Voices from Urban Africa: The Impact of Urban Growth on Children

Urban poverty -- and its impact on children -- is often overlooked and misunderstood. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities. Each year the number of urban residents increases by nearly 60 million.1 By 2050, it is projected that two thirds of the global population will be living in urban areas.2 It is estimated that 94 percent of urban growth will take place in less developed countries.3Africa, though it is the least urbanized continent today, is predicted to have one billion urban dwellers by 2040, with a substantial youth majority. Over the next 40 years, 75 percent of urban population growth in Africa will take place in Africa's secondary cities.4 Currently, over half of the African urban population lives in slum conditions. These figures alone demonstrate the growing importance of prioritizing the urban context in development work.Coupled with this growing urban population, the development community's reliance on aggregate data, which generally compares development indicators for urban and rural areas within a country, means that children and adults living in urban areas appear to be better off than those living in rural areas.Citywide statistics and the 'urban advantage' allow the wealth of some urban individuals to obscure the hardships faced by those living in urban poverty and the vast inequalities present within urban communities. The absence of detailed data means that the depths of urban poverty are often missed and children living in urban poverty are at risk of not being reached by development efforts

CLS Bank: Managing Foreign Exchange Settlement Risk

In the foreign exchange market, where average daily turnover is in trillions of dollars and trades span time zones, legal systems, and domestic payments systems, participants take on various risks. The most serious risk is credit risk - the risk that one party will fail to pay. Central banks, private sector financial institutions, and domestic payments systems operators laboured for more than a decade to develop a multi-currency settlement system to deal with these risks. The result, the CLS Bank, began operations in September 2002. It virtually eliminates the credit risk inherent in foreign exchange transactions by providing a payment-versus-payment arrangement for settlement. The CLS Bank is regulated by the Federal Reserve Board in consultation with the central banks that have currencies settling through its system. At present there are seven currencies, including the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Canada acts as banker for the CLS Bank, providing it with a settlement account and making and receiving payments on its behalf through the Large Value Transfer System. With the participation and support of the world's largest foreign-exchange-dealing institutions, and growing membership, the CLS Bank has the potential to become the dominant global mechanism for settling foreign exchange transactions.

Improving Short-Term Electricity Price Forecasting Using Day-Ahead LMP with ARIMA Models

Short-term electricity price forecasting has become important for demand side management and power generation scheduling. Especially as the electricity market becomes more competitive, a more accurate price prediction than the day-ahead locational marginal price (DALMP) published by the independent system operator (ISO) will benefit participants in the market by increasing profit or improving load demand scheduling. Hence, the main idea of this paper is to use autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models to obtain a better LMP prediction than the DALMP by utilizing the published DALMP, historical real-time LMP (RTLMP) and other useful information. First, a set of seasonal ARIMA (SARIMA) models utilizing the DALMP and historical RTLMP are developed and compared with autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models that use the differences between DALMP and RTLMP on their forecasting capability. A generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model is implemented to further improve the forecasting by accounting for the price volatility. The models are trained and evaluated using real market data in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region. The evaluation results indicate that the ARMAX-GARCH model, where an exogenous time series indicates weekend days, improves the short-term electricity price prediction accuracy and outperforms the other proposed ARIMA modelsComment: IEEE PES 2017 General Meeting, Chicago, I

Cooking

From my project this semester, I have gained an insight into cooking that I have never known before. I will be able to use what I have learned in my everyday life from now on. The different ways of preparing foods is what is emphasized in this project report but this isn\u27t all that I have learned. I was also able to gather recipes which I have kept on file. I have enclosed only a few examples. With the help of my advisor, Mrs. Hobgood, this study has encouraged me to further my interests in this field

Tips for Getting Started Accessing Data: Accessing ACS Data from data.census.gov

Objectives ✓ Understand more about census geography ✓ Access data through census.gov ✓ Navigate Quick Facts, data.census.gov and My Community Explorer ✓ Locate resources for additional learning, research and data assistanc

Carol Miller in a Senior Piano Recital

This is the program for the senior piano recital of Carol Miller. The recital took place on October 7, 1975, in the Mabee Fine Arts Center Recital Hall

Natural magic :

