Mandating Disclosure in Municipal Securities Issues: Proposed New York Legislation

This article surveys the existing mechanisims (primarily stemming from federal law) resulting in financial disclosure in connection with the offering and sale to the public of securities of New York municipal issuers. It also describes and compares alternative models for regimes of municipal issuer financial disclosure, such as the MFOA Guidelines, the federal Williams Bill and Industrial Bond Act and New York\u27s Disclosure Proposals. The article ultimately concludes that although the isolated purpose of protecting investors in a municipal securities market that is largely national could most effectively be pursued by the imposition of uniform disclosure requirements through federal law, the Disclosure Proposals are not demonstrably inadequate to this purpose, and the intrustion into the affiars of the state and local governments of New York that would accompany the federal law approach makes the enactment of the Disclosure Proposals a more attractive alternative

Choosing Your Battles: Provoking the Public at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park

During training to be an intern at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, our instructors continuously stressed the importance of reading our audience. Whether we were greeting visitors at the front desk or leading walking tours, our job was to always watch the visitors and gauge what they are interested in. For me, this was initially very frustrating. I prefer to deal with concrete things instead of making judgement calls. It all sounded pretty wishy washy and that I would somehow ‘know’ what the visitor wanted just by looking at them. Needless to say, I was not convinced

Price Cap Regulation of Airports: A New Approach

Airports are typically monopolistic providers of aeronautical services. Hence, the widespread privatization of airports within the last 20 years has in general been accompanied by some form of price regulation of aeronautical services. A great deal of attention has been given to the issue of whether the aeronautical price cap should be based upon revenues from both aeronautical and commercial services (the “single-till†approach) or revenues from aeronautical services only (the “dual-till†approach). However, each of these regulatory schemes will in general lead to regulated prices that are Pareto inefficient. This paper presents a price capping scheme that systematically exploits the potential Pareto improvements available under either the single-till or dual-till regimes.

Reimann's "Habitual Hyperthermia" Responding to Hormone Therapy.

A 25-year-old woman presented with fever of unknown origin, exhibiting malaise and low-grade fevers in evenings. These fevers exhibited a pattern of starting mid-menstrual cycle with resolution around the onset of menses, matching a pattern of "habitual hyperthermia" reported by H. Reimann in the 1930s. Extensive workup was unremarkable, and the fevers improved on oral synthetic estrogen and progesterone therapy

Documenting the Value of Librarians in the Classroom: Results from a Mixed-Methods Research Collaboration with Campus Partners

This paper details the results of a mixed-methods study of first-year and upper-division students’ information literacy (IL) competencies. The study used a rubric and a survey, seeking to answer two research questions: 1) Is there a correlation between National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) IL survey responses and IL rubric scores? 2) Are there any indicators that correlate to improved IL performance in first-year students? Results demonstrated that first-year students reported greater engagement with IL and also indicated that instructors placed greater emphasis on IL competencies than students in upper-division courses. They also show a statistically significant impact on first-year students’ rubric scores when a librarian is in the class. This finding held even when controlling for other variables. Results provide an evidence-based foundation to spur conversations with faculty and university administration on the value of IL and the role of librarians in undergraduate student success

Quality assurance for digital learning object repositories: issues for the metadata creation process

Metadata enables users to find the resources they require, therefore it is an important component of any digital learning object repository. Much work has already been done within the learning technology community to assure metadata quality, focused on the development of metadata standards, specifications and vocabularies and their implementation within repositories. The metadata creation process has thus far been largely overlooked. There has been an assumption that metadata creation will be straightforward and that where machines cannot generate metadata effectively, authors of learning materials will be the most appropriate metadata creators. However, repositories are reporting difficulties in obtaining good quality metadata from their contributors, and it is becoming apparent that the issue of metadata creation warrants attention. This paper surveys the growing body of evidence, including three UK-based case studies, scopes the issues surrounding human-generated metadata creation and identifies questions for further investigation. Collaborative creation of metadata by resource authors and metadata specialists, and the design of tools and processes, are emerging as key areas for deeper research. Research is also needed into how end users will search learning object repositories