Digging Deeper: James Connolly in America

This project continued research into James Connolly\u27s time in America from 1902-1910. It focused on primary sources in the hopes to unearth things not found in the secondary writing on Connolly’s activities during this influential time. The O’Brien papers are an eclectic collection of primary documents from Connolly’s life, including letters between James Connolly and his friend John Matheson, correspondence with other socialists, and some of Connolly’s own writing. The New York Call was a daily socialist newspaper that contains ads for Connolly’s lectures and his magazine, The Harp, as well as meetings of his organization, the Irish Socialist Federation. Through these primary sources and others, more of James Connolly’s activities and perspectives during his time in America come to light

The Role of the Acquisitions Editor in University Press Publishing

This study examines the changing role of acquisitions editors within university presses. The various factors that contribute to the changing role of acquisitions editors were examined through personal interviews of twenty-nine acquisitions editors from university presses across the United States. Twenty questions were presented to the editors on editorial responsibilities, book marketing, electronic publishing, education and job training, and author/editor relationships. This study concentrated on those questions, as well as on the evolving role of acquisitions editors when affected by variables such as library acquisitions, financial trends, electronic publishing, and rules for professorial tenure that affect changes in scholarly publishing. The study concluded that acquisitions editors still gain most of their training through job experience, although many more outlets exist now for education than were offered twenty years ago. The editors indicated that business and financial training would be helpful because of the constraints placed on scholarly publishing due to decreased university subsidies and declining sales to libraries. When acquiring manuscripts, editors use a network of scholars and authors who serve as expert advisers when evaluating scholarship in particular fields. The scholarship acquired by acquisitions editors should support the press’ mission to publish the best research available. Acquisitions editors must consider the manuscript’s potential sales, implying its appeal to the broadest possible audience, when deciding whether to publish, thus affecting the types of manuscripts they acquire. In order to recover revenue lost in publishing traditional, narrowly focused monographs and from a decrease in university subsidy, editors must balance their lists with monographs that reach the broadcast possible audience of scholars and with trade books that will reach a general audience. Most editors compete with other university presses for the most desirable scholarship by allowing multiple submissions from senior scholars and from those facing a tenure deadline. The editors acknowledge that electronic publishing may become a foundation of scholarly publishing in the future; however, currently there is not a high demand for electronic books, nor is there an established system to regulate the purchase of a book placed on the Internet. Some presses are experimenting with various electronic procedures, while others are waiting for the question to be resolved

ALFA & 3D: integral field spectroscopy with adaptive optics

One of the most important techniques for astrophysics with adaptive optics is the ability to do spectroscopy at diffraction limited scales. The extreme difficulty of positioning a faint target accurately on a very narrow slit can be avoided by using an integral field unit, which provides the added benefit of full spatial coverage. During 1998, working with ALFA and the 3D integral field spectrometer, we demonstrated the validity of this technique by extracting and distinguishing spectra from binary stars separated by only 0.26". The combination of ALFA & 3D is also ideally suited to imaging distant galaxies or the nuclei of nearby ones, as its field of view can be changed between 1.2"x1.2" and 4"x4", depending on the pixel scale chosen. In this contribution we present new results both on galactic targets, namely young stellar objects, as well as extra-galactic objects including a Seyfert and a starburst nucleus.Comment: SPIE meeting 4007 on Adaptive Optical Systems Technology, March 200

Theoretical Sensitivity Analysis for Quantitative Operational Risk Management

We study the asymptotic behavior of the difference between the values at risk VaR(L) and VaR(L+S) for heavy tailed random variables L and S for application in sensitivity analysis of quantitative operational risk management within the framework of the advanced measurement approach of Basel II (and III). Here L describes the loss amount of the present risk profile and S describes the loss amount caused by an additional loss factor. We obtain different types of results according to the relative magnitudes of the thicknesses of the tails of L and S. In particular, if the tail of S is sufficiently thinner than the tail of L, then the difference between prior and posterior risk amounts VaR(L+S) - VaR(L) is asymptotically equivalent to the expectation (expected loss) of S.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure, 4 tables, forthcoming in International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF

