Hospital Greenspaces and the Impacts on Wayfinding and Spatial Experience: An Explorative Experiment Through Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) Techniques

Background: Navigating large hospitals can be very challenging due to the functional complexity as well as the evolving changes and expansions of such facilities. Hospital wayfinding issues could lead to stress, negative mood, and poor healthcare experience among patients, staff, and family members. Objectives: A survey-embedded experiment was conducted using immersive virtual environment (IVE) techniques to explore people’s wayfinding performance and their mood and spatial experience in hospital circulation spaces with or without visible greenspaces. Methods: Seventy-four participants were randomly assigned to either group to complete wayfinding tasks in a timed session. Participants’ wayfinding performances were interpreted using several indicators, including task completion, duration, walking distance, stop, sign-viewing, and route selection. Participants’ mood states and perceived environmental attractiveness and atmosphere were surveyed; their perceived levels of presence in the IVE hospitals were also reported. Results: The results revealed that participants performed better on high complexity wayfinding tasks in the IVE hospital with visible greenspaces, as indicated by less time consumed and shorter walking distance to find the correct destination, less frequent stops and sign viewing, and more efficient route selection. Participants also experienced enhanced mood states and favorable spatial experience and perceived aesthetics in the IVE hospital with visible greenspaces than the same environment without window views. IVE techniques could be an efficient tool to supplement environment-behavior studies with certain conditions noted. Conclusions: Hospital greenspaces located at key decision points could serve as landmarks that positively attract people’s attention, aid wayfinding, and improve their navigational experience.

Does the Premium Fit the Risk? The Role of Criminal Escalation in Case Processing

Legal and qualitative studies have highlighted that courtroom actors consider multiple aspects of criminal records. However, most quantitative studies on sentencing only included the number of prior convictions or arrests, with little attention to the seriousness trends of those priors. Taking stock from studies on criminal careers, we used group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM) to identify patterns of escalation and de-escalation among a defendant sample in New York State ( n = 56,017), and then examined the role of trajectory groups in four decision points: dismissal, charge reduction, incarceration, and incarceration length. We found that escalation, de-escalation, and a higher stable level of crime seriousness were associated with less favorable outcomes at multiple decision points.

Toward comparative polycentricity scores: Assessing variations in regional delineation and subcenter identification

Urban spatial structure is increasingly characterized by polycentricity, the presence of multiple interconnected centers of similar size. Polycentricity indicators, which influence research and policies related to urban development, rely on three phases of analysis: (a) delineating regions, (b) identifying subcenters within these regions, and (c) operationalizing polycentricity; and each phase contains decision points for analysts. This paper argues that polycentricity methodologies should be thought of in terms of pathways, then systematically applies 15 such pathways to the case of German regional polycentricity and compares the results. Findings suggest that questions of polycentricity are more robustly measured by comparing across multiple regional delineation methods and selection of subcenters, then looking for signs of agreement or disagreement. When possible, constructing regions from larger areas through bottom-up methods tends to avoid the biases of administratively defined regions. When this is not possible, statistical approaches to subcenter identification can serve as a check to avoid forced selection of subcenters in poorly defined regions.

Modified NEBNext® VarSkip Short SARS-CoV-2 Library Prep Kit for Illumina Platforms - adapted for wastewater samples v1

PURPOSE: This method was developed at the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition for GenomeTrakr’s pandemic response project, monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater. Protocols developed for this project cover wastewater collection, concentration, RNA extraction, RT-qPCR, library prep, genome sequencing, quality control checks, and data submission to NCBI. This modified protocol details methods for cDNA synthesis and library preparation for sequencing of wastewater samples containing SARS-CoV-2. The protocol is based primarily on the NEBNext® ARTIC SARS-CoV-2 Library Prep Kit (Illumina®), NEB #E7650S/L 24/96 reactions, with a few modifications. Primarily, VarSkip Short primers are used in place of the ARTIC V3 primers. These primers are available in the NEBNext®ARTIC SARS-CoV-2 FS Library Prep Kit (Illumina®); however, for optimal variant detection from wastewater, sequenced fragments should be as large as possible, so we discourage fragmentation prior to end prep. There are a couple of decision points in this protocol. Examining cDNA amplicon samples on an Agilent TapeStation system or similar fragment analyzer is extremely helpful in making these decisions.

