The Out-Front Western Region: An Overview

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network ---- with 36 states and 61 researchers ---- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.This first "Special Analysis Report" focuses on the Western region, which has the largest number of states -- six out of thirteen -- that are affirmatively implementing the Affordable Care Act. That is, they have state-administered health insurance exchanges and have expanded Medicaid as authorized under the law. Altogether, there are eleven states in the Western region of the contiguous states, and nine of them are in our sample. This report describes the policy setting and goal alignment of all nine Western sample states, with emphasis on five states -- California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Nevada -- that are clearly out front as ACA-affirming states. New Mexico is also an affirming ACA state, although its exchange will not be state run until 2014. Arizona and Idaho occupy an "In-Between" category; that is, in between affirming and oppositional. Arizona rejected the state-run exchange option but accepted Medicaid expansion. Idaho so far has done the opposite, accepting the state-run exchange option while tabling Medicaid expansion. Utah is the one fully oppositional state in our sample, choosing in 2013 not to run its exchange or expand Medicaid

Private opportunity, public benefit?

The newly elected Labour government has pledged to ‘reinvigorate the Private Finance Initiative’, as part of the new emphasis on ‘public/private partnerships’ in the delivery of core public services. This article assesses the merits of using private finance to deliver public services against three criteria: whether it will lead to additional investment in social infrastructure, whether it represents good value for the taxpayer’s money and whether the use of private finance will reduce the public sector’s flexibility to pursue its public service objectives.

British Sociology: Gains and Losses

[No abstract][No keywords]

Post choice satisfaction among international postgraduate students from Asia studying in Victorian universities

As a study destination Australian universities operate in a competitive international market for full fee paying international students. In order to be successful it is vital that universities, like any other business, address issues of customer satisfaction. Using the expectations/perceptions paradigm this study examines the gap between pre-choice expectations and post-choice perceptions and the resulting satisfaction levels of international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying in Victorian universities. The study concludes that although the students, in general, appear to be relatively satisfied with the university as a study destination, students\u27 perceptions remained far below expectations across all factors and variables investigated. The study also found that there were significant variances in the expectations and perceptions among students from different countries, suggesting that the impact of culture on the decision-making behaviour of students requires further investigation.<br /

A comparative analysis of international education satisfaction using servqual

University education, the world over, has undergone significant transformation and reform with respect to higher education systems meeting the growing role of information and communication revolution, and the demand for knowledge, which represent the new challenges of globalisation. These challenges are seen as threats as well as opportunities for higher education systems around the world. The driving force of globalisation is competition and the international education market has become fiercely competitive with different marketing strategies being implemented by educational institutions to attract the growing number of students seeking higher education. The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the SERVQUAL constructs proposed by Parasuraman et al (1988 &amp; 1985) and the country of origin and satisfaction among four cohorts of Asian international postgraduate students studying in Australian universities. Country of origin is recognized as an important predictor of satisfaction and choice in the international education environment. The data used in this study is derived from a mail survey conducted among international postgraduate students from China, India, Indonesia and Thailand studying in five universities in Victoria, Australia. An adapted version of the SERVQUAL instrument was used to collect the data and was designed to measure the gap between student responses on expectations and perceptions of the university as a study destination on a seven point bi-polar scale. The responses were sought on 36 statements representing aspects of the operations and services of the university under desired (ideal) expectations of choice and post-choice perceptions. Scales were developed to investigate the relationship between the SERVQUAL constructs of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles and the country of origin and were shown to be reliable. Using ANOVA and MANOVA techniques, the study found significant differences between country of origin and the SERVQUAL constructs and discusses strategic implications and opportunities for highereducational institutions<br /

Higher Order BLG Supersymmetry Transformations from 10-Dimensional Super Yang Mills

We study a Simple Route for constructing the higher order Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson theory - both supersymmetry transformations and Lagrangian - starting from knowledge of only the $10$-dimensional Super Yang Mills Fermion Supersymmetry transformation. We are able to uniquely determine the four-derivative order corrected supersymmetry transformations, to lowest non-trivial order in Fermions, for the most general three-algebra theory. For the special case of Euclidean three-algbera, we reproduce the result presented in arXiv:$1207.1208$, with significantly less labour. In addition, we apply our method to calculate the quadratic fermion terms in the higher order BLG fermion supersymmetry transformation.Comment: 15 page

Is the United States Falling Apart?

This is a preprint (author's original) version of the article published in Daedalus 126(2):183-209. The final version of the article can be found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027433 (login required to view content). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Author's Origina