Consumer testing informs policy: overdraft regulation as a case study

In November 2009, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System issued regulations that protect consumers from being charged certain fees when, under a discretionary overdraft service, financial institutions pay transactions from a deposit account that contains insufficient funds. Under the regulations, consumers must receive notices that explain any discretionary overdraft services offered to them by their bank. In addition, consumers may not be charged overdraft fees for ATM or one-time debit transactions unless they have opted in to this service. During the rulemaking process, the Board extensively interviewed consumers and tested model notices to understand how consumers think about and use overdraft services. This paper describes banks’ overdraft programs, examines lessons learned from consumer testing, and explains how information obtained during consumer testing influenced the rulemaking. In addition, this paper presents some insights about more effective ways of conveying key information about overdraft services to consumers.Consumers' preferences ; Overdrafts ; Regulation

IMPLEMENTING GROUP PRESENTATION USING POWERPOINT ( GPPPt ) TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ SPEAKING COMPETENCE ( A Classroom Action Research at the Tenth Grade ( X-C ) , the Second Semester Students of SMA Negeri 1 Ngawi in 2009/2010 Academic Year )

Implementing Group Presentation Using PowerPoint ( GPPPt ) to Improve the Students’ Speaking Competence ( A Classroom Action Research at the Tenth Grade ( X-C ) , the Second Semester Students of SMA Negeri 1 Ngawi in 2009/2010 Academic Year ) . A Thesis: English Education Department, Graduate School, Sebelas Maret University, 2010. The objectives of this research are to: ( 1 ) identify whether or not and to what extent the use of “GPPPt” is able to improve the students’ speaking competence; and ( 2 ) describe the situations when GPPPt is being applied in the speaking class. In this research, the problem refers to the learning English, especially their speaking competence which is still low. The research methodology applied in this research is action research with two cycles in which each cycle starts from planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The data collected are the qualitative data and the quantitative data. The qualitative data are collected from observation, interview, questionnaire, and document. The quantitative data are collected from the pre test in pre research and the post test in Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. The qualitative data are analyzed by Constant Comparative Method and the quantitative data are analyzed by descriptive statistics. The implementation of GPPPt has succeeded in improving and enhancing the students’ English speaking competence. It could be seen from these indicators: 1 ) it is able to: ( a ) help the students to express their mind and ideas quickly; ( b ) help the students make sentence ( s ) fluently; ( c ) improve the students’ pronunciation to be relatively accepted; ( d ) influence the students to use correct grammar to make sentence ( s ) ; and ( e ) increase the students’ achievement in speaking evaluation; and 2 ) it enables to: ( a ) reduce the students’ temptation to have a chat with their desk mates; ( b ) respond the teacher’s questions actively; ( c ) influence the students to avoid doing non academic activities; and ( d ) motivate the students to use either their dictionaries or grammar books in English class. Besides, from the collected data, the students had obtained better score from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. For instance, the mean of pre test score of the pre research was 66.76, while the mean of the post test score in Cycle 1 was 74.00 and that of Cycle 2 was 77.64. That the implementation of GPPPt has succeeded in improving and enhancing the students’ English speaking competence, I would like to propose some suggestions for the English teachers, especially those who teach in senior high school to: ( 1 ) apply GPPPt to conduct the teaching learning process in the speaking class; ( 2 ) improve their acquisition of knowledge about GPPPt; and ( 3 ) provide more chance for the students to practice their English orally through GPPPt

Learning to integrate reactivity and deliberation in uncertain planning and scheduling problems

This paper describes an approach to planning and scheduling in uncertain domains. In this approach, a system divides a task on a goal by goal basis into reactive and deliberative components. Initially, a task is handled entirely reactively. When failures occur, the system changes the reactive/deliverative goal division by moving goals into the deliberative component. Because our approach attempts to minimize the number of deliberative goals, we call our approach Minimal Deliberation (MD). Because MD allows goals to be treated reactively, it gains some of the advantages of reactive systems: computational efficiency, the ability to deal with noise and non-deterministic effects, and the ability to take advantage of unforseen opportunities. However, because MD can fall back upon deliberation, it can also provide some of the guarantees of classical planning, such as the ability to deal with complex goal interactions. This paper describes the Minimal Deliberation approach to integrating reactivity and deliberation and describe an ongoing application of the approach to an uncertain planning and scheduling domain

Appendix I: Drafting legislation for development: lessons from a Chinese project

A discussion on the different theoretical issues regarding development legislation that divide economists and lawyers