Giving self: Receiving sight

For nearly 500 consecutive days, I have filmed myself dancing to research how time and events in my life develop who I am as a dancer and a person. The daily improvisational scores that I conduct movement from are created around how I perceive myself and the world each day. This investigation has allowed me to understand the physiological norms about myself and has opened my awareness to other people's lives and all of the natural life that exist around me. Before I started spending time alone with movement every day, it seemed I was losing sight of my relationship to myself. In my journey of watching myself grow, I have begun to realize how much each and every day of my life contributes to where I am and who I am today. This image is a blending of a photo taken from my video on January 30th, 2018 with a photo from my video exactly one year later on January 30th, 2019. It brings to life the idea that each year I am the same person with the same body, but each day I am seeing the world and the way that I fit into it differently.Ope

Environmental Clearinghouse of Schenectady

This paper analyses Environmental Clearinghouse of Schenectady, a local nonprofit environmental organization. The paper investigates the history of the organization as well as the effectiveness of its organizational and funding habits. A literary review was conducted to analyze the success of ECOS mission as well as the positive effects ECOS has on society using elements such as environmental education, the importance of early environmental education, how well the organization connects urban residents with the outdoors and the effectiveness of environmental programs. This research promotes the importance of early environmental education on our future generations health and environmental conditions. Additionally, through education, every person learns they are important and powerful enough to make a difference. ECOS is a small, local organization, but ECOS mission stretches past Schenectady’s town boundaries to benefit more people and more of our outdoor spaces

Katrina and the Federal Emergency Management Agency: A Case Study in Organizational Failure

The risk of increasingly devastating natural disasters and the continuous threats of terrorism drive the nation\u27s demand for swift and effective national emergency planning and response. Hurricane Katrina struck and devastated parts of the Gulf Region as a Category 4 hurricane in August 2005. After landfall in New Orleans, opportunities to maintain sanitation and hygiene quickly disappeared as flood water became contaminated, evacuees were stranded and forced to sleep next to dead bodies and human waste, survive without food or water and hope to be rescued. Survivors were convinced that they were abandoned by the federal government and left to die. Political leaders including President Bush, the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, have publicly criticized the federal emergency response. A content analysis will be presented that analyzes FEMA\u27s actions related to New Orleans from August 26, 2005 to September 5, 2005. A timeline of FEMA actions and decisions for these dates has been compiled from three sources: the Brookings Institute, Think Progress, and Fact Check, which will be compared against the National Response Plan functions that outline responsibilities and actions for FEMA. Congressional testimony, The White House report and the Bipartisan Committee report also provide a first hand account of FEMA\u27s response as well as providing additional information regarding actions taking by FEMA which are not included in the timelines. New recommendations, based on organizational theory, have also been developed. It is apparent that FEMA\u27s failure is due to its organizational structure and systems. Therefore, policy is needed to correct FEMA\u27s severe shortcomings. Such policy change has also been demanded by the public as well as local/state government entities

Immunohistochemical Quantification of 5HT2C Receptors and CaV 1.3 Channels after Spinal Cord Injury in the Upper Lumbar Mouse Spinal Cord

The mammalian hindlimb central pattern generator (CPG) for locomotion is located in the lumbar spinal cord, and coordinates contralateral alternation of the hindlimbs and intralimb flexor/extensor muscle alternations. Serotonin (5HT) plays an important role in enabling CPG functionality. All serotonergic input to the lumbar cord descends from the medullary Raphe nuclei; these inputs are lost after a complete spinal cord lesion. We used immunohistochemical methods to determine whether spinal cord injury (SCI) affects the expression levels of 5HT2C receptor clusters and CaV 1.3 channel clusters. Quipazine is a 5HT2 agonist and its regular administration has previously led to partial locomotor recovery. We sought to determine if daily administration would reduce the SCI-induced homeostatic changes in 5HT2C receptor and CaV 1.3 channel levels. Half the SCI mice were treated with quipazine, and half were saline vehicle treated. A combination of ImageJ and Matlab was used to determine the number, size, and intensity of 5HT2C receptor clusters after SCI, as well as the percentage of the frame area covered by CaV 1.3 channels and their average brightness. After SCI, there is a significant upregulation in the number of 5HT2C receptor clusters, and 5HT2C receptor clusters are significantly larger. Neither is reduced by quipazine. There is no significant change in the average brightness of 5HT2C receptor clusters after SCI. Additionally, the area and intensity of CaV 1.3 channels are significantly larger in SCI/saline mice than in intact mice. CaV 1.3 channels were not examined in SCI/quipazine mice due to a small sample size

Sources of Recreational and Community Conflict from Tourism in Moab, Utah

A written survey of 200 Moab residents was used to measure residents\u27 attitudes 11 toward tourism. Three regression models were developed using variables identified in the tourism literature to measure the relative importance of interpersonal contacts with tourists, negative impacts to outdoor-recreation experiences, and community experience in predicting attitudes toward tourism. Interpersonal contacts and recreation impacts both had fairly high predictive capabilities. It was concluded that interactions between recreation visitors/tourists and local residents should be a focus of further research. Data from the Moab resident survey were also used in conjunction with a survey of mountain bikers visiting or living in the Moab area and interviews with IO community leaders to document and explain the dynamics of conflicts between recreationists and community residents. It was hypothesized from anecdotal evidence that Moab residents would ascribe more negative economic and environmental impacts to mountain bikers than to other major recreation user groups in the area and that conflicts between the two groups would be asymmetric in nature. It was also hypothesized that measurements of institutional overload would be correlated to perceptions of recreation conflict. Findings from survey data supported all of these hypotheses. Conflicts reported in this study can be partially attributed to lifestyle intolerance and resource specificity (recreation concepts), as well as institutional overload and culture clash (community sociology concepts). The interaction between recreation conflict and sociocultural impacts at the community level indicate the need for a more comprehensive concept of recreation conflict beyond the historic focus upon on-site conflicts between recreation user groups