Old and Poor in America

Education, ethnicity, gender, living arrangements and age group all contribute to an older individual's risk of being poor or near poor

Walk to a Healthy Future

Proposes a new national commitment to walking and formation of walking partnerships and clubs to fight the epidemic of overweight Americans

Water/rock interactions in experimentally simulated dirty snowball and dirty iceball cometary nuclei

In the dirty snowball model for cometary nuclei, comet-nucleus materials are regarded as mixtures of volatile ices and relatively non-volatile minerals or chemical compounds. Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are regarded as useful analogs for the rocky component. To help elucidate the possible physical geochemistry of cometary nuclei, preliminary results are reported of calorimetric experiments with two-component systems involving carbonaceous chondrites and water ice. Based on collective knowledge of the physics of water ice, three general types of interactions can be expected between water and minerals at sub-freezing temperatures: (1) heterogeneous nucleation of ice by insoluble minerals; (2) adsorption of water vapor by hygroscopic phases; and (3) freezing- and melting-point depression of liquid water sustained by soluble minerals. The relative and absolute magnitude of all three effects are expected to vary with mineral composition

Kinetics of diffusional droplet growth in a liquid/liquid two-phase system

This report contains experimental results for the interdiffusion coefficient of the system, succinonitrile plus water, at a number of compositions and temperatures in the single phase region of the phase diagram. The concentration and temperature dependence of the measured diffusion coefficient has been analyzed in terms of Landau - Ginzburg theory, which assumes that the Gibb free energy is an analytic function of its variables, and can be expanded in a Taylor series about any point in the phase diagram. At most points in the single phase region this is adequate. Near the consolute point (critical point of solution), however, the free energy is non-analytic, and the Landau - Ginzburg theory fails. The solution to this problem dictates that the Landau - Ginzburg form of the free energy be replaced by Widom scaling functions with irrational values for the scaling exponents. As our measurements of the diffusion coefficient near the critical point reflect this non-analytic character, we are preparing for publication in a refereed journal a separate analysis of some of the data contained herein as well as some additional measurements we have just completed. When published, reprints of this article will be furnished to NASA

Small task-oriented groups : a systems analysis : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education at Massey University

Where two or more people are gathered together in order to engage in social interaction - there is a social system". (Anon.) The question of why it is that people come together in systems of interaction and how these systems persist as viable social arrangements is one which has been taken up by social philosophers and sociological theorists as far back as Hobbes. Subsequently Spencer, Durkheim, and such contemporary figures as Homans, Merton and Parsons have also taken issue with this problem. The present thesis shares a similar concern with the problem and derives its stimulus from the way in which sociologists have attempted to formulate adequate explanatory theories. The thesis exhibits a convergence in the interests of the two authors - on the one hand, an interest in the application of parsonian theory' to small group phenomena, and on the other, the use of 'systems theory' in the explanation of social interaction in educational settings. The specific focus of attention is on those groups which have the properties of being small and task-oriented. Such groups are ubiquitous in educational contexts. At the most general level the thesis uses Parsons' voluntaristic theory of social action as the frame of reference from which a theory of small task-oriented groups can be derived. The thesis is therefore an expedition into the realms of sociological theory and an exploration of the way in which parsons' theory in particular can be applied to an empirical situation. Elements of general systems theory have been employed to further limit the scope of the investigation by focussing only on the internal dynamic of small task-oriented groups, rather than the way in which they adapt to their surrounding environments, thus enabling such groups to be conceptualised as discrete social systems in their own right. [From Introduction

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY AND OFF-FARM EMPLOYMENT OF FARM OPERATORS

Employment history affects subsequent choices. Based on their original job choice, operators are divided into farmers and workers. Equations are estimated to determine their probabilities of working off-the-farm. Education increased the probability that workers work off-the-farm, whereas vocational training increases farmers' probability. The probability of working off-the-farm decreases as unearned income increases, and its impact on workers is larger than on farmers. An employed spouse increases the probability that farmers work off-the-farm, but has the opposite impact for workers. Employment density increases the probability that workers will work off-the-farm.Off-farm employment, Part-time farming, Small farms, Labor and Human Capital,

Exploring Fermi-LAT Extended GeV Emission with Stacking Analysis

Temporally extended emission at energies> 100 MeV have been seen nearly all of the bright GRBs detected by Fermi-LAT. The production mechanism and relationship to broadband afterglow emission remains controversial without detailed simultaneous multi-wavelength observations on individual sources. We explore this problem by stacking separately, the gamma-ray and X-ray emission for -150 Swift GRBs over the first few thousand seconds of overlapping observations after a trigger, and discuss the potential presence of an additional spectral component

Third class county budget trend analysis : 1996-2013 workbook user's manual

The electronic workbook, Third Class County Budget Trend Analysis: 1996-2013, is a set of spreadsheets, or workbook, that enables Missouri third-class counties to analyze county fiscal trends from 1996 to 2013

Missouri's Third Class County Budget Trend Analysis : Workbook User's Manual

The electronic workbook. "Third Class County Budget Trend Analysis." is a spreadsheet that enables Missouri third class counties to analyze county fiscal trends from 1996 to 2009. A county can carry out a detailed study of its own budget and fiscal performance to identify factors contributing to fiscal stress and to consider actions it may want to take. The workbook also allows a county to benchmark itself against a set standard, its own past performance or the record of another county as a gauge of fiscal performance.New 6/11