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Dancing with Nature: Being Human
No full textI started out dabbling just for fun. I needed something different to do outside of my profession as a chemist. If anything is to be fun, there has to be freedom, no limitations, and no time constraints. So, in January 2010, I decided to try painting with acrylic on canvas. I did not know what to paint and I didn’t know how to paint. So, I decided I would try abstract. Abstract eventually evolved into me painting images that represented feelings. In October 2013, I challenged myself with portraits. My very first portrait titled “Hemingway” was a blissful experience, during which I painted energized all night long until morning for four days straight while on Fall break. With that experience, I knew there was no turning back. In January 2014, I stepped out into my backyard, I looked up, and I saw images formed by the clouds ……I fell in Love. That initiated my first piece inspired by Nature titled “Heavenly Love”. I am a self-taught, freehand painter.
“Once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up” Leonardo Da Vinci.
Ever since then, I have been caught up in a Dance with Nature. My second piece from Nature is titled “Zoe: Life on Fire”. I have come to realize that I am in school again, and my teacher is Nature. My classroom is everywhere and my curriculum is everything. I observe birds, insects, trees, flowers, animals, people etc. closely, appreciating Everything! I automatically make connections, become curious, and I’m driven to study and learn more about history, philosophy, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology, animal behavior, cultures, spirituality, religion...etc. My studies are relative to my observations. By watching Nature, taking pictures and painting what I see and Love, I am being schooled by Nature. Visual Art fills the gap between words and theories. A whole image is created.
I tune into Nature and I dance. Nothing external exists while I paint, only a natural instinct within. In a dimension where time does not exist, but timing is everything, Nature is my guide, and the dance is a never-ending spiral. Through close observation we can learn and experience Nature with all our senses and remember what it feels like to be human. Nature reminds me how to be human.
I paint each piece with complete admiration, a labor of love at a very slow pace, trying to capture in detail the beauty I see in Nature. I will never capture perfectly, and that is a part of the beauty. However, I always strive for perfection. The imperfections within my paintings are like surprise gifts to be perceived differently by all, uniquely mine, and I fall in Love with them as well. The whole process begins, is fueled and ultimately ends with Love.
Some paintings to be exhibited will include: Tiger, Nubian, Honeydew, Moonlight, Sunset, Hemingway, Professor, Sacred Feminine, Heavenly Love, Zoe: Life on Fire, Reproduction 360, Emerald Heart, Sunrise: Opposites Unite, Sealed. Paintings completed during 2012-2015
Use That Guide to Your Advantage: LibGuides as the Catalyst to Flipped Learning Opportunities
Full text linkPoster created for GA/COMO 2014 Library Conference in Augusta, GA. Details how to use LibGuides to create flipped learning opportunities in Librarian led Information Literacy Sessions.Libraries use LibGuides for subject guides and instruction so often that many can throw one together in a couple hours, giving little thought to design and the power of the tool. However, that humble LibGuide can help create the perfect launching pad to flip portions of instruction, allowing students to take on some of the learning responsibility themselves. This frees instruction time for more complex tasks and active learning opportunities. This poster visually guides librarians through easy methods of editing and preparing LibGuides for the flipped classroom model. Through infographics, printed screen shots, and easy to follow charts, the poster provides a check-list to help determine which skills/learning objectives will work best with this model, along with suggested active learning assignments that can be assigned to students before or during the instructional session. An overview of suggested technology/tools will help librarians find new methods to add spice to their own guides and make them more interactive. Finally, “Use That Guide to Your Advantage” illustrates how flipping instruction supports the new ACRL framework (as it stands right now), and highlights real work examples where the guide has been created and shared with a class before the instructional session with great success
Learning to play the game: Student publishing as an indicator of future scholarly success
Full text linkThe need to encourage future generations of students in the pursuit of scientific research has been viewed as a cornerstone of US R&D efforts. However, few indicators of student intellectual activity at the graduate level are tracked on an ongoing basis. The aim of this paper is to examine graduate student publishing as an indicator of pre-doctoral research activity and future scholarly success. This study addresses the gap in knowledge about student publishing through a distinctive dataset that merges bibliometric publication data with survey data from a study of academic scientists. These data are from a nationally representative sample (n = 1598) of scientists employed in Research I institutions. For each survey respondent, we have compiled a lifetime publication record from the Web of Science, Science Citation Index. The results indicate that the share of students with at least one publication is substantial and growing over time. Co-publication with advisors is found to be an important driving factor in publication activity, along with certain demographic and field characteristics. Our analysis also suggests that graduate student publication and collaboration are predictors of later career success and productivity, and as such an important tool in evaluating graduate programs
Community design, street networks, and public health
No full textWhat is the influence of street network design on public health? While the literature linking the built environment to health outcomes is vast, it glosses over the role that specific street network characteristics play. The three fundamental elements of street networks are: street network density, connectivity, and configuration. Without sufficient attention being paid to these individual elements of street network design, building a community for health remains a guessing game. Our previous study found more compact and connected street networks highly correlated with increased walking, biking, and transit usage; while these trends suggest a health benefit, this study seeks to strengthen that connection. Using a multilevel, hierarchical statistical model, this research seeks to fill this gap in the literature through a more robust accounting of street network design. Specifically, we ask the following: what is the influence of the three fundamental measures of street networks on obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and asthma? We answer this question by examining 24 California cities exhibiting a range a street network typologies using health data from the California Health Interview Survey. We control for the food environment, land uses, commuting time, socioeconomic status, and street design. The results suggest that more compact and connected street networks with fewer lanes on the major roads are correlated with reduced rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease among residents. Given the cross-sectional nature of our study, proving causation is not feasible but should be examined in future research. Nevertheless, the outcome is a novel assessment of streets networks and public health that has not yet been seen but will be of benefit to planners and policy-makers
