Demand for Government-Provided Job-Training Programs: Evidence from the Illinois Policy Survey Data

This paper examines the determinants of the demand for public job-training programs in Illinois. A first objective is to determine the personal characteristics that influence the support for a spending increase for publicly provided job- training programs for the unemployed across various income groups in Illinois. We test for a U-shaped relationship between income and the demand for publicly provided job training. A second objective is to examine the role of local economic conditions in influencing the demand for job-training programs in Illinois. We use data from the 1995 Illinois Policy Survey supplemented with regional-level data (including the unemployment rate, manufacturing employment, population density, and poverty rate). Our empirical results do not support the existence of a U-shaped relationship between income and the demand for job training. However, we show that regional economic conditions do influence the demand for job-training programs in Illinois

Impacts from transboundary water rights violations in south Asia

Presented during the USCID water management conference held on October 13-16, 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The theme of the conference was "Water rights and related water supply issues."Includes bibliographical references.Indian operations of upstream water diversion constructions on transboundary rivers caused sedimentation in river beds and drops in river flows to no flows destroying the aquatic habitats for Gangetic fishes and dolphins, and shortage of irrigation water in Bangladesh. In the Ganges basin alone, floodplains and ponds face a water shortage by 50% causing destruction to the natural breeding grounds of 103 Gangetic fishes. Further consequences have been extinction and endangerment of aquatic species, malnutrition among people, loss of skilled professionals, a shift in agricultural practices, obstruction to pastimes, water sports, and religious observances, closure of irrigation and industries, overdependence on groundwater, inland intrusion of saline water and damage to Sundarbans, climate change and outbreaks of environmental diseases, arsenic contamination of groundwater, the problem of rehabilitation of arsenic patients, and occurrences of devastating floods. Additionally, the upstream country has planned to divert water from the Brahmaputra, the Meghna, and the Tista, signaling the same series of effects for the remaining two-thirds of Bangladesh. To protect the riparian civilization and international water rights, the UN should play the key role to establish fair-sharing of water among the riparaian nations instead of leaving the issue with them.Proceedings sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Central Utah Project Completion Act Office and the U.S. Committee on Irrigation and Drainage

Initial visioning and planning for policy change with partners and other BDC projects

The objectives are this vision document are to: 1) suggest guidelines and steps towards deiserble policy shifts; 2) compile an understanding of the issues and probable technical solutions that require appropriate policy shifts, based on the experiences of different development partners working in these areas; and 3) envision outcomes for the four components of the GBDC

Do The Sick Retire Early? Chronic Illness, Asset Accumulation, and Early Retirement.

The authors thank Patricia Reagan, members of the Department of Economics at Northern Illinois University, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.Our objective is to determine how chronic illness affects asset accumulation and retirement. Previous studies have found that poor health leads to early retirement, but those studies failed to look at the indirect impact of chronic illness on retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we define an illness as chronic if the individual reports having asthma, cancer, heart disease, stroke or diabetes for four or more years. We first estimate how a chronic illness influences asset accumulation. We then estimate how asset accumulation and current poor health influence retirement. We observe that the vast majority of the chronically ill population do not report their general health to be poor nor do they report functional limitations in activities of daily living. Nevertheless, our results indicate that chronic illness leads these people to accumulate fewer assets during their working years and consequently retire later. Neither researchers nor policy-makers discussing the many critical issues surrounding illness and retirement have addressed this issue

Domestic use of biomass fuel in the rural Meghna floodplain areas of Bangladesh

Rural households in the developing countries constitute the largest share of the biomass fuel consumption. It is also a major source of energy in the low income country. However, this energy consumption pattern varies from region to region. Different case studies on the biomass fuel consumption will certainly contribute to the understanding on the energy uses of a nation. The present study was conducted in the rural areas of the Meghna floodplain zone in Bangladesh, with a total of 80 sampled households, using the stratified random sampling technique through the semi-structured questionnaires from November 2008 through February 2009. Firewood, cowdung, leaves and twigs, branches, rice straw and rice husk were used as the biomass fuels mainly for the cooking purpose. Leaves and twigs were found as the dominant biomass fuel as 187 +/- 25.69 (SE) kg month(-1) household(-1). The major source of biomass fuel collection was identified as the own homestead and agricultural lands, 74%. The households spent 14.56 +/- 8.94 US$ month(-1) household(-1) for biomass fuels. The ratio of the total energy expenditure to the total income of the household was around 11%. But, the ratio of the biomass expenditure to the total energy expenditure of the households was 68%. Monthly income, land ownership and family size were found significantly influencing to the biomass energy expenditure. The study will be useful for the policy makers in the renewable energy, forestry and agriculture sector in Bangladesh.ArticleIFOREST-BIOGEOSCIENCES AND FORESTRY. 3:144-149 (2010)journal articl

Material Named Entity Recognition (MNER) for Knowledge-driven Materials Using Deep Learning Approach

The scientific literature contains a wealth of cutting-edge knowledge in the field of materials science, as well as useful data (e.g., numerical data from experimental results, material properties and structure). These data are critical for data-driven machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) methods to accelerate material discovery. Due to the large and growing number of publications, it is difficult for humans to manually retrieve and retain this knowledge. In this context, we investigate a deep neural network model based on Bi-LSTM to retrieve knowledge from published scientific articles. The proposed deep neural network-based model achieves an f-1 score of \~97\% for the Material Named Entity Recognition (MNER) task. The study addresses motivation, relevant work, methodology, hyperparameters, and overall performance evaluation. The analysis provides insight into the results of the experiment and points to future directions for current research.Comment: 10 page

