But Where Will the Money Come From? Experts\u27 Views on Revenue Options to Implement Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York

In 2003, the New York State Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York, upheld a trial court decision that funding for public education in New York City was unconstitutional and decreed that the state needed to increase operating aid to school districts by $5.6 billion per year (Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v. State of New York 2003)

Improved Data Migration and Processing for Projecting the Financial Aid Budget

Last fall, I again resumed work on the budget projection model that encompassed five spreadsheets. Four of these sheets generated a set of statistical averages for each class. Each one consisted of 101 columns containing data for the four-to five-hundred students(rows) in each class. In addition, a fifth sheet used these averages to generate a highly accurate prediction for expenditures in the upcoming year. However, there were two main areas of improvement that became readily apparent: importing data and the sheets themselves

Gender Bias: An Analysis of the Distribution of Institutional Aid

This study is based on the premise that equity in the distribution of institutional student aid is related to a student\u27s academic ability and need. Thus, to establish evidence of gender bias, this study examined the influence of gender on students\u27 institutional aid awards while controlling for these two factors, as well as other related student and institutional characteristics. This study found no direct evidence of gender bias when examining the relationship between student characteristics and institutional aid. However, when examining institutional characteristics, indirect implications suggested that gender was related to the relationship between academic ability as measured by SAT/ ACT and institutional aid

Dew-worms in white nights: High-latitude light constrains earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris) behaviour at the soil surface

Soil is an effective barrier to light penetration that limits the direct influence of light on belowground organisms. Variation in aboveground light conditions, however, is important to soil-dwelling animals that are periodically active on the soil surface. A prime example is the earthworm Lumbricus terrestris L. (the dew-worm), an ecosystem engineer that emerges nocturnally on the soil surface. In the summer, the northernmost populations of L. terrestris are exposed to a time interval with no daily dark period. During a two-week period preceding the summer solstice, we studied the constraints that boreal night illumination imposes on L. terrestris surface activity by comparing their behaviour under ambient light with artificially-induced darkness. Looking for evidence of geographical divergence in light response, we compared the behaviour of native L. terrestris (Jokioinen, S–W Finland; 60°48′N) with two markedly more southern populations, from Preston (Lancashire, UK; 53°47′N) and Coshocton (Ohio, USA; 40°22′N) where the nights have a period of darkness throughout the year (total latitudinal range ca. 2300 km). Under ambient light conditions, L. terrestris emergence on the soil surface was diminished by half compared with the darkened treatment and it peaked at the darkest period of the night. Also mating rate decreased considerably under ambient light. The native dew-worms were generally the most active under ambient light. They emerged earlier in the evening and ceased their activity later in the morning than dew-worms from the two more southerly populations. The differences in behaviour were, however, significant mainly between native and UK dew-worms. In the darkened treatment, the behaviour of the three earthworm origins did not differ. Under the experimental conditions light condition was the dominant environmental factor controlling surface activity, but elevated night-time air temperature and humidity also encouraged dew-worm emergence without discernible differences among geographical origins. Our results show, that in boreal summer, the high level of night illumination strongly limits soil-surface activity of dew-worms. Considering the important regulatory role of L. terrestris in many ecosystem processes, this can have significant corollaries in dew-worm impacts on the environment. Although evidence for geographical differentiation in behaviour was obtained, the results point to phenotypic flexibility in L. terrestris light response

Current Knowledge and Considerations Regarding Survey Refusals: Executive Summary of the AAPOR Task Force Report on Survey Refusals

The landscape of survey research has arguably changed more significantly in the past decade than at any other time in its relatively brief history. In that short time, landline telephone ownership has dropped from some 98 percent of all households to less than 60 percent; cell-phone interviewing went from a novelty to a mainstay; address-based designs quickly became an accepted method of sampling the general population; and surveys via Internet panels became ubiquitous in many sectors of social and market research, even as they continue to raise concerns given their lack of random selection. Among these widespread changes, it is perhaps not surprising that the substantial increase in refusal rates has received comparatively little attention. As we will detail, it was not uncommon for a study conducted 20 years ago to have encountered one refusal for every one or two completed interviews, while today experiencing three or more refusals for every one completed interview is commonplace. This trend has led to several concerns that motivate this Task Force. As refusal rates have increased, refusal bias (as a component of nonresponse bias) is an increased threat to the validity of survey results. Of practical concern are the efficacy and cost implications of enhanced efforts to avert initial refusals and convert refusals that do occur. Finally, though no less significant, are the ethical concerns raised by the possibility that efforts to minimize refusals can be perceived as coercive or harassing potential respondents. Indeed, perhaps the most important goal of this document is to foster greater consideration by the reader of the rights of respondents in survey research

From Gabii And Gordion To Eretria And Methone: The Rise Of The Greek Alphabet

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111984/1/bics12000.pd

The evolving normative dimensions of “riot”: toward an elaborated social identity explanation

