Despite Landy and Farr’s (1980) highly influential call for a moratorium on rating format research over 30 years ago, recent research continues to show that rating format design can influence rating quality. This symposium brings together a group of scholars who will share their research and expertise on this topic.

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Lyme disease, caused by the bite of a deer tick infected with Borrelia burdorferi, has been increasing in distribution and prevalence annually throughout Maine. Worker’s compensation claims for Lyme disease have also been increasing steadily since the initial claim made in 1999. This research reviewed Maine worker’s compensation claims for Lyme disease from 1999-2011 to determine trends in state distribution and occupation type. Descriptive statistics were calculated to analyze different distributions of occupational Lyme disease. Occupations with the highest distribution of Lyme disease claims were those requiring workers to spend the majority of their time outdoors. A clear trend of claim distribution was seen, which mirrored that of the State of Maine Lyme disease case surveillance data. With the apparent increase in worker’s compensation claims due to Lyme disease and an increased geographic distribution annually, additional prevention and education efforts should be focused toward the higher risk occupations.

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Water is critical for food production, food security, and health. Water quality management influences freshwater sustainability, land, and energy administration. Global agriculture accounts for more than 70% of all water consumption; the fertilizer, manure, and pesticide overspills are chief sources of water pollution worldwide. On a global scale, food-related waste directly impacts local food production and water resource management. The purpose of this multiple-case study on the food and beverage (FB) industry in the State of Georgia was to identify successful strategies for improving water management efficiency. The concepts of systems thinking, adaptive resource management, and integrated water resource management provided the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected via personal interviews with 2 global supply chain leaders in the FB industry and 1 water expert in the public water utility system in Georgia. The findings showed 10 themes: sustainability; mission-driven culture; ethical responsibility; water quality and governance; food safety and sanitation; water conservation and climatic trends; waste management; nutrition and the freeze drying method; knowledge sharing and collaboration; and water detention and retention systems. The study results are intended to contribute to social change by providing information to global supply chain leaders, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and sustainability leaders to implement sustainability beyond the environmental value; these findings will also help achieve a positive posture on resource overconsumption and waste management for efficient and complex decision making within a worldwide spectrum.

Small business owners struggle to sustain their businesses over time. According to U.S. Census data in 2014, only half of all small businesses survived beyond the first 5 years of operation, and only a third survived longer than 10 years. Grounded with the strategic contingency theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies small service business owners used to succeed beyond the first 5 years of operation. The target population consisted of 4 owners of small service and retail businesses in Arlington, VA, with fewer than 50 employees who have succeeded in business longer than 5 years. Through a process of methodological triangulation, data collected from financial documents, publicly available records, and external sources supplemented semistructured interview data. Using thematic analysis by coding narrative segments, 3 themes emerged including developing a unique marketing strategy, developing strategic leadership skills, and required business skills for sustainability. Successful unique marketing strategies emerged from understanding customer needs. The results from this study could benefit business owners by improving business success rates, which would have a positive economic effect on local community, including job creation, and sustainable economic stability. The implications for positive social change might include the reversal of small business failure trends through the application of successful business strategies.

State prison systems, particularly in the Southern US, have been overpopulated for decades with unlikely support for building new prisons which has led to overcrowding. Policy makers, however, have adopted mandatory minimum policies that include harsher sanctions for habitual offenders which exacerbated the problem of overcrowding, yet little is understood about how sentencing reform is associated with overpopulation. Using Clear and Schrantz conceptualization of prison population change, the purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to understand how one prison system in a southern state was impacted over a 10-year period by the implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing requirements. Data were collected from publicly available resources from a state department of corrections and state law enforcement agencies related to crime rates, sentence terms, parole rates, and prison population for the years 1993 through 2013. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including measures of central tendency and visual examination of line plots. Findings indicated that the state'€™s prison population did not change following the 2003 enactment of mandatory-minimum sentencing. Though no changes in prison population trends were observed, further testing may be considered to better understand the relationship between sentencing reform efforts and strengthened provisions to the laws regarding habitual felony offenders. The implications for positive social change stemming from this study includes recommendations to lawmakers to expand research and use the results as the basis of future decisions to either revise or eliminate mandatory sentencing policies taking into consideration crowding in state prisons.

Healthcare waste (HCW) incineration practices in the global South countries are among the major sources of black carbon (BC) emissions or smoke. This study analyzes HCW incineration trends during emergency situations and smoke from HCW incineration processes in Haiti. The study was prompted by the current arguments about the climate change and the growing health effects associated with BC emissions. The conceptual framework was based on both adverse health effects from BC emissions exposure and climate change potential of BC emissions. Therefore, the goal was to determine whether cardboard HCW sharps containers emit lower BC emissions to the atmosphere during the incineration process, relative to the plastic sharps containers, and the pattern of emergency HCW incineration before and after the 2010 earthquake and cholera emergencies in Haiti. This was an observational study conducted with secondary data on HCW incinerated weights from January 2009 to December 2013 and primary data on average smoke densities. Linear regression analysis of the pattern of HCW incinerated weights revealed a relatively linear pattern (R2 = 0.164) with fluctuating scenarios (peak sharp rise in 2012). Independent samples t-tests demonstrated significantly lower smoke emission during the incineration processes of cardboard sharps HCW containers as compared to plastic containers (95 % CI, p = 0.003). Implications for positive social change include provision of quantitative evidence of the benefits of cardboard sharps HCW containers in reducing smoke during incineration activities, potential data for policy formulation, suggestions for review of existing HCW guidelines, and additional research on potential health impacts of emergency HCW disposal and BC emissions.

