Feminine Magic

Having been introduced to magic by my father, I have adapted the classic methods to work in my role as a mature female teacher. Using performance and mysterious narrative, intriguing props and playing on my femininity, the classic magician routines have served me well when performing for teenagers. Reworking the classic routines in this way ensures that a school magic club for teenagers serves the various needs of both male and female students

House Price Appreciation: The Impact Of No Income Verification Loans And Investor Activity

This paper examines house price appreciation in the US from 2004 through 2009, a period marked by a boom-and-bust cycle for house prices, to investigate the impact of the extensive use of no income verification loans and investor activity on house price movements.  House price appreciation for each state and Washington, DC is modeled in cross-sectional time series regressions using macroeconomic variables and loan type intensities.  The findings suggest that widespread use of no income verification loans and non-owner occupied loans directly impacts house price movements and significantly explains the astonishing gains and sudden losses that occurred during the sample period.  

Creating Social Networks: Resettlement Center for Burmese Refugees

The refugee resettlement program in the United States must encourage both the formation of refugee communities and integra­tion within the larger community. I propose a multiuse building to strengthen refugee communities [bonding social networks] and connect refugees to the larger community [bridging social networks]. Both of these connections are essential for refugees to become integrated in a community. The building will be run by Lutheran Social Services who currently assists in the resettle­ment of refugees in the Springfield, Massachusetts area, with assistance in funding from the Wilson-Fish Discretionary Grant Program which provides financial support for alternative models of resettlement. In order to encourage the formation of bonding social networks, the building includes temporary refugee housing [20 units from one to four bedrooms] and communal spaces [community room and kitchen, cultivation areas, small religious space]. In order to build bridging social networks with the outside community, the program includes a small school for language and vocational training, Lutheran Social Services offices, retail spaces, a rentable event hall, and an exterior event space/market

A Numerical Study of the Mid-field River Plume

Idealized and realistic simulations of the Merrimack River plume on the east coast of the U.S. are performed using the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS). The effect of discharge, tides and rotation on the evolution of the tidal plume are examined. Experiments investigating the deceleration of the plume body through mixing and the relaxation of the tidal plume front are performed. Three primary findings result from this research. First, more ambient water interacts with the tidal plume front than source water. Because it takes several hours for source water to translate the plume and it is strongly diluted in the plume interior, only a small fraction of source water reaches the front. Therefore, the front is responsible for a small portion of mixing of the total ebb discharge. Second, the mouth and the tidal plume front communicate on an advective time scale. When the ebb discharge is stopped at the estuary mouth, the inertia of the discharge is enough to keep previously released source water necessary to sustain frontal propagation moving frontward. The front begins to slow when the withheld estuarine discharge is not supplied to the front. Third, the net plume mixing, defined as the total mixing of a parcel of source water before it enters the far-field, is altered by rotation. As discharge increases, an irrotational plume will exhibit an increasing trend in net mixing, while a rotational plume will exhibit a decreasing trend. These experiments bridge engineering and geophysical scale plume studies and provide a framework for understanding results reported in literature

Copyright Consultations Submission

The Writers Guild of Canada (―WGC‖) supports a copyright regime which balances the needs and interests of consumers with the rights and protections of authors. Works should be widely available for use by consumers provided that authors are fairly remunerated for those uses. Rather than criminalize consumers’ actions, the WGC would prefer to see a Copyright Act that pre-authorizes common consumer uses of works in exchange for a revenue stream payable to authors and copyright owners by using the current Private Copying Levy as a model for a more expanded collective licensing scheme. Further, Canada should embrace a National Digital Strategy and implement reforms such that Electronic Rights Management should not be permitted to be removed, fair dealing should not be expanded by the inclusion of a ‗such as‘ clause, parody and satire should cease to be infringing activities, shared authorship should be bestowed jointly on the credited writer and credited director of cinematographic work, and the WIPO Treaties should be implemented and subsequently adapted to Canadian circumstances, in no small part to avoid the hostile reception accorded to Bill C-61

Understanding parents’ sense-making of their role in adolescent daughters’ social media use through the lens of relational dialectics theory 2.0

