Profile of Georgia State Revenues 1974-1999

This report provides detailed information on trends in Georgia's major revenue sources over the period 1974-1999

An Organizational Diagnosis Of A Centralized Investigational New Drug Core Within A Large Academic Health Center

This capstone examines the root cause of the ineffectiveness of a centralized Investigational New Drug (IND) core within a research department of a large Academic Health Center (AHC). This capstone utilized an organizational diagnosis approach to collect data to determine what is and is not contributing to the success of the core. The hypotheses of this study are: 1) The centralized model was set in place without clear objectives; 2) The IND core is not operating in the way it was structured to operate; 3) The IND core is understaffed and unable to fully carry out the level of responsibility associated with being a Sponsor; and 4) Future expansion was not included in the planning phase. Data was collected by interviewing staff members, and participant observations. Prior to conducting the current state interviews, I conducted background interviews with previous staff members to determine the rationale behind centralization. The results supported the importance of learning an organization\u27s history prior to implementing a change, as well as the need for group development prior to the implementation of a new model within an organization. The organizational diagnosis I conducted was able to confirm three of four of the hypotheses. I was able to uncover two variables that I did not consider before the diagnosis: role definition, and inter-group dynamics

Why Do U.S. Firms Hold So Much More Cash Than They Used To?

The average cash to assets ratio for U.S. industrial firms increases by 129% from 1980 to 2004. Because of this increase in the average cash ratio, American firms at the end of the sample period can pay back their debt obligations with their cash holdings, so that the average firm has no leverage when leverage is measured by net debt. This change in cash ratios and net debt is the result of a secular trend rather than the outcome of the recent buildup in cash holdings of some large firms. It is concentrated among firms that do not pay dividends. The average cash ratio increases over the sample period because the cash flow of American firms has become riskier, these firms hold fewer inventories and accounts receivable, and the typical firm spends more on R&D. The precautionary motive for cash holdings appears to explain the increase in the average cash ratio.

Graph-Hist: Graph Classification from Latent Feature Histograms With Application to Bot Detection

Neural networks are increasingly used for graph classification in a variety of contexts. Social media is a critical application area in this space, however the characteristics of social media graphs differ from those seen in most popular benchmark datasets. Social networks tend to be large and sparse, while benchmarks are small and dense. Classically, large and sparse networks are analyzed by studying the distribution of local properties. Inspired by this, we introduce Graph-Hist: an end-to-end architecture that extracts a graph's latent local features, bins nodes together along 1-D cross sections of the feature space, and classifies the graph based on this multi-channel histogram. We show that Graph-Hist improves state of the art performance on true social media benchmark datasets, while still performing well on other benchmarks. Finally, we demonstrate Graph-Hist's performance by conducting bot detection in social media. While sophisticated bot and cyborg accounts increasingly evade traditional detection methods, they leave artificial artifacts in their conversational graph that are detected through graph classification. We apply Graph-Hist to classify these conversational graphs. In the process, we confirm that social media graphs are different than most baselines and that Graph-Hist outperforms existing bot-detection models

Acesso à educação de artes no ensino médio: Porque a participação dos alunos é tão importante quanto à disponibilidade do Curso

