More than Dollars for Scholars: The Impact of the Dell Scholars Program on College Access, Persistence and Degree Attainment

Although college enrollment rates have increased substantially over the last several decades, socioeconomic inequalities in college completion have actually widened over time. A critical question, therefore, is how to support low-income and first-generation students to succeed in college after they matriculate. We investigate the impact of the Dell Scholars Program which provides a combination of generous financial support and individualized advising to scholarship recipients before and throughout their postsecondary enrollment. The program's design is motivated by a theory of action that, in order to meaningfully increase the share of lower-income students who earn a college degree, it is necessary both to address financial constraints students face and to provide ongoing support for the academic, cultural and other challenges that students experience during their college careers. We isolate the unique impact of the program on college completion by capitalizing on an arbitrary cutoff in the program's algorithmic selection process. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that although being named a Dell Scholar has no impact on initial college enrollment or early college persistence, scholars at the margin of eligibility are significantly more likely to earn a bachelor's degree on-time or six years after high school graduation. These impacts are sizeable and represent a nearly 25 percent or greater increase in both four- and six-year bachelor's attainment. The program is resource intensive. Yet, back-of-theenvelope calculations indicate that the Dell Scholars Program has a positive rate of return

Organizational factors in the diffusion of an industry standard: implementing an online documentation system for Australian exporters

At present, governments in many countries are actively engaged in the development of electronic trading and certification standards to enable the smooth operation of export markets. Standards and their usability underpin confidence in the operations of markets and their effective functioning. In institutional markets, an important role for government agencies lies in developing the initial specifications for standards for interoperable systems. Once these specifications are accepted, governments can then facilitate the eventual diffusion of a standard to the B2B marketplace. Acceptance of an industry standard can determine demand, which defines the viability of that market. In this paper, we describe an initiative by a government agency, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS), in developing EXDOC, a standard for export documentation and the role that AQIS played in its implementation and diffusion. Our case study illustrates a successfully facilitated B2G implementation. It demonstrates how a standard can be supported and promulgated for the effective functioning of markets in the transition from manual to online export documentation. Once the overarching specifications for related industries have been established and diffused by government, opportunities arise for private sector markets to develop across these industries. Government agencies can promote the effective operation of standards for electronic markets. The EXDOC implementation and its iterations provide an exemplar of active engagement in the development of electronic trading and certification standards for an institutional market. Its successful diffusion provides a model of the implementation process for other export sectors and agencies. <br /

Person Equivalent Headcount Measures of Poverty

Headcount measures of poverty are by far the most common tools for evaluating poverty and gauging progress in global development goals. The headcount ratio, or the prevalence of poverty, and the headcount, or the number of the poor, both convey tangible information about poverty. But both ignore the depth of poverty, so they arguably present distorted views of the spatial distribution of poverty as well as the extent of progress against poverty over time. Additionally, headcount measures can provide incentives for policymakers and NGOs to focus their efforts on the least poor, an observation well understood among policymakers themselves. While other poverty measures mitigate these problems by capturing the intensity as well as the prevalence of poverty, they are often not central to policy discourse because they are perceived to be too "unintuitive" to have traction. There is a need for poverty measures that go beyond traditional headcount measures, but retain their direct interpretation. This paper presents person equivalent (p. e.) headcount measures, which do just that. Our approach draws on the logic of full‐time equivalent jobs, adult equivalent incomes, and other constructs in economics. An initial period is used to calibrate the average depth of poverty among the poor, which then becomes the "person equivalent" underlying the p. e. headcount and the p. e. headcount ratio. We illustrate our methods using $1.25 a day poverty data from 78 countries as provided by the World Bank, and show how the new measures map out different pictures of poverty and progress than traditional headcount measures. Overall, the picture is one of a more rapid decline in global poverty, but with significant redistributions of its burden across regions and countries. For example, p. e. headcounts are much higher than traditional headcounts in Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub Saharan Africa; in South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific the reverse is true. In Kenya the traditional headcount rose by 8 million and the p. e. headcount rose by 11 million; in South Africa the p. e. headcount fell by more than the traditional headcount. We discuss properties of the new measures, outline some generalizations and conclude with recommendations for using this approach in development goals to track progress and direct policy

Linking eCommerce and human resource strategies: a case study in a large Australian retail bank

The implementation of eCommerce technologies has considerably changed how employees in the banking industry interact with customers. For example, some customers use electronic banking applications to such an extent that they find little or no need to go into a branch. This change has had a significant impact on the way that jobs are designed and the way that employees are being managed. The preliminary findings from the case study of a large bank in Australia indicate that moving customers out of the branch to an online environment has created unforeseen issues for the way employees interact with customers and this in turn has changed the way that they do their jobs. The key challenge for banks in the future is how to form effective relationships with customers without some kind of face-to-face interaction. This impacts how organisations recruit and retain their staff as well as the level and type of skills required for jobs redesigned after the implementation of eCommerce applications. It is also an important factor in employee satisfaction.<br /

