Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Workshop | Body Worn Video Recorders: The Socio-Technical Implications Of Gathering Direct Evidence, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes

Alexander Hayes Mr.

- From in-car video recording to body-worn video recording

- Exploring available technologies: how do they work, pros and cons

- Storing direct evidence in secure storage: factors to consider

- Citizens “shooting” back with POV tech – what are their rights?

- Crowdsourced sousveillance- harnessing public data for forensic profiling

- Police force policies and practices on the application of new media

Improving Food Safety Through Self-Regulation: Exploring The Applicability Of The Hazard Analysis And Critical Control Points (Haccp) System To The Spinach And Peanut Industries, A. Bryce Hoflund, Michelle Pautz

Michelle Pautz

Abstract: Recent years have seen a plethora of incidents in the United States that have called attention to food safety, including spinach, peanut, lettuce, and ground beef recalls. Unsurprisingly in the wake of these recalls, the propensity has been to advocate for additional government regulation. This proclivity begs the question, however, is more reform what is needed? The food safety regulatory system in the U.S. is massive and fragmented; are more regulations the answer to ensuring the safety of food? Skeptics may argue that the only way to ensure the food processing industry is kept in line is through rigid …

Producing Space: Block-By-Block Change In A Gentrifying Neighborhood, Jen Douglas

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Gentrification of urban neighborhoods is part of an ongoing restructuring of the city, linked to the emerging occupational structure of the service economy and the remaking of built environments that were created for a production economy. It is the name given to processes in which commodification and reinvestment accompany the in-migration of professional and managerial workers, often displacing prior residents and giving altered spatial form to inequality.

This dissertation is a case study of gentrification in Hyde and Jackson Squares, part of Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. The emergence of gentrification pressures and their uneven distribution within the area is documented …

Microfinance: A Tool For Financial Access, Poverty Alleviation Or Gender Empowerment ? - Empirical Findings From Pakistan, Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In just 30 years microfinance has transformed from a credit-based rural development scheme that has claimed to reduce poverty and empower poor women, to a $70 billion financial industry. In the process, the traditional NGO-led model has given way to commercialized institutions, resulting in an increased emphasis on profitmaking. This has also led to confusion in the sector around its mission: is it to alleviate poverty and empower poor women or simply to provide the "unbanked" with access to formal sources of finance? This research considers the main debates in microfinance with regard to its mission and presents empirical evidence …

The Association Between Elementary Teacher Licensure Test Scores And Student Growth In Mathematics: An Analysis Of Massachusetts Mtel And Mcas Tests, Life Legeros

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This quasi-experimental value-added study provided evidence for the predictive validity of the Massachusetts MTEL General Curriculum Mathematics Subtest by finding an association between the licensure test results of 130 teachers and the growth of their 2640 grade 4 and 5 students. The study took advantage of a natural experiment that arose due to a policy change made by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MADESE) in response to the initial administration of a new highly rigorous math-specific licensure subtest for elementary and special education teachers in March, 2008. The emergency amendment allowed test takers to conditionally pass the …

Guantanamo And The End Of Hostilities, Eric Talbot Jensen

Faculty Scholarship

Detainees in the War on Terror have been at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade. The justification for these detentions has been, at least in part, the on-going hostilities in Afghanistan. However, President Obama’s announcement in his 2013 State of the Union address that “By the end of [2014] our war in Afghanistan will be over” may undercut the continuing detention authority for at least some of these Guantanamo detainees. This paper analyzes the legal doctrine of release and repatriation in light of President Obama’s announcement and concludes that the President’s determination that hostilities have concluded between specific Parties to …

Massachusetts Community Mediation Center Grant Program: Fiscal Year 2013 Year-End Report & Evaluation, Susan J. Jeghelian, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Kaila O. Eisenkraft

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

During Fiscal Year 2013, the first year of the Massachusetts Community Mediation Center (CMC) Grant Program, 15 community mediation centers across the state were awarded state operating grants. This report documents and evaluates the progress of the CMC Grant Program towards its goal of expanding the use of community mediation as an affordable public service for Massachusetts citizenry. The status of program implementation is analyzed, and the program’s success is assessed through its impact on the stabilization and effectiveness of the funded community mediation centers as measured by, among other things, their delivery of high quality mediation services, efforts to …

Dementia In Maine: Characteristics, Care, And Cost Across Settings [Chartbook], Julie T. Fralich Mba, Stuart Bratesman Mpp, Louise Olsen, Catherine Mcguire Bs, Tina Gressani, Karen Mauney, Catherine Gunn, Romaine Turyn

Disability & Aging

This report provides a baseline picture of the current use of services by people with and without dementia in Maine.

