Latino-Owned Business’s: The Future of the US Economy

In recent years the United States has witnessed an unprecedented rate of growth in the number of Latino-Owned Business’s, LOB’s, which has dramatically boosted the US Economy. However, while the number of LOB’s has increased, the sizes of these individual businesses hasn’t, growing at a rate that’s half the national average and leaving trillions of dollars and countless jobs out of reach. In search for a solution, this research bases its information in a variety of sources including government agencies and partnerships between higher education and the LOB community, among them Stanford University and the Latino Business Action Network. Through this research this paper intends to show the advantages of a relationship between higher education and LOB’s as well as propose how such a relationship would work. As the Latino population in the US continues to grow and establish businesses, it is clear how crucial it is to the economy that LOB’s get the help they need to grow

Engagement in Supporting New Teachers: A Role for Computer-Mediated Communication in Teacher Learning within Informal Professional Communities

This seminar will examine the possibilities and constraints of online communities in supporting teacher learning, both novice and experienced teachers, so addressing the national concerns for teacher retention and teacher quality in the USA. In particular, the speaker will focus on outlining a conceptual and methodological framework for characterizing interaction of experienced and novice teachers in informal network-based professional learning electronic or e-communities. The study has shown that integrating dialogic voices/utterances (Bakhtin, 1986) and using texts as “thinking device[s]” for generating new meanings (Lotman, 1990; Wertsch, 1991) are essential for effectively engaging practitioners. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, longitudinal discourse data, questionnaires, and interview responses were collected from public school teachers’ email communications and subjected to analyses from discourse analytic and ethnographic perspectives, resulting in a characterization of engagement and a taxonomy of e-communities for evaluations. The findings suggest proposals for sustainable learning in network-based environments and policy.Diane Hui has just completed her doctoral dissertation in Education at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, USA. She is a Spencer scholar awarded by the Spencer Foundation in the US. She has conducted collaborative research from a multidisciplinary perspective, both in the US and UK. These projected were funded by the McDonnell Foundation (US), government agencies (UK), and the European Communities. One project assessed the use and reflection upon an inquiry-based curriculum across subjects, with the use of information technology. The other research explored the representational connection between the logical aspects taught in sciences and the social aspects in the humanities. Other research examined sustainability education and adult dyslexia in employment. Diane grew up in Hong Kong. She has degrees from Edinburgh Univeristy (UK) and Stirling University (UK), and has taught in Hong Kong, Scotland, and the USA.published_or_final_versionCentre for Information Technology in Education, University of Hong Kon

Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE) [CFDA 84.418P]

Over the past two decades, New York State (NYS) has been actively and collaboratively engaged in systems change across three primary domains: 1) to develop a comprehensive employment system to reduce barriers to work and improve employment outcomes of individuals with disabilities; 2) to enhance the post-school adult outcomes of youth with disabilities, by collaboratively advancing evidence-based secondary transition practices at the regional, school district and individual student levels; and, 3) to support the return-to-work efforts of individuals with disabilities who receive Social Security Administration (SSA) disability benefits under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). These domains have been supported by numerous federal and state initiatives including: the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS)-sponsored Transition Systems Change grant; the SSA-sponsored State Partnership Initiative (NYWORKS); two Youth Transition Demonstrations (YTD); the Benefits Offset National Demonstration (BOND); and, three cycles of funding for the National Work Incentives Support Center (WISC); the US Department of Labor (DOL)-sponsored Work Incentive Grant, Disability Program Navigator Initiative, and Disability Employment Initiative; three rounds of funding from the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) for Medicaid Infrastructure Grants (MIG, NY Makes Work Pay); the NYS Education Department (NYSED) sponsored Model Transition Program (MTP); and three multi-year cycles of the statewide Transition Coordination Site network. Most recently, NYS has sponsored the Statewide Transition Services Professional Development Support Center (PDSC); the NYS Developmental Disability Planning Council (DDPC)-sponsored Transition Technical Assistance Support Program (T-TASP), NYS Work Incentives Support Center (NYS WISC), and NYS Partners in Policy Making (PIP); the NYS Office of Mental Health (OMH)-sponsored Career Development Initiative; and others. The growing statewide and gubernatorial emphasis on employment for New Yorkers with disabilities developed over the past two decades stemming from these initiatives, supported by service innovations and shared vision across state agencies and employment stakeholders, establishes a strong foundation for implementing and sustaining a research demonstration to “Promote the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income” (PROMISE). The NYS PROMISE will build upon NYS’ past successes and significantly support NYS in removing systems, policy and practice barriers for transition-age youth who receive SSI and their families. The NYS OMH through the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene (RFMH), with their management partners the New York Employment Support System (NYESS) Statewide Coordinating Council (SCC) and Cornell University Employment and Disability Institute, along with the proposed research demonstration site community, join the NYS Governor’s Office in designing and implementing a series of statewide strategic service interventions to support the transition and employment preparation of youth ages 14-16 who receive SSI

