Enriching Veterans' Lives: Through An Evidence Based Approach

This paper marks the launch of a new IVMF series focused on the critical topics of program evaluation, performance measurement, and evidence-based practice (EBP). The purpose of the series is to inform the broader community of veteran and military family serving organizations by highlighting examples of veteran and military serving organizations employing various methods of EBP, program evaluation, and assessment. By highlighting leading practices across the U.S., this series aims to promote learning and greater impact in service delivery across our nation's evolving and maturing community of veteran and military organizations.This case illustration highlights the evaluation efforts of the rising veteran and military serving organization Team, Red, White & Blue (Team RWB). Team RWB is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2010 with the mission of enriching the lives of America's veterans by connecting them to their communities through physical and social activity. Despite its relative youth, in 2014, the George W. Bush Institute's (GWBI) Military Service Initiative and the IVMF both identified Team RWB as a leading organization in building a robust measurement and evaluation program. The paper highlights how Team RWB integrates theory and research to drive its programming as an evidence-based wellness intervention and, in turn, produce data to inform its own organizational practice.Key HighlightsTeam RWB is an organization that values, at all levels, trust and transparency with its partners, funders, and community. This culture -- embodied by the 'Eagle Ethos' of positivity, passion, people, community, camaraderie, and commitment -- exists throughout the organization from the senior executive down to the community level.Research and evaluation of RWB's programs is and will remain vital to communicating its impact and improving how it targets resources to improve and grow its programs. The Team RWB "Eagle Research Center" is building an evidence base by quantitatively measuring its outcomes and using data to improve its program delivery.More than 1,800 veterans surveyed in 2014 and 2,500 surveyed in 2015 self-reported increases in creating authentic relationships with others, increasing their sense of purpose, and improving their health, by participating in Team RWB. Veterans also noted that participating in Team RWB had indirect benefits in their family relationships and work. Improvements on these dimensions contribute to an enriched life, with more program engagement leading to more enrichment.Team RWB achieves these results through local, consistent, and inclusive programs. The chapter and Community programs provide opportunities for physical, social, and service activities. The Leadership Development Program is comprised of national athletic and leadership camps, and a newly launched tiered leader development program

How did the location of industry respond to falling transport costs in Britain before World War I?

This article explores the location of industry in pre–World War I Britain using a model that takes account both of factor endowment and also of New Economic Geography influences. Broadly speaking, the pattern of industrial location in this period was quite persistent and regional specialization changed little. The econometric results show that factor endowments had much stronger effects than proximity to markets, although the latter was an attraction for industries with large plant size. Overall, falling transport costs had relatively little effect on industrial location at a time when proximity to natural resources, notably coal, mattered most

A new model for procuring e-books

This paper draws on a recent ground-breaking tender for e-books for higher education libraries in the UK. The strategy for the tender was informed by standard procurement practice and by the experience of acquiring other e-resources, particularly journals under the so-called big deal. Both are examined as background to the discussion of e-books in general and the tender in particular

Sweep maps: A continuous family of sorting algorithms

We define a family of maps on lattice paths, called sweep maps, that assign levels to each step in the path and sort steps according to their level. Surprisingly, although sweep maps act by sorting, they appear to be bijective in general. The sweep maps give concise combinatorial formulas for the q,t-Catalan numbers, the higher q,t-Catalan numbers, the q,t-square numbers, and many more general polynomials connected to the nabla operator and rational Catalan combinatorics. We prove that many algorithms that have appeared in the literature (including maps studied by Andrews, Egge, Gorsky, Haglund, Hanusa, Jones, Killpatrick, Krattenthaler, Kremer, Orsina, Mazin, Papi, Vaille, and the present authors) are all special cases of the sweep maps or their inverses. The sweep maps provide a very simple unifying framework for understanding all of these algorithms. We explain how inversion of the sweep map (which is an open problem in general) can be solved in known special cases by finding a "bounce path" for the lattice paths under consideration. We also define a generalized sweep map acting on words over arbitrary alphabets with arbitrary weights, which is also conjectured to be bijective.Comment: 21 pages; full version of FPSAC 2014 extended abstrac

The Prospects of Institutional Transfer: A Within-Case Study of NATO Advisor Influence Across the Afghan Security Ministries and National Security Forces, 2009-2012