Do international non-governmental organizations inhibit globalization? The case of capital account liberalization in developing countries
No full textWhy do countries liberalize capital controls? The literature identifies a range of possible reasons. Yet, despite considerable advances, the impact of international non-governmental organizations has yet to be considered. In fact, surprisingly, systematic analysis of the role of international non-governmental organizations in the diffusion of economic openness, financial or otherwise, has not been pursued previously. We offer the first such analysis by advancing the idea of ‘climatic mimesis,’ which refers to the cultural climate for policymaking that results from country ties to international non-governmental organizations. International non-governmental organizations shape capital account regulation by altering the cultural climate in a country such that liberalization becomes a more problematic policy choice. Our statistical analysis of data from developing countries reveals that international non-governmental organization ties inhibited liberalization, as did relatively high public debt and concentrated domestic banking sectors. The presence of an International Monetary Fund program and liberalization by economic competitors encouraged it. We suggest that these findings have important implications for understanding the potential for convergence and divergence in an era of globalization
‘New’ versus ‘Old’ Urbanism: A comparative analysis of travel behavior in large-scale New Urbanist communities and older, more established neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado
No full textNew Urbanist development is often characterized by higher densities, mixed land uses and various transportation options - characteristics often evidenced by older, pre-automobile neighborhoods. This is no accident; New Urbanism aims to closely approximate many qualities of 'old urbanist' neighborhoods to support, among other things, increased transportation options beyond the automobile. However, existing research is mixed as to whether new urbanist developments are reaching their transportation goals. This study employs multiple methods to examine the degree to which travel behavior in New Urbanist neighborhoods is comparable to that of old urbanist neighborhoods in the same region. Mode choice models show distance to work as a significant predictor of walking and cycling, while availability of free parking at work significantly predicts driving. Despite the fact that the New Urbanist neighborhoods are further from the central business district (CBD) than the old urbanist neighborhoods, average distance to work is similar across all neighborhoods - suggesting that employment locations are decentralized. We conclude that while New Urbanist communities may not currently be reaching their transportation goals, they have the ability to provide a supportive context for parking policy reforms and transit investments that disincentive auto travel and prioritize walking, cycling and transit
Growing a Liaison Program
Full text linkPresentation to SELA/SCLA Joint ConferenceLibrarians at a newly consolidated university
will discuss how they transplanted the concept
of embedded librarianship from their health
sciences colleagues to the university library, in
order to cultivate relationships with the library
and nurture the campus culture
Information Literacy/Information Architecture: Lessons Learned from a Card Sort Exercise
Full text linkPresentation to Georgia International Information Literacy Conference, Savannah, GAThis presentation will illustrate how to gather and correctly interpret assessment data with a card sort exercise in order to create a user-centered website that can effectively support information literacy initiatives, whether for a library website or for any educational website. The presenters will explain different types of card sort exercises, describe how they executed a card sort exercise, how they collected and analyzed the data, and discuss the results. In addition, the presenters will share lessons learned, such as what worked well, what went wrong, and what they would do differently for future card sort exercises and web site assessment projects
The ties among the notes: The social capital of jazz musicians in three metro areas
Full text linkPrevious work shows that social capital matters for careers of creative workers, leading to jobs and bolstered income. The authors focus here on factors that may facilitate various types of social capital possessed by jazz musicians and on how the options of building connections may differ for peripheral versus dominant musicians. Among other things, the authors find that both general education and formal music training promote formal social capital but constrain the share of local musicians known; meanwhile, generalism fosters both the share and diversity of local musicians known. Only a few options benefit peripheral musicians, namely union membership and having an agent
Synthesis of N-phenyl-N-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propyl)benzofuran-2-carboxamides as new selective ligands for sigma receptors
Full text linkNovel benzofuran-2-carboxamide ligands, which are selective for sigma receptors, have been synthesized via a microwave-assisted Perkin rearrangement reaction and a modified Finkelstein halogen-exchange used to facilitate N-alkylation. The ligands synthesized are the 3-methyl-N-phenyl-N-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propyl)benzofuran-2-carboxamides (KSCM-1, KSCM-5 and KSCM-11). The benzofuran-2-carboxamide structure was N-arylated and N-alkylated to include both N-phenyl and N-(3-(piperidin-1-yl)propyl substituents, respectively. These new carboxamides exhibit high affinity at the sigma-1 receptor with Ki values ranging from 7.8 to 34 nM. Ligand KSCM-1 with two methoxy substituents at C-5 and C-6 of the benzofuran ring, and Ki = 27.5 nM at sigma-1 was found to be more selective for sigma-1 over sigma-2.DA027086/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/United States
HHSN-271-2008-00025-C/PHS HHS/United States
R03 DA027086/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/United State