EITC and Family Economic Security Programs: An Assessment of Community Capacity

Outlines findings from a second-year evaluation of the impact and program accomplishments of Knight-funded free tax preparation and EITC services, outreach, and family economic security programs. Assesses strategies, challenges, and lessons learned

The Use of a Habitat Quality Stress Index to Evaluate Stress as an Analog for Proximate Fitness in the American Crow Within a Matrix of Landcover Characteristics to Assess Its Potential Contribution to Disease Etiologies

All organisms occur within spatial and temporal environments to maximize proximate fitness (health) and thus life history outcomes. Previous work has examined the temporal and behavioral aspects of proximate fitness on life history outcomes particularly regarding highly perturbed environments (i.e., climate and land use change, resource extraction, agricultural erosion, etc.). My work focuses on the less examined spatial aspect of these perturbed environments. More specifically, this dissertation examines habitat selection and quality as the basis for understanding stress response (negative and positive feedback mechanisms) to environmental stressors within the larger context of regional or gamma (ɣ) biodiversity. Through the lens of environmental endocrinology, I examine patterns of glucocorticoid (GC) hormone differentiation spatially. I do this to understand how biotic and anthropogenic environmental stressors affect stress response in the American Crow (AMCR). This stress response could have an impact on human disease origins. I examined 13 sites throughout the State of Connecticut between 2019 and 2021, from very rural to very urbanized. I collected 153 opportunistic fecal samples of AMCR, then used radio immunoassay to characterize and quantify the samples as GC hormones, a key chemical constituent that reflects stress response in avian subjects. I then used a geographic information system (GIS) to plot various catchments for each sample centroid as notional representations of AMCR territories. I then overlayed 15 landcover types as biotic and anthropogenic environmental stressors (ESs). I used ordinary least squares linear regression for my initial analyses to evaluate the degree of validity of the ES–GC relationship at discrete locations where samples were taken and subsequently within varying sized territorial catchments. Finally, I reinterpreted a single constrained gravity model for the development of a habitat quality stress index (HQSI) to understand more dynamically how stress response is affected by movement around AMCR territories. Originally based on Newton’s law of universal gravitation I believe this is the first use of such a model in evaluating stress response via fecal GCs in an ecological setting across a spatial landscape. A major takeaway from these findings is that the historically understood linearly composed landscape gradient has a much greater extracellular or episodic or granular location-specific nature. Examining GIS raster imagery for instance, yields dramatic differentiation of land cover types over very small areas (\u3c0.1 km2) that indicates stress being applied in a highly stochastic manner. This coupled with the dramatic variation in GC levels around roost areas shows AMCR likely traveling significant distances over and through locations with various levels of environmental stressors to arrive at their roost sites each evening. Stress is mediated most effectively when there is consistency or linearity in its application, facilitating a rapid return to equilibrium. The extracellular nature of landcover examined showed a dramatic differentiation that stress response is unable to adjust toover time, without having a pathological response. This results in the extension or lengthening of the negative feedback response culminating in disequilibrium of a positive feedback response, and thereby reduction in proximate fitness and immunological resistance. AMCR, more so than many other taxa, is a highly social and adaptable avian species due to its higher level of cognition and neuroplastic nature (rapid flexibility and adaptation of response via its sophisticated central nervous system [CNS]). The AMCR populations in the roosts I observed thus favor urban locations. However, AMCR’s endocrine system adapts more slowly than their CNS (brain) to higher stress environments. Social cohesion thus outweighs homeostatic balance. In effect we would say that they are too smart for their own good

Reframing Church Property Disputes in Washington State

Real property disputes between units or members of the same church are common in the United States. To resolve such disputes, the Supreme Court has endorsed two doctrines: the hierarchical deference approach and the neutral-principles of law approach. The Court has justified both doctrines on the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, but this justification is problematic. Specifically, under the hierarchical deference approach courts must always give preferential treatment to one religious group over others—effectively endorsing a particular religion. On the other hand, courts can enforce their own interpretations of religious issues under the neutral-principles approach, thereby infringing free exercise of religious beliefs. And because Washington State courts use both approaches, they also use a flawed jurisprudence. To cure these defects, this Comment proposes that Washington State courts should treat church property disputes the way they treat property disputes from secular nonprofits or fraternity organizations. This streamlined treatment conforms to existing statutes and to Washington State Supreme Court precedent. In sum, removing the First Amendment’s role is a simple and effective way for Washington State courts to resolve church property disputes without violating the federal Constitution

Building Political Will for Accountable, Equitable Trade Policy Making

Trade policy is at an inflection point. Even in the best of times, trade policy suffers from systemic dysfunction. International trade policy purports to offer broad benefits: economists find that trade increases economic output—or, in layman’s terms, “grows the pie.” Domestic economic policy is then supposed to redistribute those gains equitably. However, American trade policy consistently fails at this second step. Foreign competition has disrupted local labor markets, leading to greater job churn and lower lifetime income for lower-wage workers. The presumptive solution to this problem is Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a program to help workers who lose their jobs due to import competition. Yet Congress persistently underfunds TAA. The unsurprising result is a trade system unpopular among American workers

Professional development of ICT integration for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong: Towards a peer support enhanced model

