Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball

The relationship between Jews and black baseball in Jim Brow America. Dr. Rebecca T. Alpert, Associate Professor of Religion and Women\u27s Studies, Temple University.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/bennettcenter-posters/1303/thumbnail.jp

Automation Techniques for Intelligent Environments - Prediction of Building Activity Patterns Using a Cyclic Genetic Algorithm

This work involves learning the use schedule of an academic building in order to intelligently control various aspects of the environment. Motion sensors are used to monitor and record the activity of each of the rooms in the building. After a basic preprocessing of the data, a Cyclic Genetic Algorithm (CGA) is used to pick out the patterns of use of the rooms. The CGA is seen as ideal for such a problem because of its ability to find repetitive cyclic patterns in the data. Our results show that a CGA has the ability to pick out such patterns and construct a schedule of use for a room

Employee Benefits and Labor Markets in Canada and the United States

Alpert and Woodbury present a comprehensive set of explorations into the impacts that the provision of various types of employee benefits (or lack thereof) have on labor markets. And while there are, as the editors point out, substantial differences between the employee benefits systems of Canada and the U.S., these differences showcase the impacts of specific policies related to employee benefits on labor markets.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1187/thumbnail.jp

The Hurricane : March-Two Step

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-ps/2347/thumbnail.jp

Determinants of Knowledge about Social Security: A Study of Nonremarried Widows Caring for Children

Social security beneficiaries and the general public alike are concerned about the financial solvency of the social security program. But how much do they know about how the system works? This study analyzes the determinants of knowledge about social security among nonremarried widows having children under their care. It builds a research model based on the economic theory of rational decision making. Using ordinary least squares regression estimation techniques, the level of knowledge about specific social security provisions is regressed on family income, implicit tax rate, number of children, human capital variables, and other demographic and locational variables. The findings support the economic theory applied to this study. Widows who gain more by knowing social security provisions indeed know more about them than those who gain less

Grid-Obstacle Representations with Connections to Staircase Guarding

In this paper, we study grid-obstacle representations of graphs where we assign grid-points to vertices and define obstacles such that an edge exists if and only if an $xy$-monotone grid path connects the two endpoints without hitting an obstacle or another vertex. It was previously argued that all planar graphs have a grid-obstacle representation in 2D, and all graphs have a grid-obstacle representation in 3D. In this paper, we show that such constructions are possible with significantly smaller grid-size than previously achieved. Then we study the variant where vertices are not blocking, and show that then grid-obstacle representations exist for bipartite graphs. The latter has applications in so-called staircase guarding of orthogonal polygons; using our grid-obstacle representations, we show that staircase guarding is \textsc{NP}-hard in 2D.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

Police research, officer surveys, and response rates

In recent years, policing scholars have increasingly used survey methods to gain insight into officers’ attitudes and behaviours. Yet, surprisingly, methodological research analysing surveys of police officers is rare. We analysed the extent and correlates of response rates in police surveys, providing insights about the survey design features and study characteristics associated with higher rates of officer participation. We examined the response rates to 497 police surveys reported in 390 articles published in 15 journals from 2008 to 2017. Findings included the following: (1) the average response rate was 64%, but there was a great deal of variation, (2) in-person surveys achieved substantially higher response rates, (3) inviting a greater number of officers to participate in surveys was associated with lower response rates, and (4) response rates have declined over time (though primarily among surveys not administered in-person). Given the weight of the evidence suggesting response rates are typically a poor predictor of nonresponse bias, we argue that a low response rate on its own is an insufficient reason to dismiss a study’s merit. Furthermore, we recommend minimally acceptable reporting standards and discuss avenues for future research

Modularity and community detection in bipartite networks

The modularity of a network quantifies the extent, relative to a null model network, to which vertices cluster into community groups. We define a null model appropriate for bipartite networks, and use it to define a bipartite modularity. The bipartite modularity is presented in terms of a modularity matrix B; some key properties of the eigenspectrum of B are identified and used to describe an algorithm for identifying modules in bipartite networks. The algorithm is based on the idea that the modules in the two parts of the network are dependent, with each part mutually being used to induce the vertices for the other part into the modules. We apply the algorithm to real-world network data, showing that the algorithm successfully identifies the modular structure of bipartite networks.Comment: RevTex 4, 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; modest extensions to conten