The Innovation Commons, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This book of CASES AND MATERIALS ON INNOVATION AND COMPETITION POLICY is intended for educational use. The book is free for all to use subject to an open source license agreement. It differs from IP/antitrust casebooks in that it considers numerous sources of competition policy in addition to antitrust, including those that emanate from the intellectual property laws themselves, and also related issues such as the relationship between market structure and innovation, the competitive consequences of regulatory rules governing technology competition such as net neutrality and interconnection, misuse, the first sale doctrine, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Chapters …

Distributive Justice And Consumer Welfare In Antitrust, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The dominant view of antitrust policy in the United States is that it is intended to promote some version of economic welfare. More specifically, antitrust promotes allocative efficiency by ensuring that markets are as competitive as they can practicably be, and that firms do not face unreasonable roadblocks to attaining productive efficiency, which refers to both cost minimization and innovation.

The distribution concern that has dominated debates over United States antitrust policy over the last several decades is whether antitrust should adopt a “consumer welfare” principle rather than a more general neoclassical “total welfare” principle. In The Antitrust Paradox Robert …

Competition For Innovation, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Both antitrust and IP law are limited and imperfect instruments for regulating innovation. The problems include high information costs and lack of sufficient knowledge, special interest capture, and the jury trial system, to name a few. More fundamentally, antitrust law and intellectual property law have looked at markets in very different ways. Further, over the last three decades antitrust law has undergone a reformation process that has made it extremely self conscious about its goals. While the need for such reform is at least as apparent in patent and copyright law, very little true reform has actually occurred.

Antitrust has …

Do Foreign Direct Investment And Foreign Aid Promote Good Governance In Africa?, Adugna Lemi, Blen Solomon, Sisay Asefa

Adugna Lemi

The literature on the roles that governance/political and economic stability play to attract capital flows into African economies has been burgeoning. Good governance, liberalization, infrastructure, incentive packages have been regarded as cures to break the deadlock to reverse the economic plight, to attract inflow of capital and, in some cases, to reverse outflows of African economies. The flow of capital, however, has undesirable side effects on host economies’ working conditions, environmental standard, inequality, and culture, among others. These economic and social external or negative spillover effects are due to the phenomenon of “race-to-the-bottom” where companies invest in economies with lax …

Measurement, Monitoring, And Evaluation Of State Demonstrations To Integrate Care For Dual Eligible Individuals: Massachusetts Evaluation Design Plan., Julie T. Fralich Mba, Maureen Booth Mrp, Ma, Edith G. Walsh Phd, Angela M. Greene Ms, Mba, Melissa Morley Phd, Wayne Anderson Phd

Disability & Aging

CMS contracted with RTI International to monitor the implementation of all State demonstrations under the Financial Alignment Initiative, and to evaluate their impact on beneficiary experience, quality, utilization, and cost. The evaluation includes an aggregate evaluation and State-specific evaluations. This report describes the State-specific Evaluation Plan for the Massachusetts demonstration as of December 16, 2013. The evaluation activities may be revised if modifications are made to either the Massachusetts demonstration or to the activities described in the Aggregate Evaluation Plan (Walsh et al., 2013). Although this document will not be revised to address all changes that may occur, the annual …

The Impact Of The Affordable Care Act On The Safety-Net. A Focus On Two Community-Based Clinics Serving Latin@ Immigrants In The Greater New Orleans Region, Rosa Herrin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

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Latin@ immigrants face many obstacles to affordable healthcare that push them to disproportionately rely on the primary safety-net for their healthcare needs. This system is mostly funded with public monies that will be significantly reduced when Affordable Care Act is fully implemented. Since undocumented Latin@ immigrants are prohibited from accessing federally funded healthcare, they will be left out of the health care reform. This thesis examines two community-based clinics in the Greater New Orleans area that serve this population, and have developed linguistically and culturally appropriate programs that address its needs. The New Orleans Faith Health Alliance and Common-Ground …