Internationalisation of a Global Sporting Product: The Case of Rugby 7s

<p>Sports are continuing to grow in prominence and possess similar attributes to multinational corporations. However, there is currently a lack of knowledge around the internationalisation of sports in business literature. Research is heavily centred on the sport of soccer, with a focus on historical accounts of how sport has shaped national identities of nations and the cross-national diffusion of sports across national borders. This research has been driven due to the focus on the topic by the fields of sociology and political science which both contribute heavily to the literature. This thesis aims to create a focus on emerging sports such as rugby, using real-time and current accounts of how internationalisation is currently being impacted and shifting the literature into the international business field. In order to do this, two research questions are asked: How is Rugby 7s internationalising? And How does Rugby 7s manage the key decision points in internationalisation? The use of decision points looks at going beyond applying theoretical frameworks to the research and directly seeks to find the key decisions that sports managers face when internationalising. This study is designed in an exploratory way with semi-structured interviews used to explore and better understand the phenomena of sports internationalisation. To ensure all perspectives from stakeholders were covered a single case study with embedded units was applied to the study. With the results of the interviews then triangulated with a secondary data set. The analysis of the findings shows the executives faced difficult decisions within the areas of market selection, mode of entry, adaptation and standardisation and long term commitment. The results show that Rugby 7s as a product has been heavily shaped by numerous forces such as culture and knowledge of the markets. With the events individually being unique, however, as a collective product Rugby 7s can be identified as one product as a ‘glocal’ approach has been implemented by executives. Further research should continue looking at other emerging sports to gain a wider understanding of sports internationalisation. By doing this it increases the knowledge and understanding of the phenomena and can be used to establish frameworks for future research.</p>

Internationalisation of a Global Sporting Product: The Case of Rugby 7s

<p>Sports are continuing to grow in prominence and possess similar attributes to multinational corporations. However, there is currently a lack of knowledge around the internationalisation of sports in business literature. Research is heavily centred on the sport of soccer, with a focus on historical accounts of how sport has shaped national identities of nations and the cross-national diffusion of sports across national borders. This research has been driven due to the focus on the topic by the fields of sociology and political science which both contribute heavily to the literature. This thesis aims to create a focus on emerging sports such as rugby, using real-time and current accounts of how internationalisation is currently being impacted and shifting the literature into the international business field. In order to do this, two research questions are asked: How is Rugby 7s internationalising? And How does Rugby 7s manage the key decision points in internationalisation? The use of decision points looks at going beyond applying theoretical frameworks to the research and directly seeks to find the key decisions that sports managers face when internationalising. This study is designed in an exploratory way with semi-structured interviews used to explore and better understand the phenomena of sports internationalisation. To ensure all perspectives from stakeholders were covered a single case study with embedded units was applied to the study. With the results of the interviews then triangulated with a secondary data set. The analysis of the findings shows the executives faced difficult decisions within the areas of market selection, mode of entry, adaptation and standardisation and long term commitment. The results show that Rugby 7s as a product has been heavily shaped by numerous forces such as culture and knowledge of the markets. With the events individually being unique, however, as a collective product Rugby 7s can be identified as one product as a ‘glocal’ approach has been implemented by executives. Further research should continue looking at other emerging sports to gain a wider understanding of sports internationalisation. By doing this it increases the knowledge and understanding of the phenomena and can be used to establish frameworks for future research.</p>

Utilizing CRISPR-Cas in Tropical Crop Improvement: A Decision Process for Fitting Genome Engineering to Your Species

Adopting modern gene-editing technologies for trait improvement in agriculture requires important workflow developments, yet these developments are not often discussed. Using tropical crop systems as a case study, we describe a workflow broken down into discrete processes with specific steps and decision points that allow for the practical application of the CRISPR-Cas gene editing platform in a crop of interest. While we present the steps of developing genome-edited plants as sequential, in practice parts can be done in parallel, which are discussed in this perspective. The main processes include 1) understanding the genetic basis of the trait along with having the crop’s genome sequence, 2) testing and optimization of the editing reagents, development of efficient 3) tissue culture and 4) transformation methods, and 5) screening methods to identify edited events with commercial potential. Our goal in this perspective is to help any lab that wishes to implement this powerful, easy-to-use tool in their pipeline, thus aiming to democratize the technology.