NYS PROMISE Learning Community Group Concept Mapping: Fall 2016 Case Manager Experience - Final Report

Beginning in 2014, the Federal Government provided funding to New York State as part of an initiative to improve services that lead to sustainable outcomes for youth receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. As part of the NYS PROMISE initiative, Concept Systems, Inc. worked with the Learning Community to develop learning needs frameworks using the Group Concept Mapping methodology (GCM). The GCM projects gather, aggregates, and integrate the specific knowledge and opinions of the Learning Community members. This allows for their guidance and involvement in supporting NYS PROMISE as a viable community of practice. This work also increases the responsiveness of NYS PROMISE to the Learning Community members’ needs by inspiring discussion during the semi-annual in-person meetings. As of the end of year three, three GCM projects have been completed with the PROMISE Learning Community. These projects focused on Outreach and Recruitment Project 1), Case Management and Service Delivery (Project 2), and Case Manager Experience (Project 3). This report discusses the data collection method and participation in the Case Manager Experience GCM project, as well as providing graphics, statistical reports, and a summary of the analysis

Learning Community Group Concept Mapping: Fall 2014 Outreach and Recruitment, Spring 2015 Case Management and Service Delivery. Final Reports

Beginning in 2014, the Federal Government provided funding to New York State as part of an initiative to improve services that lead to sustainable outcomes for youth receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. As part of the NYS PROMISE initiative, Concept Systems, Inc. worked with the Learning Community to develop learning needs frameworks using the Group Concept Mapping methodology (GCM). This GCM project gathers, aggregates, and integrates the specific knowledge and opinions of the Learning Community members and allows for their guidance and involvement in supporting NYS PROMISE as a viable community of practice. This work also increases the responsiveness of NYS PROMISE to the Learning Community members’ needs by inspiring discussion during the semi-annual in-person meetings. As of the end of year two, two GCM projects have been completed with the PROMISE Learning Community. These projects focused on Outreach and Recruitment and Case Management and Service Delivery. This report discusses the data collection method and participation in both GCM projects, as well as providing graphics, statistical reports, and a summary of the analysis. In this report we refer to the Fall 2014 project as Project 1, and the Spring 2015 project as Project 2

MHD DYNAMIC BOUNDARY LAYER FLOW OVER A PLANE PLAQUE

The problem of MHD dynamic boundary layer fluid sliding flow over a plane plaque is investigated.  The von Karman™s integral method is applied to integrating the governing system of partial differential equations over the boundary layer thickness. Quantities of physical interest such as the boundary layer thickness, local or wall shear stress, friction drag force and coefficient of friction drag is derived. Comparisons with available literature give excellent agreements. The applicability of large or small magnetic fields in many industrial and electrical devices leads to the derivation of asymptotic results for the slip velocity. Pictorial representation made to the boundary layer thickness indicates that increasing magnetic parameter increases it as a result of the retarding force. The coefficient of friction drag is analyzed for various values of MHD and velocity slip parameters. It was observed that both the MHD and velocity slip or fluid slide parameters have retarding effect on the coefficient of friction drag, with the MHD playing a much more dominant role

Discovery and Strategic Partnership Group Concept Mapping: 2014-2015 Progress Report

In 2014, New York State received funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to begin the NYS PROMISE (Promote the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income) research initiative. The goal of this initiative is to coordinate the system of support surrounding these youths to better catalyze their potential to transition from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to a sustainable future of living and earning as independent adults. To guide strategy and support PROMISE priorities over the course of the initiative, NYS PROMISE convened the NYS PROMISE Steering Committee, comprised of appointed liaisons from agencies who are connected to the NYS PROMISE initiative. To support sustainable partnership development for greater progress and impact on the goals of NYS PROMISE, the Steering Committee engaged in a structured, time sensitive strategic planning and partnership framework development effort. To develop the elements of a prioritized strategy, the group used Group Concept Mapping (GCM), and constructed a visual framework, or concept map, that served as the basis for prioritization and strategy development throughout the process. The GCM approach employs a group process to capture individual contributions for consensus around a given topic, using a structured approach with a specific sequence of steps that support timely and consistent engagement in the process. GCM incorporates opinions and values, and presents the results in ways that are understandable and usable. 25 individuals from 8 member agencies took part in the concept map development, contributing elements in response to the following prompt: “To yield enduring individual outcomes, a viable system to support youth with disabilities in their transition from high school to successful adult lives needs to include…

