The Limits of Corporate Responsibility. By Neil W. Chamberlain. New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1973. Pp. 236. $10.00.

This book is a chronicle of past and a prediction of future corporate survival through the furtherance of the consumerist philosophy. Professor Chamberlain discusses (although all too briefly) how corporations have inculcated in American society the materialism that is its principal motivating force and how that value, feeding on itself and thereby forging an alliance of mutual need between the corporate structure and the American people, has created the situation described in the above quotation. He also analyzes the impact of this philosophy on various aspects of corporate and noncorporate life, from the corporation\u27s relationship with its employees to that with its shareholders, from the physical environment to education, from community decisions to national policy and international relations

The Sunset Review of a Social Work Board of Examiners: A Case Example

The author reviews the events following the passage of Colorado\u27s pioneer Sunset Review Legislation in 1976. The experiences of the 36 states which passed Sunset Legislation have been varied. Lobbying efforts in addition to costs have played a significant role in the review process and outcome. A case analysis of the Sunset Review of the Colorado Social Work Board of Examiners illustrates the tenacity of a group of professionals determined to maintain legal regulation of the social work field. The group\u27s success was a result of political organization and the technical expertise required to influence policy makers

Who Chooses? An Analysis of Student Characteristics in the Hartford Public School System

Hartford resident students have school choice and apply to many different types of schools in a variety of locations, but not all students exercise their right to choose the school they attend. While the number of students attending HPS who do submit applications to change school is known, an analysis of the individual characteristics of these students has not been done. Without such an analysis, a full evaluation of the success of school choice in Hartford is not possible. But before we explore the differences between those who choose and those who do not, we need to analyze the entire pool of Hartford students. In our study, we ask: Who are the students living in Hartford who could potentially exercise their right to choose? Demographic, school attendance, performance, and continuity characteristics of Hartford residents attending Hartford public schools (district and magnet) in grades 3-8 over a five-year period (2008-2013) are explored. We find that while the percentage of Hispanic, Special Education, English Language Learners, and Magnet School students have increased, Black students has decreased in the HPS system over the five year period. While the majority of students attend a school in the same zone in which they reside, in 2012-13, there is an increase in students residing in Zones 1 and 4 who attend a school outside their school zone. Over the five years of our study, only 7% of the students whose CMT test results place them as “below basic” or “basic” in 2008-09 became “high-achievers” in 2012-13. Of those who were “proficient,” only 27% improved their score to “high-achiever” status. Of those who were “high-achievers” in 2008-09, 42% performed worse in 2012-13. Lastly, the percentage of students who leave the HPS system and are high achievers is not different from the percentage of students who stay in the HPS system and are high achievers for each of the five years. In the next semester, we will analyze the characteristics of students leaving the HPS system

Distributed Method Selection and Dispatching of Contingent, Temporally Flexible Plans

SM thesisMany applications of autonomous agents require groups to work in tight coordination. To be dependable, these groups must plan, carry out and adapt their activities in a way that is robust to failure and to uncertainty. Previous work developed contingent, temporally flexible plans. These plans provide robustness to uncertain activity durations, through flexible timing constraints, and robustness to plan failure, through alternate approaches to achieving a task. Robust execution of contingent, temporally flexible plans consists of two phases. First, in the plan extraction phase, the executive chooses between the functionally redundant methods in the plan to select an execution sequence that satisfies the temporal bounds in the plan. Second, in the plan execution phase, the executive dispatches the plan, using the temporal flexibility to schedule activities dynamically.Previous contingent plan execution systems use a centralized architecture in which a single agent conducts planning for the entire group. This can result in a communication bottleneck at the time when plan activities are passed to the other agents for execution, and state information is returned. Likewise, a computation bottleneck may also occur because a single agent conducts all processing.This thesis introduces a robust, distributed executive for temporally flexible plans, called Distributed-Kirk, or D-Kirk. To execute a plan, D-Kirk first distributes the plan between the participating agents, by creating a hierarchical ad-hoc network and by mapping the plan onto this hierarchy. Second, the plan is reformulated using a distributed, parallel algorithm into a form amenable to fast dispatching. Finally, the plan is dispatched in a distributed fashion.We then extend the D-Kirk distributed executive to handle contingent plans. Contingent plans are encoded as Temporal Plan Networks (TPNs), which use a non-deterministic choice operator to compose temporally flexible plan fragments into a nested hierarchy of contingencies. A temporally consistent plan is extracted from the TPN using a distributed, parallel algorithm that exploits the structure of the TPN.At all stages of D-Kirk, the communication load is spread over all agents, thus eliminating the communication bottleneck. In particular, D-Kirk reduces the peak communication complexity of the plan execution phase by a factor of O(A/e'), where e' is the number of edges per node in the dispatchable plan, determined by the branching factor of the input plan, and A is the number of agents involved in executing the plan.In addition, the distributed algorithms employed by D-Kirk reduce the computational load on each agent and provide opportunities for parallel processing, thus increasing efficiency. In particular, D-Kirk reduces the average computational complexity of plan dispatching from O(eN^3) in the centralized case, to typical values of O(eN^2) per node and O(eN^3/A) per agent in the distributed case, where N is the number of nodes in the plan and e is the number of edges per node in the input plan.Both of the above results were confirmed empirically using a C++ implementation of D-Kirk on a set of parameterized input plans. The D-Kirk implementation was also tested in a realistic application where it was used to control a pair of robotic manipulators involved in a cooperative assembly task

