Turning the Tide on Persistent Rural Poverty: Blueprint for a Path Forward

It is the goal of NeighborWorks America to make every place a community of opportunity. Unfortunately, some areas are being left behind more than others as our global and national economies continue to shift. Rural communities are among them. The people who have toiled in the coal mines of Kentucky and West Virginia, as well as in the paper and textile mills in Maine and western North Carolina, have not fared well in the changing economy. Likewise, the historically disenfranchised Native Americans in the Southwest, Latinos in the border colonias and the residents of the disaster-plagued Delta are struggling to survive. Our country needs to bring opportunity back to these regions and their people.Although rural America accounts for less than 20 percent of the country's overall population, 85 percent of persistent-poverty counties are outside of metro areas. Yet at the same time, there are so many examples of people and organizations doing good work; they just need support and the resources to go to scale. Special attention clearly is required, and that's why we formed the Rural Initiative

Serverless Computing: Current Trends and Open Problems

Serverless computing has emerged as a new compelling paradigm for the deployment of applications and services. It represents an evolution of cloud programming models, abstractions, and platforms, and is a testament to the maturity and wide adoption of cloud technologies. In this chapter, we survey existing serverless platforms from industry, academia, and open source projects, identify key characteristics and use cases, and describe technical challenges and open problems

Evaluation of Police and Fire Reform:Year 1 Summary Report

Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) became operational in 2013 following the passing of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act in 2012. In terms of policing, the Act brought together the eight regional Police forces, the Scottish Police Services Authority and the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency into two new national bodies: Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority. In relation to Fire and Rescue services, the Act established the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service , replacing the eight former Fire and Rescue services and the Scottish Fire Services College. Both sets of reforms are set within a context of decreasing budgets and involve making significant financial savings in relatively short timescales. Both Police Scotland and SFRS are also experiencing important shifts in demand for their services. The aims of this evaluation are to: (i) assess if the three aims of reform (reduced duplication, more equal access to specialist expertise and greater engagement with communities) have been met; (ii) learn the lessons from the implementation of this reform to inform the process of future public service reform; (iii) evaluate the wider impact of reform on the Justice and the wider public sector. The evaluation began in February 2015 and will conclude in February 2019. This first report focuses on findings emerging from the initial two stages of this work: (i) a review of publically available evidence up to the end of November 2015 and (ii) national key informant interviews. The latter were undertaken with a sample of senior representatives across policing and fire in Scotland and a range of national bodies outwith the two services, including other criminal justice sector agencies, local authorities and third sector organisations. This will be complemented with local geographical case study work in years two and four of the evaluation by engaging with local stakeholders including police officers, firefighters, elected members and community representatives. The purpose of the interviews was to focus on perceptions of the processes and experiences of reform in order to help understand 'how' and 'why' the aims of reform have (or have not) been met. The interviews have also highlighted possible lessons for future public service reform processes and the wider impacts of police and fire reform on the justice system and public sector more broadly. No claims can be made for the representativeness of the views articulated by the interviewees but they do give an important if partial perspective on reform. A sample of these interviewees will be revisited at a later stage in the evaluation to capture perceptions of change over time. This Executive Summary section gives an overview of the key themes which have emerged from this first year of work. These are elaborated upon in the main body of the report which captures in greater detail important differences and distinctions in the experiences of reform for the two services

Listen to Nice

In describing Humphrey Jennings’ wartime documentary propaganda film, 'Listen to Britain' (1942), a film with an overtly poetic sensibility and dominantly musical soundtrack, John Corner asserts that ‘through listening to Britain, we are enabled to properly look at it'. This idea of sound leading our attention to the images has underpinned much of the collaborative work between composer and sound designer, Geoffrey Cox, and documentary filmmaker, Keith Marley. It is in this context that the article will analyse an extract of A Film About Nice (Marley and Cox 2010), a contemporary re-imagining of Jean Vigo’s silent documentary, 'A propos de Nice' (1930). Reference will be made throughout to the historical context, and the filmic and theoretical influences that have informed the way music and creative sound design have been used to place emphasis on hearing a place, as much as seeing it

Prospect relativity: how choice options influence decision under risk.

In many theories of decision under risk (e.g., expected utility theory, rank-dependent utility theory, and prospect theory), the utility of a prospect is independent of other options in the choice set. The experiments presented here show a large effect of the available options, suggesting instead that prospects are valued relative to one another. The judged certainty equivalent for a prospect is strongly influenced by the options available. Similarly, the selection of a preferred prospect is strongly influenced by the prospects available. Alternative theories of decision under risk (e.g., the stochastic difference model, multialternative decision field theory, and range frequency theory), where prospects are valued relative to one another, can provide an account of these context effects

Fogler Library: Build a Brand that Gets You Hired

Fogler Library and Dr. Nick Mitchell from Clarivate Analytics present a series of discussions focused on scholarly communication, bibliometrics, publishing, and more for faculty and graduate students. The following topics are covered: Session #1 - Make it easy for a stranger to find your research publications Session #2 - What metrics do hiring and promotion committees use to gauge “scholarship quality”? Session #3 - Where and what should I publish to grow my research brand? About the Presenter Nick Mitchell, PhD. is a Solutions Consultant for Clarivate Analytics, the world’s foremost provider of research information and analytics. Prior to joining Clarivate in 2017, Nick held teaching and research appointments at Gettysburg College, St. Bonaventure University, and the National Institute on Aging.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/umaine_video/1023/thumbnail.jp

Biopolymer-based structuring of liquid oil into soft solids and oleogels using water-continuous emulsions as templates

Physical trapping of a hydrophobic liquid oil in a matrix of water-soluble biopolymers was achieved using a facile two-step process by first formulating a surfactant-free oil-in-water emulsion stabilized by biopolymers (a protein and a polysaccharide) followed by complete removal of the water phase (by either high- or low-temperature drying of the emulsion) resulting in structured solid systems containing a high concentration of liquid oil (above 97 wt %). The microstructure of these systems was revealed by confocal and cryo-scanning electron microscopy, and the effect of biopolymer concentrations on the consistency of emulsions as well as the dried product was evaluated using a combination of small-amplitude oscillatory shear rheometry and large deformation fracture studies. The oleogel prepared by shearing the dried product showed a high gel strength as well as a certain degree of thixotropic recovery even at high temperatures. Moreover, the reversibility of the process was demonstrated by shearing the dried product in the presence of water to obtain reconstituted emulsions with rheological properties comparable to those of the fresh emulsion