The question of how normative form changes during a riot, and thus how collective behaviour spreads to different targets and locations, has been neglected in previous research, despite its theoretical and practical importance. We begin to address this limitation through a detailed analysis of the rioting in the London borough of Haringey in 2011. A triangulated analysis of multiple sources of data (including police reports, media accounts, and videos) finds a pattern of behaviour shifting from collective attacks on police targets to looting. A thematic analysis of 41 interview accounts with participants gathered shortly after the events suggests that a shared anti-police identity allowed local postcode rivalries to be overcome, forming the basis of empowered action not only against the police but to address more long-standing grievances and desires. It is argued that collective psychological empowerment operated in a “positive feedback loop”, whereby one form of collective self-objectification (and perceived inability of police to respond) formed the basis of further action. This analysis of the development of new targets in an empowered crowd both confirms and extends the elaborated social identity model as an explanation for conflictual intergroup dynamics

Bone Marrow Cells in Murine Colitis: Multi-Signal Analysis Confirms Pericryptal Myofibroblast Engraftment without Epithelial Involvement

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credite

The perceived impact of location privacy: A web-based survey of public health perspectives and requirements in the UK and Canada

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The "place-consciousness" of public health professionals is on the rise as spatial analyses and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are rapidly becoming key components of their toolbox. However, "place" is most useful at its most precise, granular scale – which increases identification risks, thereby clashing with privacy issues. This paper describes the views and requirements of public health professionals in Canada and the UK on privacy issues and spatial data, as collected through a web-based survey.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Perceptions on the impact of privacy were collected through a web-based survey administered between November 2006 and January 2007. The survey targeted government, non-government and academic GIS labs and research groups involved in public health, as well as public health units (Canada), ministries, and observatories (UK). Potential participants were invited to participate through personally addressed, standardised emails.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 112 invitees in Canada and 75 in the UK, 66 and 28 participated in the survey, respectively. The completion proportion for Canada was 91%, and 86% for the UK. No response differences were observed between the two countries. Ninety three percent of participants indicated a requirement for personally identifiable data (PID) in their public health activities, including geographic information. Privacy was identified as an obstacle to public health practice by 71% of respondents. The overall self-rated median score for knowledge of privacy legislation and policies was 7 out of 10. Those who rated their knowledge of privacy as high (at the median or above) also rated it significantly more severe as an obstacle to research (<it>P </it>< 0.001). The most critical cause cited by participants in both countries was bureaucracy.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The clash between PID requirements – including granular geography – and limitations imposed by privacy and its associated bureaucracy require immediate attention and solutions, particularly given the increasing utilisation of GIS in public health. Solutions include harmonization of privacy legislation with public health requirements, bureaucratic simplification, increased multidisciplinary discourse, education, and development of toolsets, algorithms and guidelines for using and reporting on disaggregate data.</p

Causes of decoupling between larval supply and settlement and consequences for understanding recruitment and population connectivity

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 392 (2010): 9-21, doi:10.1016/j.jembe.2010.04.008.Marine broadcast spawners have two-phase life cycles, with pelagic larvae and benthic adults. Larval supply and settlement link these two phases and are crucial for the persistence of marine populations. Mainly due to the complexity in sampling larval supply accurately, many researchers use settlement as a proxy for larval supply. Larval supply is a constraining variable for settlement because, without larval supply, there is no settlement. Larval supply and settlement may not be well correlated, however, and settlement may not consistently estimate larval supply. This paper explores the argument that larval supply (i.e., larval abundance near settlement sites) may not relate linearly to settlement. We review the relationship between larval supply and settlement, from estimates and biases in larval supply sampling, to non-behavioral and behavioral components, including small-scale hydrodynamics, competency, gregarious behavior, intensification of settlement, lunar periodicity, predation and cannibalism. Physical and structural processes coupled with behavior, such as small-scale hydrodynamics and intensification of settlement, sometimes result in under- or overestimation of larval supply, where it is predicted from a linear relationship with settlement. Although settlement is a function of larval supply, spatial and temporal processes interact with larval behavior to distort the relationship between larval supply and settlement, and when these distortions act consistently in time and space, they cause biased estimates of larval supply from settlement data. Most of the examples discussed here suggest that behavior is the main source of the decoupling between larval supply and settlement because larval behavior affects the vertical distribution of larvae, the response of larvae to hydrodynamics, intensification of settlement, gregariousness, predation and cannibalism. Thus, larval behavior seems to limit broad generalizations on the regulation of settlement by larval supply. Knowledge of the relationship is further hindered by the lack of a well founded theoretical relationship between the two variables. The larval supply- settlement transition may have strong general consequences for population connectivity, since larval supply is a result of larval transport, and settlement constrains recruitment. Thus, measuring larval supply and settlement effectively allows more accurate quantification and understanding of larval transport, recruitment and population connectivity.JP would like to thank WHOI Ocean Life Institute for partial funding. FP’s contribution is based upon research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation