Child Poverty in Rural America

This report explores the well-being of the 14 million children who live in rural America. Rural families represent a significant share of our total population and they are disproportionately poor, less educated, and underemployed. Yet poor children and the unique challenges they face are often overlooked by policymakers. Poor children living in rural America face significant educational, social, and economic challenges just as their urban counterparts do, but many of these problems are exacerbated by the isolation and limited access to support services common in rural areas

Sampling design for compliance monitoring of surface water quality: A case study in a Polder area

International agreements such as the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) ask for efficient sampling methods for monitoring natural resources. In this paper a general methodology for designing efficient, statistically sound monitoring schemes is described. An important decision is the choice between a design-based and a model-based method, implying the choice between probability (random) sampling and purposive sampling. For mapping purposes, model-based methods are more appropriate, whereas to obtain valid results for the universe as a whole, such as in testing water quality standards against legal standards, we generally prefer a design-based method. Four basic sampling patterns in space-time universe are described: static, synchronous, static-synchronous, and rotational. A case study is carried out for monitoring the quality of surface water at two farms in western Netherlands, wherein a synchronous sampling design is applied, with stratified simple random sampling in both space and time. To reduce laboratory costs the aliquots taken at the locations of a given sampling round are bulked to form a composite. To test the spatiotemporal mean N-total concentration during the summer half-year against the MAR standard with a power of 80% at a concentration 15% below the MAR standard and with a confidence of 95%, six to nine sampling rounds are needed with 50 to 75 locations per sampling round. For P-total the required number of sampling rounds differs strongly between the two farms, but is for both farms much larger than for N-total

Peak wind speed anemometers /maxometer/ Final report, 26 Mar. 1969 - 25 May 1970

Fabrication and testing of peak wind speed recording devic

Using Intelligent Agents to Manage Business Processes

This paper describes work undertaken in the ADEPT (Advanced Decision Environment for Process Tasks) project towards developing an agent-based infrastructure for managing business processes. We describe how the key technology of negotiating, service providing, autonomous agents was realised and demonstrate how this was applied to the BT business process of providing a customer quote for network services

Existence of nodal solutions for Dirac equations with singular nonlinearities

We prove, by a shooting method, the existence of infinitely many solutions of the form $\psi(x^0,x) = e^{-i\Omega x^0}\chi(x)$ of the nonlinear Dirac equation {equation*} i\underset{\mu=0}{\overset{3}{\sum}} \gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \psi- m\psi - F(\bar{\psi}\psi)\psi = 0 {equation*} where $\Omega>m>0,$ $\chi$ is compactly supported and \[F(x) = \{{array}{ll} p|x|^{p-1} & \text{if} |x|>0 0 & \text{if} x=0 {array}.] with $p\in(0,1),$ under some restrictions on the parameters $p$ and $\Omega.$ We study also the behavior of the solutions as $p$ tends to zero to establish the link between these equations and the M.I.T. bag model ones