Attitudes Towards Immigration Reform In The United States: The Importance Of Neighborhoods, Noelle Makhoul Fcrh '12

The Fordham Undergraduate Research Journal

Americans are greatly divided over immigration reform. Public opinion literature provides multiple explanations for these attitudinal differences. One contention in the literature is that the amount of ethnic diversity in one’s neighborhood affects mass attitudes towards immigration reform. Within this literature, some scholars argue that ethnic diversity triggers more negative attitudes towards immigration. Others posit that ethnic diversity is associated with positive attitudes towards immigration. In this paper, I seek to contribute to this debate by exploring the role of ethnic diversity in one’s neighborhood in shaping public attitudes toward immigration reform. This study is based upon semi-structured interviews with …

Evaluating Quality Improvement To Improve Hiv Reporting, Nandi A. Marshall, William C. Livingood, Angela Peden, Gulzar H. Shah, Russ Toal, Dayna Alexander, Alesha Wright, Sandra Jump, Shelby Freeman, Kay Davis, Lynn Woodhouse, Kellie Penix

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

The incorporation and evaluation of Quality Improvement into Georgia’s public health systems continues to be a focus of the Georgia Public Health Practice Based Research Network. This report describes the process, preliminary results and lessons learned from incorporating Quality Improvement into one of Georgia’s public health districts.

Evidence Use In New York City Public Health Policymaking, Miriam J. Laugesen, Kimberley R. Isett

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has attracted national attention for his public health policy reforms. The policy process behind the reform program has received less scrutiny, especially the use of research by policymakers. We show that the process used to develop, promote, and evaluate polices is heavily based on five types of data and research. New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene staff conducted in-depth appraisals of existing published research, used local health surveys and private laboratory surveillance data, engaged in “shoe-leather” field research, formed research collaborations within and outside government, and disseminated research to legitimize policy …

Commentary: Moving Beyond The Numbers, Effectively Using Research To Influence Policy, F. Douglas Scutchfield, Marylou Wallace

Frontiers in Public Health Services and Systems Research

This seventh issue of Frontiers reflects the variety of PHSSR. One emerging theme, however, is the notion of public health and its role in policy and policy development. PHSSR focuses on several potential users, researchers, practitioners and policy makers. As it concerns policy makers, PHSSR delivers research that allows them to make decisions about policy change that not only influences public health status, but creates healthy conditions. In this way, PHSSR essentially influences decisions about support for public health services.

Foreword, Winston E. Langley

Winston E. Langley

Change is a fundamental feature of life and living; without it, few things would survive, and fewer, if any, would thrive. The New England Journal of Public Policy has undergone a change, having elected to assume an electronic form. Since coming into being in this form three months ago, the success it has realized with its earlier issues has been remarkable. It is as if it were being waited on. In the month of December 2012, for example, the journal was the second most popular publication series on ScholarWorks at the University of Massachusetts Boston, with a total of 2,783 …

Youth Sport Coaching Efficacy: Coach Education Level As A Predictor Of Coaching Efficacy, Geoffrey V. Weller

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this research was to evaluate coaches’ level of education as a predictor of their coaching efficacy level. The study tested ten hypotheses. Two for each of the five types of coaching efficacy identified: (1) Coaches with a higher level of education will not exhibit a higher level of coaching efficacy and (2) male coaches will not exhibit a higher level of coaching efficacy than similarly educated female coaches. Individuals (N=1669) coaching teams within the YMCA of Lincoln, NE Youth Sports Branch were emailed a link to an online survey developed using Qualtrics software. An analysis of variance …

Languages Of The Unheard: Why Militant Protest Is Good For Democracy, Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

A normative democratic theory of sound militancy is proposed, drawing on the ideas of Martin Luther King, but rejecting his non-violence standard in favour of a democratic standard. This normative standard is then applied to civil disobedience, disruptive direct action, sabotage, black blocs, rioting and armed struggle.

