Measuring The Capabilities Infrastructure: A County-Level Index Of Nonprofit And Private Sector Organizational And Physical Community Capital

Across the United States, citizens’ communities provide vastly different access to critical resources that can improve their personal, familial, and collective well-being. Yet, little is known about the organization of the physical and organizational resource infrastructure of these communities, limiting the ability of policymakers, researchers, and citizens to address uneven development, inequality, and poverty. Drawing on 2015 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) data, this research study creates a tool for measuring the nonprofit and private organizational and physical resource environment of communities at the county-level by aggregating establishment counts for 20 indicators into six standardized thematic dimensions to create the “nonprofit and private sector organizational and physical capital establishments” index (NPOPCE). Along with individual scores for six dimensions, an overall standardized score was created for each county. This project finds that this index corresponds with general rankings of well-being and provides a more nuanced analytic tool for county analysis of organizational and physical capital. The analytical application of each of these indices, the six individual and single overall, were tested by conducting Spearman’s Rho correlation tests with four comoutcome-based measures of poverty from the American Community Survey 2016 five-year estimates. As a whole, the indices show a strong general relationship with the poverty measures, indicating the overall index’s usefulness as a supplement to future multivariate poverty analysis

Planning for a Managed Retreat: Moving in a New Direction

Climate change is altering the United States’ coastline in both subtle and extreme ways. The threat is especially pressing in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which is experiencing sea levels rising faster than the global average. As global sea level rise continues to increase, coastal communities across the country must make difficult decisions about their futures. Instead of waging an endless war with the tide, one option for them to consider is the process of managed retreat, which provides a long-term solution by relocating communities away from vulnerable areas. Low to moderate income communities face a variety of additional social and equitable concerns related to managed retreat and other efforts to adapt to climate change. This paper summarizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Flood Insurance Program, as well as current buyout programs at the federal and state level. Next is focuses on several managed retreat and relocation case studies with an eye toward guiding low- to moderate-income communities faced with preparing for managed retreat. After analyzing these case studies, this paper proposes how these lessons can be applied to the process of managed retreat for coastal Virginia, and particularly low and moderate income communities. This abstract has been taken from the authors\u27 introduction

The Entrepreneurship Center at the Mississippi Development Authority: An Assessment of the State’s Small Business Engine

The importance of a strong entrepreneurial environment for overall economic development is well established. Mississippi, this Mississippi Development Authority’s Entrepreneur Center is the state’s leading authority on small business development. However, there has been little to no analysis of the effectiveness and efficiency of the Entrepreneur Center. Two surveys were conducted. The Mississippi Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Survey (MEES) was administered by the University of Mississippi’s McLean Institute for Public Service and Community Engagement last fall to a population of 4214 business and community leaders with a responsive sample of n= 573. This survey is used to contextualize the business ecosystem of the state. A second Qualtrics surveyed the more than 2,000 individuals in the Entrepreneur Center’s contact list with responsive sample of 209. This data aims to assess the usefulness of the current services that the Center provides and provide guidance for future efforts. Preliminary results indicate that small businesses are most assisted by the personal consulting services and online webinars of the Center. Despite their general approval of the program, three major concerns arise. Firstly, because the Center is in Jackson, and satellite offices have been shuttered in the last year, many citizens reported that travel distance restricted their access to resources. In connection to this concern, respondents thought that the small staff of the Entrepreneur Center often left the entity overextended. Finally, the overlap between the numerous programs that help small businesses (SBA, SBDCs, Mississippi Mainstreet, DRA, various university resources) created an environment where identifying and securing the necessary resources is arduous. Provisional conclusions call for a consolidation of the various state and federal resources through a central “entrepreneurial hub” that allows busy entrepreneurs access to the myriad of assistance already available

Affect's Effects: Considering Art-activism and the 2001 Crisis in Argentina

Anxious of straying too far from traditional rational actor models and an assiduous positivism, social movement scholars have displayed a persistent tendency to overlook the specificities of visual tools and aesthetic experience in claim-making and political protest. Often, as a direct consequence, the possibilities for mobilization and the matrices within which action takes place are described and understood in ways that are oversimplified, even distorted. Notably, small steps have been taken to overcome these distortions by building in a theory of affect that reserves a crucial space for the extra-discursive in the study of contentious politics. Extending some of these insights, this article reveals how an affect-informed approach can be particularly illuminating in studies of art-activism. It takes stencil protests from the aftermath of the 2001 crisis in Argentina as a case in point, discussing affects and their effects on porteño street artists. In so doing, it strengthens the case for greater incorporation of affect as a tool for understanding in literatures that deal with questions of framing, art-activism and the possibilities for social change

Memory and Spin Injection Devices Involving Half Metals

We suggest memory and spin injection devices fabricated with half-metallic materials and based on the anomalous Hall effect. Schematic diagrams of the memory chips, in thin film and bulk crystal form, are presented. Spin injection devices made in thin film form are also suggested. These devices do not need any external magnetic field but make use of their own magnetization. Only a gate voltage is needed. The carriers are 100% spin polarized. Memory devices may potentially be smaller, faster, and less volatile than existing ones, and the injection devices may be much smaller and more efficient than existing spin injection devices

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