Does Relationship Lending Still Matter in the Consumer Banking Sector? Evidence from Two Financial Service Organizations in Vermont

We use actual loan applications submitted to a community development credit union (CDCU) and a traditional community bank to examine the role of relationship lending in the automobile loan market. We first show that the community bank relies upon credit scoring, not relationship lending; low-income households with poor credit histories are very unlikely to receive car loans from this traditional bank. We then show that relationship lending is a critical factor in the loan decision at the CDCU; low-income households with strong ties to the institution are likely to receive loans, despite poor credit histories. We conclude that as consolidation, deregulation and technology move mainstream financial institutions away from relationship lending and toward credit scoring, CDCUs will occupy an increasingly critical niche for low-income households.

The Theology and the Function of the Prayers in the Book of Daniel

This dissertation investigates the theology and the function of the prayers in the Book of Daniel. The introduction reviews the scholarly literature in regard to the prayers of the Old Testament in general and the prayers in the Book of Daniel in particular. Recent studies of prayers in the Old Testament have focused on their theological function in their final literary setting. They have also turned their attention to prayer as part of a process of communication, of a divine-human dialogue, and consequently this study is structured from the aspect of interpersonal relationships. Chapter 1 deals with Daniel and his friends. First, prayers, references to prayers, and allusions to prayers are identified in Dan 2, 3, 6, 9, and 10. Next, the prayers are situated in the structure and in the plot of each of these chapters. Exegesis is performed on the thanksgiving by Daniel in 2:20-23 and his confession in 9:4b-19, the only two recorded prayers, and their semantic and thematical links with their respective context are described. Centering on the gentile kings, chapter 2 follows a similar outline, identifying situations of prayer in Dan 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and performing exegesis on the royal doxologies of Dan 3:33; 4:31b-32; 4:34; and 6:27-28. Chapter 3 presents a synopsis of prayers in the book. The various references to prayer are compared, and they are positioned in the structure of the book as a whole and viewed in relation to the progression of its events. The function of the prayers is described inthree areas: the thematic relationship between the prayers and the various sections of the book, the contribution of the prayers to the depiction of its characters, and the theological implications of the prayer-events as part of a divine-human dialogue. The dissertation is completed by a summary of the results of the study

The effect of two athletic training programs on aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, reaction time, and percent body fat

It is perhaps obvious that athletic teams, such as basketball and wrestling, use different conditioning pro­grams during the regular season of competition because of the nature of their sports. Although many coaches initiate particular programs and use them year after year, rarely do they have any definite measurements concerning the effects of the program on their athletes other than a win-loss record. To better understand the conditioning that takes place in various sports, in this study, several parameters of fitness were calculated-using the basketball and wrestling teams at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The measurements will indicate the change in each conditioning variable during the season

The effect of two athletic training programs on aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, reaction time, and percent body fat

What are the effects of two different athletic programs on the aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, reaction time, and percent body fat of varsity college athletes

When God Speaks Cross-Culturally: The Bible as Mission

The Bible is the foundation for the mission of the Church. It contains the message to be proclaimed, and it reveals paradigms for mission from the history of the people of God in times past. But more than that, the Bible is in itself mission. It is part of God’s communication to humankind

Comparison of academic performance of twins and singletons in adolescence : follow-up study

Objectives To determine whether twins in recent cohorts show similar academic performance in adolescence to singletons and to test the effect of birth weight on academic performance in twins and singletons. Design Follow-up study. Setting Denmark. Participants All twins (n = 3411) and a 5% random sample of singletons (n = 7796) born in Denmark during 1986-8. Main outcome measures Test scores in ninth grade (age 15 or 16), birth weight, gestational age at birth, parents’ age, and parents’ education. Results Ninth grade test scores were normally distributed, with almost identical mean and standard deviations for twins and singletons (8.02 v 8.02 and 1.05 v 1.06) despite the twins weighing on average 908 g (95% confidence interval 886 to 930 g) less than the singletons at birth. Controlling for birth weight, gestational age at birth, age at test, and parents’ age and education confirmed the similarity of test scores for twins and singletons (difference 0.04, 95% confidence interval − 0.03 to 0.10). A significant, positive association between test score and birth weight was observed in both twins and singletons, but the size of the effect was small: 0.06-0.12 standard deviations for every kilogram increase in birth weight. Conclusions Although older cohorts of twins have been found to have lower mean IQ scores than singletons, twins in recent Danish cohorts show similar academic performance in adolescence to that of singletons. Birth weight has a minimal effect on academic performance in recent cohorts; for twins this effect is best judged relative to what is a normal birth weight for twins and not for singletons

On the Limiting Behaviour of the Fundamental Geodesics of Information Geometry

The Information Geometry of extended exponential families has received much recent attention in a variety of important applications, notably categorical data analysis, graphical modelling and, more specifically, log-linear modelling. The essential geometry here comes from the closure of an exponential family in a high-dimensional simplex. In parallel, there has been a great deal of interest in the purely Fisher Riemannian structure of (extended) exponential families, most especially in the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature. These parallel developments raise challenges, addressed here, at a variety of levels: both theoretical and practical—relatedly, conceptual and methodological. Centrally to this endeavour, this paper makes explicit the underlying geometry of these two areas via an analysis of the limiting behaviour of the fundamental geodesics of Information Geometry, these being Amari’s (+1) and (0)-geodesics, respectively. Overall, a substantially more complete account of the Information Geometry of extended exponential families is provided than has hitherto been the case. We illustrate the importance and benefits of this novel formulation through applications