Use of extended and prepared reference objects in experimental Fourier transform X-ray holography

The use of one or more gold nanoballs as reference objects for Fourier Transform holography (FTH) is analysed using experimental soft X-ray diffraction from objects consisting of separated clusters of these balls. The holograms are deconvoluted against ball reference objects to invert to images, in combination with a Wiener filter to control noise. A resolution of ~30nm, smaller than one ball, is obtained even if a large cluster of balls is used as the reference, giving the best resolution yet obtained by X-ray FTH. Methods of dealing with missing data due to a beamstop are discussed. Practical prepared objects which satisfy the FTH condition are suggested, and methods of forming them described.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Applied Physics Letter

Reactivity and electronic structure of aluminum clusters: The aluminum-nitrogen system

The stability of anionic aluminum–nitrogen clusters has been examined and Al2N−, Al3N−2,Al5N−2, Al6N−3, Al8N−3, and Al9N−2 are found to be particularly stable. Theoreticaldensity functional calculations on neutral and anionic AlnN (n=1–8) clusters were performed and the stability and reaction energetics with oxygen examined. Clusters requiring less than 5.7 eV to remove an electron and an Al atom are shown to be resistant to the reaction with oxygen

Cooperative effects in the oxidation of CO by palladium oxide cations

Cooperative reactivity plays an important role in the oxidation of CO to CO2 by palladium oxide cations and offers insight into factors which influence catalysis. Comprehensive studies including guided-ion-beam mass spectrometry and theoretical investigations reveal the reaction products and profiles of PdO2 + and PdO3 + with CO through oxygen radical centers and dioxygen complexes bound to the Pd atom. O radical centers are more reactive than the dioxygen complexes, and experimental evidence of both direct and cooperative CO oxidation with the adsorption of two CO molecules are observed. The binding of multiple electron withdrawing CO molecules is found to increase the barrier heights for reactivity due to decreased binding of the secondary CO molecule, however, reactivity is enhanced by the increase in kinetic energy available to hurdle the barrier. We examine the effect of oxygen sites, cooperative ligands, and spin including two-state reactivity

The Formation of [TiO(H2O)n]+ Cluster Ions

Gas phase [TiO(H2O)n]+ clusters are produced by laser induced plasma reactions of titanium and water, and studied using a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. More than 60 water molecules cluster onto TiO+; but, no [Ti(H2O)n]+ clusters are observed. The cluster size distributions of [TiO(H2O)n]+ can be fit to log-normal curves. Considered in the context of other data reported herein for cluster distributions of [NbO(H2O)n]+, it is concluded that the cluster formation and growth proceed via a coalescence mechanism between [TiO(H2O)n]+ and water molecule(s), which may lead to the formation of solvation shells. Ab initio calculations were employed to gain insight into the structures and energetics of small [TiO(H2O)n]+ clusters with n = 1–3. A charge donation from the water ligand to the TiO+ ion is found, which indicates the existence of high binding energies between water and TiO+. These experimental and theoretical results further contribute to an understanding of ion-induced nucleation in general, and hydration of TiO+, in particular

Crystal field effects on the reactivity of aluminum-copper cluster anions

The limits and useful modifications of the jellium model are of great interest in understanding the properties of metallic clusters, especially involving bimetallic systems. We have measured the relative reactivity of CuAl−n clusters (n=11–34) with O2. An odd-even alternation is observed that is in accordance with spin-dependant etching, and CuAl−22is observed as a “magic peak.” The etching resistance of CuAl−22 is explained by an unusually large splitting of the 2D10 subshell that occurs because of a geometric distortion of the cluster that may also be understood as a crystal field splitting of the superatomic orbitals

Closed-shell to split-shell stability of isovalent clusters

Metallic clusters containing 2, 8, 18, and 20 electrons are now known to exhibit enhanced stability that can be reconciled because of filled 1S, 1P, 1D, and 2S electronic shells within a simplified confined nearly free electron (NFE) gas. Here, we present first-principles studies on three isovalent clusters, i.e., ZnMg8, CuMg8−, and AuMg8−, each with 18 valence electrons. All the clusters exhibit local energetic stability but with differing origins. Although the stability of ZnMg8 can be reconciled within the conventional confined NFE picture with filled 1S2, 1P6, and 1D10shells, CuMg8− and AuMg8− are shown to be stable despite the unfilled D-shell. Their stability can be understood as a crystal field–like splitting of the otherwise degenerate D-shell because of internal electric fields of the positive ion cores that lead to a filled 1S2, 1P6, 1D8, 2S2 sequence separated by unfilled D2 states that form a large gap. We also examine the progression toward the metallic character in ZnMgn clusters, because isolated Mg and Zn atoms have filled valence 4s2 and 3s2 atomic states. As Mg atoms are added to a Zn atom, the excited atomic p-states in the Mg atoms hybridize rapidly with Zn and Mg s-states to promote a metallic character that evolves more rapidly than in pure Mgn clusters