Bioculture Journal
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Using GIS to Assist Location and Site Selection
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2012Using GIS to Assist Location and Site Selection concentrates on how real life problems and decisions of business location can be supported through the integration of modeling and mapping with GIS. It covers one of the most powerful tools currently utilized to assist the location and site decision selection of the best suitable alternative. Using GIS to Assist Location and Site Selection introduces the reader to the historic background of site selection analysis, extensively explains trade area and shows how to use available web-map applications to gather demographic data. A variety of cases are presented within this paper to explain how to use GIS in site location/selection. Each case unfolds and is associated to a modeling pattern. Chapter 3 covers line based analysis along a network by illustrating the use of GIS in the decision making process of a case study of sitting a path/corridor based on the amount of full-time employees along the path. Chapter 4 follows with an example of the approach of location based on characteristics of a specific area which involves the selection of multiple land parcels for acquisition. Chapter 5 concentrates on coverage based analysis that introduces multiple facilities and location-allocation model. In every case study, the preferred modeling tool was extracted from the toolbox of ESRI Desktop version 10 software. The author describes how to use GIS to capture, store, transform, analyze and display geographic data to make it available to decision makers. The paper concludes with a discussion on the lessons learned from each case study, highlights what tools are available to real estate developers for location analysis and what does the future holds in location analysis with GI
Contemporary Popular Culture and the Politics of Asian American Representation, Resistance, and Cultural Production
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012Despite their increasing visibility in mainstream popular culture, problems in Asian American representation continue to manifest. For example, there is renewed interest in infantilizing, colonial images of Asian women, as well as the outright exclusion of Asian bodies, commonly swapped out for white ones for allegedly better marketability. In this dissertation, I articulate the new spaces, discourses, and agents that enable and reproduce these narratives. With a critical focus on agency, meaning-making, and political intervention, I interrogate the representations of Asian Americans in pop culture texts, audience responses to those texts and to protests of the texts, and emergent counter-hegemonic Asian American cultural productions. I pay particular attention to the heterogeneity of Asian and Asian American audiences because they help us to understand how their varying histories and political and ideological perspectives color their negotiations with mainstream American pop culture texts, which, in contrast, tend to cast the figure of the Oriental in homogenous ways as inherently foreign, humorless, unassimilable, or consumable. I argue that this analysis of audience discourses is largely possible because the Internet, and social media in particular, has changed the ways in which we negotiate racial meaning. We now wrestle with racial ideology publicly, sometimes anonymously with strangers online, which creates an opportunity to investigate ideological beliefs and examine assumptions about how Asian Americans think they fit, or fail to fit, within a white-dominated American society. Finally, I explore Asian American blogs, online cultural productions that continue to illustrate the heterogeneity of Asian American audiences, and also serve as powerful sources of independent, critical perspectives that I argue can help to decolonize the Asian American imagination
Cross-Cultural Communication for International Urban Design Practice: Lessons from a Field Studio in China
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2012Economic realities are leading more and more Western and American Architect-Engineer-Consultant (AEC) firms to work in China. To be successful, these firms must not only be skilled in physical design, but also in cross-cultural communication. Similarly, Chinese domestic designers who work with Western and American designers must also have these skills. In this thesis, I consult existing literature, compare my own personal experiences, and report on interviews with international design practitioners to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Western design firms working in China. I also describe a case study of a University of Washington international design field studio in which I participated in the summer of 2011, which provides a possible model for American and other Western design firms working in China. This thesis intends to promote awareness of the difficulties and importance of cross-cultural communication between designers from different cultures working on international urban design projects. It highlights some major pitfalls and hopefully provides some solutions for designers to use to become more successful in international design practice
Littlefield Organ Series presents a Guest Artist Recital: Fabio Ciofini September 25, 2012
No full textConcert ProgramLittlefield Organ Series presents a Guest Artist Recital: Fabio Ciofini September 25, 201