A Review of the Role of Labor in Recent International Trade Models

The traditional focus of international trade theory has had limited overlap with the analytical orientation of practitioners in the field of human resource management and industrial relations (HRM/IR). This is an unfortunate lapse since both areas are concerned with the issues of industrial growth, employment, and income distribution - issues that are closely related to international comparative advantage and commercial policy. Recently, trade economists have begun to explore the implications of international trade for issues that have previously been considered the domain of labor economists, such as the individual's decision to acquire an education, the likelihood of labor action in an industry, and the size of the union wage premium over a competitive sector. This review is intended to stimulate HRM/IR economists to consider general equilibrium influences on the behavior of labor and to invite suggestions concerning the treatment of labor issues in international trade models.Research Seminar in International Economics, Department of Economics, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100652/1/ECON127.pd

The Impact of COVID-19 on Community-based Juvenile Service Aid Programs

The Community-based Juvenile Services Aid Division (CBA) is a program funded by the Nebraska legislature and housed within the Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice (NCC). The guiding statute requires that funds be used for programs and services that divert youth from the juvenile justice system. The overarching aim is to effectively intervene with youth while they are in the community, and thereby reduce youth going to court or being placed in juvenile detention. To assess the efficacy of the interventions, the legislature allocated 10% of the fund for the development of a common data set and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the CBA program. The common dataset is currently maintained by the NCC; evaluation of effectiveness of programs is conducted by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Juvenile Justice Institute (JJI). The goal of collecting data in a common dataset is to have comparable measures across the state and to help programs determine if they are effectively keeping youth out of the system. For the past three fiscal years (July 1, 2018 – June 30, 2021), the number of funded programs has remained fairly consistent, although the types of programs being funded have fluctuated some (see Figures 1 and 2 below). Although the chart below appears to show an increase in programming, this is because programs receiving funding through the Juvenile Services Commission Grant Program (JS) also began entering youth data into the common dataset for FY 20/21

Cash transfers and the mental health of young people: evidence from South Africa's child support grant

This study examines the longitudinal impact of the South African Child Support Grant (CSG) on risk for depression and life satisfaction among young people (15–19 years). We analysed data from the last three waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), a nationally representative panel survey that took place every two years from 2008 to 2017. We used an instrumental variable (IV) approach that exploits multiple changes in age eligibility from 1998 to 2012. Depressive symptoms were assessed using an 8-item version of the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale; participants who scored above 8 were considered at risk for depression. Life satisfaction was rated on a scale of 1 (‘very dissatisfied’) to 10 (‘very satisfied’); participants who scored 8 or above were classified as satisfied. We also examined impacts on educational deficit (≥2 years behind) and not being in education, employment or training (NEET) as secondary outcomes, as these are also important for mental health. Age eligibility strongly predicted CSG receipt at Wave 3. In instrumental variable models, CSG receipt did not influence the risk for depression (β = 0.10, SE = 0.10, p = 0.316), nor life satisfaction (β = −0.07, SE = 0.09, p = 0.420) at Wave 3, nor at Waves 4 or 5. Some improvements in educational deficit were observed at Wave 3 among CSG beneficiaries compared to non-beneficiaries. These results were robust to multiple specifications. CSG receipt did not improve the psychological wellbeing of adolescents and young adults, nor did it improve their education or employment outcomes. Our findings highlight the need to identify alternative social policies that address the root causes of youth social disadvantage, in conjunction with targeted approaches to improve the mental health of young South Africans living in poverty

Determination of X-ray flux using silicon pin diodes

Accurate measurement of photon flux from an X-ray source is a parameter required to calculate the dose absorbed by a sample. The development of a model for determining the photon flux incident on pin diodes, and experiments to test this model, are described for incident energies between 4 and 18 keV used in macromolecular crystallography