Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Postcards From Bremen A.K.A. Oregon Trails, Thomas W. Leonhardt

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

The Dynamics Of Community Life In Rural Nebraska, John C. Allen, Rebecca J. Vogt, Sam Cordes

Publications from the Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI)

Many rural communities have experienced population losses during the past decade. Coupled with the aging population, this has resulted in many communities struggling to remain viable. However, improvements in technology have presented many opportunities for the rural areas to grow and prosper. Given these changes, how do rural Nebraskans feel about their community? Are they planning to move from their community in the next year?

This report details 3,199 responses to the 2001 Nebraska Rural Poll, the sixth annual effort to understand rural Nebraskans’ perceptions. Respondents were asked a series of questions regarding their community and their plans to move …

Statewide Safety Study Of Bicycles And Pedestrians On Freeways, Expressway, Toll Bridges, And Tunnels, Thomas C. Ferrara

Mineta Transportation Institute

The purpose of this study is to attempt to clarify some of the issues pertaining to bicycles on freeways. Specifically, the goal of this project is to “develop policy recommendations, guidelines, and policies for bicycle and pedestrian use of freeways, expressways, tunnels, and toll bridges in California.”

Applying An Integrated Model To The Evaluation Of Travel Demand Management Policies In The Sacramento Region, Mti Report 01-03, Robert A. Johnston

Mineta Transportation Institute

The Mineta Transportation Institute at San José State University conducted this study to review the issues and implications involved in the project in question. The primary objective of this study was to use an advanced integrated land use and transportation model to evaluate transit and supportive land use and pricing policies; the Sacramento MEPLAN model was used to simulate these policies. The model represents the effect of changes in the transportation system on land use. If the land use and transportation interaction is not represented, then the analysis of transit and highway alternatives may be biased. For example, if the …

Applying An Integrated Urban Model In The Evaluation Of Travel Demand Management Policies In The Sacramento Region: Year Two, Mti Report 01-08, Robert A. Johnston

Mineta Transportation Institute

In this study, the authors apply an integrated land use and transportation model, the Sacramento MEPLAN model, to evaluate transit investment alternatives combines with supportive land use policies and pricing policies in the Sacramento region. The current study builds upon the year-one study (Johnson et. al., 2000) in two important respects. First, the study employs a second version of the Sacramento MEPLAN model that explicitly represents floorspace consumption in the land use component of the model. Second, the transit, land use and pricing policies evaluated in the year-two project as expanded and refined in this study in response to the …

Non-Pricing Methods To Optimize High Occupancy Vehicle Lane Usage, Mti Report 01-11, George E. Gray

Mineta Transportation Institute

The Mineta Transportation Institute) at San José State University conducted this study to review the issues and implications involved in the project in question. Twenty-four potential HOV facility user groups were identified. Through a ranking process, seven of these groups were selected for further study in phase one. The project team made the following preliminary conclusions as to the suitability of each group to use HOV facilities and recommended whether each group should be included in the phase two study to refine these findings and develop implementation strategies. 1. As the result of 1998 legislation, which includes sunset provisions, electric …

California Border Zone Land Transportation Issues: Nafta Ii, Mti Report 01-06, George E. Gray

Mineta Transportation Institute

The Mineta Transportation Institute at San José State University conducted this study to review the issues, impacts, implications, and opportunities for improved California-Baja California border area land transportation. The study reviews current conditions, previously identified issues, and, in consultation with Caltrans District 11 officials and others, developed an ultimate listing of seven issues for detailed study as follows: (1) public transportation at the border; (2) cross-broder Americans with Disabilities Act interface; (3) California highway access to Tijuana International Airport; (4) Clean Air Act compliance; (5) General Services Administration off-site authority; (6) southbound inspection requirement; and (7) pipelines or other stationary …

Inspire, Fall 2001: The Joys Of Summer, Cedarville College

Inspire

No abstract provided.

Rio Grande Invitational Results, Cedarville University

Men's Cross Country Statistics

No abstract provided.

