The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Block Grant

[Excerpt] The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant was created in the 1996 welfare reform law (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, P.L. 104-193). That law was the culmination of a series of legislative changes that altered the rules for providing benefits and services to needy families with children

Heavy Quark Effective Field Theory at O(1/m_Q^2). II. QCD Corrections to the Currents

We present a calculation of the renormalized heavy-light and heavy-heavy currents in HQET at order O(1/m_Q^2).Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX (using amsmath.sty

Pricing to market of German exporters: evidence from panel data

This paper investigates price discrimination of German exporters across different foreign markets. We examine the degree of pass-through of exchange rate fluctuations in the pricing of 70 export items. The model is estimated using panel data on export unit values. Parameter estimation relies on GMM first difference, fixed effects, LAD, OLS first difference, and the random coefficients model. The main results for 70 manufactured goods and 15 destination countries between 1990-1994 are : The degree of pricing to market differs among destinations and products. Highest pricing to market is observed for U.S., Japan, Italy and Spain. Pricing to market is more prevalent in exports of chemicals and fertilisers than in machinery products. --Pricing to market,law of one price,panel data

Topological objects in QCD

Topological excitations are prominent candidates for explaining nonperturbative effects in QCD like confinement. In these lectures, I cover both formal treatments and applications of topological objects. The typical phenomena like BPS bounds, topology, the semiclassical approximation and chiral fermions are introduced by virtue of kinks. Then I proceed in higher dimensions with magnetic monopoles and instantons and special emphasis on calorons. Analytical aspects are discussed and an overview over models based on these objects as well as lattice results is given.Comment: 28 pages, 17 figures; Lectures given at 45th Internationale Universitaetswochen fuer Theoretische Physik (International University School of Theoretical Physics): Conceptual and Numerical Challenges in Femto- and Peta-Scale Physics, Schladming, Styria, Austria, 24 Feb - 3 Mar 200

Temporal Variability and Stability in Infant-Directed Sung Speech: Evidence for Language-specific Patterns.

In this paper, sung speech is used as a methodological tool to explore temporal variability in the timing of word-internal consonants and vowels. It is hypothesized that temporal variability/stability becomes clearer under the varying rhythmical conditions induced by song. This is explored crosslinguistically in German – a language that exhibits a potential vocalic quantity distinction – and the non-quantity languages French and Russian. Songs by non-professional singers, i.e. parents that sang to their infants aged 2 to 13 months in a non-laboratory setting, were recorded and analyzed. Vowel and consonant durations at syllable contacts of trochaic word types with ¦CVCV or ¦CVːCV structure were measured under varying rhythmical conditions. Evidence is provided that in German non-professional singing, the two syllable structures can be differentiated by two distinct temporal variability patterns: vocalic variability (and consonantal stability) was found to be dominant in ¦CVːCV structures whereas consonantal variability (and vocalic stability) was characteristic for ¦CVCV structures. In French and Russian, however, only vocalic variability seemed to apply. Additionally, findings suggest that the different temporal patterns found in German were also supported by the stability pattern at the tonal level. These results point to subtle (supra) segmental timing mechanisms in sung speech that affect temporal targets according to the specific prosodic nature of the language in question

Results of 2007 Survey of Unaccompanied Homeless Youth Providers

This report demonstrates the extent to which homeless youths are underserved in Illinois. Though the statistics show that homeless youth programs are successful in helping youths achieve their potential, far too many youths never have the opportunity to access needed services