The Borrower\u27s Tale: A History of Poor Debtors in \u3ci\u3eLochner\u3c/i\u3e Era New York City

This study adds to the recent scholarship on Progressivism in practice—fine-grained, place-based studies of reform at the local level—but focuses closely on the relationships among reformers, industry, and the law that an earlier generation of historians studied at the national level and outlined in broad brushstrokes. This study also builds upon the creditor-centered work of historians such as Mark H. Haller and John V. Alviti, but moves beyond their reliance upon distinctions and categories, such as those separating profit making credit providers from philanthropic credit providers, which were less important to borrowers than they have been for historians. In focusing primarily on the lived experience of poor borrowers, this article imports into the study of household credit relationships an approach mapped out by several historians of social welfare policy and institutions, who have attempted to reorient the institution-centered historiography of social welfare to give greater weight to the perspectives of welfare recipients. This study attempts to correct a similar imbalance in the historiography of household credit relationships. The value of viewing the history of credit through the lived experiences of working-class households is not solely in documenting the human dignity and agency of poor borrowers, although this is certainly one of the goals of this study. Rather, by looking at credit relationships from the borrower’s point of view, a number of different institutions, groups, and policies that borrowers experienced as simultaneous and overlapping, but that historians have usually studied separately from one another, are brought into the same analytic frame. Thus, in contrast to prior work, this study treats charitable and for-profit lenders to the poor together as participants in the same market for working-class credit. The debtors’ stories presented here show how impoverished families organized their financial lives, made ends meet, and employed borrowing as a survival strategy

Anti-Competition Regulation

Looking across the long twentieth century, this article tracks the rise and fall of one form of anti-competition regulation: the certificate of public convenience. Designed to curb “destructive competition” in certain industries, such as transportation and banking, certificate laws prevented firms from entering those industries unless they could convince regulators that they would satisfy an unmet public demand for goods or services. This history highlights how lawmakers used similar techniques in governing infrastructure and finance—two fields that are not often studied together. It also shows that state regulation both prefigured legal change at the federal level and then lagged behind it, suggesting that different dynamics have been in play at each level of governance in devising competition policy over the last century

The impact of diversity in Queensland classrooms on literacy teaching in changing times

The intent of the paper is to identify possible inhibitors to best practice for literacy teaching and learning and to identify key considerations for a responsive, relevant and constructive curriculum and pedagogy for the teaching of literacy in diverse classrooms. A review of relevant research and pedagogical frameworks such as sociocultural constructivism, productive pedagogies and multiliteracies pedagogy, will provide the basis on which to argue some possible classroom practices for teachers to consider for the as ways forward in diverse classrooms. This paper will be contextualized within the current political agenda in regard to literacy education and recent research into literacy teaching and learning in Australia, reported in 'The National Inquiry into Literacy' and consider the issues together with the assessment demands placed on teachers in classrooms

Improving the clinical value and utility of CGM systems: issues and recommendations : a joint statement of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association Diabetes Technology Working Group

The first systems for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) became available over 15 years ago. Many then believed CGM would revolutionise the use of intensive insulin therapy in diabetes; however, progress towards that vision has been gradual. Although increasing, the proportion of individuals using CGM rather than conventional systems for self-monitoring of blood glucose on a daily basis is still low in most parts of the world. Barriers to uptake include cost, measurement reliability (particularly with earlier-generation systems), human factors issues, lack of a standardised format for displaying results and uncertainty on how best to use CGM data to make therapeutic decisions. This scientific statement makes recommendations for systemic improvements in clinical use and regulatory (pre- and postmarketing) handling of CGM devices. The aim is to improve safety and efficacy in order to support the advancement of the technology in achieving its potential to improve quality of life and health outcomes for more people with diabetes

Improving the clinical value and utility of CGM systems: issues and recommendations: a joint statement of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association Diabetes Technology Working Group

The first systems for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) became available over 15 years ago. Many then believed CGM would revolutionize the use of intensive insulin therapy in diabetes; however, progress toward that vision has been gradual. Although increasing, the proportion of individuals using CGM rather than conventional systems for self-monitoring of blood glucose on a daily basis is still low in most parts of the world. Barriers to uptake include cost, measurement reliability (particularly with earlier-generation systems), human factors issues, lack of a standardized format for displaying results, and uncertainty on how best to use CGM data to make therapeutic decisions. This Scientific Statement makes recommendations for systemic improvements in clinical use and regulatory (pre- and postmarketing) handling of CGM devices. The aim is to improve safety and efficacy in order to support the advancement of the technology in achieving its potential to improve quality of life and health outcomes for more people with diabetes

The relation of perceptual factors and speed of handwriting to spelling ability.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

