Los Angeles, 1984: Hot Dogs and Croissants

Providing spectator food service for the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles was a massive and challenging undertaking. The author details the planning, recruitment, training, and sales considerations which the provider went through over a two-year period to be ready for the Games.

Louis in Los Angeles

Inscriptions: Verso: [stamped] Photograph by Freda Leinwand. [463 West Street, Studio 229G, New York, NY 10014].

A-REIT seasoned equity offerings : determinants and market reaction

The paper examines the decision by Australian Real Estate Trusts (A-REITs) to issue seasoned equity offerings from 2000 - 2008 and stock market reaction to the offerings using panel data and event study methodologies, respectively. The global financial crisis has resulted in freezing of the Australian bond markets, with several A-REITs left with seasoned equity issuance and asset sales as the only viable modes of raising additional capital. The findings review that leverage and operating risk are negative significant determinants of seasoned equity offerings; profitability and growth opportunities are positive significant determinants. Of the structure and type of properties held by the A-REIT, only stapled management structure and international operations are significant determinants. Type of properties held by A-REITs show inconsistent results. Similar to previous studies of seasoned equity offerings, we find a significant negative abnormal return associated with their announcement and no evidence of excessive leakage of information. Cross-sectional regressions show that the issued amount raised and leverage are significant factors affecting abnormal returns.

The intention to notice : the collection, the tour and ordinary landscapes

The Intention to Notice: the collection, the tour and ordinary landscapes is concerned with how ordinary landscapes and places are enabled and conserved through making itineraries that are framed around the ephemera encountered by chance, and the practices that make possible the endurance of these material traces. Through observing and then examining the material and temporal aspects of a variety of sites/places, the museum and the expanded garden are identified as spaces where the expression of contemporary political, ecological and social attitudes to cultural landscapes can be realised through a curatorial approach to design, to effect minimal intervention. Three notions are proposed to encourage investigation into contemporary cultural landscapes: To traverse slowly to allow space for speculations framed by the topographies and artefacts encountered; to [re]make/[re]write cultural landscapes as discursive landscapes that provoke the intention to notice; and to reveal and conserve the fabric of everyday places. A series of walking, recording and making projects undertaken across a variety of cultural landscapes in remote South Australia, Melbourne, Sydney, London, Los Angeles, Chandigarh, Padova and Istanbul, investigate how communities of practice are facilitated through the invitation to notice and intervene in ordinary landscapes, informed by the theory and practice of postproduction and the reticent auteur. This community of practice approach draws upon chance encounters and it seeks to encourage creative investigation into places. The Intention to Notice is a practice of facilitating that also leads to recording traces and events; large and small, material and immaterial, that encourages both conjecture and archive. Most importantly, there is an open-ended invitation to commit and exchange through design interaction.

Destination positioning opportunities elicited through the repertory test with laddering analysis

While in many travel situations consumers have an almost limitless range of destinations to choose from, their actual decision set will usually only comprise between two and six destinations. One of the greatest challenges facing destination marketers is positioning their destination, against the myriad of competing places that offer similar features, into consumer decision sets. Since positioning requires a narrow focus, marketing communications must present a succinct and meaningful proposition, the selection of which is often problematic for destination marketing organisations (DMO), which deal with a diverse and often eclectic range of attributes in addition to numerous self-interested and demanding stakeholders. This paper reports the application of two qualitative techniques used to explore the range of cognitive attributes, consequences and personal values that represent potential positioning opportunities in the context of short break holidays. The Repertory Test is an effective technique for understanding the salient attributes used by a traveller to differentiate destinations, while Laddering Analysis enables the researcher to explore the smaller set of personal values guiding such decision making. A key finding of the research was that while individuals might vary in their repertoire of salient attributes, there was a commonality of shared consequences and values.

Persistent ocean monitoring with underwater gliders : towards accurate reconstruction of dynamic ocean processes

Ocean processes are dynamic and complex events that occur on multiple different spatial and temporal scales. To obtain a synoptic view of such events, ocean scientists focus on the collection of long-term time series data sets. Generally, these time series measurements are continually provided in real or near-real time by fixed sensors, e.g., buoys and moorings. In recent years, an increase in the utilization of mobile sensor platforms, e.g., Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, has been seen to enable dynamic acquisition of time series data sets. However, these mobile assets are not utilized to their full capabilities, generally only performing repeated transects or user-defined patrolling loops. Here, we provide an extension to repeated patrolling of a designated area. Our algorithms provide the ability to adapt a standard mission to increase information gain in areas of greater scientific interest. By implementing a velocity control optimization along the predefined path, we are able to increase or decrease spatiotemporal sampling resolution to satisfy the sampling requirements necessary to properly resolve an oceanic phenomenon. We present a path planning algorithm that defines a sampling path, which is optimized for repeatability. This is followed by the derivation of a velocity controller that defines how the vehicle traverses the given path. The application of these tools is motivated by an ongoing research effort to understand the oceanic region off the coast of Los Angeles, California. The computed paths are implemented with the computed velocities onto autonomous vehicles for data collection during sea trials. Results from this data collection are presented and compared for analysis of the proposed technique.

Networked aquatic microbial observing systems: An overview

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Trajectory design for autonomous underwater vehicles based on ocean model predictions for feature tracking

Trajectory design for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) is of great importance to the oceanographic research community. Intelligent planning is required to maneuver a vehicle to high-valued locations for data collection. We consider the use of ocean model predictions to determine the locations to be visited by an AUV, which then provides near-real time, in situ measurements back to the model to increase the skill of future predictions. The motion planning problem of steering the vehicle between the computed waypoints is not considered here. Our focus is on the algorithm to determine relevant points of interest for a chosen oceanographic feature. This represents a first approach to an end to end autonomous prediction and tasking system for aquatic, mobile sensor networks. We design a sampling plan and present experimental results with AUV retasking in the Southern California Bight (SCB) off the coast of Los Angeles.

Trajectory design and implementation for multiple autonomous underwater vehicles based on ocean model predictions

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Networked robotic sensor platform deployments for use in coastal environmental assessment in southern California

Mobile sensor platforms such as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and robotic surface vessels, combined with static moored sensors compose a diverse sensor network that is able to provide macroscopic environmental analysis tool for ocean researchers. Working as a cohesive networked unit, the static buoys are always online, and provide insight as to the time and locations where a federated, mobile robot team should be deployed to effectively perform large scale spatiotemporal sampling on demand. Such a system can provide pertinent in situ measurements to marine biologists whom can then advise policy makers on critical environmental issues. This poster presents recent field deployment activity of AUVs demonstrating the effectiveness of our embedded communication network infrastructure throughout southern California coastal waters. We also report on progress towards real-time, web-streaming data from the multiple sampling locations and mobile sensor platforms. Static monitoring sites included in this presentation detail the network nodes positioned at Redondo Beach and Marina Del Ray. One of the deployed mobile sensors highlighted here are autonomous Slocum gliders. These nodes operate in the open ocean for periods as long as one month. The gliders are connected to the network via a Freewave radio modem network composed of multiple coastal base-stations. This increases the efficiency of deployment missions by reducing operational expenses via reduced reliability on satellite phones for communication, as well as increasing the rate and amount of data that can be transferred. Another mobile sensor platform presented in this study are the autonomous robotic boats. These platforms are utilized for harbor and littoral zone studies, and are capable of performing multi-robot coordination while observing known communication constraints. All of these pieces fit together to present an overview of ongoing collaborative work to develop an autonomous, region-wide, coastal environmental observation and monitoring sensor network.