Outdoor Occupational History and Risk of Parkinson Disease: a Case-Control Study
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2012Introduction: A role for antioxidants in prevention of Parkinson disease has been proposed, however, epidemiologic evidence supporting this assertion has been inconclusive. Ninety percent of vitamin D in adults is produced in vivo related to ultraviolet type B exposure. This creates a plausible role for outdoor work as a strong surrogate for vitamin D in studies related to neurodegenerative disease. Design and Setting: We investigated this association among non-Hispanic Caucasians in Washington state using 447 incident Parkinson disease cases diagnosed between 1992-2008, and 578 neurologically normal controls, frequency matched by age and sex. Material and Methods: Subjects' work histories were obtained by in-person interviews, and a validated method was used to classify each occupation up to 10 years prior to diagnosis (cases)/reference (controls) according to relative time spent outdoors. Research participants were categorized as having exclusively indoor, a combination of indoor/outdoor, or exclusively outdoor occupations using job title. Length of time employed in each occupation was also used to estimate the lifetime duration of any outdoor work, and the maximal and typical levels of outdoor work. Results: Classified by job title and without the inclusion of a 10-year lag time, Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals from unconditional logistic regression adjusting for age, sex, and smoking were as follows: (> 0 - 75% workday outdoors) 0.86 (0.60-1.23), compared to workers who labored exclusively indoors. Classified by job title and incorporating a 10-year lag time, Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals from unconditional logistic regression adjusting for age, sex, and smoking were as follows: (> 0 - 75% workday outdoors) 0.85 (0.60-1.22), compared to workers who labored exclusively indoors. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that workers who spend at least part of their day outdoors have a lower risk of Parkinson disease as compared to workers who labor exclusively indoors. This supports the hypothesis that ultraviolet type B exposure acting as an ecological surrogate for vitamin D may provide a protective effective for the development of Idiopathic Parkinson Disease
Revealing Character and Concealing Identity in the Romantic Familiar Essay
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012This dissertation argues that the elements of informality, self-revelation, and direct address in the Romantic familiar essay are evidence of concerted efforts for securing a relationship with readers and setting up standards of proper reading. In other words, what appears to be the strong presence of a writer's personality in the essays is really a means for constructing sympathetic readers in an age of increasingly hostile criticism. While other scholarship on Romantic essayists has focused on individual writers or, more narrowly, on particular essays, this is the first major study of the genre of the familiar essay in the early nineteenth century since 1934. This is a significant contribution to studies of Romanticism, which tend to ignore the genre and dismiss the essays as dated or quaint. By focusing on the generic components of the essays of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb in the political and social context in which they were written, I show that these writers used their essays to intervene in contemporary critical discussions about authenticity and the relationship of authenticity to writing. The complexity of the familiar essay was intensified in the Romantic period by the emergence of several social formations, including a rapidly expanding reading public; the proliferation of mass-market periodicals and literary criticism aimed especially at the middle classes; anonymous publication practices; and emerging constructions of identity and authenticity. In other words, the self-fashioning and audience formation in the familiar essays in the Romantic period are determined neither by the generic conventions of the essay nor by the spirit of the age, but rather by an intersection of the two. Despite their diversity, the essays share a preoccupation with cultivating a relationship of familiarity with sympathetic readers in the midst of a volatile periodical scene. Although writers of the familiar essay frame their projects differently, each points to the importance of establishing an intimate relationship with his unknown readers. This emphasis on relationships over mere rhetoric is symptomatic of a desire for change in the dynamic between readers and writers in the early nineteenth century
Bureaucratic Impediments to Collaboration: A Case Study of the Asian Carp and the Great Lakes Basin
