40 Years of FOIA, 20 Years of Delay: Oldest Pending Freedom of Information Requests Date Back to the 1980s

Presents findings from the Knight Open Government Survey, which surveys government offices and agencies on the status of their public information requests, and finds that extensive backlogs persist

Community Health Workers and Promotores in California

Provides an overview of, and describes the challenges facing, the emerging workforce of public health professionals who carry out a variety of health promotion, case management, and service delivery activities at the community level

Asymmetric information, self-selection and pricing of insurance contracts: the simple no-claims case

This paper presents an optional bonus-malus contract based on a pri-ori risk classification of the underlying insurance contract. By inducing self-selection, the purchase of the bonus-malus contract can be used as a screening device. This gives an even better pricing performance than both an experience rating scheme and a classical no-claims bonus system. An application to the Danish automobile insurance market is considered

Fundamentals of Cost and Risk that Matter to Pension Savers and Life Annuitants

This chapter analyzes two types of investment strategies for an investor with a savings plan for retirement. In one, the investor sets an upper target which his wealth should not go above. In the other, the investor adds a lower target which his wealth should not go below. The analysis is done in a Black-Scholes model with one risky stock and one risk-free bond, with the restriction that the investor cannot invest more than his current wealth in the risky stock. We illustrate the results by describing a 30-year horizon. We use quantiles of the terminal wealth distribution or the level of accumulated wealth obtained by a given percentage of investors who follow the recommended strategy. The embedded guarantee and freedom to choose the upper and lower bounds represent the main appeal of this approach. We discuss the connection between expected return, affordable risk, and transparent fees for funds management

The influence of microgravity on invasive growth in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

This study investigates the effects of microgravity on colony growth and the morphological transition from single cells to short invasive filaments in the model eukaryotic organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Two-dimensional spreading of the yeast colonies grown on semi-solid agar medium was reduced under microgravity in the Sigma 1278b laboratory strain but not in the CMBSESA1 industrial strain. This was supported by the Sigma 1278b proteome map under microgravity conditions, which revealed upregulation of proteins linked to anaerobic conditions. The Sigma 1278b strain showed a reduced invasive growth in the center of the yeast colony. Bud scar distribution was slightly affected, with a switch toward more random budding. Together, microgravity conditions disturb spatially programmed budding patterns and generate strain-dependent growth differences in yeast colonies on semi-solid medium

On the practical implementation of retirement gains by using an upside and a downside terminal wealth constraint

We analyze an investment strategy for an investor with a savings plan for retirement consisting on constraining the terminal wealth accumulated after the savings period by setting an upper and lower bound. We carry out a simulation of the terminal wealth after a savings period of thirty years by using daily, monthly, weekly and yearly updates. We calculate the percentiles of the final wealth and the corresponding lifetime annuity that the pension saver will receive during the consumption period. We observe how that the simulated values converge to the theoretical values of the percentiles when the frequency of update increases. Finally, in the numerical example the effect of inflaction is also considered