Distributed method selection and dispatching of contingent, temporally flexible plans

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-178).Many applications of autonomous agents require groups to work in tight coordination. To be dependable, these groups must plan, carry out and adapt their activities in a way that is robust to failure and to uncertainty. Previous work developed contingent, temporally flexible plans. These plans provide robustness to uncertain activity durations, through flexible timing constraints, and robustness to plan failure, through alternate approaches to achieving a task. Robust execution of contingent, temporally flexible plans consists of two phases. First, in the plan extraction phase, the executive chooses between the functionally redundant methods in the plan to select an execution sequence that satisfies the temporal bounds in the plan. Second, in the plan execution phase, the executive dispatches the plan, using the temporal flexibility to schedule activities dynamically. Previous contingent plan execution systems use a centralized architecture in which a single agent conducts planning for the entire group. This can result in a communication bottleneck at the time when plan activities are passed to the other agents for execution, and state information is returned. Likewise, a computation bottleneck may also occur because a single agent conducts all processing.(cont.) This thesis introduces a robust, distributed executive for temporally flexible plans, called Distributed-Kirk, or D-Kirk. To execute a plan, D-Kirk first distributes the plan between the participating agents, by creating a hierarchical ad-hoc network and by mapping the plan onto this hierarchy. Second, the plan is reformulated using a distributed, parallel algorithm into a form amenable to fast dispatching. Finally, the plan is dispatched in a distributed fashion. We then extend the D-Kirk distributed executive to handle contingent plans. Contingent plans are encoded as Temporal Plan Networks (TPNs), which use a non-deterministic choice operator to compose temporally flexible plan fragments into a nested hierarchy of contingencies. A temporally consistent plan is extracted from the TPN using a distributed, parallel algorithm that exploits the structure of the TPN. At all stages of D-Kirk, the communication load is spread over all agents, thus eliminating the communication bottleneck. In particular, D-Kirk reduces the peak communication complexity of the plan execution phase by a factor of O (A/e'), where e' is the number of edges per node in the dispatchable plan, determined by the branching factor of the input plan, and A is the number of agents involved in executing the plan.(cont.) In addition, the distributed algorithms employed by D-Kirk reduce the computational load on each agent and provide opportunities for parallel processing, thus increasing efficiency. In particular, D-Kirk reduces the average computational complexity of plan dispatching from O (N3e) in the centralized case, to typical values of O (N2e) per node and O (N3e/A) per agent in the distributed case, where N is the number of nodes in the plan and e is the number of edges per node in the input plan. Both of the above results were confirmed empirically using a C++ implementation of D-Kirk on a set of parameterized input plans. The D-Kirk implementation was also tested in a realistic application where it was used to control a pair of robotic manipulators involved in a cooperative assembly task.by Stephen Block.S.M

Who Chooses in Hartford? Report 1: Statistical analysis of Regional School Choice Office applicants and non-applicants among Hartford-resident HPS students in grades 3-7, Spring 2012

Which Hartford-area families were more (or less) likely to apply for public school choice options, and how do they vary by student characteristics & achievement, school composition, and neighborhood demographics? Report 1 offers a statistical analysis of RSCO applicants versus non-applicants among 6,673 Hartford-resident students enrolled in Hartford Public Schools (HPS) — both district schools and interdistrict magnet schools — from grades 3 through 7 in Spring 2012. Overall, we found that participation in the RSCO application process was not random, but linked to student socioeconomic characteristics that often showed higher participation by more privileged families. In this sample, there were statistically significant lower levels of RSCO participation among English Language Learners and those with special needs, and generally higher levels by students with high CMT scores, and those who live in census areas with higher median household incomes and higher percentages of owner-occupied housing. The report also evaluates statistically significant differences and the magnitude of numbers of expected versus actual applicants by race and ethnicity, school performance, location, and other characteristics

Who Chooses in Hartford? Regional School Choice Office Applications from Hartford-resident HPS students in 2012

These presentation slides are an abbreviated version of the full report: Dougherty, Jack, Diane Zannoni, Marissa Block, and Stephen Spirou. Who Chooses in Hartford? Report 1: Statistical Analysis of Regional School Choice Office Applicants and Non-Applicants among Hartford-Resident HPS Students in Grades 3-7, Spring 2012. Hartford, CT: Cities Suburbs Schools Project at Trinity College, May 12, 2014.http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cssp_papers/46