Radio:Reaching Young Adult Audiences, What are the Challenges and Opportunities for Radio Programmers in Cultivating Young Adult Audiences in the Current Media Environment?

As young adults have adopted the use of digital new media technologies, previous scholarly research has predicted a lack of interest by young adults in traditional media, including radio. This waining interest in traditional media by young adults has also been reported in the popular press. An abandonment of radio by young adults could bring about an eventual decline in audience, resulting in adverse economic effects to the broadcast radio industry and related industries, including a decrease in radio revenues, the deflation in the value of radio properties, and potential job loss. This research examined the challenges radio programmers and marketers feel they are having in reaching out to and growing young adult audiences in the face of competition from new media and new media technologies as well as new opportunities for programming and marketing that these new media present. This research surveyed websites and interviewed radio broadcasters in the San Francisco Bay Area who demonstrated success in marketing to young adults in an attempt to ascertain the challenges and new opportunities in reaching and cultivating radio listeners is presented by new media. It was found that these San Francisco Bay Area radio stations are using new media tools to market and program to young adult listeners, and that these tools are key in keeping the radio medium robust

Recovery Research, Katrina's Fifth Anniversary, and Lessons Relearned

What may be called “disaster science” is a broad field that begins with understanding hazards, risks, and population vulnerabilities and moves on to establishing best-practice models of response, mitigation, and recovery. Gaps abound in our collective knowledge in all of these areas, and it is fair to suggest that we have only begun to scratch the surface in terms of what we need to know. The goal continues to be to learn how to prevent disasters whenever possible and, when prevention is not possible, to at least optimize survival, preserve vital infrastructure, and return rapidly to a state of normalcy

Hurricane Sandy: Lessons Learned, Again

Hurricane Sandy was a sobering reminder to those of us who call New York home that it is a port city and subject to the whims of wind and water. The storm itself was massive: climatologically, a thousand miles wide at its peak; economically, an estimated excess of $50 billion in damages. In the New York metropolitan area, 97 people died in the storm, thousands were displaced from their homes, and 2 major hospitals required perilous evacuations even as the hurricane force winds engulfed the metropolitan region. For those of us in the fields of disaster medicine and public health preparedness, the question is, were we ready? During the past decade considerable public investment has been made in standardizing command and communication, assuring appropriate and rapid supply chains, and training the medical and public health workforces to respond appropriately. And yet, in the week after the storm, persistent reports of widespread gaps in the provision of coordinated relief were received from the Rockaways to Coney Island to Staten Island and New Jersey. The question was not one of capacity and capability as much as it was of communication and coordination. Resources did not always make it the last mile to reach those most in need

A Computational Economy for Grid Computing and its Implementation in the Nimrod-G Resource Brok

Computational Grids, coupling geographically distributed resources such as PCs, workstations, clusters, and scientific instruments, have emerged as a next generation computing platform for solving large-scale problems in science, engineering, and commerce. However, application development, resource management, and scheduling in these environments continue to be a complex undertaking. In this article, we discuss our efforts in developing a resource management system for scheduling computations on resources distributed across the world with varying quality of service. Our service-oriented grid computing system called Nimrod-G manages all operations associated with remote execution including resource discovery, trading, scheduling based on economic principles and a user defined quality of service requirement. The Nimrod-G resource broker is implemented by leveraging existing technologies such as Globus, and provides new services that are essential for constructing industrial-strength Grids. We discuss results of preliminary experiments on scheduling some parametric computations using the Nimrod-G resource broker on a world-wide grid testbed that spans five continents

School Interventions After the Joplin Tornado

Background/Objective To qualitatively describe interventions by schools to meet children's needs after the May 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado. METHODS: Qualitative exploratory study conducted six months after the tornado. Key informant interviews with school staff (teachers, psychologists, guidance counselor, nurse, principal), public health official, and physicians. Report After the tornado, school staff immediately worked to contact every enrolled child to provide assistance and coordinate recovery services. Despite severe damage to half of the city's schools, the decision was made to reopen schools at the earliest possible time to provide a safe, reassuring environment and additional services. An expanded summer school session emphasized child safety and emotional wellbeing. The 2011-2012 school year began on time, less than three months after the disaster, using temporary facilities. Displaced children were bused to their usual schools regardless of their new temporary residence locations. In just-in-time training sessions, teachers developed strategies to support students and staff experiencing anxiety or depression. Certified counselors conducted school-based, small-group counseling for students. Selective referrals were made to community mental health providers for children with greatest needs. CONCLUSIONS: Evidence from Joplin adds to a small body of empirical experience demonstrating the important contribution of schools to postdisaster community recovery. Despite timely and proactive services, many families and children struggled after the tornado. Improvements in the effectiveness of postdisaster interventions at schools will follow from future scientific evidence on optimal approaches