Sensation seeking, non-contextual decision making, and driving abilities as measured through a moped simulator.

The general aim of the present study was to explore the relations between driving style (assessed through a moped riding simulator) and psychological variables such as sensation seeking and decision making. Because the influences of sensation seeking and decision making on driving styles have been studied separately in the literature, we have tried to investigate their mutual relations so as to include them in a more integrated framework. Participants rode the Honda Riding Trainer (HRT) simulator, filled in the Sensation Seeking Scale V (SSS V), and performed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). A cluster analysis of the HRT riding indexes identified three groups: Prudent, Imprudent, and Insecure riders. First, the results showed that Insecure males seek thrills and adventure less than both Prudent males and Insecure females, whereas Prudent females are less disinhibited than both Prudent males and Insecure females. Moreover, concerning the relations among SSS, decision making as measured by the IGT, and riding performance, high thrill and adventure seekers performed worse in the simulator only if they were also bad decision makers, indicating that these two traits jointly contribute to the quality of riding performance. From an applied perspective, these results also provide useful information for the development of protocols for assessing driving abilities among novice road users. Indeed, the relation between risk proneness and riding style may allow for the identification of road-user populations who require specific training

Community Development in Dynamic Neighborhoods: Synchronizing Services and Strategies with Immigrant Communities

Community development organizations must be increasingly cognizant of and responsive to their changing neighborhoods. Major demographic factors related to the growth and influx of recent immigrants to the United States are having a notable impact on many communities. Through a review of current research and interviews with leading experts and practitioners of community development organizations, private lenders and governmental agencies, this analysis explores (1) the importance of immigrants in community development, (2) the response of community development organizations to recent demographic shifts, and (3) the challenges and opportunities practitioners face when connecting immigrants to their communities.Despite growing research about the implications of immigrant markets for the private sector, there is little research about the role and contributions of community development organizations in the integration of new immigrants. Immigration trends and characteristics are different today than those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This research concludes that these new demographics drive much of the dynamic change in cities across the United States. CDOs can best address the changes at the local level, but need more data and market analysis of neighborhood trends. These organizations are in a key position to connect newcomers not only to long-term housing, but also to business development, jobs and leadership opportunities through strategic partnerships and planning

The Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative Housing Market Study

The Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative is a collaborative effort between the City of Syracuse, local and national non-profit organizations, and private sector leaders. This partnership was created in response to an urgent challenge issued by Congressman James Walsh (R-Syracuse) in the summer of 1999 -- a challenge to revitalize distressed neighborhoods in Syracuse and reclaim those of the city's 1,031 vacant buildings that are having the greatest blighting impact on these neighborhoods. The Initiative is a city-wide effort, but is focused on revitalizing seven central-city neighborhoods that have suffered a wave of disinvestment and bear much of the burden of the city's abandoned housing stock.Viable strategies to address the problem of neighborhood decline in Syracuse must reflect an understanding of local housing market dynamics. The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation undertook this market study to help identify the challenges and opportunities that distressed neighborhoods face in today's housing market, and to suggest a course of action that makes sense given current housing market conditions. To accomplish these goals, the study utilized an extensive mix of secondary data sources, as well as primary data generated through a series of interviews with local informants and a survey of over 6,000 households in seven central city neighborhoods that the City of Syracuse has designated as "revitalization areas" for the Neighborhood Initiative

Reinvested Earnings Bias, The “Five Percent” Rule and the Interpretation of the Balance of Payments – With an Application to Transition Economies

We show that the imputation of reinvested profits of the subsidiaries of foreign firms as a debit item on a host country's balance of payments account tends to overstate the current account deficit. We also show that, because of the workings of the FDI financial life cycle, this phenomenon is most evident for countries that have recently received large inflows of capital. The transition economies of East Europe certainly fall among such countries, and we show that, for the Czech Republic and Hungary, this imputation has a large effect on their reported current account balance. We verify the working of the FDI financial life cycle using two different panels of developed, developing and transition economies.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39928/3/wp543.pd

Scenario of the organic food market in Europe

Scenario analysis is a qualitative tool for strategic policy analysis that enables researchers and policymakers to support decision making, and a systemic analysis of the main determinants of a business or sector. In this study, a scenario analysis is developed regarding the future development of the market of organic food products in Europe. The scenario follows a participatory approach, exploiting potential interactions among the relevant driving forces, as selected by experts. Network analysis is used to identify the roles of driving forces in the different scenarios, and the results are discussed in comparison with the main findings from existing scenarios on the future development of the organic sector

Bridging the Equity Gap: Driving Community Health Outcomes Through the Green Jobs Movement

The fundamental link between poverty and health mandates a new approach to both, one capable of raising community health standards by lifting individuals, families and communities out of poverty.Merely providing access to healthcare does not address fundamental societal inequities that translate into greater health risks and more extensive exposure to environmental hazards for low-income communities and communities of color -- risks aggravated by climate change.In Bridging the Equity Gap: Driving Community Health Outcomes Through the Green Jobs Movement, Green For All makes the case that the Green Jobs Movement -- a broad, progressive coalition of environmental and health advocates, social justice and civil rights organizations, labor and community-based groups, and business -- can bring about a systems change to improve economic, environmental and health conditions for low-income communities

Assessing Impact

We take this opportunity to communicate Heron's approach to assessing impact, with a particular audience in mind: our customers -- grantees, investees and applicants.We thought that it might be useful to outline how and why we support practitioners and their networks in results-based, management-oriented systems for assessing impact. Following this letter, we highlight four organizations that demonstrate impact at the local, regional and national levels

Credit Union Partnerships with NeighborWorks Organizations: Proven Models for Success

This paper provides case studies showing that credit union partnerships with NeighborWorks organizations can contribute to building healthy communities. This is because credit unions and NeighborWorks organizations benefit from leveraging the human, physical, structural and financial assets that each has to offer while community members benefit from access to affordable financial products and services

Modeling Collaboration in Academia: A Game Theoretic Approach

In this work, we aim to understand the mechanisms driving academic collaboration. We begin by building a model for how researchers split their effort between multiple papers, and how collaboration affects the number of citations a paper receives, supported by observations from a large real-world publication and citation dataset, which we call the h-Reinvestment model. Using tools from the field of Game Theory, we study researchers' collaborative behavior over time under this model, with the premise that each researcher wants to maximize his or her academic success. We find analytically that there is a strong incentive to collaborate rather than work in isolation, and that studying collaborative behavior through a game-theoretic lens is a promising approach to help us better understand the nature and dynamics of academic collaboration.Comment: Presented at the 1st WWW Workshop on Big Scholarly Data (2014). 6 pages, 5 figure