Chronically Sustainable: Creating a Sustainable Community for the Chronically Ill

In a world that is rapidly changing due to climate change, there is a group of people that are being left behind in the ?green? movement. This is not new for these people; the group has often been forgotten and under served by society throughout history. This group is the chronically ill. With a variety of abilities and needs, society has failed to give them the same opportunities in life as the abled body. Buildings are required to have accessible entrances but often time they are far from the main entrances and highlight a person?s disabilities by inconveniencing not just only the disabled but everyone in their group. Yet, there is even more to accessibility than ADA entrances. Accessibility has many factors such as affordability, access to resources, and usability. This project focuses on how to create a community that is designed for the chronically ill with their various needs and abilities at the forefront of the design while considering the sustainability of the project. Located outside of Phoenix, Arizona within the Sonoran Desert, this project focuses on the ability to create a sustainable community that caters to a demographic that has struggled to become more sustainable due to their additional medical needs. The community will provide for the chronically ill and their families within the master planned community. Amenities include a community center, retail, grocery store, medical facility, athletic facilities, and leisure facilities. The project is divided into two parts: master planning the community and designing key community aspects

Predictions of structural elements for the binding of Hin recombinase with the hix site of DNA

Molecular dynamics simulations were coupled with experimental data from biochemistry and genetics to generate a theoretical structure for the binding domain of Hin recombinase complexed with the hix site of DNA. The theoretical model explains the observed sequence specificity of Hin recombinase and leads to a number of testable predictions concerning altered sequence selectivity for various mutants of protein and DNA. Combining molecular dynamics simulations with constraints based on current knowledge of protein structure leads to a theoretical structure of the binding domain of Hin recombinase with the hix site of DNA. The model offers a mechanistic explanation of the presently known characteristics of Hin and predicts the effects of specific mutations of both protein and DNA. The predictions can be tested by currently feasible experiments that should lead to refinements in and improvements on the current theoretical model. Because current experimental and theoretical methods are all limited to providing only partial information about protein-DNA interactions, we believe that this approach of basing molecular simulations on experimental knowledge and using the results of these simulations to design new, more precise experimental tests will be of general utility. These results provide additional evidence for the generality of the helix-turn-helix motif in DNA recognition and stabilization of proteins on DNA

Proposed Modifications to the Los Angeles Rattler Test

The amount of highway construction is increasing every year. As a result, there is an ever increasing demand for mineral aggregates. Engineers classify these mineral aggregates as the smaller rocks which are composed of one or more minerals. In the state of California, between one-fifth and one-third of the 300 million dollars spent annually for the construction of highways is used for the procurement and placement of aggregates. (l) This cost is steadily increasing because of the depletion of the more accessible and higher quality aggregates. Because the traffic volume and loads are steadily increasing, the Interstate system as well as many other primary roads being built demand durable aggregates. The selecting of high quality aggregates is not a new problem. Back in Roman times it was necessary to select suitable rocks for use as flag stones, a surfacing material of the time. Some of the highways of that era remain in excellent condition today as a result of the prudent selection of surfacing material. It was not until the late nineteenth century, however, that the use of machines to simulate field conditions for the purpose of determining the durability of aggregates began. The first successful test for abrasion of aggregates was the Deval test. At the present time the Los Angeles rattler tests used by most of the State Highway Departments. It is considered the most effective test for determining the structural and abrasive qualities of an aggregate. In the late 1940\u27s however, it was observed that aggregates which had passed the Los Angeles rattler test were failing under field conditions. In 1947, Melville investigated a failure in Route 250 near Charlottesville, Virginia. From his investigation he concluded that the aggregates had weathered sufficiently to produce a layer of plastic fines which caused the failure. (2) Since then there have been many similar cases reported, especially in the western states. As a consequence of· these failures, many of the western states have been attempting to develop an empirical test that will determine the tendency of an aggregate to produce plastic fines. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, and South Dakota, as well as other states, have developed tests to determine the durability characteristics of aggregates. At the present time, none of these tests are universally accepted by other states or by the American Society for Testing and Materials. The Los Angeles rattler test is a very simple test and requires little time to perform. The amount of time required to conduct a test is becoming increasingly important because labor costs are steadily rising. Also, with the high production of modern aggregate contractors, it is important to have a test which can be accomplished in a short period of time. The Los Angeles rattler machine is an expensive piece of equipment and one that all state highway departments regard as standard equipment. Accordingly, this study was made with a view toward modifying the Los Angeles rattler test to include wet abrasion. This would make it possible to obtain the necessary durability information from a single laboratory test without appreciably adding to the cost of equipment