Towards A Christian Economics?, Jonathan Warner

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

The Hypothetical Even-Share Scenario, Dennis L. Soden

IPED Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

An Exploration Into Individual Development Accounts As An Anti-Poverty Strategy, Timothy G. Reutebuch

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

A non-random, cross-sectional sampling procedure was utilized in this study to determine what factors are related to households choosing to utilize Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) as a means to escape poverty. Surveys from 111 households were collected from September 1997, to April 1999, in seven Ohio counties to elucidate the relationship between the level of assets in working poor households and selected household demographic variables, and the decision on whether or not to actually participate in an IDA program. Findings revealed that households 1) with more than one wage earner and 2) with higher levels of education are more likely …

What We Owe Our Children, They Their Children, ..., John E. Roemer, Roberto Veneziani

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Egalitarian theorists, since Rawls, have in the main advocated equalizing some objective measure of individual well-being, such as primary goods, functioning, or resources, rather than subjective welfare. This discussion, however, has assumed, implicitly, a static environment. By analyzing a society that survives for many generations, we demonstrate that equality of opportunity for some objective condition is incompatible with human development over time. We argue that this incompatibility can be resolved by equalizing opportunities for welfare. Thus, ‘subjectivism’ seems necessary if we are to hope for a society which can both equalize opportunities and support the development of human capacity over …

The Equity Premium Consensus Forecast Revisited, Ivo Welch

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

A seller wishes to sell an object to one of multiple bidders. The valuations of the bidders are privately known. We consider the joint design problem in which the seller can decide the accuracy by which bidders learn their valuation and to whom to sell at what price. We establish that optimal information structures in an optimal auction exhibit a number of properties: (i) information structures can be represented by monotone partitions, (ii) the cardinality of each partition is finite, (iii) the partitions are asymmetric across agents. These properties imply that the optimal selling strategy of a seller can be …

Egalitarianism Against The Veil Of Ignorance, John E. Roemer

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

J. Rawls and R. Dworkin have each used veils of ignorance to justify equality (Rawls) or to compute what equality entails (Dworkin). J. Harsanyi has also derived a distributive ethic from a veil of ignorance argument, which, although not egalitarian, is believed by Harsanyi to be not excessively inegalitarian. Harsanyi’s analysis does not determine a unique social choice function, but rather a family of such functions. Here, by appending more information to Harsanyi’s environment, and an Axiom of Neutrality, I uniquely determine a social welfare function by extending Harsanyi’s argument. I show that this function is strongly inegalitarian, in that …

What It Takes For A Woman To Start Her Own Business: My Personal Quest, Kristi Rinehart

Theses and Graduate Projects

Today women in the United States are more visibly involved in the ownership of a range of enterprises - from home-based proprietorships to women-established corporations with employees. Women are achieving new goals in business; increased educational levels and work experience have opened the entrepreneurial floodgates. This study will discuss what factors influence and motivate women in corporate America to "go it alone" while also detailing what it takes for a women to start her own business. The author will also discuss her aspirations to open a small business.

Familiarity Facilitates Social Learning Of Foraging Behaviour In The Guppy, Will Swaney, Jeremy Kendal, Hannah Capon, Culum Brown, Kevin N. Laland

Sentience Collection

Previous studies have shown that guppies, Poecilia reticulata, can learn the route to a food source by shoaling with knowledgeable conspecifics, and prefer to shoal with experienced foragers and familiar fish. We tested the hypothesis that guppies would learn more effectively from (1) familiar than unfamiliar demonstrators and (2) well-trained than poorly trained demonstrators. Demonstrator fish were given experience in swimming a route to a food source and then introduced into shoals of untrained observer guppies; the spread of this foraging skill was recorded over 15 trials. The demonstrators were either familiar or unfamiliar to the observers and either well …

The Effect Of Response Contingencies On Scale Model Task Performance By Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes), Valerie A. Kuhlmeier, Sarah T. Boysen

