Boardman Lake Trail

Today in the United States, a significant portion of energy use is devoted to transportation needs. To address sustainable energy use in transportation, Team Wicked Awesome formed in the class LIB 322: “Wicked Problems in Sustainability” at Grand Valley State University in the winter of 2015. Looking to wicked problem solving methods, we examined Traverse City’s need for alternative options for transportation (other than single occupant vehicles). As an alternative mode of transportation, we looked into a number of ways to promote bicycle ridership and came to discover there was a tentative plan to complete a portion of the Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation Trail (T.A.R.T) that would give an entire side of the Boardman Lake more access to downtown and other neighborhoods via bicycle. We discovered that there was a lack of communication between local cycle groups, other community stakeholders and city officials in addressing the completion of the Boardman Lake Trail. We will hold a summit in order to open a dialogue with the community members and other stakeholders to discuss the state of the trail by integrating stakeholders and experts in a discussion panel. As part of the Wicked Problems model of problem solving we hope to bridge gaps that currently exist between these interested parties. We do not intend to create a new effort, but instead we will increase community involvement in the current effort and encourage city officials to place higher priority on the project. This summit will provide the public with information that will educate them not only on the prospects of the trail\u27s completion, but what obstacles exist, and what the community at large can do to help complete the trail. We hope this event will encourage citizens of the community to engage in collaborative effort and to take ownership and responsibility for the future of their city

Seeds of Promise Community Dialogue Report of Deliberative Findings One

As a team of Liberal Studies students at Grand Valley State University, we co-designed and facilitated a community dialogue in the fall of 2015 located at Seeds of Promise in the Madison Square neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Residents from the surrounding neighborhood were invited to come for dinner and dialogue so they could share their concerns, prioritize their values, and begin to identify a broad range of interventions on issues of concern to them. The dialogue focused on concerns surrounding crime and safety. It was collaboratively designed to build upon community identified issues through surveys and discussions with host neighbors Joanna Brown and Paula Collier. As a team, our goals for this dialogue were to Empathetically listen to neighborhood residents, ensure all participants’ voices were heard, integrate and analyze our findings, and report the findings back to interested community members so that they can use this information to further their work in the neighborhood

Comparative study of design: application to Engineering Design

A recent exploratory study examines design processes across domains and compares them. This is achieved through a series of interdisciplinary, participative workshops. A systematic framework is used to collect data from expert witnesses who are practising designers across domains from engineering through architecture to product design and fashion, including film production, pharmaceutical drugs, food, packaging, graphics and multimedia and software. Similarities and differences across domains are described which indicate the types of comparative analysis we have been able to do from our data. The paper goes further and speculates on possible lessons for selected areas of engineering design which can be drawn from comparison with processes in other domains. As such this comparative design study offers the potential for improving engineering design processes. More generally it is a first step in creating a discipline of comparative design which aims to provide a new rich picture of design processes

Macaque models of human infectious disease.

Macaques have served as models for more than 70 human infectious diseases of diverse etiologies, including a multitude of agents-bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, prions. The remarkable diversity of human infectious diseases that have been modeled in the macaque includes global, childhood, and tropical diseases as well as newly emergent, sexually transmitted, oncogenic, degenerative neurologic, potential bioterrorism, and miscellaneous other diseases. Historically, macaques played a major role in establishing the etiology of yellow fever, polio, and prion diseases. With rare exceptions (Chagas disease, bartonellosis), all of the infectious diseases in this review are of Old World origin. Perhaps most surprising is the large number of tropical (16), newly emergent (7), and bioterrorism diseases (9) that have been modeled in macaques. Many of these human diseases (e.g., AIDS, hepatitis E, bartonellosis) are a consequence of zoonotic infection. However, infectious agents of certain diseases, including measles and tuberculosis, can sometimes go both ways, and thus several human pathogens are threats to nonhuman primates including macaques. Through experimental studies in macaques, researchers have gained insight into pathogenic mechanisms and novel treatment and vaccine approaches for many human infectious diseases, most notably acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which is caused by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Other infectious agents for which macaques have been a uniquely valuable resource for biomedical research, and particularly vaccinology, include influenza virus, paramyxoviruses, flaviviruses, arenaviruses, hepatitis E virus, papillomavirus, smallpox virus, Mycobacteria, Bacillus anthracis, Helicobacter pylori, Yersinia pestis, and Plasmodium species. This review summarizes the extensive past and present research on macaque models of human infectious disease

Computational solutions for omics data

High-throughput experimental technologies are generating increasingly massive and complex genomic data sets. The sheer enormity and heterogeneity of these data threaten to make the arising problems computationally infeasible. Fortunately, powerful algorithmic techniques lead to software that can answer important biomedical questions in practice. In this Review, we sample the algorithmic landscape, focusing on state-of-the-art techniques, the understanding of which will aid the bench biologist in analysing omics data. We spotlight specific examples that have facilitated and enriched analyses of sequence, transcriptomic and network data sets.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant GM081871

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

A study of selections for the size, shape and color of hens' eggs /

Bibliography: p. 310-312.Mode of access: Internet