This dissertation is an in-depth case study of NATO advisors and their perceived influence in Afghanistan (2009-2012). It explores the two-part question, how do foreign security actors (ministerial advisors and security force trainers, advisors, and commanders) attempt to influence their host-nation partners and what are their perceptions of these approaches on changes in local capacity, values, and security governance norms? I argue that security sector reform (SSR) programs in fragile states lack an explicit theory of change that specifies how reform occurs. From this view, I theorize internationally led SSR as guided institutional transfer, grounded in rationalist and social constructivist explanations of convergence, diffusion, and socialization processes. Responding to calls for greater depth and emphasis on interactions and institutional change in SSR research, I examine NATO\u27s efforts in Afghanistan as an extreme case of SSR in which external-internal interactions were the highest. A stratified, purposive sample of 68 military and civilian elites (24 ministerial advisors, 27 embedded field advisors and commanders, and 17 experts and external observers) participated in a confidential, semi-structured interview. Content analysis of interviews and supporting documentation reveal that participants perceived modest impact on capacity development in both the Afghan security ministries and security forces; however, they perceived limited normative impact on both organizational and individual levels. Second, participants who used heavy-handed or transactional approaches rarely saw positive or enduring outcomes with their counterparts. Third, legitimacy-based approaches that elicited partner engagement were perceived as more effective than power-based approaches (e.g., demands, incentives), though the techniques participants favored (e.g., persuasion, guided discovery learning) varied by level and context. Fourth, in addition to Afghan political and cultural constraints, NATO\u27s campaign strategy, accelerated timeline, and high resource inflow created perverse incentives for some advisors and leaders to pressure or induce their counterparts in the spirit of progress. Finally, advisors with the unique ability to develop close relationships were more likely to promote capacity transfer and, elicit curiosity and dialogue on security governance norms (e.g., civilian control, ethical leadership)

Contracting for Reform: The Challenges of Procuring Security Training and Advisory Services in Fragile Environments

Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Progra

Solar park microclimate and vegetation management effects on grassland carbon cycling

Increasing energy demands and the drive towards low carbon (C) energy sources has prompted a rapid increase in ground-mounted solar parks across the world. This represents a significant global land use change with implications for the hosting ecosystems that are poorly understood. In order to investigate the effects of a typical solar park on the microclimate and ecosystem processes, we measured soil and air microclimate, vegetation and greenhouse gas emissions for twelve months under photovoltaic (PV) arrays, in gaps between PV arrays and in control areas at a UK solar park sited on species-rich grassland. Our results show that the PV arrays caused seasonal and diurnal variation in air and soil microclimate. Specifically, during the summer we observed cooling, of up to 5.2 °C, and drying under the PV arrays compared with gap and control areas. In contrast, during the winter gap areas were up to 1.7 °C cooler compared with under the PV arrays and control areas. Further, the diurnal variation in both temperature and humidity during the summer was reduced under the PV arrays. We found microclimate and vegetation management explained differences in the above ground plant biomass and species diversity, with both lower under the PV arrays. Photosynthesis and net ecosystem exchange in spring and winter were also lower under the PV arrays, explained by microclimate, soil and vegetation metrics. These data are a starting point to develop understanding of the effects of solar parks in other climates, and provide evidence to support the optimisation of solar park design and management to maximise the delivery of ecosystem services from this growing land use

Utilizing Observations and Ranks in Kernel Estimation

For univariate i.i.d. samples, analyses are usually performed on observations themselves, or on the ranks of the observations when they are ordered. This is true in both the parametric and non-parametric setting. However, observations and ranks can be utilized simultaneously. This work concentrates on developing methods that combine observations and ranks in kernel-based estimation methods. The standard kernel density estimator, transformation kernel density estimator, and the Nadaraya-Watson kernel regression estimator are modified using ranks. Excluding the modified transformation kernel density case, the asymptotic properties are investigated for the estimators. For all estimators, various bandwidth selection methods are explored. Simulation is used to compare the modified estimators to the standard estimators. It is demonstrated that when samples are taken from skewed distributions, the modified kernel density estimator outperforms the standard estimator. Additionally, the modified Nadaraya-Watson outperforms the standard estimator in a variety of cases. The modified transformation density estimator did not outperform the unmodified estimator.Statistic