Seeking A Sustainable Journey to Work: Findings from the National Bridges to Work Demonstration

The Bridges to Work demonstration was designed to test whether efforts to help inner-city job seekers overcome barriers to accessing suburban jobs would result in better employment opportunities and earnings for these workers. This report examines outcomes for more than 1,800 applicants to Bridges to Work, half of whom were randomly selected to receive the programs transportation, job placement and supportive services for up to 18 months and half who were not offered these services. The researchers found that Bridges to Work did not positively impact participants employment and earnings, results that were consistent across cities and across various strategies for providing transportation services. Given the programs implementation challenges, costs and lack of results, the report concludes that the Bridges model is not a viable policy response to the mismatch between the location of jobs and the location of unemployed workers. However, the models lack of success does not diminish the importance of improving transportation options to increase workers access to employment, and the authors derive a number of important lessons from the demonstrations experience to inform future mobility efforts

Deconstructing Faith and A Disorienting Community

Life does not go as planned. It can be both brighter and more tragic than expected, and probably even both, all at once. I have felt deeply the moments my expectations were not met in my life. My faith is one of those things greatly affected by such brokenness and beauty in life. After years in ministry and years practicing my faith, I have found that the church is too often not a space to work through the disorientation that comes when one’s understanding of life conflicts with one’s actual experience of life. Instead of making room for this kind of struggle to be worked out, the church often offers clichéd resolutions and the pressure to ignore the doubt, questions, and in-between-ness that come with such disorientation. A friend of mine recently posted the following to Facebook: When I started having my doubts and questions, I didn’t really have anywhere to go with them. I tried bringing things up with my coworkers and friends, but it didn’t seem like anyone cared – or had any idea what to do about it. So, I became very isolated in many ways. That transitioned into a long, dark period of depression, to the point of having suicidal thoughts. When I finally walked away, I had no idea what to do next . . . 1 This is happening over and over again for so many people. So, I have set out to study ways to integrate deconstruction philosophies into the Christian faith in the context of the community life. I am asking, how can a community of faith make space for also losing a version of faith, space to go through disorientation, and not be threatened by doubts, questions, and struggles, but offer a way toward greater hope, an increased fidelity to Christ, and a deeper bond within community? I am finding in my own 1 Rob Davis’ Facebook page, accessed May 26, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/robdavisisme/posts/1453503741616030. Used by permission. x community experience that building in language and practices of deconstruction actually brings a renewed life to faith. In ritualizing the loss of faith, being present with others in their disorientation, and embracing mystery, a more fluid foundation emerges to reconstruct a more evolving faith. Deconstruction can become an integrated part of faith and community life in order to provide a space to process worldview shifts. Expanding the language of faith to include liminal space, or in-between-ness, allows for a more robust language, increased self-reflection, and a healthier lens for life. A disorienting community is one that walks with others with the presence and grace needed to face and function within a life that does not go as planned

Intra-trackway morphological variations due to substrate consistency: the El Frontal dinosaur tracksite (Lower Cretaceous, Spain).

An ichnological and sedimentological study of the El Frontal dinosaur tracksite (Early Cretaceous, Cameros basin, Soria, Spain) highlights the pronounced intra-trackway variation found in track morphologies of four theropod trackways. Photogrammetric 3D digital models revealed various and distinct intra-trackway morphotypes, which reflect changes in footprint parameters such as the pace length, the track length, depth, and height of displacement rims. Sedimentological analyses suggest that the original substrate was non-homogenous due to lateral changes in adjoining microfacies. Multidata analyses indicate that morphological differences in these deep and shallow tracks represent a part of a continuum of track morphologies and geometries produced by a gradient of substrate consistencies across the site. This implies that the large range of track morphologies at this site resulted from similar trackmakers crossing variable facies. The trackways at the El Frontal site present an exemplary case of how track morphology, and consequently potential ichnotaxa, can vary, even when produced by a single trackmaker

Universal Preschool: Much to Gain but Who Will Pay?

This paper explores ways to finance a preschool program that would be universally available to all 4-year-olds in the country. Experts say that 4-year-olds have much to gain from a stimulating and nurturing preschool experience, and mounting evidence suggests that these benefits accrue to society on a much larger scale as well

Looking Back, by Elizabeth Scott Scrivner Dickson

The personal narrative of Elizabeth Scott Scrivner Dickson of Paris. Includes family stories from the Paris Fire of 1916

The Devil May Be in the Details: How the Characteristics of SCHIP Programs Affect Take-Up

The paper explores whether the specific design of a states Childrens Health Insurance Program has contributed to its success in meeting two objectivesnamely, whether the program has been successful in reducing the proportion of the targeted population that is uninsured and whether this has been accomplished without a significant reduction in private coverage

Program Evaluation of Milwaukee's Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic

For PA 869: Workshop in Policy Analysis, Domestic Issue

XD Metrics on Demand Value Analytics: Visualizing the Impact of Internal Information Technology Investments on External Funding, Publications, and Collaboration Networks

Many universities invest substantial resources in the design, deployment, and maintenance of campus-based cyberinfrastructure (CI). To justify the expense, it is important that university administrators and others understand and communicate the value of these internal investments in terms of scholarly impact. This paper introduces two visualizations and their usage in the Value Analytics (VA) module for Open XD metrics on demand (XDMoD), which enable analysis of external grant funding income, scholarly publications, and collaboration networks. The VA module was developed by Indiana University’s (IU) Research Technologies division, Pervasive Technology Institute, and the CI for Network Science Center (CNS), in conjunction with the University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research. It provides diverse visualizations of measures of information technology (IT) usage, external funding, and publications in support of IT strategic decision-making. This paper details the data, analysis workflows, and visual mappings used in two VA visualizations that aim to communicate the value of different IT usage in terms of NSF and NIH funding, resulting publications, and associated research collaborations. To illustrate the feasibility of measuring IT values on research, we measured its financial and academic impact from the period between 2012 and 2017 for IU. The financial return on investment (ROI) is measured in terms of IU funding, totaling $339,013,365 for 885 NIH and NSF projects associated with IT usage, and the academic ROI constitutes 968 publications associated with 83 of these NSF and NIH awards. In addition, the results show that Medical Specialties, Brain Research, and Infectious Diseases are the top three scientific disciplines ranked by the number of publications during the given time period