The Burden of Giving: Race, SES, and Nativity Differences in Providing Informal Financial Assistance

Interpersonal relationships within social networks provide resources for individuals to overcome financial hardships and emotional uncertainty. One form of support, giving money to family members and friends (i.e., informal financial assistance), has received little empirical attention, even when it comes at an economic and social cost to the person providing support. Drawing on negative social capital theory, it is hypothesized that racial minorities and immigrants may be more likely to provide monetary support to members of core discussion networks, given the persistent economic embedded in their social networks. The objective of this study is to examine i) racial differences in providing financial assistance ii) how race moderates the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and providing financial assistance iii) how race moderates the relationship between nativity status and providing financial assistance. The results of this project, using logistic regression analyses of the 2017 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), find that higher SES Black and Native American individuals are more likely than White individuals of similar SES, to provide informal financial assistance to members of core discussion networks. Foreign-born Black and Hispanic individuals are significantly more likely to provide money to members of networks than their foreign-born White counterparts. Moving beyond previous research, this study demonstrates the nuanced patterns of financial giving, and how they vary by SES and nativity for Black and Hispanic individuals compared to White individuals. Advisor: Jeffrey A. Smit

An Analysis of a Hurricane Loss Model, Validation from Tyndall AFB, and Applications for the Air Force

Recent reconstruction of infrastructure and its associated cost due to hurricanes justify research into hurricane loss models that can provide a more robust cost estimate. Academic research indicates that hurricane disasters are becoming more frequent and are becoming costlier. This research intends to explore hurricane loss models used by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Risk Management Solution (RMS) and Florida State University (FSU). Within the literature review, key components of hurricane loss models were identified. These models and the key components were explored in order to help bring an understanding of loss estimation. The research found that the implementation of the HAZUS model may aid in calculating the replacement cost of buildings using the specific building loss functions. The building loss functions are dependent on terrain type and building characteristics, however. HAZUS user define facilities capability reports the probability of specific building damage, however not the replacement cost. The generic building stock results prove to be off by approximately 70 when comparing building averages. The building loss functions results prove to be off by approximately 195 and the user define facilities proved to be off by approximately 438 when comparing building to building results. The limitations included unavailable awarded contracts, the analysis was only applied to 41 buildings and that default generic building stock data within the software. Within the DoD, HAZUS conveys that rougher terrain and masonry buildings can be advantageous when building near the shore. Using the building loss functions method is a simpler, quicker and standardized approach to get replacement cost results. Overall, this research determined that HAZUS may give valuable insight when looking at hurricane strikes in a study region

Evolutionary Automatic Text Summarization using Cluster Validation Indexes

The main problem for generating an extractive automatic text summary (EATS) is to detect the key themes of a text. For this task, unsupervised approaches cluster the sentences of the original text to find the key sentences that take part in an automatic summary. The quality of an automatic summary is evaluated using similarity metrics with human-made summaries. However, the relationship between the quality of the human-made summaries and the internal quality of the clustering is unclear. First, this paper proposes a comparison of the correlation of the quality of a human-made summary to the internal quality of the clustering validation index for finding the best correlation with a clustering validation index. Second, in this paper, an evolutionary method based on the best above internal clustering validation index for an automatic text summarization task is proposed. Our proposed unsupervised method for EATS has the advantage of not requiring information regarding the specific classes or themes of a text, and is therefore domain- and language-independent. The high results obtained by our method, using the most-competitive standard collection for EATS, prove that our method maintains a high correlation with human-made summaries, meeting the specific features of the groups, for example, compaction, separation, distribution, and density

Agrobacterium rhizogenes vs auxinic induction for in vitro rhizogenesis of Prosopis chilensis and Nothofagus alpina

The induction and improvement of in vitro rhizogenesis of microshoots of Prosopis chilensis (Mol.) Stuntz and Nothofagus alpina (Poep. et Endl. Oerst.) were compared using Agrobacterium rhizogenes (Ar) versus indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) in the culture media. Microshoots of P. chilensis (1-2 cm length), coming from in vitro grown seedlings, were cultivated in a modified Broadleaved Tree Medium (BTMm) containing half salt concentration of macronutrients and 0.05 mg.L-1 benzilaminopurine (BAP). After 30 days, microshoots with 2-4 leaves were selected and cultured in BTMm-agar in presence or abscense of Ar and in combination with IBA. For N. alpina, the apical shoots with the first 2 true leaves, from 5 weeks old seedlings, were cultured in the abovementioned medium, but with 0.15 mgL-1 of BAP. After 2 months, microshoots with 2-3 leaves were selected and cultured in BTMm-agar, supplemented with 5 mg.L-1 IBA or in liquid BTMm on perlite and, in the presence or absence of A. rhizogenes (Ar) and in combination with 3 mg.L-1 IBA. Rooting in P. chilensis reached 100.0% when Ar infection was produced in the presence of IBA, increasing both, the number and dry weight of roots. In N. alpina, 90.0% of rooting efficiency was obtained when Ar infection was produced in liquid culture and in the absence of auxin.Fil: Caro, Luis Alberto. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Santecchia, Natalia. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Marinangeli, Pablo Alejandro. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida; ArgentinaFil: Curvetto, Nestor Raul. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; ArgentinaFil: Hernandez, Luis Francisco. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Agronomía; Argentin

“Are You …”: An Examination of Incomplete Question Stems in Self-administered Surveys

Questionnaire designers are encouraged to write questions as complete sentences. In self-administered surveys, incomplete question stems may reduce visual clutter but may also increase burden when respondents need to scan the response options to fully complete the question. We experimentally examine the effects of three categories of incomplete question stems (incomplete conversational, incomplete ordinal, and incomplete nominal questions) versus complete question stems on 53 items in a probability webmail survey. We examine item nonresponse, response time, selection of the first and last response options, and response distributions. We find that incomplete question stems take slightly longer to answer and slightly reduce the selection of the last response option but have no effect on item nonresponse rates or selection of the first response option. We conclude that questionnaire designers should follow current best practices to write complete questions, but deviations from complete questions will likely have limited effects. Includes Supplementary materials

Sociability and outdoor urban open spaces: a case study of two plazas in Bogota, Colombia

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1986 H475Master of ArchitectureArchitectur

POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS, DESDE EL CRITERIO DE DESARROLLO ENDÓGENO EN LOS 13 MUNICIPIOS DE LA ZONA DE LOS VOLCANES DEL ESTADO DE MÉXICO, EN EL PERIODO 2009-2012.

Administración pública, es un tema muy amplio y de diversidad de sustentos teóricos, empíricos y prácticos, es por eso que la presente tesis es otro referente formal, que incluye algunas de las situaciones que convergen en lo relacionado a la administración y en concreto a la administración pública municipal. Otras intenciones del presente estudio es difundir el desenvolvimiento y la construcción de la operatividad de la administración municipal, para que la ciudadanía en general, pueda conocer y proveer una participación formal de propuestas referenciadas formalmente. Para que en un futuro el involucramiento dentro de la práctica en la administración pública en el ámbito municipal, sea sustentada con los elementos necesarios para ser una eficiente y provechosa participación