A HISTORY OF CONSUMER CLASS ACTIONS IN STATE COURTS

Most historians date the “modern” class action to the 1966 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Yet, the class action or “representative suit” has a longer, unexplored history in the state courts. In the late 1930s and 1940s, a group of scrappy, first-generation lawyers tried to build their businesses by aggregating the small-sum claims of many consumers. The defendants in these cases were, for example, lenders who failed to comply with the technicalities of state disclosure mandates, and utility companies that charged consumers extra fees. Each consumer’s claim was small, but, as a group, the claims could yield a recovery large enough to make the case worthwhile for an entrepreneurial plaintiffs’ lawyer. State courts were not ready to embrace the consumer class action, however, for a few reasons. First, representative consumer suits threatened the professional identity of the organized bar. Class counsel came from the same ranks as personal injury attorneys, derisively labeled “ambulance chasers” by legal elites, and they similarly viewed litigation as a means to earn their fees. Both the bench and the elite bar disapproved of this approach. Second, representative consumer suits threatened the business community. Judges were sensitive to the objections of businessmen, who had been involved in writing some of the laws that class plaintiffs now sought to turn against them. Finally, past judicial decisions concerning representative suits did not favor allowing consumers to aggregate their claims, in the absence of some “common interest” among the plaintiffs or proof that the defendant had insufficient funds to pay all class members in full. In response to these concerns, state courts delayed the development of procedural devices that would have provided meaningful remedies for violations of substantive consumer rights. Without these remedies, substantive rights proved of more limited value. This history underscores the importance of effective enforcement mechanisms in consumer law, which typically pits numerous individuals with small-dollar claims against more sophisticated and well-resourced corporate defendants. It also shifts the narrative arc of consumer law’s history. Rather than a story of decline, in which the remedial promise of Federal Rule 23 was thwarted by contractual developments and judicial maneuvering in the 1990s and beyond, it becomes a story of reversion, in which judicial, legislative, and business hostility to class actions near century’s end caused the pendulum to swing back towards norms that had prevailed in state courts at the very beginning of the consumer class action era

Synthesising evidence to estimate pandemic (2009) A/H1N1 influenza severity in 2009-2011

Knowledge of the severity of an influenza outbreak is crucial for informing and monitoring appropriate public health responses, both during and after an epidemic. However, case-fatality, case-intensive care admission and case-hospitalisation risks are difficult to measure directly. Bayesian evidence synthesis methods have previously been employed to combine fragmented, under-ascertained and biased surveillance data coherently and consistently, to estimate case-severity risks in the first two waves of the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic experienced in England. We present in detail the complex probabilistic model underlying this evidence synthesis, and extend the analysis to also estimate severity in the third wave of the pandemic strain during the 2010/2011 influenza season. We adapt the model to account for changes in the surveillance data available over the three waves. We consider two approaches: (a) a two-stage approach using posterior distributions from the model for the first two waves to inform priors for the third wave model; and (b) a one-stage approach modelling all three waves simultaneously. Both approaches result in the same key conclusions: (1) that the age-distribution of the case-severity risks is "u"-shaped, with children and older adults having the highest severity; (2) that the age-distribution of the infection attack rate changes over waves, school-age children being most affected in the first two waves and the attack rate in adults over 25 increasing from the second to third waves; and (3) that when averaged over all age groups, case-severity appears to increase over the three waves. The extent to which the final conclusion is driven by the change in age-distribution of those infected over time is subject to discussion.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/14-AOAS775 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Interactive batch process schedule optimization and decision-making using multiobjective genetic algorithms

A multiobjective genetic algorithm (MOGA) is applied to a test batch scheduling problem to optimize five objectives simultaneously. The design of the MOGA allows an emphasis on human interaction with the optimization process, including the ability to change priorities of preferences and plant data interactively, and to allow the MOGA to make decisions regarding batch size and the rule task allocation. Experimental results demonstrate the development of this technique, allowing the combination of human expertise and MOGA optimization power to provide scheduling solutions to a highly complex problem

AARE 2006: Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference 2006: Engaging Pedagogies

[Abstract]: This paper examines, from the perspective of a ‘workplace challenge’, the ways in which the culture of an organisation can be changed from a hierarchical structure to that of a learning organisation. The paper focuses on the concept of Academic Interest Areas (AIA), which evolved from a University Faculty restructure. Firstly, the reasons for change are discussed and contextualised. Secondly, the Faculty restructure and the development of the AIA initiative are explored. The paper describes the institution and the place of the education faculty within the institution. It further outlines the faculty restructure, its impact and how the AIA initiative subsequently evolved from this restructure. A discussion of the development of workplace change, the culture of the organisation and subsequent leadership issues, provides a context for the analysis of the challenges and successes of the AIA to date. Information gleaned from documentation, collegial discussion and interviews with academic staff involved in the AIA process provides the basis upon which to reflect on the AIA initiation. The initial findings indicate that the AIA initiative is largely accepted by Faculty academics as a worthy concept but that it falls short in the transition of the AIA concept into a fully functional initiativ