Data curation issues in transitioning a field science collection of long-term research data and artefacts from a local repository to an institutional repository

The SGS-LTER research site was established in 1980 by researchers at Colorado State University as part of a network of long-term research sites within the US LTER Network, supported by the National Science Foundation. Scientists within the Natural Resource Ecology Lab, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, and Biology Department at CSU, California State Fullerton, USDA Agricultural Research Service, University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Wyoming, among others, have contributed to our understanding of the structure and functions of the shortgrass steppe and other diverse ecosystems across the network while maintaining a common mission and sharing expertise, data and infrastructure.Transition a local 32 year project, the Shortgrass Steppe Long-Term Ecological Research (SGS-LTER), with over 100 data packages and related digital artefacts, to an Institutional Repository (IR) at Colorado State University (CSU) Libraries to ensure persistent, reliable, and interoperable access to our collection of scientific data. Our collaborative team envisions being part of a larger information environment, which enables sharing of knowledge and data - a web of repositories. Poster presented at the 9th International Digital Curation Conference held in San Francisco, California on February 25, 2014. Refereed.This work is supported by NSF Grant Number DEB-0823405, Colorado State University, and the UIUC Data Curation Education at Research Centers (DCERC IMLS Award #RE-02-10-0004-10)

Measurements of Isospin Asymmetry and Difference of Direct CP Asymmetries in Inclusive B→Xsγ Decays

We report measurements of isospin asymmetry Delta(0-) and difference of direct CP asymmetries Delta A(CP) between charged and neutral B -> X-s gamma decays. This analysis is based on the data sample containing 772 x 10(6)B (B) over bar pairs that was collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB energy-asymmetric ethornecollider. Using a sum-of-exclusive technique with invariant X-s mass up to 2.8 GeV= c2, we obtain Delta(0-) = [0.48 +/- 1.49(stat) +/- 0.97(syst) +/- 1.15(f(+-)/f(00))]% and Delta A(CP) = [+3.69 +/- 2.65(stat) +/- 0.76(syst)]%, where the last uncertainty for.0-is due to the uncertainty on the production ratio of B+B- to B-0(B) over bar (0) in.o4Sthorn decays. The measured value of Delta(0-) is consistent with zero, allowing us to constrain the resolved photon contribution in the B -> X-s gamma, and improve the branching fraction prediction. The result for Delta A(CP) is consistent with the prediction of the SM. We also measure the direct CP asymmetries for charged and neutral B -> X-s gamma decays. All the measurements are the most precise to date.The authors would like to thank M. Misiak, G. Paz and M. Endo for fruitful discussions. A. I. is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant No. 16H03968. We thank the KEKB group for the excellent operation of the accelerator; the KEK cryogenics group for the efficient operation of the solenoid; and the KEK computer group, the National Institute of Informatics, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) computing group for valuable computing and Science Information NETwork 5 (SINET5) network support. We acknowledge support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) of Japan, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and the Tau-Lepton Physics Research Center of Nagoya University; the Australian Research Council; Austrian Science Fund under Grant No. P 26794-N20; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Contracts No. 11435013, No. 11475187, No. 11521505, No. 11575017, No. 11675166, No. 11705209; Key Research Programof Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Grant No. QYZDJ-SSW-SLH011; the CAS Center for Excellence in Particle Physics (CCEPP); Fudan University Grant No. JIH5913023, No. IDH5913011/003, No. JIH5913024, No. IDH5913011/002; the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under Contract No. LTT17020; the Carl Zeiss Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Excellence Cluster Universe, and the VolkswagenStiftung; the Department of Science and Technology of India; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare of Italy; National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea Grants No. 2014R1A2A2A01005286, No. 2015R1A2A2A01003280, No. 2015H1A2A1033649, No. 2016R1D1A1B01010135, No. 2016K1A3A7A09005 603, No. 2016R1D1A1B02012900; Radiation Science Research Institute, Foreign Large-size Research Facility Application Supporting project and the Global Science Experimental Data Hub Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information; the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Center; the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Slovenian Research Agency; Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Basque Government (No. IT956-16) and Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) (Juan de la Cierva), Spain; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan; and the United States Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation

