Eucatastrophic Tales: Tell the Story of God through Children\u27s Literature

In this Project Portfolio, I will address the following NPO: Teachers of children have underappreciated or not recognized the faith formation possibilities found in children’s literature. The overall key finding of my research is that children’s literature is an ideal medium through which adults can facilitate conversations about God with children. This finding emerged from the ministry setting of the local church, and as an extension, the Christian university. My project is a thorough, informative book on the faith formation possibilities of children’s literature, and a more accessible companion resource: a universal bookmark guide. The book contains 5 chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. The bookmark is standard size, front and back with a side that appeals to children and a side that helps adults facilitate God-conversations with any children’s book

Downside Risk Optimization of the Thrift Savings Plan Lifecycle Fund Portfolios

The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the defined benefit contribution plan for the US Government, introduced the asset allocation Lifecycle (L) Funds in August 2005. These funds seek to minimize risk and maximize expected portfolio return via mean-variance optimization (MVO). The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and examine the efficiency of the TSP L Funds and create alternative L Fund portfolios via downside risk optimization (DRO). Whereas MVO minimizes the portfolio variance (standard deviation), DRO seeks to minimize the risk below an investor’s minimal acceptable return in the market, defined as the Co-Lower Partial Moment (CLPM). The research team compares the TSP and DRO (CLPM) L Fund expected portfolio values at retirement for three typical investors. The expected portfolio values are computed using @Risk software via Monte Carlo simulation of TSP individual fund monthly returns, the L Fund quarterly target allocations, and various investor inputs. The quantitative results and analysis of this evaluation determined that TSP participants realize higher expected portfolio values at retirement by investing into a DRO (CLPM) L Fund versus any of the TSP L Funds. To validate the findings, this thesis compares an investment stream in the L Funds from August 2005 through December 2009

Sunday drive: Review of automobile ownership, societal and environmental impacts and behavioural change

The automobile is a pervasive component of modern life; it has played a crucial role in shaping the society in which we live and the way in which we behave and interact with those around us. This paper provides an overview of the motor vehicle; tracing the origins of the automobile, how it helped shaped many aspects of societal and urban development and the psychological impacts on society. It also reviews studies that have explored the driving factors of vehicle ownership and choice at a disaggregate level and examines the literature that addresses the environmental impacts of the motor vehicle. The conclusion is drawn that there is perhaps no single product that has had as big an impact on modern society as the motor vehicle, an impact that is unlikely to wane. As such, the automobile will continue to be fertile subject matter for researchers from many disciplines and for in policy who must make plans in the presence of the motor vehicle

Strategic Management of Integrated Public Transport and its Value in the Air Bus Service Context

While there is a well-developed body of academic literature on how to procure ground transport services and how to integrate those services, there is virtually no literature on how to do this in the context of air services (in combination with ground services). This paper aims to substantially contribute to the area of strategic management of integrated transport based on the concept of mobility as a service including revenue management, marketing operations management and also policy making. All these areas relate to improving efficiency, acceptability and profitability of air services to regional and remote areas (but also air services more generally) that can benefit significantly from any form of integration (integrated fares, timetables, customer information, marketing etc.). We show that customer-centric public transport integration with aviation as the highest priority can create competitive advantage of the air bus transport value chain as particularly in the regional aviation context the total trip travel experience is of high importance given the potential competition from private car travel, except for island air services. The public ground transport experience will therefore not only impact on the perceived flight product quality but also on other products along the aviation value chain. In terms of the demand analysis and travel choice literature, we reveal that integrated planning and management efforts such as joint timetabling and joint pricing are most likely to have an impact on competitive advantage, demand (passenger numbers plus yields, measured in the customers’ willingness to pay) and hence the profitability of regional air services. We use stated choice experiments for flights from Sydney to regional NSW, Australia to establish the willingness to pay for integrated add-ons to scheduled regional air services

Northeast Philadelphia Wellness and Client Engagement Research: Turning Points for Children: The Food and Wellness Network

https://digitalcommons.pcom.edu/bridging_gaps2016/1003/thumbnail.jp