Tea Leaves

My paper describes the importance of ancestors in your present day life and how my grandmother and her writings came back into my life to help guide me in my present moments

Beyond Payday Loans: Consumer Installment Lending in Illinois

This report analyzes detailed, loan level data and describes the terms and conditions, borrower demographics, and default characteristics of loans made by consumer installment lenders in Illinois

The Illinois Payday Loan Loophole

Analysis of Circuit Court of Cook County filings by one large payday lending showing the shift from short-term loans, cover by Payday Loan Reform Act consumer protections, to longer-term installment loans not covered by the act. The report also looks at the debt collection process

A Global Survey of Community Reinvestment Laws: The Obligation of the Private Sector to Serve the Underserved in Several Countries

Summaries of the community reinvestment legislation in the United States, United Kingdom, Nigeria, Brazil, South Africa, India, Australia, and Canada

Building Community Assets: Growing Lower-Income Credit Union Membership through Community and Credit Union Partnerships

This report details the partnership process and lessons learned from a two-year technical assistance program designed to help community organizations partner with mainstream credit unions with the goal of enrolling new lower-income members or expanding an existing partnership. The case studies describing these partnerships identify four strategic areas through which partnerships can be strengthened and the common barriers to developing a successful partnership can be overcome

Comparison of Meniscectomy to Conservative Management on Meniscus Repair

https://openriver.winona.edu/urc2018/1112/thumbnail.jp

Debt Detour: The Automobile Title Loan Industry in Illinois

This report provides a method for estimating the loan terms and conditions, default conditions, automobile characteristics, and borrower demographics of title loans in Illinois based on Cook County court cases filed against borrowers in default during 2005. It identifies key information on the title loan industry necessary to inform the public debate on how to best apply nationally recognized small loan consumer protections to the Illinois title loan industry

Establishing a Machine Learning Framework for Discovering Novel Phononic Crystal Designs

A phonon is a discrete unit of vibrational motion that occurs in a crystal lattice. Phonons and the frequency at which they propagate play a significant role in the thermal, optical, and electronic properties of a material. A phononic material/device is similar to a photonic material/device, except that it is fabricated to manipulate certain bands of acoustic waves instead of electromagnetic waves. Phononic materials and devices have been studied much less than their photonic analogues and as such current materials exhibit control over a smaller range of frequencies. This study aims to test the viability of machine learning, specifically neural networks in aiding in phononic crystal design. Multiple combinations of training datasets, neural network configuration, and data formatting methods are attempted with performance metrics recorded. A novel inverse design scheme is proposed that utilizes phonon density of states to perform prediction of phononic crystal parameters given a desired band gap and center frequency

Newsroom Convergence in a College Journalism School: Are Students Prepared for a Job?

This study aims to examine the current state of broadcast journalism education at the college level. It will also ask if college broadcast journalism students are receiving sufficient education and experience in their university newsrooms to get a job after graduation. The study surveyed professional television news directors from the 210 Designated Market Areas (DMA) in the United States. Most respondents agreed to some extent that converged college newsrooms better prepare students for a job as prior research suggested. However, it does not appear that those same applicants would be preferred over ones with traditional broadcast journalism education. The survey results did not show that students graduating from journalism school are perceived as highly skilled in the job functions of the profession. Few responding television news directors rated graduates as extremely good or moderately good at the skills in question. Writing and copy-editing abilities were among the most poorly ranked and indicate areas deserving of more attention from journalism educators. The findings suggest, though, that a broadcast degree is worth it for journalism students seeking a job in television as responses were less favorable for graduates without one. Even further, being more qualified or having converged journalism experience does not necessarily mean a higher salary or an increased chance for a promotion or managerial position

Reinvestment Alert 29: Refund Anticipation Loan Usage Rates Negatively Impact the Asset Building Potential of the Earned Income Tax Credit

This report analyzes 2002 IRS tax return data to determine the impact of refund anticipation loan usage among EITC recipients in communities across Illinois. The report also calculates the total amount of EITC dollars spent on high cost tax preparation and refund anticipation loan products in these same areas