Enabling affordable access to fibre infrastructure for West and Central African higher education institutions : final report

Research activities comprised gathering information on the state of connectivity in West and Central Africa with emphasis on available commercial fibre infrastructure, and assessment of the regulatory environment and price levels. This study shows that higher education institutions (HEIs) have a total user base of over 100 institutions and 2.16 million users, representing an estimated total bandwidth (2008) of 266 Mbps and a budget of US$9.5 million. By building National Research and Education Networks (NRENS) and a Regional Research and Education Network (RREN), HEIs will be able to take advantage of the new submarine cable and regional fibre optic networks soon to be available

Information politics, transnational advocacy and education for all

Introduction: Successful advocacy requires research. Advocacy organizations need to gather evidence to show the extent of a particular social problem, the lack of official response to the problem, and solutions that could be fostered from the ground up. The process of gathering information and using it for political advocacy has been termed “information politics” (Keck & Sikkink 1998). In the past two decades, civil society organizations have played an increasingly prominent role in global educational advocacy and governance (Mundy & Murphy 2001; Mundy 2007). Civil society organizations carry out a significant amount of research into the (lack of) progress made on Education for All goals, monitoring and evaluating education policy and practice at local, national and regional levels, and offering alternative approaches to meet EFA targets. Yet little has been done to examine the evidence-gathering process to see what it can tell us about the role of advocacy research in education policy and the wider role of civil society in global educational change. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of evidence-based advocacy and educational governance. In order to do so, I examine information politics as carried out by two civil society organizations in the Education for All (EFA) movement. One is ActionAid International, a large international development NGO originally based in the UK but now headquartered in Johannesburg. The other is the Asian South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE), a regional network of education practitioners and activists currently headquartered in Mumbai. I explore one example of information politics carried out by each of my case study organizations: ActionAid’s International Benchmarks on Adult Literacy, and ASPBAE’s Asia South-Pacific Education Watch. My intention here is to shed light on how information is collected and disseminated by advocacy NGOs, and what this tells us about the internal dynamics and strategies of these organizations as well as the wider development education field of which they are a part

Intercultural and digital competence in teacher training from an international perspective: Poland Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Russia

This article presents one of the studies from the European project IRNET, a network that pursues the development of new tools and methods for advanced pedagogical science in the field of ICT instruments, elearning and intercultural competences. We intend to explore the application of international and national policies of innovative, digital Education and intercultural competences in teacher training, as well as innovative educational practices. Another objective of the project is also to identify such practises and/or research projects in order to foster intercultural and digital competences in Spain, Poland , Slovak, Portugal and Russia. From a comparative perspective and on a qualitative paradigm, we have analyzed three comparative units that have allowed, among other things, us to look at the impact of projects financed with European or national funds as promoters of change and innovation related to intercultural training and technologies information. Finally, it has been observed that teaching trends point to a professorship endowed with skills that integrate intercultural models from the joint search for the school of the future, and for that online networks and virtual learning communities are key resources

Architecture Education Methodology Comparison between KTH-Sweden and PUA-Egypt

The increasing global emphasis on sustainable approaches demands new approaches to architecture education. In order to raise the level of architecture education; analyses of different education programs, finding comparable experiences and problems across borders and the creation of a network worldwide for the exchange of information are recognized methods of achieving and maintaining comparable national and global standards. With the aim of improving education and research activities, Faculty of Engineering at Pharos University in Alexandria, Egypt; PUA (Private developing world university) and the Royal Institute of Technology; KTH (International technical university in Stockholm, Sweden) agreed on long term cooperation in 2009.This cooperation aim is to introduce the "Swedish" experience in teaching and education at PUA in order to provide graduates with the professional, intellectual and technological skills which enable them to compete in global job markets and cope with modernity. As a part of the cooperation agreement between PUA and KTH; a team work from KTH conducted a follow up and evaluation of Architecture program at PUA.The present paper focuses on the Architecture Curriculum followed in PUA as compared to the already adapted in Sweden. This comparison is undertaken in various directions covering methodologies used in both universities; besides in depth analysis of that methodology outcome, in the form of the final product quality (the graduate students) will be exposed. This comparative analysis gives us as academics a basis to strengthen our programs, to enhance our role in shaping undergraduate education, and to improve the quality of education