Moving from Jobs to Careers: Engaging Low-Wage Workers in Career Advancement

The Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration offers a new approach to helping low-wage and dislocated workers advance by increasing their wages or work hours, upgrading their skills, or finding better jobs. At the same time, these workers are encouraged to augment and stabilize their income by making the most of available work supports, such as food stamps, public health insurance, subsidized child care, and tax credits. This report presents preliminary information on the effectiveness of strategies that were used to attract people to the WASC program and engage them in services

From Getting By to Getting Ahead: Navigating Career Advancement for Low-Wage Workers

From just getting by at the end of each month to getting ahead is a hard climb for many low-wage workers. This report, from MDRC's Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration, explores how WASC career coaches help low-wage workers understand the complex interactions between earnings and eligibility for work support programs and guide them to make the best advancement decisions possible

Impact of Si nanocrystals in a-SiOx<Er> in C-Band emission for applications in resonators structures

Si nanocrystals (Si-NC) in a-SiOx were created by high temperature annealing. Si-NC samples have large emission in a broadband region, 700nm to 1000nm. Annealing temperature, annealing time, substrate type, and erbium concentration is studied to allow emission at 1550 nm forsamples with erbium. Emission in the C-Band region is largely reduced by the presence of Si-NC. This reduction may be due to less efficient energy transfer processes from the nanocrystals than from the amorphous matrix to the Er3+ ions, perhaps due to the formation of more centro-symmetric Er3+ sites at the nanocrystal surfaces or to very different optimal erbium concentrations between amorphous and crystallized samples.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure

Strategies to Help Low-Wage Workers Advance: Implementation and Early Impacts of the Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) Demonstration

Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) is an innovative strategy to help low-wage workers increase their incomes by stabilizing employment, improving skills, increasing earnings, and easing access to work supports. In its first year, WASC connected more workers to food stamps and publicly funded health care coverage and, in one site, substantially increased training activities

Encouraging Evidence on a Sector-Focused Advancement Strategy: Two-Year Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration

This report summarizes the two-year findings of a rigorous random assignment evaluation of the WorkAdvance model, a sectoral training and advancement initiative. Launched in 2011, WorkAd-vance goes beyond the previous generation of employment programs by introducing demand-driven skills training and a focus on jobs that have career pathways. The model is heavily influenced by the positive findings from the Sectoral Employment Impact Study (SEIS) completed in 2010. A major component of the WorkAdvance model, in common with the programs studied in the SEIS, is formal training offering industry-recognized certifications, reflecting the hypothesis that skills acquisition is necessary for advancement. The model also requires providers to be far more employer-facing than traditional training programs, taking into account multiple employers' changing skill requirements, employee assessment practices, and personnel needs. This report presents the imple-mentation, cost, participation, and two-year economic impacts of WorkAdvance. The economic results are based on unemployment insurance earnings records and a second-year follow-up survey.The WorkAdvance program operations and evaluation are funded through the federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF), a public-private partnership administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service. This SIF project is led by the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City and the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity in collaboration with MDRC.Key Findings*All providers translated the WorkAdvance model into a set of concrete services, but it took time— more than a year for some components and providers -- and a substantial amount of tech-nical assistance and support. As a result, at some sites, later study enrollees were more likely than earlier ones to experience a fully implemented and "mature" WorkAdvance program.*Overall, WorkAdvance resulted in very large increases in participation in every category of services, as well as in training completion and credential acquisition, compared with what would have happened in the absence of the program. Expenditures for the operation of WorkAdvance fell between $5,200 and$6,700 per participant at the four providers delivering the program.*WorkAdvance providers increased earnings, with variation in results that closely matched the providers' experience in running sector-based programs and the extent to which the services they offered were demand driven. The most experienced sectoral provider, Per Scholas, had large and consistent impacts on both primary and secondary outcomes. Madison Strategies Group and Towards Employment, providers new to sectoral training, had promising but less consistent results that grew stronger for later enrollees. One provider, St. Nicks Alliance, did not produce positive impacts. The results did not differ dramatically across subgroups, though en-couragingly, WorkAdvance was able to increase earnings among the long-term unemployed.The evaluation as a whole provides important information for workforce development providers interested in pursuing a sector strategy. The analysis considers the role played by providers' sector-specific training and preparation and the role played by the nature of the sectors themselves. Future priorities that emerge from the results are (1) understanding how to help the more disadvantaged access the programs and (2) learning how to build service capacity, given how complex the model is to run