Assessment Of Seawater Quality: Do Public Perceptions Of Seawater Quality Match Indications Given By Macroalgae?, Angela Bartolo

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Determination of seawater quality is an essential activity in coastal areas especially in ones that attract bathers. This study aims to investigate whether the Ecological Quality Status (EQS) of seawater in bathing areas in the Maltese Islands differs across sites. The study also aims to investigate the correlation between public perceptions and objective measures of seawater quality as well as factors affecting perception of seawater quality. Another objective of this study is to investigate the public’s knowledge about macroalgae and opinion on macroalgae. The EQS of seawater in six coastal sites in the Maltese Islands is investigated using the EEI-c …

Feasibility Study Of Installing Artificial Bathing Platforms At The Northeast Coast Of Malta, Darren Bianco

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The need to create additional bathing areas at rugged karst rocky shores of the northeast coast of Malta could be met by installing temporary wooden decking platforms, since current sandy beaches are very crowded in the peak summer season. Wooden decking platforms are also an acceptable alternative to beach nourishment projects, where the latter can have permanent negative environmental impacts. The old and eroded concrete platforms which cover large areas of the northeast coast of Malta represent an eyesore to the public. The option of overlaying these concrete platforms with a permanent rock amalgam composed of fiber-reinforced concrete which mimics …

Security By Contractor: Outsourcing In Peace And Stability Operations, Volker Franke

Volker C. Franke

No abstract provided.

Outstanding Educational Performance Awards: Highlighting High-Achieving Arkansas Schools, 2013, Vera R. Deberg, Sarah M. Burks, Prairey Walkling, Gary W. Ritter

Arkansas Education Reports

The GPA measure, we believe, is a better representation of student achievement on statewide standardized exams. In this report, we are presenting a list of the top 25 schools in each area. In some cases, these "top 25 lists" will contain more than 25 schools as some schools' GPA scores will be identical. This is not a new phenomenon, as we also exceeded 25 schools in previous reports when using the percent proficient and advanced metric as an indicator for student achievement; however, there are fewer ties using the more precise GPA measure.

After we present our overall snapshot of …

Strengthening Immigrants' Health Access: Current Opportunities, Leighton C. Ku

Health Policy and Management Issue Briefs

This brief summarizes key opportunities helping the nation’s newcomers in gaining health insurance coverage and health access that are possible under the current law. Provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will help millions of legal immigrants gain access to affordable health insurance coverage. At the same time, however, immigrants will also face new responsibilities. Like citizens, lawfully present immigrants will be responsible for having health insurance coverage or paying a tax penalty, although some are exempt. Rules about immigrants’ access to health insurance benefits are often complicated because they depend on specific immigration categories, as well as eligibility for …

Research Brief: "Women Service Members And Veterans Returning To Colleges And Universities: An Exploratory Analysis", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief summarizes a scholarly article of the same name. It reviews research which analyzes the impact of being a transitioning woman veteran entering the student veteran sphere.

A Mandatory Spay/Neuter Ordinance In San Francisco: The Solution To San Francisco’S Other Homeless Problem, Davi Lang

Master's Projects and Capstones

This Capstone explains the dog overpopulation problem in San Francisco where the increase in dog impoundments and animal cruelty cases, particularly ones involving dogs, has been straining its Department of Animal Care & Control’s already limited resources. At least 33 local governments around the United States have implemented mandatory spay/neuter laws for all dogs as a way to curb dog overpopulation. This Capstone argues for San Francisco to adopt a similar mandatory spay/neuter law, in which all dogs over the age of six months must be spayed or neutered, with certain exceptions. This will relieve the strain on Animal Care …

Export Controls: A Contemporary History, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides highlights of my recently published book Export Controls: A Contemporary History. Describes the roles played by multiple U.S. Government agencies and congressional oversight committees in this policymaking arena including the Commerce, Defense, State, and Treasury Departments. It also reviews the roles played by international government organizations such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, export oriented businesses, and research intensive universities.

The Plight Of Kenyan Domestic Workers In Gulf Countries, Caroline Muthoni Gikuru

Master's Theses

Kenya’s economy remains the regional leader within the East African Community (EAC) and among East African countries at large. However, political instability such as the 2007 post-election violence and the region’s social and political instability trickling into Kenya, have negatively affected the country’s economic growth. To bridge the economic gap, Kenyan women are seeking employment in the domestic service sector in the Gulf Countries, with Saudi Arabia being the most popular destination. At their destination countries, some domestic workers are subjected to various forms of abuse by their employers, leaving the worker without recourse due to the lack of legal …