Though integration rather than alienation is the aim of Wharton's ironic method, alienation is a crucial unifying theme threaded throughout her best work, a motif so insistently explored that it, rather than manners or social commentary, or any other consideration, is the author's central concern. The problem of alienated consciousness has been an almost obsessive theme of American literature for over two centuries, and Edith Wharton's career-long attention to this theme places her work where it belongs--in the mainstream of American fiction--and gives it relevance which transcends its receding time and place. In Wharton's view, alienation is a pervasive force influencing human behavior. Her characters are not merely fossils of a by-gone social milieu; they are representative beings confronting a destructive reality--the complex loneliness of the human spirit--and they are linked by their shared consciousness of spiritual, emotional, and physical isolation and their often bewildered, often thwarted, attempts to overcome it.Wharton's ironic method demands that her readers become sensitive receivers of nuance, ambiguity, and multiple meaning--literally, readers upon whom nothing is lost--and her writing assumes its greatest coherence only when her ironic technique is accurately understood. Her most consistent ironic device, and perhaps the one which demands the most sensitivity on the part of her audience, is ironic characterization, varying in degree but almost always involving the protagonist, whose view of himself and his circumstances is at variance with that of the author and reader. Ironies of situation and imagery are also crucial to Wharton's technique, usually fulfilling the general function of contributing to narrative unity by emphasizing theme. And extremely important is Wharton's ironic juxtaposition of elements of romanticism, realism, and naturalism, employed to produce complications of characterization and value.In Wharton's most effective novels, then, which span her long career, the elemental thematic tension is between alienation and integration, a tension exactly reproduced by the form of its expression. They deserve to be viewed as a body of work unified by technique and theme, achieving a fusion of form and purpose which results in that quality of inevitable rightness Wharton called "natural magic."The recurring consensus of several generations of critics ranging from Edmund Wilson to R. W. B. Lewis has been that the fiction of Edith Wharton has not received a just evaluation. Wharton's reputation in American literature remains uncertain and her achievement elusive, traditionally because of historical and cultural biases which deprecate her aristocratic background, her expatriation to France, and even her gender. More recently, an attitude of critical resistance has arisen from assumptions made by current theorists who view the irony elemental to Wharton's fiction as being at odds with neo-oral, anti-ironic preferences of structuralist analysis. Though these theorists perceive irony as a distancing strategy which increases the alienation of writer and audience, a contention of this study is that irony--the basis of Wharton's art--may be an integrating strategy instead, a bonding mechanism bringing together writer and audience by establishing affinities of understanding and complicity between writer and reader and requiring them to become co-creators of meaning

School Culture Survey Constructs and Student Achievement Relationships in Title I K-8 Schools

This quantitative study investigated the correlation between school culture constructs and student achievement in 160 Title I K-8 schools from four Local Education Agencies. Title I schools receive funds from the federal government to fund programs and provide resources to help students meet rigorous standards on state assessments. School culture is defined as the beliefs, perceptions, relationships, attitudes, and written and unwritten rules that shape and influence every aspect of how a school functions. This study aimed to determine if any relationship existed between school culture constructs and student achievement. Statistical analysis included preexisting data collected from the 2016 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey and 2014-2016 student achievement data from the North Carolina End-of-Grade tests. The School Culture Survey constructs developed by Gruenert and Valentine (1998) were used to conduct a multilevel random intercept model for statistical analysis. Data analysis revealed a significant relationship between 2 of the 6 constructs related to school culture. Statistical analysis results revealed that Professional Development and Learning Partnership constructs had a significant relationship to student achievement. Both constructs had a p value of 0.00, which means a significant relationship exists between them and student achievement. Based on the results, recommendations include (1) broadening sample to include more Title I schools; (2) conduct a study to see if non-Title I schools will have the same constructs that relate to student achievement, (3) conduct a study to evaluate Professional Development and Learning Partnership in Title I schools, (4) analyzing Title I Distinguished schools, and (5) conducting a qualitative study related to understanding Professional Development and Learning Partnership in Title I schools. Building capacity in Professional Learning and Learning Partnerships could be the key to making sustained changes

Ohio City: A Proposal for Area Conservation in Cleveland

The author’s master’s thesis, written in the mid-1970s as the first preservation efforts were underway in Cleveland\u27s Ohio City neighborhood. Poh Miller argues for the conservation of Ohio City’s diverse cultures and people, as well as its distinctive architecture. This thesis was submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of the George Washington University in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Originally written: May 1975; Online publication: September 2018.https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clevmembks/1038/thumbnail.jp

EEOC Reinforces Broad Interpretation of ADAAA Disability Qualification: But What Does Substantially Limits Mean

Part I of this Article recognizes the difficulty in calculating how many workers are disabled. Such difficulties have been used by the courts to justify differing interpretations of what constitutes a disability. This Part also discusses the origin of the ADA and provides a brief overview of the 2008 ADAAA. Part I of the Article examines the United States Supreme Court\u27s interpretations that narrowed the construction of what is a substantial limitation and what is an ADA disability. This Part highlights the lack of consensus between the courts, Congress, and the EEOC, as well as the courts\u27 apparent disregard of the congressional intent that the ADA serve as a vehicle for meaningful protection of disabled workers. Part III discusses the 2008 amendments and the 2009 proposed EEOC regulations with particular focus on (a) the broad scope of disability protection; (b) the expansion of what qualifies as major life activities; (c) the broad construction of substantially limits ; and (d) the role of mitigating measures. Part IV examines limitations and ambiguities in the ADAAA, including the criteria for being regarded as having such an impairment, and identifies future disability-related challenges. The conclusion supports congressional intent to provide broader protection for disabled employees and addresses the inherent contradictions posed by the new EEOC definition of substantially limits. It also recognizes the difficulty in applying a definition that explains what the phrase does not mean rather than defining what it does mean. Finally, the conclusion recommends an alternate definition of a substantial limitation of a major life activity