Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Congestion Costs And Scheduling Preferences Of Car Commuters In California: Estimates Using Big Data, Jinwon Kim, Jucheol Moon

Mineta Transportation Institute

On average, California car commuters waste 4–5 minutes per morning commute due to congestion. Multiplied across all California car commuters, those few minutes entail a yearly total of approximately 2.3 billion hours of time wasted, costing 6 billion dollars. The objective of this study is to quantify congestion costs and determine how commuters adapt to the level of congestion they face (i.e., commuters’ scheduling utility functions). To that end, this research developed a model of trip scheduling under congestion to construct California commuters’ travel-time profiles, i.e., the menu of travel times that each individual would likely face according to alternate …

The 2025 Michigan State Oral Health Plan, Ellen Sugrue Hyman Jd

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This feature article explores the 2025 Michigan State Oral Health Plan (SOHP), a comprehensive initiative developed by the Michigan Oral Health Coalition (MOHC) and a statewide coalition, including the Michigan Dental Association (MDA). With a focus on enhancing oral health for all Michigan residents, the SOHP prioritizes addressing economic and racial disparities. The plan, guided by three key goals—Increasing Awareness and Education, Dental-Health Integration, and Access and Infrastructure—aims to improve oral health outcomes. The article discusses the plan's development process, key findings highlighting existing disparities, workforce challenges, and the strategic implementation of the SOHP through collaborative efforts and workgroups.

Collective Cognitive Capital, Emily R. D. Murphy

William & Mary Law Review

This Article calls for a new project for law and neuroscience. It outlines a structural, not individual, application of brain and behavioral science that is aligned with the general goal of basic science research: improving the lives of citizens with a better understanding of the human experience. It asks brain and behavioral science to move explicitly into public policy territory, and specifically onto ground more traditionally occupied by economists—but in ways the project of “behavioral economics” has not yet ventured. Put simply, policy analysts should focus on brains—“collective cognitive capital”—with the same intensity with which they focus on money, rights, …

Staff Matters: Is Our Practice Required To Mandate Employee Vaccination For Covid-19?, Jodi Schafer Sphr, Shrm-Scp

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This Staff Matters Column addresses the confusion surrounding COVID-19 vaccination mandates for private dental practices. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) vaccine mandate was upheld. However, the CMS rule, clarified through FAQs, applies to specific health care facilities accepting Medicare or Medicaid funding and does not include private dental practices. The article navigates the nuances of the CMS rule, emphasizing its impact on certain health care settings rather than private dental practices, offering clarity on vaccination requirements for dental professionals.

Indicators Of Political Instability In The Presence Of Rapid Urban And Youth Population Growth, Douglas W. Hubbard

Theses and Dissertations

Large and rapidly growing cities and other urban agglomerations have the potential to become incubators of political instability. This is especially true of rapidly growing cities which are located in countries that are also experiencing high rates of growth in their youth population. Rapid growth rates put stress on urban infrastructure and other institutions, and these stresses can cause major problems for both city and national governments. Knowing when these cities and countries may be trending toward their tipping points regarding political instability will help governments and international organizations develop and implement effective strategies to mitigate the risk of instability.

The Governor’S Budget Awareness For Dentistry, Christopher J. Smiley Dds

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This editorial highlights the significance of the Governor's proposed budget in February, marking a substantial step forward for oral health awareness in Michigan. The budget allocates funds for long-sought oral health initiatives, including addressing barriers to hospital-based dental care, enhancing Medicaid coverage for adults, and streamlining dental plans. With a focus on workforce availability, the editorial emphasizes the critical role of oral health in employability. The proposed budget, influenced by effective MDA advocacy, reflects a notable achievement in prioritizing dentistry, underscoring the potential for future opportunities.

Lasso For Stochastic Frontier Models With Many Efficient Firms, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yoonseok Lee

Center for Policy Research

We apply the adaptive LASSO (Zou, 2006) to select a set of maximally efficient firms in the panel fixed-effect stochastic frontier model. The adaptively weighted L1 penalty with sign restrictions for firm-level inefficiencies allows simultaneous estimation of the maximal efficiency and firm-level inefficiency parameters, which results in a faster rate of convergence of the corresponding estimators than the least-squares dummy variable approach. We show that the estimator possesses the oracle property and selection consistency still holds with our proposed tuning parameter selection criterion. We also propose an efficient optimization algorithm based on coordinate descent. We apply the method to estimate …

Defelonization And Police Decision-Making: A Phenomenological Study Of Policing Behaviors In Los Angeles County Post-Proposition 47, Stephen William Bell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore how law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County described their lived experiences of engaging in discretionary enforcement behaviors when policing narcotics crimes. Rational choice theory provided the theoretical framework for the study. The two research questions asked the following: 1) What does Proposition 47 mean to law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County in relation to their self-efficacy to police narcotic offenses? 2) What do law enforcement officers in Los Angeles County share as challenges when policing narcotic offenses in their communities after the ratification of Proposition 47? Purposeful sampling …

Optimizing Multimodal Transportation Access To Support Commuting Among Low-Income Transit Riders With Social Distancing, Shailesh Chandra, Vivek Mishra

