Leveling the Path to Participation: Volunteering and Civic Engagement Among Youth From Disadvantaged Circumstances

This report is the third in the Youth Helping America Series, a series of reports based on data from the 2005 Youth Volunteering and Civic Engagement Survey, a national survey of 3,178 American youth between the ages of 12 and 18. The survey was conducted by the Corporation for National and Community Service in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau and the nonprofit coalition Independent Sector. The survey collected information on teen volunteering habits, experiences with school-based service-learning, and other forms of civic engagement. This report explores the attitudes and behaviors of youth from disadvantaged circumstances toward volunteering and other forms of civic engagement

Community Service and Service-learning in America's Schools

"In the spring of 2008, 1,847 principals of K-12 public schools, nationwide, responded to a survey on the prevalence of community service and service-learning in their schools. The National Study of the Prevalence of Community Service and Service-Learning in K-12 Public Schools, sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service and conducted by Westat, collected data on the scope of community service and service-learning activities, as well as the policies and supports for service-learning provided by and for schools during the 2007-08 academic year.

Panchromatic imaging and spectroscopic observations of the mass ejections of RY Scuti

We describe recent panchromatic imaging and spectroscopic studies of the supergiant, mass-transferring, binary star RY Scuti, which is in a brief transitional phase to become a Wolf-Rayet star and a stripped-envelope supernova.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of "Physics of Evolved Stars 2015 - A conference dedicated to the memory of Olivier Chesneau

The Health Benefits of Volunteering: A Review of Recent Research

Over the past two decades we have seen a growing body of research that indicates volunteering provides individual health benefits in addition to social benefits. This research has established a strong relationship between volunteering and health: those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer. Comparisons of the health benefits of volunteering for different age groups have also shown that older volunteers are the most likely to receive greater benefits from volunteering, whether because they are more likely to face higher incidence of illness or because volunteering provides them with physical and social activity and a sense of purpose at a time when their social roles are changing. Some of these findings also indicate that volunteers who devote a "considerable" amount of time to volunteer activities (about 100 hours per year) are most likely to exhibit positive health outcomes

The Estimation of Prewar GNP: Methodology and New Evidence

The paper develops new methodology for the estimation of prewar GNP, taps previously unused data sources, and develops new estimates for the periods 1869-08 and 1869-28. Primary among the new data sources are direct measures of output in the transportation, communications, and construction sectors, and estimates of the consumer price index. New measures of real GNP, nominal GNP, and the GNP deflator are developed. The new estimates of real GNP are as volatile on average over the business cycle as the traditional Kuznets-Kendrick aeries but dampen the amplitude of some cycles while raising the amplitude of others. The new estimates of the GNP deflator are distinctly less volatile than the traditional series and in fact no more volatile than in the postwar period.

The Estimation of Prewar GNP Volatility, 1869-1938

New evidence is provided to assess the recent controversy regarding the volatility of real economic activity before 1929 relative to the period since World War II. Some recent work claims that the longstanding stylized fact of greater prewar volatility is "spurious". In contrast, this paper reconfirms the greater amplitude of business fluctuations prior to the Great Depression. The basic technique is the regression method, which estimates equations for real GNP during 1909-38, with one or more explanatory variables for components of GNP, and then uses the estimated coefficients to "backcast" real GNP or the period 1869-1908. The paper contains an extensive examination of the sensitivity of these regression indexes to alternative dependent variables, sample periods, detrending methods, and the inclusion of alternative explanatory variables. Particular attention is paid to the conflicting evidence regarding the amplitude of cycles in construction activity between 1870 and 1890. The resulting prewar/postwar volatility ratios, for 1869-1928 as compared to 1950-1980, range from 1.43 to 2.16. The paper concludes by suggesting that this range of volatility ratios is more likely to understate than overstate the prewar/postwar volatility ratio.

ILR Impact Brief - Deconstructing Absenteeism: Satisfaction, Commitment, and Unemployment

[Excerpt] Group attitudes about satisfaction and commitment are negatively associated with absenteeism and interact in predicting absenteeism at the unit level. The effects are particularly strong in areas where jobs are plentiful but fade away where jobs are scarce. In other words, higher levels of absenteeism in a work group are associated with lower levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in labor markets with low unemployment, and vice versa. Organizational commitment is the crucial factor: absenteeism is higher in work units with low levels of commitment regardless of the level of satisfaction. Group norms about absenteeism and other contextual factors, such as work processes, contribute to the variance among work units. Satisfaction and commitment are not related to changes in absenteeism over time

An Analytical Study of Ozone Feedbacks on Kelvin and Rossby–Gravity Waves: Effects on the QBO

An equatorial beta-plane model of the middle atmosphere is used to analytically examine the effects of radiative cooling and ozone heating on the spatial and temporal evolution of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). Under the assumption that the diabatic heating is weak and the background fields of wind, temperature, and ozone are slowly varying, a perturbation analysis yields expressions describing the vertical spatial modulation of Kelvin and Rossby–gravity waves in the presence of ozone. These expressions show that wave-induced changes in the diabatic heating arising from the advection of basic-state ozone reduce the local radiative damping rate by up to 15% below 35 km. In a one-dimensional model of the QBO, eddy ozone heating increases the amplitude of the zonal wind QBO by 1–2 m s−1 and increases the oscillation period by about two months. The significance of these results to the observed QBO is discussed