Mid-scale farms are disappearing across America in favor of small lifestyle farms and industrial agriculture. Urban sprawl, while pressuring these farms to sell for development, has also contributed to a societal disconnect from the land. This loss of a sense of place can be seen in shifting consumer attitudes towards food and a rising demand for local, sustainable, and organic products. Tapping into that trend is the farming method (optimized for mid-scale farms) championed by Polyface, Inc; a rotation of various livestock across pastures maintains the farm as an ecosystem, balancing the needs of both land and animals. Greenmont Farm lies in the Shenandoah Valley: a landscape of rolling hills crisscrossed with fence lines and overshadowed by the Blue Ridge Mountains. Currently farmed by Polyface, Greenmont's future is unclear and it is struggling to break even. Phasing in limited residential development alongside an intensification of the working farm forms a modern agricultural community, allowing Greenmont to stay intact. Thickening the boundary between protected regions of unchecked growth and the open pastures creates a narrow site for each phase. The housing units react to their placement in between the pastoral and the rugged, while common spaces reflect the inherent seasonality of a farm. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

"Recent full-scale crash tests of the weak-post W-beam guardrail system have resulted in unsatisfactory collision performance as evaluated by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 350. Since acceptable crash test performance is required in order to use a guardrail on a Federal-Aid Highway in the United States, the poor performance of the weak-post W-beam guardrail is a significant problem to those states that use it. The goal of this project was to improve the impact performance of the weak-post W-beam guardrail system so that it satisfies the requirements of NCHRP Report 350 at test level three."

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第17884号 / 工博第3793号 / 新制||工||1580(附属図書館) / 30704 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科建築学専攻 / (主査)教授 中島 正愛, 教授 田中 仁史, 教授 金子 佳生 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

The Connection is a story about a detective hired to find her client's one true connection in the world. We Learned It From The Birds, follows the workday of two men as the control the birds population at JFK.

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Some String or Another: Fiction and Nonfiction Stories of Connection, a creative thesis, explores patterns of change in stories from the perspective of connection and disconnection. The preface examines the effects of temporal disconnection, the relationship of conflict and connection to narrative rhythm, and the webs of connection formed during the process of creation. Included in the body of the work are six fiction stories, one metafiction story, and two nonfiction essays.

The thesis consists of three essays in development and political economics. Political Connection, Government Patronage and Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms The paper tests whether politically connected firms receive preferential favor from the government, as measured by state capital investment from the central government and subsidies. My results suggest that firms connected with one more top leader from the State Council receive 9.4 percent more subsidies, firms connected with one more leader who holds positions on both the Central Committee and the State Council obtain 23 percent more state capital and then have a 2 percentage point higher product markup. When there is extra state capital due to political connections, other domestic capital is crowded out. The heterogeneous effects find that firms with more employees, but lower sales and less profit tend to receive more state capital if equally connected, while firms with higher sales tend to obtain more subsidies. This additional state capital and these subsidies do not seem to improve the firm's performance. The Determinants of Media Bias in China We measure and investigate the determinants of political control of newspapers in China. We find that more strictly politically controlled newspapers cover disasters and corruption more than their commercial competitors, most likely in order to monitor lower level officials. We also find that they cover leaders and the official news agency Xinhua to a larger extent. We find that in the cross section, the political control correlates negatively with GDP per capita and population size, but there is no time trend in the political control of Chinese newspapers in the 2000s. Finally, we analyze the effect of a reform to close down all county papers in 2003. The reduced competition significantly affected the degree of political control of the remaining papers. Chinese Microblogs and Drug Quality This paper examines the impact of the introduction of Sina Weibo, the most popular microblog in China, on the quality of drugs on the market. I find that the number of bad drugs is decreasing in Sina Weibo use: if the Sina Weibo use is doubled, the number of bad drugs found will be reduced by 21 percent. I show that the reduction of bad drugs is driven by two mechanisms: Sina Weibo induces more effort from the Drug Administration and it deters the production of bad drugs. The results suggest that microblogs can play an important role in monitoring both the public and the private sectors, especially in a context with media censorship.

The Migrant Workers Hostel and the four Artisan Houses, situated on a corner site within the Newtown Cultural Precinct, holds untapped historic and cultural potential that no facility occupying that site has allowed it to reach. The desire to conceptualise a new role for these abandoned heritage buildings on this culturally significant site was the initial motivation for the intervention. The intended design intervention transforms the existing derelict site into one of opportunity, through a public education facility, allowing information to be accessed through the media film. Through the new interpretation of a safe study environment, 'Connection' allows everyone the opportunity of accessing information and furthering oneself. / Dissertation (MInt(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Architecture / unrestricted

A city cannot exist without its geographic context. This is an irrefutable statement; a city is a singular place, founded upon its location relative to organic and constructed resources. New Orleans is no exception to this rule, yet the chasm between the modern city and its geographic framework has consistently proved to be detrimental to its progress. The ecological conditions that exist are unique to the region yet are often in direct opposition with the trajectory of urban development. This dichotomy can be catastrophic when faced with a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated neighborhoods across the greater New Orleans area, the Lower Ninth Ward in particular. Due to its low elevation and close proximity to the vulnerable Industrial Canal, the storm surge completely inundated the neighborhood and left its recovery up to outside sources. Ironically, a natural historic buffer exists adjacent to this neighborhood: the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle. Years of sediment diversion and salt water filtration have left the formerly fresh water swamp a brackish marsh, weakening its role in the surrounding ecosystem and diminishing its capacity to protect the Lower Ninth Ward. Focusing on the parallel relationship between the degradation of Bayou Bienvenue and the slow road to recovery of the Lower Ninth Ward, this thesis aims to explore the historical implications of this connection, while proposing that the future of both these integral pieces of New Orleans can only be achieved through a relationship of reciprocity. By linking the process of wetland reforestation with a dynamic, intrinsic approach to community involvement, a platform emerges that allows for both to not only stabilize but thrive. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

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