Size dependent tunneling and optical spectroscopy of CdSe quantum rods

Photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy are used to study the electronic states in CdSe quantum rods that manifest a transition from a zero dimensional to a one dimensional quantum confined structure. Both optical and tunneling spectra show that the level structure depends primarily on the rod diameter and not on length. With increasing diameter, the band-gap and the excited state level spacings shift to the red. The level structure was assigned using a multi-band effective-mass model, showing a similar dependence on rod dimensions.Comment: Accepted to PRL (nearly final version). 4 pages in revtex, 4 figure

Stellar 36,38^{36,38}Ar(n,γ)37,39(n,\gamma)^{37,39}Ar reactions and their effect on light neutron-rich nuclide synthesis

The $^{36}$Ar$(n,\gamma)^{37}$Ar ($t_{1/2}$ = 35 d) and $^{38}$Ar$(n,\gamma)^{39}$Ar (269 y) reactions were studied for the first time with a quasi-Maxwellian ($kT \sim 47$ keV) neutron flux for Maxwellian Average Cross Section (MACS) measurements at stellar energies. Gas samples were irradiated at the high-intensity Soreq applied research accelerator facility-liquid-lithium target neutron source and the $^{37}$Ar/$^{36}$Ar and $^{39}$Ar/$^{38}$Ar ratios in the activated samples were determined by accelerator mass spectrometry at the ATLAS facility (Argonne National Laboratory). The $^{37}$Ar activity was also measured by low-level counting at the University of Bern. Experimental MACS of $^{36}$Ar and $^{38}$Ar, corrected to the standard 30 keV thermal energy, are 1.9(3) mb and 1.3(2) mb, respectively, differing from the theoretical and evaluated values published to date by up to an order of magnitude. The neutron capture cross sections of $^{36,38}$Ar are relevant to the stellar nucleosynthesis of light neutron-rich nuclides; the two experimental values are shown to affect the calculated mass fraction of nuclides in the region A=36-48 during the weak $s$-process. The new production cross sections have implications also for the use of $^{37}$Ar and $^{39}$Ar as environmental tracers in the atmosphere and hydrosphere.Comment: 18 pages + Supp. Mat. (13 pages) Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Bloodlines: mammals, leeches, and conservation in southern Asia

Southern Asia is a biodiversity hotspot both for terrestrial mammals and for leeches. Many small-mammal groups are under-studied in this region, while other mammals are of known conservation concern. In addition to standard methods for surveying mammals, it has recently been demonstrated that residual bloodmeals within leeches can be sequenced to find mammals in a given area. While these invertebrate-parasite-derived DNA (iDNA) methods are promising, most of the leech species utilized for this type of survey remain unevaluated, notwithstanding that their diversity varies substantially. Here we examine approximately 750 individual leech specimens in the genus Haemadipsa across a large range in southern Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, and China), specifically reviewing the diversity of mammals they feed on and their own genetic structuring. Leeches were found to feed on a considerable variety of mammals, corroborating prior studies. Additionally, leeches were found to have fed both on bats and on birds, neither of which has previously been recorded with this method. The genetic structuring of the leeches themselves revealed 15 distinct clades of which only two precisely corresponded to previously characterized species, indicating that much work is needed to finalize classifications in this genus. Most importantly, with regards to mammal conservation, leeches in these clades appear to feed on a broad range of mammals

Relationship between photonic band structure and emission characteristics of a polymer distributed feedback laser

G. A. Turnbull, P. Andrew, M. J. Jory, William L. Barnes, and I. D. W. Samuel, Physical Review B, Vol. 64, article 125122 (2001). "Copyright © 2001 by the American Physical Society."We present an experimental study of the emission characteristics and photonic band structure of a distributed feedback polymer laser, based on the material poly[2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene]. We use measurements of the photonic band dispersion to explain how the substrate microstructure modifies both spontaneous and stimulated emission. The lasing structure exhibits a one-dimensional photonic band gap around 610 nm, with lasing occurring at one of the two associated band edges. The band edge (frequency) selection mechanism is found to be a difference in the level of output coupling of the modes associated with the two band edges. This is a feature of the second-order distributed feedback mechanism we have employed and is clearly evident in the measured photonic band structur

Sustainable deltas in the Anthropocene

What are the possible trajectories of delta development over the coming decades? Trajectories will be determined by the interactions of biophysical trends such as changing sediment supplies, subsidence due to compaction of sediment and climate change, along with key socio-economic trends of migration and urbanisation, agricultural intensification, demographic transition, economic growth and structural change of the economy. Knowledge and understanding of plausible trajectories can inform management choices for deltas in the Anthropocene, including new policy perspectives and innovative adaptation. The emergence of visionary delta management plans in some large deltas, such as the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, is an important and necessary component. This chapter synthesises the state of knowledge and highlights key elements of science that will inform decisions on future management of deltas.<br/