A heterogeneidade dos elementos que compreendem a climatologia tropical se evidencia no comportamento das chuvas nessa região macroclimática. Para tanto, compreender seu comportamento temporal e espacial assume grande relevância, em função do impacto dessas na dinâmica urbana e rural, bem como para seu planejamento estratégico. Verificar seu curso interanual em episódios diários é grande desafio, nesse sentido. Com isso, o estudo objetivou analisar as chuvas diárias na região de São Carlos/SP, a fim de compreender sua evolução temporal e espacial, além de avaliar possíveis tendências para essa, que se insere na dinâmica tropical (sazonalmente chuvoso/estiagem). Foram analisados 39 anos de dados diários de chuvas, em 7 postos pluviométricos, e que estiveram com, ao menos, 95% dos dados consistentes. Utilizou-se de índices climáticos (script RClimdex) e do Laplace trend factor para analisar os dados temporais históricos e de tendência. Observou-se que os valores dos índices flutuam entre as estações, mas que esses estão associados aos fenômenos da ZCAS (Zona de Convergência do Atlântico Sul) e dos SFs (Sistemas Frontais), que regem o clima no sudeste da América do Sul. Além disso, notou-se que o sul da área estudada apresenta maior concentração pluviométrica, em função dos aspectos geomorfológicos (e até de ocupação), bem como notou-se o aumento de episódios extremos de chuvas diárias. As chuvas diárias, portanto, tendem a concentração, uma vez que os volumes anuais diminuem ou aumentam (ciclicamente), mas notam-se precipitações pluviométricas mais intensas (mm) em dias chuvosos, além do aumento da tendência dos dias com chuvas extremas. Futuros estudos que ampliem a área de estudo e possíveis correlações poder-se-ão reafirmar tais resultados, conforme verificado em estudos prévios. / Rainfall shows the heterogeneity of tropical climatology. Temporal and spatial behavior is highly relevant to verify the impact on urban and rural dynamics and strategic planning. The inter-annual course in daily episodes is the biggest challenge in that regard. The objective of this study was to analyze daily rainfall in the São Carlos/SP region, understand its temporal and spatial evolution, as well as to evaluate possible trends for this, which are part of tropical (seasonally rainy/dry) dynamics. A total of 39 years of daily rainfall data were analyzed in 7 pluviometric stations, with at least 95% of the data consistent using Climatic indexes (RClimdex script), and the Laplace trend factor to analyze temporal and trend data. It was observed that the values of the indexes fluctuate between the stations. These are associated with the phenomena of the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ) and SFs (Frontal Systems), which regulates the climate in the south-east of South America. Also, the south of the studied area presents a higher rainfall concentration, due to the geomorphological (and even occupation) aspects, as well as the increase of extreme episodes of daily rains. Therefore, daily rains tend to concentrate, since annual volumes decrease or increase (cyclically), but the rainfall (mm) is more intense on rainy days, in addition to the increase in the tendency of the days with extreme rains. Future studies that broaden the area of study and possible correlations may reaffirm such results, as verified in previous studies.

<p>cDNA microarrays is one of the first high-throughput gene expression technologies that has emerged within molecular biology for the purpose of functional genomics. cDNA microarrays compare the gene expression levels between cell samples, for thousands of genes simultaneously. </p><p>The microarray technology offers new challenges when it comes to data analysis, since the thousands of genes are examined in parallel, but with very few replicates, yielding noisy estimation of gene effects and variances. Although careful image analyses and normalisation of the data is applied, traditional methods for inference like the Student <i>t</i> or Fisher’s <i>F</i>-statistic fail to work.</p><p>In this thesis, four papers on the topics of empirical Bayes and full Bayesian methods for two-channel microarray data (as e.g. cDNA) are presented. These contribute to proving that empirical Bayes methods are useful to overcome the specific data problems. The sample distributions of all the genes involved in a microarray experiment are summarized into prior distributions and improves the inference of each single gene.</p><p>The first part of the thesis includes biological and statistical background of cDNA microarrays, with an overview of the different steps of two-channel microarray analysis, including experimental design, image analysis, normalisation, cluster analysis, discrimination and hypothesis testing. The second part of the thesis consists of the four papers. Paper I presents the empirical Bayes statistic <i>B</i>, which corresponds to a <i>t</i>-statistic. Paper II is based on a version of <i>B</i> that is extended for linear model effects. Paper III assesses the performance of empirical Bayes models by comparisons with full Bayes methods. Paper IV provides extensions of <i>B</i> to what corresponds to <i>F</i>-statistics.</p>