Handicapping currency design: counterfeit deterrence and visual accessibility in the United States and abroad

Despite the increasing use of electronic payments, currency retains an important role in the payments system of every country. Two aspects of currency usage drive currency design worldwide: deterring counterfeiting and making paper currency accessible to the visually impaired. Further, among the world's currencies, only U.S. banknotes are widely owned and used in transactions outside their country of issue (although the euro also has some external circulation). In this article, we compare and contrast major currencies and their design features. We conclude that the designs of the two most widely used currencies in the world-the U.S. dollar and the euro-have successfully deterred counterfeiting; data on other currencies are not public. We also conclude that, among the world's major currencies, U.S. banknotes have the fewest features to assist the visually impaired.Paper money design ; Coinage ; Counterfeits and counterfeiting

Note: Finger Imaging: A 21st Century Solution to Welfare Fraud at our Fingertips

This Note describes the finger imaging process and summarizes the current New York Social Services law regarding public assistance. It also outlines the current finger imaging bill before the New York State Legislature. Part III examines and considers the two major policy arguments against the implementation of the program. Part IV outlines the legal controversy regarding finger imaging and addresses each express concern as well as constitutional issues. Part V compares New York\u27s finger imaging legislation with similar legislation already in place in California and argues that the New York program will be as effective as California\u27s. In conclusion, this Note urges the New York State Legislature to enact a statewide finger imaging requirement for public assistance and embrace the finger imaging system as an effective and proper method of combatting welfare fraud in the state

Note: Finger Imaging: A 21st Century Solution to Welfare Fraud at our Fingertips

This Note describes the finger imaging process and summarizes the current New York Social Services law regarding public assistance. It also outlines the current finger imaging bill before the New York State Legislature. Part III examines and considers the two major policy arguments against the implementation of the program. Part IV outlines the legal controversy regarding finger imaging and addresses each express concern as well as constitutional issues. Part V compares New York\u27s finger imaging legislation with similar legislation already in place in California and argues that the New York program will be as effective as California\u27s. In conclusion, this Note urges the New York State Legislature to enact a statewide finger imaging requirement for public assistance and embrace the finger imaging system as an effective and proper method of combatting welfare fraud in the state

Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans

To combat terrorism, Attorney General John Ashcroft has asked Congress to "enhance" the government's ability to conduct domestic surveillance of citizens. The Justice Department's legislative proposals would give federal law enforcement agents new access to personal information contained in business and school records. Before acting on those legislative proposals, lawmakers should pause to consider the extent to which the lives of ordinary Americans already are monitored by the federal government. Over the years, the federal government has instituted a variety of data collection programs that compel the production, retention, and dissemination of personal information about every American citizen. Linked through an individual's Social Security number, these labor, medical, education and financial databases now empower the federal government to obtain a detailed portrait of any person: the checks he writes, the types of causes he supports, and what he says "privately" to his doctor. Despite widespread public concern about preserving privacy, these data collection systems have been enacted in the name of "reducing fraud" and "promoting efficiency" in various government programs. Having exposed most areas of American life to ongoing government scrutiny and recording, Congress is now poised to expand and universalize federal tracking of citizen life. The inevitable consequence of such constant surveillance, however, is metastasizing government control over society. If that happens, our government will have perverted its most fundamental mission and destroyed the privacy and liberty that it was supposed to protect

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationPublic health surveillance systems are crucial for the timely detection and response to public health threats. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the release of anthrax in the following month, there has been a heightened interest in public health surveillance. The years immediately following these attacks were met with increased awareness and funding from the federal government which has significantly strengthened the United States surveillance capabilities; however, despite these improvements, there are substantial challenges faced by today's public health surveillance systems. Problems with the current surveillance systems include: a) lack of leveraging unstructured public health data for surveillance purposes; and b) lack of information integration and the ability to leverage resources, applications or other surveillance efforts due to systems being built on a centralized model. This research addresses these problems by focusing on the development and evaluation of new informatics methods to improve the public health surveillance. To address the problems above, we first identified a current public surveillance workflow which is affected by the problems described and has the opportunity for enhancement through current informatics techniques. The 122 Mortality Surveillance for Pneumonia and Influenza was chosen as the primary use case for this dissertation work. The second step involved demonstrating the feasibility of using unstructured public health data, in this case death certificates. For this we created and evaluated a pipeline iv composed of a detection rule and natural language processor, for the coding of death certificates and the identification of pneumonia and influenza cases. The second problem was addressed by presenting the rationale of creating a federated model by leveraging grid technology concepts and tools for the sharing and epidemiological analyses of public health data. As a case study of this approach, a secured virtual organization was created where users are able to access two grid data services, using death certificates from the Utah Department of Health, and two analytical grid services, MetaMap and R. A scientific workflow was created using the published services to replicate the mortality surveillance workflow. To validate these approaches, and provide proofs-of-concepts, a series of real-world scenarios were conducted

Visualising the Invisible: Displaying Building Resource-use Benchmarks in a 3D City Visualisation

This thesis proposes a reinvention of the means of presenting statistical data about 3D urban environments. Conventional GIS use of 3D ’enhances’ hard to understand 2D maps with even harder-to-understand histograms of data. The goal is to demonstrate the means by which data on energy and water-use in buildings can be used to enhance familiar 3D interactive city environments and be made accessible to the widest possible audience. Ultimately, resource benchmarks and other related publicly available information about the built environment could be presented in this highly accessible form. All information would be database driven, so automatically updateable. From this basic platform, applications that allow people to compare their own private records with public norms are easily constructed: a world where a building owner can compare their energy records with benchmarks for similar buildings and take action to improve if necessary, or to advertise accomplishments. This study draws on data from the ‘BEES’ Building Energy End-use Study - a BRANZ research project documenting energy and water use in New Zealand commercial buildings. During the study a ‘Websearch’ survey was conducted, building a detailed picture of non-residential building stock in New Zealand with data collected on building typologies, characteristics and surroundings. A thorough research methodology was developed to ensure that high level data could be collected from 3,000 randomly selected buildings within the budget allocated for the project. The data was examined for quality, building characteristics and typology mix and a valuable layer of detail was added by inferring additional information from the basic Websearch dataset. Where sub-samples used in the BEES study were subject to refusal / survey participation rates, the level of potential bias in the mix of building typologies could be tested and allowances made. Energy and water use data collected for a random subset of the sample, could then be applied as benchmarks to the census of New Zealand commercial buildings. In order to trial the communication of the benchmark results to the widest possible audience, an automated 3D city visualisation ‘pilot’ was generated of the Wellington Central Business District and a number of graphic tools were brought together to make the information publicly accessible and as useful as possible. The overall aim was to test the feasibility of applying this technique at a national level. The research revealed three major recommendations: firstly, a national unique building identifier is required to ensure the accuracy of national building data and enable statistical results about the built environment to be accurately and reliably applied to real buildings; secondly, resource use data in 3D format is urgently required to improve the value of sustainable properties; lastly, creating a significant impact on building stock efficiency will depend upon the engagement of a wider audience. Developed further, this visualisation will enable construction professionals, building owners, developers and tenants to understand the built environment and implications of building design and typology on energy and water use

From brawn to brains: how immigration works for America

Immigrants help fuel the U.S. economy, representing about one in every six workers. Because of accelerated immigration and slowing U.S. population growth, foreign-born workers accounted for almost half of labor force growth over the past 15 years. Public attention has forcused mainly on the large number of low-skilled immigrant workers, but the number of high-skilled immigrants actually grew faster during the period.Immigrants ; Labor supply - United States ; Education - Economic aspects ; Emigration and immigration