b) If all agents maximised expected utility, it is difficult to explain why some evade and others do not. Assuming fine rates and detection rates to be the same across all agents, different degrees of risk aversion explain different amounts of tax evaded but do not explain why some people evade and others do not. c) There is a general view that, given actual fine rates and the probability of audit, the amount of evasion undertaken is too low, in relation to what the standard model predicts. This idea is not to our knowledge fully argued, in that it is unclear exactly how much evasion the standard model does predict. Also it is unclear how large empirical estimates of evasion actually are in the context of the portfolio model. Actual evasion must be compared with the amount of income that an agent is able to hide from the tax authority.We considered the economic literature on the role of morals in tax evasion together with some empirical evidence. In particular, we focused on the Myles and Naylor model which considers tax compliance as a social custom, and on Bordignon's analysis, which examines the role of fairness considerations in deterring tax evasion. In Myles and Naylor's model the issue of the effect of an increase in the tax rate on tax evasion is not completely resolved. It is possible to get an increase in tax evasion after an increase in the tax rate, but this will occur only because those who were previously honest start to evade, i.e. more people become evaders. Existing evaders would still decrease tax evasion after an increase in the tax rate, as in the Yitzhaki model. Hence the Myles and Naylor analysis offers only a partial resolution to this puzzling prediction. Bordignon's analysis is more satisfactory in this respect: in his model people can end up evading more, when the tax rises, even when they were previously evading. This happens when individuals perceive the increase in the tax rate as unfair and consequently are prepared to evade more than previously.Hence the puzzling prediction concerning the effect of a change in the tax rate is not completely resolved by the models on social interactions. We also pointed out that the argument that some people are inherently honest is vulnerable to evolutionary forces. Once we allow preferences to change and selfish attitudes to be present in the social environment, altruistic behaviour can be undermined by an increased tendency to "selfishness". Furthermore the simple arguments we gave suggested some difficulties in explaining how "honest" and "utility maximising" individuals could coexist in equilibrium. This general argument is not new to economics, having appeared as long back as 1959 in Tullock's famous paper on voting.The argument that some people may be inherently honest and not evade even if it would pay to do so is not completely satisfactory. In the models we considered people are assumed to be motivated by non-selfish considerations, some sort of predisposition to altruistic behaviour seems to be taken as given, rather than explained. There has been a large amount of literature that suggests some form of "altruism" motivates economic decisions. However the models and evidence that point in this direction suggest that the stability of altruistic or co-operative behaviour relies on some form of reciprocity. This argument for altruism is weaker in the context of tax evasion, however. Tax evasion is by its nature a hidden activity and individuals cannot observe each other. Moreover a single taxpayer can be reciprocal only with an anonymous group. Hence reciprocity considerations and punishment of cheaters are likely to be a lot less effective than in many of the cases studied. In the light of this, the question of why individuals should consider tax compliance as part of a social custom remains an open question.Empirical evidence on this issue is rather thin, in that most of empirical studies do not consider this question directly. From the studies we discussed, the evidence on the role of morals is not compelling. More compelling is the role of opportunities and costs of evasion in determining tax compliance. Curiously this issue has been neglected by the literature in the standard portfolio model. Here the only cost for evading is the fine, which is incurred only in case of detection.We explored the idea that costs or opportunities rather than willingness to evade might determine evaders' behaviour: some people may not evade simply because it is too costly or because they do not have the opportunity to do so. By introducing a minor modification to the standard approach, to allow for a cost element in evasion, we get some different results. In particular we show that it is possible to predict an increase in tax evasion after an increase in the tax rate, without relying on any particular psychological motivation. It is also possible to get a mixed outcome of evaders and non-evaders, even if individuals have the same income and face the same probability of detection. Typically, evaders are less risk averse than nonevaders. Different degrees of risk aversion lead to different choices on whether or not to evade. This was not a characteristic of the standard model.In Chapter 5 we analysed the optimal audit policy when taxpayers have different opportunities to evade. The analysis can be extended in various ways: 1) by considering different sizes for the two groups of tax payers; 2) by allowing individuals to choose the group to which they belong. This pursues the idea developed by Cowell (1985). 3) The choice of the tax rate could be endogenised, to allow more interaction among the taxpayer, the tax authority and tax enforcement agency. This would obviously require an explicit social welfare based approach. 4) It is also possible that the government could directly affect evasion by controlling the cost of compliance. In particular it could be interesting to examine how much of the compliance cost should be borne by the government and how much by the individual.These are directions for possible future research. NoteThe last chapter of the thesis is joint work with Thibaud Vergé at CMPO

