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Analyzing the Supply-Side Dynamics of Affordable Housing in the United States
Get PDFThis thesis delves into the multifaceted realm of housing affordability in the United States, focusing on the supply-side dynamics shaping its availability and accessibility. Through a comprehensive analysis, this study investigates various factors influencing the supply of affordable housing, including governmental policies, market forces, and socio-economic trends. By synthesizing existing literature, statistical data, and case studies, it sets out to reveal the interconnectedness of regulatory frameworks, existing housing policies, existing programs, and initiatives in the affordable housing sector. Moreover, this research examines strategies to combat the housing affordability crisis. The findings highlight the importance of taking a regional approach to address the regional problem of affordable housing. Ultimately, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the supply-side dynamics shaping the landscape of housing affordability and offers insights for policymakers, practitioners, and advocates striving to foster meaningful and sustainable housing solutions
The Economics Behind the Legalization of Sports Gambling and Financial Market Relations
Get PDFWith the recent legalization of sports gambling, it has become a popular spectacle among sports fans and financial analysts pursuing an understanding of it. This thesis dives into the meticulous relationship between sports gambling and economic factors/financial market relations using academic literature to understand the relationship.
The thesis explores sports gambling from an economic standpoint using incentives to understand the market participants and economic advantages and disadvantages. It also uses academic literature and analytics to make a case for market efficiency while also delving into particular inefficiencies.
Furthermore, this thesis uses characteristics of the stock market in comparison of the sports betting market to obtain a better understanding in how they are similar and different. It also includes market projections along with a financial analysis of both industries.
Lastly, this thesis pursues an understanding of the economic factors and financial market relations to sports gambling in order to provide useful information for future bettors and investors
Arkansas Parent Survey 2024
Get PDFThe Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas administered a survey on education topics to a representative sample of 450 Arkansas parents of school-aged children in 2024 and addressed a variety of education-related topics.
The following findings emerged from the survey and are discussed in this report.
Arkansas parents… have high expectations for their children attending college. would not advise their children to become teachers. with children in 4DSW districts show strong support. with children in non-4DSW schools are uncertain about adopting a four-day school week. believe the 4DSW exceeds academic expectations. do not widely utilize tutoring. strongly support Arkansas\u27s Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs). believe private schools accepting EFAs should adhere to the same standards and requirements as public schools. have diverse perspectives of teacher salary
Automatic Extraction of Vulnerability Information for Security Operators Using GPT Models
Get PDFArtificial intelligence has progressed rapidly in recent years, greatly revolutionizing the world and helping to automate increasingly complex tasks. However, there are still some disciplines where the problem of automation has not yet been thoroughly tackled, such as in software vulnerability management. Vulnerability management is a critical component of cybersecurity for an organization. Until recently, learning about a vulnerability required a security operator to manually search and read through online information and security advisories to find needed information. Doing so is a significantly time-consuming task, as these advisories tend to be quite lengthy and packed with information about various technologies. To simplify this process, we first present a new approach that can extract crucial information about a vulnerability from provided documents using large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, generating a concise summary of the vulnerability from the documents. This approach can save much of the operator’s time that would need to be spent reading the lengthy documents. While this approach works well for those that already have documents about vulnerabilities to summarize, operators still need to find relevant documents for the vulnerability of interest first, e.g., through web search. To further automate this process, we then introduce a modified implementation of the basic summarization approach as a web browser extension, which can automatically generate a summary about a vulnerability of interest from web search results. That way, an operator only needs to manually type a search about a vulnerability, e.g., “CVE-2023-31147”, in a search engine, and then our solution can automatically generate a concise summary of valuable information about the vulnerability. This enhancement integrates a robust and automated source gathering method and introduces several new filtering parameters that allow users to specify requirements pertaining to the documents and summaries generated by the approach. The results of these approaches are then evaluated on their ability to include various important pieces of information in the generated summaries. We find that the basic approach of summarizing over provided documents performs exceptionally well. The web browser extension has a slight decrease in accuracy as the cost of automation but is still very accurate
Validation and Optimization of Aerosolized Particle Delivery in a Nasal Airway-on-Chip Model
No full textParticles of pollutants commonly found in the air we breathe are known to have a multitude of chronic, debilitating, and sometimes deadly health effects on humans (1,2,3). Trends show that air pollution is worsening - data collected from more than 3,000 cities indicated that air pollution increased by 8% from 2017-2022 - a short span of only five years (5). Particulate matter, or PM, is normally defined as solid particles or liquid droplets present in the air and is classified based on size (3). PM exposure has been linked to a host of negative respiratory effects including bronchial hyperreactivity, respiratory infections, hospitalizations, development of asthma, and impaired development of lung function in children (1,2,3). Decades of research have been performed to study the respiratory consequences of human industrialization, with some recent studies focused on the effects of PM. While much has been discovered about the diseases and conditions caused by pollution, there is still little known about the cellular mechanisms by which they occur. Current research at the University of Arkansas is seeking to bridge this gap, and is focusing on the effects of PM, on nasal epithelial cells using cutting-edge techniques. The nasal organ-on-chip project by the Mechanobiology and Soft Materials Laboratory promises to make vital contributions to this research by discovering the effects of imitation PM on human nasal epithelial cells. We present here progress made on a bilateral flow system designed to expose in a highly controlled manner the nasal organ on chip device with aerosolized PM. First, we achieved a steady aerosolization system and validated its ability to aerosolize microscopic particles and deposit them onto surfaces either perpendicular or parallel to airflow. We were then able to combine the aerosol generating system with a bilateral flow system, and further demonstrated the ability to deposit aerosolized particles onto the chip in physiologically relevant bilateral flow. We found that the effect of exposure time on the number of particles deposited onto the chip was positively correlated, and that there was a linear relationship between the concentration of particle solution (before aerosolization) on the number of particles deposited on the chip, both from the aerosol generation system alone in singular flow and in the bilateral flow with physiological specifications. We achieved a range in deposition of the number of beads hypothesized to be pathologically effective (2,000 to 8,000 beads) was achieved, however, decreases in the system vent size and humidity levels were found to have a profound negative impact on bead count. This project successfully developed a physiologically relevant bilateral aerosol flow system, which, pending minor modifications, will be used to expose human nasal epithelial cells to imitation PM on a novel organ-on-chip