Sentience Collection

The effects of modified procedures on chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes) performance in a scale model comprehension task were examined. Seven chimpanzees that previously participated in a task in which they searched an enclosure for a hidden item after watching an experimenter hide a miniature item in the analogous location in a scale model were retested under procedures incorporating response costs. In Experiment 1, chimpanzees were trained under procedures that rewarded only item retrievals occurring on the 1st search attempt. During test trials, 6 chimpanzees performed above chance, including 4 that were previously unsuccessful under the original procedures (V. A. Kuhlmeier, S. …

Catholic Deaf Community Newsletter, September-October 2001

Catholic Deaf Community Newsletter

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Portland, OR

Catholic Deaf Community Newsletter Finding Aid

Newsletter Catholic Deaf Of Detroit, September 2001

Newsletter Catholic Deaf of Detroit

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Detroit, MI

Newsletter Catholic Deaf of Detroit Finding Aid

Ministry Formation Program Newsletter, Fall 2001

Ministry Formation Program Newsletter

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Chicago, IL

Ministry Formation Program Newsletter Finding Aid

Ephatha, Fall 2001

Ephatha

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Newark, NJ

Front Matter, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Vol. 03 No. 2 Journal Of Microfinance, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Seven Aspects Of Loan Size, Mark Schreiner

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Attempts to measure the depth of outreach in microfinance usually start--and often end--with loan size. But just what is loan size? This paper discusses seven aspects of loan size, each of which affects not only depth of outreach but also profitability. The seven aspects are: term to maturity, dollars disbursed, average balance, dollars per installment, time between installments, number of installments, and "dollar-years of borrowed resources." This paper defines the seven aspects, explains why each one matters, and gives examples of their measurement with data from three Latin American microfinance organizations.

Microfinance Impact Assessments: The Perils Of Using New Members As A Control Group, Dean S. Karlan

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Microfinance institutions aim to reduce poverty. Some assess their impact through a cross-sectional impact methodology which compares veteran to new participants and then calls any difference between these two groups the "impact" of the program. Such studies have risen recently in popularity because they are cheap, easy to implement, and often encouraged by donors. USAID, through its AIMS project, encourages this methodology with its SEEP/AIMS practitioner-oriented tools. This paper intends to inform practitioners about the perils of using such a strategy, and suggests a couple of solutions to some of the larger problems with this approach.

Announcements, Journal Of Microfinance

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Approach To The Microenterprise Sector In Latin America: An Intergrating Framework, Jaime Ortiz

Journal of Microfinance / ESR Review

Unavoidable macroeconomic adjustment policies have exacerbated social inequalities in Latin America. As a result, electoral platforms have identified microenterprises as an alternative economic activity to help alleviate poverty. Pursuing an efficient microentrepreneurial base requires from governments a comprehensive package of both financing and training strategies. Conversely, microentrepreneurs require a better understanding of their activity in order to set forward arguments that will allow them to enhance their management practices. Government policies towards the microenterprise sector should create favorable conditions conducive to the establishment and operation of financial institutions as well as specialized nongovernmental organizations providing training and consulting. Within that …

Review Of What Government Can Do: Dealing With Poverty And Inequality, By Benjamin I. Page And James R. Simmons, Sanford F. Schram

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Online Bayesian Tree-Structured Transformation Of Hmms With Optimal Model Selection For Speaker Adaptation, Shaojun Wang, Yunxin Zhao

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents a new recursive Bayesian learning approach for transformation parameter estimation in speaker adaptation. Our goal is to incrementally transform or adapt a set of hidden Markov model (HMM) parameters for a new speaker and gain large performance improvement from a small amount of adaptation data. By constructing a clustering tree of HMM Gaussian mixture components, the linear regression (LR) or affine transformation parameters for HMM Gaussian mixture components are dynamically searched. An online Bayesian learning technique is proposed for recursive maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of LR and affine transformation parameters. This technique has the advantages of …