Academic freedom and freedom of speech:the assault of vulnerability

The UK government’s attempt to “prevent” terrorism and extremism in the university sector is rightly seen as an intolerant threat to academic freedom. However, this development has not come from a “right wing” authoritarian impulse, but rather, replicates many of the discussions already taking place in universities about the need to protect “vulnerable” students from offensive and dangerous ideas. Historically, the threat to academic freedom came from outside the university, from pressures exerted from governments, from religious institutions who oversaw a particular institution or from the demands of business. Alternatively it has been seen as something that is a particular problem in non-Western countries that do not have democracy. While some of these problems and pressures remain, there is a more dangerous threat to academic freedom that comes from within universities, a triumvirate of a relativistic academic culture, a new body of identity-based student activists and a therapeutically oriented university management, all three of which have helped to construct universities as safe spaces for the newly conceptualized “vulnerable student.” With reference to the idea of vulnerability, this chapter attempts to chart and explain these modern developments

Academic research into marketing: many publications, but little impact?

This article reviews some issues associated with the way in which academic research into marketing is evaluated by UK education authorities using their Research Excellence Framework (REF), in particular the impact component of the assessment. It discusses the extent to which research by marketing academics published in leading academic journals is relevant to the concerns of marketing management and how this relevance or lack of it may be reflected in the relative paucity of impact submissions in marketing. It considers the model of impact assessment used in the REF and how this differs from how marketing academics work in practice, giving three examples of significant impact that would not be acceptable under current rules. It concludes by suggesting that alternative models for impact should be investigated and suggests that using more practical models might result in better engagement of marketing academics with business, leading to greater relevance in teaching and employability of marketing graduates

Dissimilarity of the gut-lung axis and dysbiosis of the lower airways in ventilated preterm infants

Background: Chronic lung disease of prematurity (CLD), also called bronchopulmonary dysplasia, is a major consequence of preterm birth but the role of the microbiome in its development remains unclear. We, therefore, assessed the progression of the bacterial community in ventilated preterm infants over time in the upper and lower airways, and assessed the gut-lung axis by comparing the upper and lower airways bacterial communities with the stool findings. Finally, we assessed if the bacterial communities were associated with lung inflammation to suggest dysbiosis. Methods: We serially sampled multiple anatomical sites including the upper airway (nasopharyngeal aspirates, NPA), lower airways (tracheal aspirate fluid, TAF, and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, BAL) and the gut (stool) of ventilated preterm-born infants. Bacterial DNA load was measured in all samples and sequenced using the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene Results: From 1,102 (539 NPA, 276 TAF, 89 BAL, 198 stool) samples from 55 preterm infants, 352 (32%) amplified suitably for 16s RNA gene sequencing. Bacterial load was low at birth, quickly increased with time but was associated with predominant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in all sample types. There was dissimilarity in bacterial communities between the upper and lower airways and the gut with a separate dysbiotic inflammatory process occurring in the lower airways of infants. Individual OTUs were associated with increased inflammatory markers. Conclusions: Taken together, these findings suggest that targeted treatment of the predominant organisms, including those not routinely treated such as Ureaplasma spp., may decrease the development of CLD in preterm-born infants