Evidence-Based Practice and the Use of Information in State Agency Decision-Making

The contemporary policy environment makes persistent demands on agency officials to use the best information available when making decisions about policies, programs, and practices. State and federal legislation calls on agencies to incorporate evidence-based practices in their programs. Using data from a 2008 survey of state agency administrators, we examine the extent to which state government agencies draw upon various sources of information to guide their decisions about programmatic operations. Our findings reveal the extent to which agencies rely on, or weight, scientific studies and formal evaluations compared to other sources. The paper offers new insights into the use of information, particularly scientific evidence, in state agency decision-making, offering the first systematic look at how widely such information is used.

Internally 4-connected binary matroids with cyclically sequential orderings

We characterize all internally 4-connected binary matroids M with the property that the ground set of M can be ordered (e0,…,en−1) in such a way that {ei,…,ei+t} is 4-separating for all 0≤i,t≤n−1 (all subscripts are read modulo n). We prove that in this case either n≤7 or, up to duality, M is isomorphic to the polygon matroid of a cubic or quartic planar ladder, the polygon matroid of a cubic or quartic Möbius ladder, a particular single-element extension of a wheel, or a particular single-element extension of the bond matroid of a cubic ladder

At-Risk Youth

By creating more upstanding citizens through youth programs, as well as increasing the amount of youth programs, the culture of crime can be reversed in Las Vegas.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/educ_sys_202/1038/thumbnail.jp

Linking Economic Development and Poverty: The Role of Innovation and Innovation Capacity in the South

While most economic development research views poverty as a sign of need for development or poverty reduction as an outcome of successful development, this study treats poverty as an independent variable alongside contemporary measures of innovation capacity that reflect state potential for economic development, examining the combined impact of poverty and innovation capacity on economic development outcomes. The study examines the effect poverty has on economic development outcomes given levels of innovation capacity, and the effect poverty has on formation of state innovation capacity. The methodology consists of pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis with panel corrected standard errors with lags. The findings show mixed support for the effect of poverty on innovation capacity formation, weak support for the negative direct effects of poverty on economic growth, and strong support confirming important differences between the south and the rest of the nation. Poverty appears to impact economic growth only indirectly through its effect on the components of capacity that lead to economic growth

Growth and dispersal patterns of Tribolium castaneum in different size habitats

Citation: Hall, B. (2017). Growth and dispersal patterns of Tribolium castaneum in different size habitats . 1st Annual Undergraduate Research Experience in Entomology Symposium, November 16, 2016. Manhattam, KS.Competition for space, resources, and mates plays an important role in the survivorship of many organisms (Sbilordo et al. 2011). Understanding how competition affects a population is a crucial component in ensuring the survival of threatened and endangered species (Halliday et al. 2015). But what affect does an organism’s habitat size have on its ability to grow in population? Habitat size and competition have an inverse relationship. As the habitat decreases in size, there is an increase in intraspecific competition. In this experiment, we tested this relationship. We found that Tribolium castaneum produced less offspring in smaller containers compared to larger ones. They also had larger distances between individuals in larger containers. This research helps support the hypothesis that habitat destruction can negatively affect the growth of a population (Van Allen et al. 2016)

Building the Next Successful Library Discovery Tool

The implementation of web scale discovery has yielded remarkable results at the University of North Florida. Full-text downloads more than doubled in the first year, and ILL dropped, but has the system realized its potential? As today’s library patron grows more sophisticated and more demanding, what more can we ask of today’s modern library search tool? Join Michael Kucsak and Jeremy Hall as they share a brief history of their library\u27s success from assessment to implementation. Then they will discuss the future of the modern discovery tool and the changes vendors must make in order to survive the world of digital content delivery

The religious quest of Patrick White

In this study I explore the emergence in Patrick White of a myth which embodies the primal concerns of human beings, as opposed to the artificial, merely habitual or conventional, I argue that in this process he returns us to religious imperatives. I show how Australia is the setting for this myth and is charged with a special imaginative importance. White's quest is seen as an attempt to make new or revivify perceptions in an environment uncongenial to over-domestication and which relativizes artificial attempts at order and system. This leads me to examine White's treatment of art and iconoclasm; and I look at the theme of sacrifice in his work, as that which strips away in order to reconstitute afresh. I devote a chapter to the 'crucifixion' scene in White’s novel Riders in the Chariot, trying to point to a redemptive stability underlying White's work and suggested by this novel. In conclusion, I briefly place White's work within the context of a post-modern world