A profile of New Hampshire\u27s foreign-born population

At the turn of the 20th century, New Hampshire had over 88,000 foreign-born persons, over 15,000 more than it has today. In 1900, the state\u27s concentration of foreign born (21 percent) was higher than the average percentage and more than three times the current percentage of 6 percent in the state. In 1900, New Hampshire ranked 15th of all states in percentage of the foreign-born population. As of 2008, New Hampshire ranks 26th out of the 50 states

Beyond the Tunnel Problem, Addressing Cross-Cutting Issues that Impact Vulnerable Youth

Across the country, mayors, commissioners, superintendents, governors, and state policymakers are innovating to address the needs of vulnerable youth. These efforts take many forms: restructuring high schools to improve graduation rates, creating developmentally appropriate interventions to reduce juvenile delinquency, and revamping child welfare practices to keep more youth safely in their homes are just a few of these strategies. Many initiatives, however, are plagued by "crosscutting problems" -- issues that cut across the different agencies that serve youth. Unless crosscutting issues are addressed proactively, they may undermine systemic reforms. This short paper is the first in a series of briefing papers designed to inform officials, practitioners, funders, advocates, scholars and the general public about crosscutting problems and possible solutions to these problems. This paper focuses primarily on the authors' experiences in New York City, though many of the crosscutting problems discussed are known to occur in many jurisdictions large and small. The series starts by presenting a typology of crosscutting issues. The next paper in this series will elaborate on a specific area -- namely, juvenile justice and education. Additional briefing papers will focus on local initiatives that tackle specific problems and more systemic attempts to solve crosscutting issues

Multivariate trend comparisons between autocorrelated climate series with general trend regressors

Inference regarding trends in climatic data series, including comparisons across different data sets as well as univariate trend significance tests, is complicated by the presence of serial correlation and step-changes in the mean. We review recent developments in the estimation of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation robust (HAC) covariance estimators as they have been applied to linear trend inference, with focus on the Vogelsang-Franses (2005) nonparametric approach, which provides a unified framework for trend covariance estimation robust to unknown forms of autocorrelation up to but not including unit roots, making it especially useful for climatic data applications. We extend the Vogelsang-Franses approach to allow general deterministic regressors including the case where a step-change in the mean occurs at a known date. Additional regressors change the critical values of the Vogelsang-Franses statistic. We derive an asymptotic approximation that can be used to simulate critical values. We also outline a simple bootstrap procedure that generates valid critical values and p-values. The motivation for extending the Vogelsang-Franses approach is an application that compares climate model generated and observational global temperature data in the tropical lower- and mid-troposphere from 1958 to 2010. Inclusion of a mean shift regressor to capture the Pacific Climate Shift of 1977 causes apparently significant observed trends to become statistically insignificant, and rejection of the equivalence between model generated and observed data trends occurs for much smaller significance levels (i.e. is more strongly rejected).Autocorrelation; trend estimation; HAC variance matrix; global warming; model comparisons

New England’s foreign-born population today

Since the 1600s, immigrants have been drawn to New England, and even now parts of the region would be losing population and economic vitality if not for the foreign-born population. UNH’s Carsey Institute analyzes the demographics.Immigrants - New England

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis study asks how government accountability reports are used to influence public education policy. Government accountability reports, called "audits" in Utah, prove to be useful tools for examining education policy. Using a collective case study design examining Utah's Class Size Reduction (CSR) policy, government accountability reports demonstrate that a systematic review of request, report, and result is an effective means for identifying policy narratives. These government accountability reports showed that over 10 years Utah's State Office of Education and local school districts repeatedly failed to comply with Utah Statutes requiring accounting for CSR appropriations. Repeated findings of data integrity and poor accounting did not lead to political action by state legislators. Despite repeated negative findings about CSR expenditures legislative appropriations were maintained even during two economic downturns. Evidence in this study suggests that these reports result from a breakdown in communication between agency officials and the Legislature. Government accountability reports do not appear to have any more influence on policy decision-making than other sources of policy information. However, these sources of information are financed with public dollars, and political actors' dissatisfaction with agency responses does not justify the cost of unused reports

Profile of New Hampshire's Foreign-born Population

New Hampshire, like the rest of the nation, is experiencing an increase in the numbers and diversity of its foreign-born population. The state's foreignborn population has experienced significant changes recently that are different from most other states. Highlights of the report * The percentage of the population that is foreign born in New Hampshire was above the national average in the first half of the 20th century and now it is significantly below the national average. * In the early 2000s -- from a relatively low base -- the state's percentage of foreignborn population has been increasing faster than all but six other states. * Immigrants to New Hampshire come from a wider range of places than is true elsewhere. * New Hampshire's foreign-born population has higher levels of educational attainment and income than the national average. * New Hampshire's foreign-born population is geographically concentrated in Hillsborough County and Manchester. * In the 1990s, New Hampshire had a lower foreign-born growth rate than the national average, but that is changing in the 21st century

A Nonparametric Efficiency Analysis of Bean Producers from North and South Kivu

The purpose of this research is to determine how technically efficient small-scale producers are in two provinces (North and South Kivu) in the Democratic of Republic (DR) of Congo at producing two different varieties of beans: bush and climbing beans. In addition to calculating the efficiency scores, this research attempts to identify what producer and field characteristics affect these scores. We hypothesize that bean producers will be more productive than producers in South Kivu and that climbing bean producers will be more productive than bush bean producers. Technical efficiency is estimated using a nonparametric approach. A tobit model is used to examine the effect of producer and field characteristic on the efficiency score. On average, farms were 66% technically efficient. North Kivu bean producers and climbing bean producers have, on average, a higher technical efficiency score than their counterparts. Implications from this research suggest that there is room for improvement in the technical efficiency scores for producers in DR of Congo. Based on the results, it may be more productive to continue focusing on improving the yield and nutritional content of climbing beans.Production Economics, Production Economics,

Performance and Stability of Large Planar Solid Oxide Fuel Cells Using Phosphine Contaminated Hydrogen Fuel

The objective of this work was to investigate how fuel utilization and method of fuel delivery for a large planar fuel cell with co-flow configuration will affect the degradation rate and mechanism of phosphine poisoning of a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Coal syngas, a potential fuel source for SOFCs, contains gas phase impurities such as PH3, which rapidly degrade Ni-based SOFC anodes. Researchers have shown significant reconstruction of Ni-anodes in button cell configurations with ~0.5 mV hr-1 degradation rates, but it is not evident that these rates will occur in actual stack applications. A singular planar stack repeat unit was constructed using a Haynes 242 interconnect manifold with a cobalt-oxide coating. The cell was operated at 800°C with 10 ppm PH3 in dry H2. Cell performance was evaluated over 500 hours by means of voltage-current measurements and impedance spectroscopy. PH3 was measured entering the fuel cell and then exiting the fuel cell in the exhaust. The post-run material analysis of the contaminated cell was conducted via x-ray diffraction (XRD), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning electron micrographs (SEM). In this work, there was no appreciable degradation attributable to PH3 poisoning of the anode. No reconstruction of the Ni-anode was observed. This result is in contrast to the many papers published on the subject, where anode-supported SOFC in a button cell configuration degraded rapidly. It is believed that the increased fuel utilization of the large planar cell compared to the published literature using button cells contributed to increased H2O generation which led to side reactions that prevented the phosphorus from interacting with the Ni-anode; platinum components may have catalyzed these reactions