Chapter 40R School Cost Analysis and Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement

Analyzes the effects of insuring local communities against having to absorb school costs above the increased property and excise tax revenue generated by new housing units. Calls for supplements as a way to encourage the construction of moderate housing

Multiple regression analysis on the S & P 500 index

The purpose of this research was to determine which, if any, financial and economic variables significantly affect the closing value of the Standard & Poor\u27s 500 Index. The goal of finding the significant variables which affect the Standard & Poor\u27s 500 Index was accomplished by performing a multiple regression analysis. This regression model used the closing quarterly value of the Standard & Poor\u27s 500 Index as the dependent variable. The independent variables included the 90-day Treasury Bill rate, domestic corporate profits, and real disposable personal income. The data set for each of these variables was their closing quarterly value for the period beginning in March of 1963 and ending in December of 1987. The data were obtained from the U. S. Department of Commerce (1991)

Conversation of Values: A Community Perspective of Sustainable Development Criteria Concerning Revitalization Efforts in Jackson, Mississippi

Jackson, Mississippi is currently undergoing a revitalization movement in an attempt to revive its blighted downtown core. While physical development is crucial to revival of the downtown landscape, the cultural landscape must also be considered. I hypothesized that developers, business owners, and residents working or living in and around downtown Jackson would report differing desires, positions, and values concerning four elements of sustainable development: cultural, economic, political, and environmental. Ultimately, the hypothesis was refuted according to the quantitative data analysis. However, there were different understandings within the qualitative data where the substance of this research project can be found. These data serve as a “Dialogue of Values” (Blewitt 2008) and an indicator of concerns on which Jacksonians can focus as revitalization continues. This foundation of concerns also establishes a benchmark to measure future inquiries into the inclusion of sustainable development in Jackson’s revitalization

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2015: The Housing Cost Conundrum

Why has housing supply not kept up with housing demand? This is the question we decided to finally tackle head-on in this edition of the "Greater Boston Housing Report Card" by undertaking an in-depth study of detailed housing cost data that we have collected from housing agencies and developers. The answer to our question is an unsettling one. We have failed to meet housing production targets because there is no way to do so given the high cost of producing housing for working and middle-income households. In part, this is because of the extreme barriers to new construction, especially in the form of severely restrictive zoning at the local level across much of Massachusetts.Solving this problem of insufficient housing supply will require a battery of new approaches to zoning and construction techniques -- something that has eluded developers and policymakers alike. We suggest in these pages some new approaches to increase housing supply

The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2013: What Follows The Housing Recovery?

This report is the 11th in the series of annual "Greater Boston Housing Report Cards," the first of which appeared in 2002 at a time when housing prices in the region were skyrocketing. In the course of this series, we have reported on the local housing bubble from 2000 through 2005, during which time home prices appreciated at annual double-digit rates; the retreat in home prices that begain in 2006; and then the beginning of a housing recovery in 2010. Like past report cards, this 2013 report probes Greater Boston's housing landscape, keeping tabs on housing construction, home prices, and rents. We have analyzed the relationship between the region's economy, demography, and housing, and we have kept track of federal, state and local government policies that affect the region's housing market. This report also includes a new analysis of local zoning regulations in Greater Boston communities because of the critical role zoning can play, particularly in the development - or lack of developmeent - of multifamily housing. The 2013 Report Card attempts to answer six questions about Greater Boston's housing market and its effect on the region's well-being: 1. What are the most recent trends in home sales, housing production, and foreclosures? 2. What does the future trajectory of home prices and rents look like? 3. Given current economic conditions, is another housing bubble on the horizon? 4. Given the changing demographics and economic health of Greater Boston, have we begun to build appropriate new housing stock to meet expected demand and to help moderate furure price and rent hikes? 5. Do we still face zoning constraints at the local level that hinder the production of an appropriate housing stock for the region? 6. What roles are the federal government and the Commonwealth playing in the housing market today

A simulated study of implicit feedback models

In this paper we report on a study of implicit feedback models for unobtrusively tracking the information needs of searchers. Such models use relevance information gathered from searcher interaction and can be a potential substitute for explicit relevance feedback. We introduce a variety of implicit feedback models designed to enhance an Information Retrieval (IR) system's representation of searchers' information needs. To benchmark their performance we use a simulation-centric evaluation methodology that measures how well each model learns relevance and improves search effectiveness. The results show that a heuristic-based binary voting model and one based on Jeffrey's rule of conditioning [5] outperform the other models under investigation

Verifying timestamps of occultation observation systems

We describe an image timestamp verification system to determine the exposure timing characteristics and continuity of images made by an imaging camera and recorder, with reference to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The original use was to verify the timestamps of stellar occultation recording systems, but the system is applicable to lunar flashes, planetary transits, sprite recording, or any area where reliable timestamps are required. The system offers good temporal resolution (down to 2 msec, referred to UTC) and provides exposure duration and interframe dead time information. The system uses inexpensive, off-the- shelf components, requires minimal assembly and requires no high-voltage components or connections. We also describe an application to load FITS (and other format) image files, which can decode the verification image timestamp. Source code, wiring diagrams and built applications are provided to aid the construction and use of the device.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (PASA

Lake Erie Grape Farm Cost Survey, 2001-2005

E.B. 2006-19This report is a summary of five years of grape costs and returns data collected from Lake Erie Region grape growers for the 2001-2005 seasons. “Concord” and “Niagara” grapes utilized for juice and generic wine accounted for over 90 percent of the survey acreage. About two-thirds of the acreage surveyed was in New York and one-third from Pennsylvania. In recent years, 42 to 49 growers participated, with total vineyard acreage ranging from about 4,400 to 5,200 acres. Average costs per acre over the entire five year period were $1,663, including an imputed value for the operator’s labor. Major cost categories were paid labor ($380 per acre), depreciation ($213), interest ($114), operator labor ($116) and chemicals ($117). Average yield per farm was 6.4 tons per acre with a range of 2.8 to 8.6 tons per acre. Growers suffered through some difficult circumstances (poor weather, declining prices) over the past five years. Juice grape cash market prices tended to drift down over the course of the five years. National Grape members’ returns moved upward through 2004 and then suffered a severe drop in 2005. Some growers had custom harvesting or other farm income not tied to grape prices. Some growers collected income from crop insurance, disaster payments, and/or Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) that helped to buoy income in the face of disappointing yields and unharvested grapes in 2003. However, almost half of the farms who were in the survey for all five years had yields of 7 tons or better. These growers are able to compete with other growing regions such as Washington State. Lake Erie Grape Belt farm managers are responding to lower prices in a variety of ways, including becoming more labor efficient, dropping some poor vineyards (especially leased ones), increasing wine grape production, and increasing farm size

How users assess web pages for information-seeking

In this paper, we investigate the criteria used by online searchers when assessing the relevance of web pages for information-seeking tasks. Twenty four participants were given three tasks each, and indicated the features of web pages which they employed when deciding about the usefulness of the pages in relation to the tasks. These tasks were presented within the context of a simulated work-task situation. We investigated the relative utility of features identified by participants (web page content,structure and quality), and how the importance of these features is affected by the type of information-seeking task performed and the stage of the search. The results of this study provide a set of criteria used by searchers to decide about the utility of web pages for different types of tasks. Such criteria can have implications for the design of systems that use or recommend web pages