Letter from Charles Cola, former Yonkers City Councilman, to Geraldine Ferraro

Congratulatory letter from Charles A. Cola, former Yonkers City Councilman and former Republican, to Geraldine Ferraro. Cola also writes on behalf of the North Yonkers Preservation & Development Corporation. Included are a copy of a letter written by Cola to President Ronald Reagan, outlining his reasons for leaving the Republican Party, plus a newspaper clipping of an article about Cola, and a data entry sheet.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/vice_presidential_campaign_correspondence_1984_new_york/1226/thumbnail.jp

COLA with massive neutrinos

The effect of massive neutrinos on the growth of cold dark matter perturbations acts as a scale-dependent Newton's constant and leads to scale-dependent growth factors just as we often find in models of gravity beyond General Relativity. We show how to compute growth factors for $\Lambda$CDM and general modified gravity cosmologies combined with massive neutrinos in Lagrangian perturbation theory for use in COLA and extensions thereof. We implement this together with the grid-based massive neutrino method of Brandbyge and Hannestad in $\texttt{MG-PICOLA}$ and compare COLA simulations to full $\it N$-body simulations of $\Lambda$CDM and $f(R)$ gravity with massive neutrinos. Our implementation is computationally cheap if the underlying cosmology already has scale-dependent growth factors and it is shown to be able to produce results that match $\it N$-body to percent level accuracy for both the total and CDM matter power-spectra up to $k\lesssim 1 h/$Mpc.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, 1 table, version accepted for publication in JCAP, added frame-lagging terms in 2LPT sections (results unaffected) and appendix on comparison to SP

Putting interoperability to the test: building a large reusable assessment item bank

The COLA project has been developing a large bank of assessment items for units across the Scottish further education curriculum since May 2003. These will be made available to learners mainly via colleges virtual learning environments (VLEs). Many people have been involved in the development of the COLA assessment item bank to ensure a high level of technical and pedagogical quality. Processes have included deciding on appropriate item types and subject areas, training authors, peer-reviewing and quality assuring the items and assessments, and ensuring they are tagged with appropriate metadata. One of the biggest challenges has been to ensure that the assessments are deliverable across the four main virtual learning environments in use in Scottish colleges-and also through a stand-alone assessment system. COLA is significant because no other large project appears to have successfully developed standards-compliant assessment content for delivery across multiple VLEs. This paper discusses how COLA has dealt with the organizational, pedagogical and technical issues which arise when commissioning items from many authors for delivery across an educational sector

Developing a national item bank

The COLA project has been developing a large bank of assessment items for units across the Scottish further education curriculum since May 2003. These will be made available to learners mainly via colleges’ virtual learning environments. Many people have been involved in the development of the COLA item bank. Processes have included deciding on appropriate item types and subject areas, training authors, peer-reviewing and quality assuring the items and assessments, and ensuring they are interoperable and tagged with appropriate metadata

Social Security: Cost-of-Living Adjustments

To compensate for the effects of inflation, Social Security recipients usually receive an annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). Benefits will be increased by 1.7% in 2015, following an increase of 1.5% in 2014. Social Security COLAs are based on changes in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), updated monthly by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The COLA equals the growth, if any, in the index from the highest third calendar quarter average CPI-W recorded (most often, from the previous year) to the average CPI-W for the third calendar quarter of the current year. The COLA becomes effective in December of the current year and is payable in January of the following year. (Social Security payments always reflect the benefits due for the preceding month.) If there is no percentage increase in the CPI-W between the measuring periods, no COLA is payable. No COLA was payable in January 2010 because the average CPI-W for the third quarter of 2009 did not increase from the average CPI-W for the third quarter of 2008, and again in 2011 because the average CPI-W for the third quarter of 2010 remained below the average CPI-W for the third quarter of 2008. When the average CPI-W for the third quarter of 2011 exceeded that for 2008, establishing a new benchmark, a COLA was payable in 2012. Because the average CPI-W for the third quarters of 2012 and 2013 exceeded the average CPI-W for the third quarters of each respective preceding year, 2014 will be the third consecutive year in which a COLA will be paid. Because a COLA of 1.7% will be paid to Social Security beneficiaries in 2015, identical percentage increases in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and railroad retirement “tier 1” benefits will be paid, and other changes in the Social Security program will be triggered. Although COLAs under the federal Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the federal military retirement program are not triggered directly by the Social Security COLA, these programs use the same measuring period and formula for computing their COLAs. As a result, their recipients similarly will receive a 1.7% COLA in January 2015. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the trustees for the Social Security trust funds both project annual COLAs beyond 2015. This report is updated annually

Cost-of-Living Adjustments for Federal Civil Service Annuities

[Excerpt] Cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) are based on the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). COLAs for both CSRS and FERS are determined by the average monthly CPI-W during the third quarter (July to September) of the current calendar year and the third quarter of the base year, which is the last previous year in which a COLA was applied. The “effective date” for COLAs is December, but they first appear in the benefits issued during the following January. All CSRS retirees and survivors receive COLAs. Under FERS, however, nondisabled retirees under the age of 62 do not receive COLAs. Survivors and disabled retirees are eligible for COLAs under FERS regardless of age. CSRS pays a COLA that is equal to the percentage change in the CPI-W during the measurement period, but COLAs under FERS are limited if the rate of inflation is greater than 2.0%. If the rate of inflation during the measurement period is between 2.0% and 3.0%, the COLA under FERS is 2.0%. If inflation is greater than 3.0%, then the COLA for FERS benefits is equal to the CPI-W minus one percentage point. Congress passed the first law requiring automatic COLAs for federal civil service retirement benefits in 1962, and it has adjusted either the formula by which they are calculated or the date on which they take effect more than ten times since then. If consumer prices as measured by the CPI-W do not increase from the third quarter of the base year to the third quarter of the current calendar year, there is no COLA for annuities paid under CSRS or FERS. For example, from the third quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2015, the CPI- W fell by 0.4%. Therefore, no COLA was paid under either CSRS or FERS beginning January 2016. From the third quarter of 2018 to the third quarter of 2019, the CPI-W increased by 1.6%. Therefore, beginning in January 2020, the CSRS COLA and the FERS COLA are both 1.6%

A Semiotic Analysis on the Perceived Meanings of Coca Cola “Anthem” Video Commercial

This study observes the perceived meanings produced by young adult (18 to 30 years old) and older (50 to 65 years old) respondents as respondents from different age group can produce different perceived meanings from each other. The writer's finding is that in perceiving, young adult respondents tend to emphasize on Coca Cola's emotional roles. On the other hand, the older respondents emphasize on Coca Cola's physical roles