Transcriptomic Profiling of Engineered Human Gene Integration in The Mouse Genome Following In Vitro Gene Editing
No full textGene replacement is a promising method of therapy for genetic diseases. However, safety and efficacy are areas that need more research. This experiment aims to use RNA sequencing and bioinformatic techniques to provide answers to these questions and provide direction to future studies to develop a gene replacement therapeutic. C2C12 mouse myoblast cells were transfected with a vector containing a CRISPR-Cas9 system and the Human Factor IX (hF9) gene in order to hijack target genes and integrate the hF9 gene. The two target genes, myoglobin (Mb) and creatine kinase (Ckm), were chosen for their high rate of expression and low impact on survival when removed in vivo. RNA sequencing was performed to analyze the transcriptome of the mouse cells using differential expression analysis and splicing isoform analysis. Differential expression revealed Mb was downregulated and Ckm was not significantly affected, while some other genes had significant changes in their expression rate. Splicing isoform analysis revealed that the hF9 gene was integrated into the mouse genome but had variable expression along different points along the gene. Overall, this experiment and analysis techniques show promise in using the Mb and Ckm sites for gene replacement. However, experimentation is needed to find the cause and in vivo effects of expression changes in off-target genes
Analyzing Food Sources and Food Insecurity of Kichwa Farming Families in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Get PDFWhile the right to food is internationally recognized and the United Nations established the sustainable development goal to end hunger and achieve food security by 2030, many households remain without consistent access to food in 2024. In Latin America, approximately 4 in 10 households were reported as food insecure in 2020 with higher rates in rural and indigenous communities. Rural areas, which have great overlap with indigenous communities in Ecuador, experience disproportionately high levels of poverty and food insecurity compared to urban areas. The most populous indigenous nationality in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the participants of this study are the Kichwa or Runa people that practice indigenous agroforestry through chakras. Approximately 60,000 Kichwa people inhabit the lowland Amazon, but their nutrition and food security is threatened by urbanization, extractive activities, and deforestation that jeopardizes the proliferation of their agricultural systems.
This study aims to identify the food sources of Kichwa farming families and their household levels of food insecurity to provide greater specificity about food insecurity levels that are not represented by regional and national analyses. I identified food sources and food insecurity levels through a daily food log, semi structured interviews, and a food insecurity survey conducted in two communities. This study measured the food insecurity of families that practice chakra agroforestry to discuss the dynamic relationship between household agricultural production and food security. I surveyed eleven families total across two communities near Tena, Ecuador. Across both communities, families were moderately or severely food insecure with their food originating from chakra cultivation, outside markets, and forest and river resources adjacent to their agricultural land. I determined that Kichwa farming families do not have consistent, sufficient access to food and additional research must be conducted connecting sociodemographic factors to household food insecurity. Further research into the most effective resources and assistance for Kichwa farming families would also provide important information as to how the broad issue of food insecurity may be mitigated
Empowering Community Leaders to Drive Sustainable Tourism and Small Business Development in Dangriga, Belize
Get PDFThis paper discusses the complexities of tourism development in Dangriga, Belize and how simple efforts can greatly impact small businesses in Central America
Evaluating Passive and Assertive Secularism: A Comparative Study of France and Sweden
Get PDFThis thesis seeks to identify the reasoning behind different outcomes of secularism in both France and Sweden in the context of Ahmet Kuru\u27s passive and assertive secularism model. While explaining the historical causes and evolution of secularist thought, it aims to effectively evaluate contrasting approaches to how secularism is applied. To address the current gap in studies intending to assess secularism, this argument identifies how various factors are impacted by secularist-state policies. Through this analysis, it reveals the determinants in secularist approaches and their consequences on religious tensions or tolerance. This assessment of similar European countries experiencing both immigration and growing secular societies can explain how state policies towards secularism contrast
How does Fracking-Related Information Influence Fracking Risk Perceptions? Examining the Roles of Ideology and Information on Fracking Risk Perceptions
Get PDFHydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the United States has created an economic boom that has helped fuel an ongoing policy conflict between environmental sustainability and human health versus energy independence, expansion of national security, and future economic prosperity. With little federal regulation regarding fracking, policy decisions associated with fracking have fallen to state and local jurisdictions, making the attitudes of officials and lawmakers at the local level the center of many debates regarding fracking and related policies. This paper examines how ideology and information regarding fracking interact to shape risk perceptions associated with fracking. Specifically, this paper uses a survey experiment of local policy elites in Texas to examine whether providing different information impacts the relationship between an individual’s ideology and risk perceptions. Survey respondents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) a neutral condition with information about the fracking process, 2) the previous information plus information about chemical disclosure requirements in Texas, or 3) the previous information, plus information from the EPA that highlights that trade secrets allow for at least some chemicals to not be disclosed. Results indicated that framing influenced water risk perceptions, and that the more conservative ideologies are associated with lower perceived risks. Implications for fracking-related policy, and policy more broadly, will be discussed