There is renewed interest in the role of arts education in the curriculum of U.S. public schools not only because of the intrinsic value of the arts and its believed impact on achievement, but because cultivating creativity is thought to promote innovation and fuel economic growth. Still, we know little about basic access to arts education. Using individual-level administrative data from The University of Texas at Dallas Education Research Center (UTD-ERC), we develop several distinct indices of access to identify high schools rich in the arts. We find that high schools offering an extensive number of courses in the arts do not necessarily enjoy high rates of student participation. Policymakers who examine access based only on course counts in the arts will identify predominately large, non-rural high schools as having arts-rich environments. Evaluating arts programs along a single dimension, as is common in federal reports and other studies, fails to provide an accurate representation of access to arts education. Any examination of access to arts education should jointly consider course availability and student engagement in the arts. Policymakers can follow our approach and develop similar indices to assess the current state of arts education in their states.Existe un renovado interés en el papel de la educación artística en el currículo de las escuelas públicas de Estados Unidos, no sólo por el valor intrínseco de las artes y su impacto en el rendimiento, sino porque el cultivo de la creatividad se cree promueve la innovación y el crecimiento económico. Sin embargo, sabemos muy poco sobre el acceso básico a la educación artística. Utilizando los datos administrativos a nivel individual del Centro de Investigación en Educación de la Universidad de Texas en Dallas (UTD-ERC), desarrollamos varios índices de acceso para identificar las escuelas secundarias con mayor acceso a las artes. Encontramos que las escuelas secundarias que ofrecen un gran número de cursos de artes no disfrutan necesariamente de altas tasas de participación de los estudiantes. Las autoridades que examinan acceso basado únicamente en número de cursos de arte identificarán las escuelas secundarias predominantemente grandes, en zonas no rurales, como poseedoras de ambientes ricos en arte. La evaluación de los programas de arte en una sola dimensión, como es común en los informes federales y otros estudios, no proporcionan una representación precisa del acceso a la educación artística. Cualquier examen de acceso a la educación artística debe considerar conjuntamente disponibilidad del curso y la participación del estudiante en las artes. Los políticos pueden seguir nuestro enfoque y desarrollar índices similares para evaluar el estado actual de la educación artística en sus estados.Há um interesse renovado no papel da educação de artes no currículo das escolas públicas dos Estados Unidos, não só por causa do valor intrínseco das artes e seu acreditável impacto no sucesso, mas porque cultivar a criatividade é considerado promover a inovação e servir como combustível no crescimento econômico. Ainda assim, nós sabemos pouco sobre o acesso básico à educação de artes. Usando dados administrativos a nível individual na Universidade de Texas no Centro de Pesquisa Educação Dallas (UTD-ERC), nós desenvolvemos vários índices distintos de acesso para identificar escolas de ensino médio ricas em artes. Nós achamos que escolas de ensino médio que oferecem uma extensa série de cursos em artes não necessariamente desfrutam de altos índices de participação dos alunos. Os legisladores, que examinam o acesso com base apenas na contagem de cursos de artes identificará predominantemente grandes escolas de ensino médio, não-rurais como tendo ambientes ricos em artes. Avaliação de programas de artes ao longo de uma única dimensão, como é comum em relatórios federais e outros estudos, não fornecem uma representação precisa do acesso à educação de artes. Qualquer exame de acesso à educação de artes deve considerar em conjunto a disponibilidade do curso e o envolvimento dos alunos nas artes. Os formuladores de políticas podem seguir nossa abordagem e desenvolver índices semelhantes para avaliar o estado atual da educação de artes em seus estados

Age-Related Gene Expression Differences in Monocytes from Human Neonates, Young Adults, and Older Adults.

A variety of age-related differences in the innate and adaptive immune systems have been proposed to contribute to the increased susceptibility to infection of human neonates and older adults. The emergence of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) provides an opportunity to obtain an unbiased, comprehensive, and quantitative view of gene expression differences in defined cell types from different age groups. An examination of ex vivo human monocyte responses to lipopolysaccharide stimulation or Listeria monocytogenes infection by RNA-seq revealed extensive similarities between neonates, young adults, and older adults, with an unexpectedly small number of genes exhibiting statistically significant age-dependent differences. By examining the differentially induced genes in the context of transcription factor binding motifs and RNA-seq data sets from mutant mouse strains, a previously described deficiency in interferon response factor-3 activity could be implicated in most of the differences between newborns and young adults. Contrary to these observations, older adults exhibited elevated expression of inflammatory genes at baseline, yet the responses following stimulation correlated more closely with those observed in younger adults. Notably, major differences in the expression of constitutively expressed genes were not observed, suggesting that the age-related differences are driven by environmental influences rather than cell-autonomous differences in monocyte development

Introspective Symmetries

The practical unification of context-free grammar and von Neumann machines has enabled telephony, and current trends suggest that the investigation of write-ahead logging will soon emerge. Here, we confirm the understanding of context-free grammar, which embodies the essential principles of software engineering [13]. In order to surmount this obstacle, we use distributed methodologies to demonstrate that IPv4 can be made permutable, ambimorphic, and random