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2012Bureaucratic Impediments to Collaboration: A Case Study of the Asian Carp and the Great Lakes Basin Christina Wille Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Thomas Leschine School of Marine and Environmental Affairs Silver carp and bighead carp, also known as Asian carp, were first imported to the United States in the early 1970s for use in aquaculture, research, and waste management; however, these species escaped to the Mississippi River basin in various flooding incidents by 1980s. Both species have now spread throughout much of the upper Mississippi River system. In the Illinois River, commercial fishing operations harvested over 5 million pounds of bighead and silver carp from the Illinois River in 2009. Depending on its life stage, Asian carp will eat between 5-20% of its body weight daily in plankton, and adult Asian carp can weigh more than 25 kg. Almost all native fish in the Great Lakes Basin depend on plankton for at least part of their life cycle, so an established population of Asian carp will have profound effects on the ecosystem. Moreover, the presence of silver carp in a waterway poses a serious risk to boaters, since these fish have excellent hearing and leap 8-10 feet into the air when startled and have caused bruises, concussions, and broken bones when the carp have collided with humans. Natural resource managers are concerned about the possible introduction of bighead and silver carp to the Great Lakes Basin through the Chicago Area Waterways System. In response to the potential introduction of Asian carp species to the Great Lakes, the Obama Administration formalized the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee (ACRCC) in 2010. This thesis studies the relationship between the organizational structure of the ACRCC's member agencies and these agencies' efforts to work together. One hypothesis is that agencies key to ACRCC efforts exhibit fewer characteristics of a bureaucratic organization; an alternate hypothesis is that the agency's calculation of the costs of and benefits resulting from collaboration explain its decision to collaborate or not. Data was gathered through elite interviews with agency representatives who attend ACRCC meetings. Interview questions were designed to gather insights into several different aspects of the agencies involved and the ACRCC in general, including the structure of each participant's agency, the participant's agency's role in the ACRCC as well as the roles that other important agencies play in the ACRCC, and the effectiveness of the ACRCC as an organization, together with any factors that aid or detract from the ACRCC's goal. The questions were designed to be general, to allow each participant's perceptions of the ACRCC to guide our discussion. The open nature of the questions and the resulting responses led to the creation of the second hypothesis midway through the interviews. Data supported both hypotheses: some correlation was found between the levels of collaboration and the levels of bureaucratic characteristics as predicted by the first hypothesis, especially in federal agencies. There was also support for the second hypothesis, particularly for state agencies. These costs and benefits included jurisdictional issues and access to resources (whether these aspects were considered costs or benefits depended on the circumstances organizations were faced with), as well as concerns about the costs associated with the continued spread of Asian carp. However, given the limits of this study it is not possible to conclusively prove one hypothesis over the other. Interview responses also provided information about the level of collaboration for the ACRCC as a whole. The organization provides a forum for communication about the issue among its members, but the ACRCC does not yet appear to rise consistently to the level of true coordination. Due to the limitations of this study, it is not possible to make predictions about future collaborative efforts in the ACRCC. Further studies are necessary to gather more information before such predictions can be reliably made
Improving the Evidence Base for Maternal Health Outcomes Worldwide
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012Maternal health is a key priority for the international community, as evidenced by commitment to Millennium Development Goal 5. However, evidence on maternal mortality is weak. This thesis addresses the shortcomings in the measurement of maternal mortality through three components. First, it presents a systematic assessment and analysis of all data available for the measurement of maternal mortality over the period 1980-2008, resulting in new estimates of maternal mortality for 181 countries with quantified uncertainty. The results show a remarkable decline in maternal deaths, from 526,300 in 1980 to 342,900 in 2008, an average annual decline of 1.5%. This new evidence suggests there is cause for greater optimism than generally perceived, and that substantial declines in the MMR are possible over relatively short periods of time. Second, the thesis presents an innovative, replicable, and generalizable approach to selecting the multivariable model for the trend analysis of maternal mortality. The third component presents the results of a comprehensive search for maternal deaths in Mexico over the period 2006-2010. This study shows encouraging progress towards the more complete and accurate assessment of causes of maternal mortality in a middle-income country, and offers a useful strategy for improving detailed, cause-specific maternal mortality data at the country level. The results also highlight the growing importance of indirect obstetric causes, which requires rethinking the health system response to maternal mortality, with health personnel trained to treat the entire woman, not just her pregnancy. Together, this dissertation fills important gaps in the maternal health field, providing new evidence and approaches to the measurement issues that have hampered progress in the past