Sustainability Amidst Uncertainty: Columbia Forest Products’ Pursuit of Sustainability in a Changing Market

Upon reading the latest report from the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, Harry Demorest found his concerns confirmed – the construction of new homes had fallen yet again across the United States. Over the past month, new home starts had declined over 14% in December; this marked the end of 2007 during which housing starts were down 25% compared to the previous year and hit a low not experienced since 1993. The question was no longer “will there be a recession?” but rather “how long will the recession last?” The fate of Columbia Forest Products, the company that Harry led for 16 years as Chairman and CEO, is tightly bound to the US housing market. CFP has over a 40% market share in hardwood plywood products, most of which go into new home construction. Further, over the past three years, CFP has embarked on a journey into sustainability. This journey is marked most profoundly by the introduction of PureBond® non-formaldehyde plywood in 2006. A first in the industry, PureBond® provides significant health benefits to CFP employees and customers by removing a known carcinogen from its products. It also has been a catalyst for CFP to pursue a more comprehensive, sustainability-inspired strategy. But in the midst of the dreadful housing market in the US, Harry and the rest of CFP executive team wondered if further pursuit of a sustainability strategy would be detrimental to their company’s competitiveness

Behavioral and molecular genetics of reading-related AM and FM detection thresholds

Auditory detection thresholds for certain frequencies of both amplitude modulated (AM) and frequency modulated (FM) dynamic auditory stimuli are associated with reading in typically developing and dyslexic readers. We present the first behavioral and molecular genetic characterization of these two auditory traits. Two extant extended family datasets were given reading tasks and psychoacoustic tasks to determine FM 2 Hz and AM 20 Hz sensitivity thresholds. Univariate heritabilities were significant for both AM (h2 = 0.20) and FM (h2 = 0.29). Bayesian posterior probability of linkage (PPL) analysis found loci for AM (12q, PPL = 81 %) and FM (10p, PPL = 32 %; 20q, PPL = 65 %). Bivariate heritability analyses revealed that FM is genetically correlated with reading, while AM was not. Bivariate PPL analysis indicates that FM loci (10p, 20q) are not also associated with reading

The active compression wave cochlear amplifier

This thesis investigates hair cell (He) homeostasis and the compression wave cochlear amplifier.In the first part of the thesis, an accurate physiological treatment of a generic HC is conducted using a nonlinear distributed parameter physical model. This model includes the major ionic species (sodium, potassium and chlorine), defining the active cellular homeostatic properties. This model is used for transient response analysis. Resting state and transient responses of the HC model are in excellent agreement with the experimental literature. HCs in this model are most simply classified as instantaneous nonlinear transduction devices (i. e. their homeostatic mechanisms are not significantly frequency selective).A compression wave cochlear amplifier (CW-CA) is defined and modelled for the first time in the second part of the thesis. It is a physiological model that addresses three main elements present in the peripheral hearing circuit: cochlear mechanics, HC nonlinearity, and neurology. The actual physiological feedback mechanism of the CW-CA is realistic.A passive travelling wave (or other mechanical) vibration is the input to the system. Whilst the travelling wave wiggles the Organ of Corti, the compression wave pulsates it. The CW-CA is an alternative to the physiologically ill-defined locally active travelling wave cochlear feedback amplifier proposed by others. The new CW-CA model results in a cycle-by-cycle amplifier with nonlinear response. It is capable of assuming an infinite number of different operating states. The stable and first few amplitude-limited unstable states are significant in describing the operation of the peripheral hearing system. The CW-CA model can explain a large number of hearing phenomena. Several of these are investigated by means of a system analysis for both the stable and unstable cases. The system is studied and the tone, two-tone suppression and distortion product responses are found to align well with published results.Explanations for various mechanical, HC and neurological phenomena are discussed and presented. For example, previously poorly understood phenomena such as otoacoustic emissions and neural spontaneous rates are accounted for

The 'Aesthetics of Personalism' in Caryl Phillips's Writing: Complexity as a New Brand of Humanism

This paper attempts to underline the epistemological implications of Phillips's handling of diasporic history through a focus on individual lives in Cambridge (1991) and The Nature of Blood (1997). His confessional first-person narratives highlight the intricacies inherent in human nature, thereby resisting the globalizing discourse of liberal humanism. Even more importantly, his fictions seem to illustrate a new, more understanding approach to this often hackneyed term, for they give voice to individuals whose multiple differences are, paradoxically, part proof of a common humanity, viewed here as an inclusive rather than exclusive concept

A Data Driven Approach for Prioritizing COVID-19 Vaccinations in the Midwestern United States: Prioritizing COVID-19 Vaccinations

Considering the potential for widespread adoption of social vulnerability indices (SVI) to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations, there is a need to carefully assess them, particularly for correspondence with outcomes (such as loss of life) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health Public Health GIS team developed a methodology for assessing and deriving vulnerability indices based on the premise that these indices are, in the final analysis, classifiers. Application of this methodology to several Midwestern states with a commonly used SVI indicates that by using only the SVI rankings there is risk of assigning a high priority to locations with the lowest mortality rates and low priority to locations with the highest mortality rates. Based on the findings, we propose using a two-dimensional approach to rationalize the distribution of vaccinations. This approach has the potential to account for areas with high vulnerability characteristics as well as to incorporate the areas that were hard hit by the pandemic