Linking the National Medical Expenditure Survey with the National Health Interview Survey: analysis of field trials

[by Nancy A. Mathiowetz and E. Patrick Ward]."September 1987."Includes bibliographical references

The Cannell Legacy

Charles Cannell engineered the study of Interviewer-respondent interaction. He created conceptual frameworks for understanding the interviewing process and its impact on data quality. He invented methods for observing and recording interview interaction. He pioneered the use of randomized experiments in the survey context. He amalgamated insights from clinical and social psychology, sociology, group dynamics, as well as research on verbal and nonverbal communication to inform his work. This interdisciplinary approach has broadly influenced both interviewing research and practice. In this paper, we review Cannell’s many contributions to the field and his enduring legacy

The Cannell Legacy

Charles Cannell engineered the study of Interviewer-respondent interaction. He created conceptual frameworks for understanding the interviewing process and its impact on data quality. He invented methods for observing and recording interview interaction. He pioneered the use of randomized experiments in the survey context. He amalgamated insights from clinical and social psychology, sociology, group dynamics, as well as research on verbal and nonverbal communication to inform his work. This interdisciplinary approach has broadly influenced both interviewing research and practice. In this paper, we review Cannell’s many contributions to the field and his enduring legacy

The Cannell Legacy

Charles Cannell engineered the study of Interviewer-respondent interaction. He created conceptual frameworks for understanding the interviewing process and its impact on data quality. He invented methods for observing and recording interview interaction. He pioneered the use of randomized experiments in the survey context. He amalgamated insights from clinical and social psychology, sociology, group dynamics, as well as research on verbal and nonverbal communication to inform his work. This interdisciplinary approach has broadly influenced both interviewing research and practice. In this paper, we review Cannell’s many contributions to the field and his enduring legacy

Wealth dynamics: reducing noise in panel data

Although the asset data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is of very high quality, there is sufficient noise to frustrate attempts to study saving behaviour by examining wave-to-wave change in wealth. In this research, we attempt to reduce noise by means of reactive-dependent interviewing in which respondents with large inexplicable changes in assets between 1998 and 2000 are called back by HRS interviewers, presented with their prior reports and asked to reconcile the data. We achieved reconciliation for 1255 households (2479 net-worth components) and, as a result, the variance in measured change for the entire sample of 11,583 households with the same financial respondents in both waves was cut in half. The empirical validity of the data also appears to have been improved. The correlation of gross change in net worth and income, for instance, increased from an insignificant negative to a highly significant positive value. Although reconciliation of large asset changes marginally improves the goodness of fit of multivariate models, there remains sufficient noise in the asset-change data to require analysts to employ additional methods to reduce the influence of outliers. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55813/1/878_ftp.pd

Evaluating latent variable interactions with structural equation mixture models

Interactions are commonly hypothesized in psychological research. Methods exist for estimating interactions with observed variables, but problems with small effect sizes, measurement error, predictor distributions, and the unknown nature of the relationships among the variables of interest make it difficult to detect interactions. Latent variable approaches were proposed to remedy some problems with observed variables, however these methods require a priori specification of the functional form of the interaction. The present work evaluates an approach using structural equation mixture models (SEMMs) to estimate interactions among latent variables without specifying a functional form in advance. Results indicate that the approach can approximate a variety of latent variable relationships. Larger sample sizes and areas with more observations were associated with better SEMM performance. Typically, SEMMs with additional classes had less bias. It is recommended that researchers examine predicted value plots for several SEMMs to evaluate the relationships among the latent variables