View from the Street: Partnerships and Collaboration

Richard Simonds and Josh Reynolds are social workers in Houston. Richard is the Director of THRIVE Connection at Family Houston. Josh is the Director of United Way Care for Elders, an initiative of United Way of Greater Houston that is a collaborative of aging service providers. One avenue of our collaboration has been a program called Financial Coaching at Family Services of Greater Houston. In aggregate we have run the program since 2007 – Josh from 2007 until the end of 2010, and Richard since that time. Financial Coaching and the more traditional Financial Education have been a part of a suite of economic programs at Family Houston, which has included a car loan program for working parents with poor credit, a (healthy) alternative to a payday loan product, and employment services. Financial Coaching and Education are also part of a larger community collaborative, United Way THRIVE, which is a coalition of 20 organizations focused on family financial stability in everything from job training to a full-service credit union and tax preparation services. Financial Coaching is financial education personalized and stretched out over six months to a year or longer. It is a best practice program that helps clients set a budget, reduce debt, save for their goals, and accomplish amazing things like home ownership or launching a small business. Also, because every decision and every relationship in life can have a financial component, Financial Coaching has the potential to touch on aspects of counseling, case management, family reunification, and many other elements of family function/dysfunction. It is one of the most comprehensive and impactful programs either one of us has come across in over 17 years of management

SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL WATER ALLOCATION IN THE KISSIMMEE RIVER BASIN

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Psychogeography and its relevance to inclusive teaching and learning development: why it matters where students choose to sit

This paper is based on my own experiences of classroom psychogeography, as experienced through working with a group of around 50 Masters students at Central Saint Martins over a period of more than ten years. Much has been written and published about the design of learning spaces − as well as the dynamics of group work − but relatively little has been published about the psychogeography of learning, especially at the Higher Education level. Space is never neutral. It separates − or it includes. It can be used to reinforce or challenge power-based relationships. Students express their feelings about learning by their mode of occupation of learning spaces, but these choices can also influence peer dynamics and students’ subsequent levels of engagement. I began my research as a passive observer, by noticing how certain student interactions tended to take place in certain parts of a classroom, irrespective of the individuals involved. I subsequently devised various interventions in classroom psychogeography, designed to facilitate the most effective mixing of students in group work. The outcomes of these interventions were recorded through questionnaires given to my students after participating in various classroom interventions, as well as through granular evidence, assembled though both formal and informal interviews. My conclusions reflect on my attempts to intervene in the spatial dynamics of learning, in order to facilitate a more inclusive psychogeograph

A frequency weighting for the evaluation of steering wheel rotational vibration

The human perception of rotational hand-arm vibration has been investigated by means of a test rig consisting of a rigid frame, an electrodynamic shaker unit, a rigid steering wheel, a shaft assembly, bearings and an automobile seat. Fifteen subjects were tested while seated in a driving posture. Four equal sensation tests and one annoyance threshold test were performed using sinusoidal excitation at 18 frequencies in the range from 3 to 315 Hz. In order to guarantee the generality of the equal sensation data the four tests were defined to permit checks of the possible influence of three factors: reference signal amplitude, psychophysical test procedure and temporary threshold shift (TTSv) caused by the test exposure. All equal sens ation tests used a reference sinusoid of 63 Hz at either 1.0 or 1.5 m/s2 r.m.s. in amplitude. The four equal sensation curves were similar in shape and suggested a decrease in human sensitivity to hand-arm rotational vibration with increasing frequency. The slopes of the equal sensation curves changed at transition points of approximately 6.3 and 63 Hz. A frequency weighting, called Ws, was developed for the purpose of evaluating steering wheel rotational vibration. The proposed Ws has a slope of 0 dB per octave over the frequency range from 3 to 6.3 Hz, a slope of -6 dB per octave from 6.3 to 50 Hz, a slope of 0 dB per octave from 50 to 160 Hz and a slope of -10 dB per octave from 160 to 315 Hz. Ws provides a possible alternative to the existing Wh frequency weighting defined in International Standards Organisation 5349-1 (2001) and British Standards Institution 6842 (1987)

Amos Alonza Stagg in wood

I should like to make an attempt to get at that spiritual essence possessed by Mr. Stagg. We all have our own particular qualities in this respect, but Mr. Stagg is truly one of our great men today, and to discover what lies behind his greatness is to make the problem of registering his strength that much clearer. Mr. Stagg stands for something conceded to be great force in American athletics. His code of living, playing, and fighting, and his lifetime spent in guiding young men according to his standards for these activities, have stamped him as a veritable monument in the eyes of our youth. There is strength in the name Stagg, strength in the man, and in the eyes that watch so keenly as boys continue to pass under his tutelage. This strength is moral, a kind of pillar lacking in the structure of many so-called successful men who grew into power during Mr. Stagg\u27s years. He has never compromised his position when opportunities for doing so were plentiful. I should like to make one further point. This is in relation to the material. The medium used is Jarrah wood. It is hard enough to suggest strength, red enough to imply warmth, and yet soft enough to be in sympathy with the generosity of the man portrayed. Stone is cold. It would be more suitable to a portraiture of a Rockefeller, certainly not a Stagg. Wood is a material that comes from a growing life-form, rooted in the ground. It takes its strength gradually as the years roll by. What better choice of medium could be made? At this point the reader may or may not agree with me when I say that the diverse pattern of mental gymnastics undergone by the artist demands more understanding than the observer of his work can fathom. Aside from the psychological and philosophical relationships there are the technical aspects of the creative effort. These latter consideration will be found in the text of the paper. Mr. Amos Alonzo Stagg was the model chosen for the sculpture. The choice was prompted by Dr. Tully C. Knoes who was to have been the subject for the study. Dr Knoles preferred that his close friend and fellow worker, Mr. Stagg, be selected. At this point it became necessary to develop the preliminary sketches for the purpose of deciding upon a composition suitable to the dimensions of the wood