Considering the Cellular Composition of Olfactory Ensheathing Cell Transplants for Spinal Cord Injury Repair: A Review of the Literature

Olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) are specialized glia cells of the olfactory system that support the continual regeneration of olfactory neurons throughout adulthood. Owing to their pro-regenerative properties, OECs have been transplanted in animal models of spinal cord injuries (SCI) and trialed in clinical studies on SCI patients. Although these studies have provided convincing evidence to support the continued development of OEC transplantation as a treatment option for the repair of SCI, discrepancies in the reported outcome has shown that OEC transplantation requires further improvement. Much of the variability in the reparative potential of OEC transplants is due to the variations in the cell composition of transplants between studies. As a result, the optimal cell preparation is currently a subject of debate. Here we review, the characterization as well as the effect of the cell composition of olfactory cell transplantation on therapeutic outcome in SCI. Firstly, we summarize and review the cell composition of olfactory cell preparations across the different species studied prior to transplantation. Since the purity of cells in olfactory transplants might affect the study outcome we also examine the effect of the proportions of OECs and the different cell types identified in the transplant on neuroregeneration. Finally, we consider the effect of the yield of cells on neuroregeneration by assessing the cell dose of transplants on therapeutic outcome

2007–2016 FATAL TRAFFIC CRASHES IN ALASKA, HAWAII, IDAHO, AND WASHINGTON AND CHARACTERISTICS OF TRAFFIC FATALITIES INVOLVING HAWAIIANS AND CSET MINORITIES

Data for this comparative study were collected from the Fatality Analysis and Reporting System (FARS) for the years 2007 to 2016 for the states of Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, and Washington. The rates of roadway fatalities, especially those of American Indians (which include Aleuts and Eskimos), Guamanians, Samoans, and Native Hawaiians (which include part-Hawaiians) were the focus of the study; they are referred to as “CSET Minorities” in this report; all other races are referred to as “All Others.” Three main contributing factors for fatal crashes—alcohol use, speeding, and non-usage of restraint—were analyzed for each population group. CSET states are lagging behind many countries in terms of traffic safety. Significant differences in the involvement of alcohol, speeding, and non-usage of restraint were indicated between CSET Minority fatalities and All Others. For all types of crashes examined, CSET Minorities exhibited statistically significant differences, nearly all of them being higher or worse than All Others, except for motorcycle crashes. In Hawaii, the proportion of Hawaiians in the population is steady at approximately 21%, but their proportion in FARS database is at 28% and rising. Aggregate data analysis of traffic fatalities focused on three rural, indigenous, tribal, and isolated (RITI) communities in Hawaii, the entire Big Island of Hawaii, and the rural communities of Waianae and Waimanalo on the island of Oahu. All three locations are known for their relatively large number of Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians. The percentage of Hawaiians in traffic fatalities was 32% on the Big Island, 50% in Waianae, and 78% in Waimanalo

Shifting Cultivation and its Alternatives in Bangladesh: Productivity, Risk and Discount Rates

This study evaluates the economic feasibility of replacing shifting cultivation (Jhum) with settled agriculture and new soil conservation technology based on an assessment of the farmers’ risk and corresponding discount rates in the Khagrachari hill district of Bangladesh. Shifting cultivation can cause top soil loss, degradation of soil quality, and decrease in crop yield but significant improvements in yields could also be achieved with increased fallowing. On the other hand, the use of soil conservation technology is found to be highly profitable. The study finds that the social discount rate is a crucial factor determining the switch from shifting cultivation to new soil conservation methods. Jhum farmers are likely to switch to the new technology in a 3-year rotation scheme only if their rate of discount is below 58%. On the other hand, farmers with a 6- year rotation would switch as long as their discount rate is less 33%. Because they discount the future rather heavily, poor farmers with short fallows would require very high returns to tempt them to adopt a new type of farming. High initial cost of establishment, long gestation period, and unclear customary rights are additional deterrents to the adoption of soil conservation technology. The study concludes that these problems can be overcome if financial support and technical assistance are made available

THE LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE OF NURSERY OWNERS IN THE PRODUCTION AND MARKETING OF SAPLINGS

The purpose of this study is to determine the level of knowledge of nursery owners in the production and marketing of saplings. Ninety four nursery owners were selected randomly from a total of 157 nursery owners under four Upazila of Rangpur district. An interview scheduled was used for the collection of data in 2011; and the results shows that 63.8% of the nursery owners had medium level of knowledge, while 36.2% had high level of knowledge. Findings also shows that farm size, annual income ,innovativeness, communication exposure, training received, and involvement in nursery have positive significant relationships and constraints during production; and marketing has negative significant relationship with the level of knowledge of the nursery owners. However, the result of stepwise multiple regression indicates that 69.4% (Adjusted R2=69.4) of the variance in the level of knowledge of the nursery owners could be explained using the explanatory variables of the study. This indicates that there are other variables working behind the level of knowledge of the nursery owners during production and marketing