The Demonstration

Bloom presents findings from the Texas Worker Adjustment Demonstration, a 2,192-person randomized experimental evaluation of reemployment programs for displaced workers conducted at three sites in Texas. This project demonstrated that a relatively inexpensive mix of job-search assistance and limited occupational skills training can be a cost-effective means of assisting displaced workers.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1094/thumbnail.jp

Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report

This report, written by Abt Associates and MDRC and published by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, finds that Reading First increased the amount of time that teachers spent on the five essential components of reading instruction, as defined by the National Reading Panel. While Reading First did not improve students' reading comprehension on average, there are some indications that some sites had impacts on both instruction and reading comprehension. An overview puts these interim findings in context

Promoting Work in Public Housing: The Effectiveness of Job-Plus

Measures the effectiveness of employment related assistance, use of rent breaks as an incentive to work more, and activities that promote neighbor-to-neighbor support for work in Baltimore, Chattanooga, Dayton, Los Angeles, St. Paul, and Seattle

Intra-night Optical Variability of BL Lacs, Radio-Quiet Quasars and Radio-Loud Quasars

We report optical monitoring observations of 20 high-luminosity AGN, 12 of which are radio-quiet quasars (RQQs). Intra-night optical variability (INOV) was detected for 13 of the 20 objects, including 5 RQQs. The variations are distinctly stronger and more frequent for blazars than for the other AGN classes. By combining these data with results obtained earlier in our program, we have formed an enlarged sample consisting of 9 BL Lacs, 19 RQQs and 11 lobe-dominated radio-loud quasars. The moderate level of rapid optical variability found for both RQQs and radio lobe-dominated quasars argues against a direct link between INOV and radio-loudness. We supplemented the present observations of 3 BL Lacs with additional data from the literature. In this extended sample of 12 well observed BL Lacs, stronger INOV is found for the EGRET detected BL Lacs.Comment: 8 pages, 3 Postscript figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS, uses mn2e.cl

A Multi-Level Analysis of the Impacts of Services Provided By the UK Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration

Background: The United Kingdom Employment Retention and Advancement (U.K. ERA) demonstration was the largest and most comprehensive social experiment ever conducted in the United Kingdom. It examined the extent to which a combination of postemployment advisory support and financial incentives could help lone parents on welfare to find sustained employment with prospects for advancement. ERA was experimentally tested across more than 50 public employment service offices and, within each office, individuals were randomly assigned to either a program (or treatment) group (eligible for ERA) or a control group (not eligible). Method: article presents the results of a multilevel nonexperimental analysis that examines the variation in office-level impacts and attempts to understand what services provided in the offices tend to be associated with impacts. Result: The analysis suggests that impacts were greater in offices that emphasized in-work advancement, support while working and financial bonuses for sustained employment, and also in those offices that assigned more caseworkers to ERA participants. Offices that encouraged further education had smaller employment impacts. Conclusion: Plausible results are obtained identifying those particular implementation features that tended to be linked to stronger impacts of ERA. The methodology employed also allows the identification of which services are associated with employment and welfare receipt of control families receiving benefits under the traditional New Deal for Lone Parent program

The PTF Orion Project: a Possible Planet Transiting a T-Tauri Star

We report observations of a possible young transiting planet orbiting a previously known weak-lined T-Tauri star in the 7-10 Myr old Orion-OB1a/25-Ori region. The candidate was found as part of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) Orion project. It has a photometric transit period of 0.448413 +- 0.000040 days, and appears in both 2009 and 2010 PTF data. Follow-up low-precision radial velocity (RV) observations and adaptive optics imaging suggest that the star is not an eclipsing binary, and that it is unlikely that a background source is blended with the target and mimicking the observed transit. RV observations with the Hobby-Eberly and Keck telescopes yield an RV that has the same period as the photometric event, but is offset in phase from the transit center by approximately -0.22 periods. The amplitude (half range) of the RV variations is 2.4 km/s and is comparable with the expected RV amplitude that stellar spots could induce. The RV curve is likely dominated by stellar spot modulation and provides an upper limit to the projected companion mass of M_p sin i_orb < 4.8 +- 1.2 M_Jup; when combined with the orbital inclination, i orb, of the candidate planet from modeling of the transit light curve, we find an upper limit on the mass of the planetary candidate of M_p < 5.5 +- 1.4 M_Jup. This limit implies that the planet is orbiting close to, if not inside, its Roche limiting orbital radius, so that it may be undergoing active mass loss and evaporation.Comment: Corrected typos, minor clarifications; minor updates/corrections to affiliations and bibliography. 35 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Accepted to Ap