MARKETING COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF E-TAILING FIRMS IN PORT HARCOURT

The nexus of this work was to ascertain the extent to which marketing communication strategies affects customer satisfaction of e-tailing firms in Port Harcourt. Two dimensions were studied; impersonal communication and online direct communication. Their effects on customer satisfaction were measured in the study. Descriptive research design was used and four hypotheses were formulated and tested using the data collected from 400 respondents through a five Point Likert Scale questionnaire, with the sampling frame selected through cluster sampling. Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient was adopted to conduct the inferential statistics. Findings showed that the dimensions of marketing communication strategies influenced customer satisfaction, by revealing that marketing communication strategies have a positive and significant relationship with customer satisfaction. It was therefore recommended that, e-tailing firms should engage adequately in the use of marketing communication strategies to enhance customer satisfaction

Cultural Diversity and Non-formal Health Education in Dzaleka Refugee Camp

Malawi is one of the African countries that hosts thousands of refugees mostly from Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and other African countries. These refugees come from various cultural backgrounds. Their cultural diversity is visible in languages, tribes, spiritual beliefs, food, dances and etiquette. Even though these refugees are all around the country, their concentration at Dzaleka Refugee Camp is usually over 10,000 at any given period of the year. Amidst the refugees finding a relatively safe place in Dzaleka Refugee Camp, they however face community health challenges as any other reasonably stable community. In worst cases, health challenges in the camp are worse than the surrounding communities. In response to these health challenges, the need for a hygienic environment and health community members, various organizations provide non-formal health education in the camp. These organizations come from within and outside the camp. Non-formal health education in the camp strives to help the community use the information for sanitary living as a preventative measure to illness. However, non-formal health education finds itself taking place in this culturally diverse community. This project interviewed 40 non-formal health education participants in the community to inquire about their views on cultural diversity\u27s interaction with non-formal health education. This project finds that communication, personal value judgement and lack of non-formal health education resources are the main perceived challenges that cultural diversity poses in non-formal health education in the camp. Finally, the project finds that creating a support system through recruiting local staff and making use of community relationships are key strategies in adapting non-formal health education in such a culturally diverse community

Egwu-onwa: A Convergence of Delightful, Mind-blowing Literary Forms

Panel: Genre Lit: Bodice Rippers, Aliens and High For

Traditional Religion and Moral Conscience

The paper is concerned with traditional religion and moral conscience. It seeks to examine in what way(s) the traditional religion has contributed towards the building of moral conscience. Descriptive research method was adopted for the study. It was found that the traditional religion has contributed immensely towards the building of traditional Africans moral consciences by instilling in the religious adherents the fear of punishment by the spirit beings for any breach of the moral codes which are believed to be not mere human inventions but what have been sanctioned by the deities. It was also found that living a virtuous life is one of the greatest demands on the worshippers for becoming ancestors. The paper recommends that like traditional Africans, people should have objectives for living a moral life; that religious leaders should deemphasize prosperity and emphasize holiness for increasing moral conducts in the society. It concludes that there is a correlation between the traditional religion and moral conscience

Beyond policy positions: How party type conditions programmatic responses to globalization pressures

Do parties adapt their programmatic strategies in times of heightened economic globalization? Are these changes captured by right-left positional changes or do parties go beyond policy shifts and enact more comprehensive programmatic overhauls? Furthermore, are such changes linked to traditional party family classifications and, if so, do different party types re-program their manifestos differently? Finally, what role does radical right competition play in the changing programmatic strategies of mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties? This paper addresses these questions by developing a theoretical framework that accounts for economic globalization, cleavage change, and programmatic supply. Using Giebler et al.’s (2015) measure of programmatic clarity, the analysis reveals clear differences in party responses to economic globalization. Additionally, the results show that parties go beyond right-left positional changes and adapt their programmatic supply on a more general level. For social democratic parties, however, such adaptation hinges on whether a radical right competitor is present

The prevalence of incidental physiological intracranial calcifications in the South African adult population as seen on computed tomography

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Medicine in Diagnostic Radiology Johannesburg, 2016MT201