With the development of social media, parents must figure out how to guide their children’s use or even whether to allow it. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 30 parents of daughters aged 12–18. Relational dialectics theory 2.0 was used to analyze how parents’ talk revealed their sense-making of their role in adolescent daughters’ social media use. Analysis revealed that parents voiced competing discourses pertaining to “bad” versus “good” parents and monitoring versus trusting daughters. Discourses that take place at the distal level compete with those at the proximal site of the utterance chain, challenging parents to engage in sense-making. Findings suggest that the advice of open communication between parent and adolescent addresses only the proximal level and not the distal level of societal expectations for monitoring and close involvement required of the “good parent.” To make sense of and manage competing discourses, parents appear to couple conversations with daughters with voicing discourses of daughter uniqueness as a way to favor trusting over monitoring and still maintain a “good” parent identity

Provider Communication and Mothers’ Willingness to Vaccinate Against HPV and Influenza: A Randomized Health Messaging Trial

Objective Understand the effect of a health messaging intervention focused on provider communication about vaccination on mothers’ willingness to vaccinate children against HPV and seasonal influenza. Methods 2,476 mothers of 9-13-year-olds in the U.S. completed a Web-based survey in August 2014. Mothers were randomized to one of two groups targeting HPV or influenza vaccine. Mothers whose child had not received the target vaccine (i.e., zero doses of HPV vaccine/no prior-year administration of influenza vaccine) were randomized to the intervention. The study used a 3x2 between-subjects design; illustrated vignettes depicted one of three levels of provider recommendation strength (brief mention of vaccination, strong recommendation of vaccination, or personal disclosure of vaccination of own children), and presence or absence of information comparing safety of vaccination to the safety of a common daily activity. Outcome was mothers’ willingness to have their child receive the target vaccine (0-100.) Perceived benefits of vaccination were assessed prior to viewing the intervention and included as a covariate in analyses, along with child gender. Results For HPV vaccine, there was a main effect of safety information, F(1,684)=7.99, p=.005, and perceived benefits of vaccination, F(1,684)=221.64, p<.001) on mothers’ willingness to vaccinate. For influenza, perceived benefits of vaccination significantly related to willingness, F(1,462)=105.78, p<.001). Child gender was not associated with willingness. Conclusions Provider communication about vaccination may need to be tailored to the vaccine in question. A next step to increasing coverage for both HPV and influenza vaccines may be an intervention aimed at increasing mothers’ perceived benefits of vaccination

Low-frequency variability of currents in the deepwater eastern Gulf of Mexico

Vertical structure of the low frequency horizontal currents at the northern edge of the Loop Current during eddy shedding events is observed using concurrent hydrographic, moored, and satellite altimetry data from 2005. Dynamic modes are calculated at three deep (~3000 m), full water-column moorings in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Time-series of the barotropic and first two baroclinic modes are found using a least squares minimization that fits theoretically derived modes to observed moored velocity data. EOF analyses show that the majority of observed variance is explained by a surface-trapped mode that is highly coherent with the temporal amplitudes of the first baroclinic mode, and a lower, but significant percentage of variance is captured in bottom-intensified modes. Amplitudes of the second empirical mode indicate that currents are more coherent in the ocean interior approaching the Loop Current, as more variance is explained by this mode at the southernmost mooring near the Loop Current. A dynamic mode decomposition of the horizontal currents reveals that the barotropic and first baroclinic modes exhibit low frequency variability and eddy time scales of 10 – 40 days. Second baroclinic mode amplitudes show higher frequency variability and shorter time scales. A model utility test for the least squares fit of modeled to observed velocity shows that the second baroclinic mode is useful to the statistical model during 50 – 85 % of the mooring deployment, and is particularly necessary to the model when cyclonic features are present in the study area. The importance of the second baroclinic mode to the model increases significantly closer to the Loop Current. High-speed currents associated with the Loop Current and anticyclones stimulate a strong first baroclinic response, but the second baroclinic mode amplitudes are found to be similar in magnitude to the first baroclinic mode amplitudes at times. This happens episodically and could be an indication of higher order dynamics related to frontal eddies or Loop Current eddy shedding