Although information and communication technology (ICT) has gradually become a standard teaching technology in schools in many countries and regions like Hong Kong, the implementation of ICT in teaching and learning in schools still fails to meet high government and public expectations. This study was an investigation into the potential of peer support to enhance professional development of ICT integration for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. The study utilized peer support as a social approach to professional development and employed action research to examine the experiences of ten secondary school teachers who worked in five peer support groups for sixteen months. A peer support model was introduced to the participants who then applied these principles in their own contexts. Data on participants' reflections and evaluations of the peer support process was collected through individual interviews and peer-group conferences. Each participant was interviewed at the beginning, middle and end of the research period and each peer group was interviewed at the end of the project. By employing a grounded theory approach, themes related to the participants' experiences of peer support for ICT integration and the impact of peer support as a means of professional development were generated from the data. The study's findings indicate that the participants responded positively to peer support as a means of professional development. Peer support was successful in: increasing professional interactions; broadening perspectives of ICT; increasing reflection; and providing personal and emotional support. From an analysis of the study's findings, in conjunction with a review of the appropriate literature, a teacher professional development model for ICT integration has been developed that may be helpful in furthering the goal of successful ICT integration. This model focuses on the importance of intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic incentives and is based on a developmental process in which individual teachers determine their own practice through peer support enhanced critical reflection that continually expands their personal context of ICT integration

The Fluence Distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts

In the use and interpretation of $\log{N}$--$\log{S}$ distributions for gamma-ray bursts, burst peak flux has typically been used for $S$. We consider here the use of the fluence as a measure of $S$, which may be a more appropriate quantity than the peak flux in such highly variable sources. We demonstrate how using the BATSE trigger data we can determine the selection effects on fluence. Then using techniques developed elsewhere to account for the important threshold effects and correlations. Applying the appropriate corrections to the distributions, we obtain a fluence distribution which shows a somewhat sharper break than the peak flux distribution, implying a possibly narrower fluence luminosity distribution. If bursts are at cosmological distances, these observations together indicate that evolution of the luminosity function is required.Comment: ApJ Letters, Accepted May 24, 1996. 16 pages LaTeX, 4 Postscript figures, uses AASTeX and psfig macros, paper also available at http://www-bigbang.stanford.edu/~ted/paper4.htm

Numerical Evaluation of Bell-Shaped Proportional Damping Model for Softening Structures

A new type of proportional damping models, called bell-shaped proportional damping model, has recently been proposed. This new model has not only addressed the spurious damping forces, but also maintained the same order of computational efficiency as the Rayleigh model. This model has also been further improved such that, by using the tangent stiffness approach, it becomes suitable for structures experiencing softening response with negative stiffness. The improved model allows users to have flexible control of modal damping ratio for all interested frequency intervals, including those associated with negative stiffness. In this study, the performance of bell-shaped damping model is evaluated numerically in a response history analysis of a multi-storey building under seismic loading. The results show that, compared to the Rayleigh model, the bell-shaped model performs excellently in terms of always giving desirable positive energy dissipation even when the structure is experiencing softening response

Regeneration of the heart

The death of cardiac myocytes diminishes the heart's pump function and is a major cause of heart failure, one of the dominant causes of death worldwide. Other than transplantation, there are no therapies that directly address the loss of cardiac myocytes, which explains the current excitement in cardiac regeneration. The field is evolving in two important directions. First, although endogenous mammalian cardiac regeneration clearly seems to decline rapidly after birth, it may still persist in adulthood. The careful elucidation of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of endogenous heart regeneration may therefore provide an opportunity for developing therapeutic interventions that amplify this process. Second, recent breakthroughs have enabled reprogramming of cells that were apparently terminally differentiated, either by dedifferentiation into pluripotent stem cells or by transdifferentiation into cardiac myocytes. These achievements challenge our conceptions of what is possible in terms of heart regeneration. In this review, we discuss the current status of research on cardiac regeneration, with a focus on the challenges that hold back therapeutic development

Exploring Data and Methods to Assess and Understand the Performance of SSI States: Learning from the Cases of Kentucky and Maine

This study examined two major questions. Do national and state assessments provide consistent information on the performance of state education systems? What accounts for discrepancies between national and state assessment results if they are found? Data came from national and state assessments in grade 4 and grade 8 mathematics from 1992 to 1996 in Maine and Kentucky: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS), and Maine Educational Assessment (MEA). Here is a very brief summary of major research findings: 1. NAEP and state assessments reported inconsistent results on the performance level of students in Maine and Kentucky across grades and years. Both MEA and KIRIS appear to have more rigorous performance standards, which reduces the percentage of students identified as performing at Proficient/ Advanced level. These discrepancies may be understood in light of the differences between the NAEP and state assessments in their definitions of performance standards and the methods of standard setting. 2. The size of achievement gaps between different groups of students appeared somewhat smaller on state assessments than on the NAEP. The discrepancies may be explained by examining the differences between NAEP and state assessments in the representation of different student groups in their testing samples, the distribution of item difficulties in their tests, and differential impact of state assessment on low-performing students/schools. 3. The sizes of achievement gains from the states’ own assessments were considerably greater than that of NAEP’s. At the same time, the amount of difference is not always consistent across grades. These gaps and inconsistencies might be related to differences between the national and state assessments in the stakes of testing for school systems and changes in test format that impact test equating. The study findings raise cautions in using either national or state assessment results alone to evaluate the performance of particular state education systems. This report also provides some preliminary analyses of the sources of inconsistencies and discrepancies between national and state assessments. Although these findings may not be generalized to all states, they suggest that policymakers and educators become more aware of the unique features and limitations of current national and state assessments. While the NAEP assessment can be used to cross-check and validate the states’ own assessment results, each state’s unique assessment characteristics (both policy and technical aspects) need to be considered. The study gives us implications for comparing and/or combining the results from national and state assessments