Mineta Transportation Institute

During the COVID-19 pandemic, LA Metro has encouraged social distancing among passengers—especially at stations of high-demand routes—and has increased fixed-route transit (FRT) services. However, potential impacts of social distancing on the performance of FRT services remain mostly unknown. This research evaluates the accessibility of FRT buses with social distancing using the ridership data collected on four FRT routes: 105, 108, 111, and 115 of the LA Metro's A Line stations located in low-income neighborhoods. This research shows that social distancing of six feet can impact FRT's accessibility to destination stations, and maximum accessibility is achieved only for a certain number …

A Framework For Assessing Accountability In Collaborative Governance: A Process-Based Approach, Seulki Lee, Sonia M. Ospina

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite the complexities involved around the accountability mechanisms of collaborative governance, little is known about how to assess accountability at the network level and disentangle possible accountability deficits. This study first explicates the nature of collaborative governance accountability in contrast to accountability in traditional public administration and market-based governance. The analysis shows how collaborative governance accountability is distinctive: (a) accountability relationships shift from bilateral to multilateral; (b) horizontal as well as vertical accountability relationships are involved; (c) not only formal standards but also informal norms are used; and (d) accountability challenges move from control/audit issues to trust-building and paradox management …

Five Key Points In The Ipcc Report On Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation, Lisa Schipper, Vanessa Castan Broto, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looks at the impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities associated with the climate crisis, and we are three of the 270 scientists and researchers who wrote it. The document reports stark new findings on the way current global warming of 1.1℃ is impacting natural and human systems, and on how our ability to respond will be increasingly limited with every additional increment of warming.

Ecosystem Duties, Green Infrastructure, And Environmental Injustice In Los Angeles, Sayd Randle

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In Los Angeles, water managers and environmentalist NGOs champion green infrastructure retrofits, installations intended to maximize the water-absorbing capacity of the urban landscape. In such arrangements, the work of water management is necessarily spread among a more-than-human community, including (but certainly not limited to) humans, plants, soils, and gravels. This article analyzes the human labor within these collaborations, tracking when and how this work gets enrolled in networks of water management and circuits of value. I develop the term ecosystem duties to characterize these exertions and as a useful analytic for assessing emergent dynamics of environmental justice.

Technical Report: Reviewing The Relationships Between Urban Morphological Variables And Outdoor Thermal Comfort (Otc) To Assess Comfort Implication Of Densification For Singapore, Shreya Banerjee, Ngai Yan Ching, Sin Kang Yik

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Majority thermal comfort studies focus on exploring the relationships between subjective parameters such as personal, physiological, psychological, and behavioral attributes and how they shape Outdoor Thermal Comfort (OTC). Although some attempts have been made to analyze the impact of urban morphological variables, but few have explored the effect of urban densification on OTC. Assessing the impact of density attributes is especially important for highly dense cities such as Singapore. Keeping this in consideration, ths study aims to provide a review-based analysis connecting OTC and various density related morphological variables. Firstly, this report analyses existing literature to provide snapshots on various …

Using Google Trends As A Proxy For Occupant Behavior To Predict Building, Chun Fu, Clayton Miller

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In recent years, the availability of larger amounts of energy data and advanced machine learning algorithms has created a surge in building energy prediction research. However, one of the variables in energy prediction models, occupant behavior, is crucial for prediction performance but hard-to-measure or time-consuming to collect from each building. This study proposes an approach that utilizes the search volume of topics (e.g., education or Microsoft Excel) on the Google Trends platform as a proxy of occupant behavior and use of buildings. Linear correlations were first examined to explore the relationship between energy meter data and Google Trends search terms …

Policy And Behavior: Comparisons Between Twitter Discussions About The Us Tobacco 21 Law And Other Age-Related Behaviors, Page D. Dobbs, Jason B. Colditz, Shelby Shields, Anna Meadows, Brian A. Primack

Health, Human Performance and Recreation Faculty Publications and Presentations

To combat the e-cigarette epidemic among young audiences, a federal law was passed in the US that raised the minimum legal sales age of tobacco to 21 years (commonly known as Tobacco 21). Little is known about sentiment toward this law. Thus, the purpose of our study was to systematically explore trends about Tobacco 21 discussions and comparisons to other age-restriction behaviors on Twitter. Twitter data (n = 4628) were collected from September to December of 2019 that were related to Tobacco 21. A random subsample of identified tweets was used to develop a codebook. Two trained coders independently coded …

Commentary: Coastal Cities Like Singapore Face Outsized Risks – And Opportunities – In A Warming World, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Many Southeast Asian cities are at the frontline for rapid, concerted and effective climate action, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report's lead author Winston Chow.

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Giving With Pride: Considering Participatory Grantmaking In An Anti-Racist, Lgbtq+ Community Foundation, Elizabeth J. Dale, Nicole J. Plastino

The Foundation Review

Institutional racism is woven into organizations, processes, and practices in complex ways that inhibit transformational change. Participatory grantmaking and trust-based philanthropy are two paradigms that can shift such power dynamics in foundation giving. This article examines how Pride Foundation, a regional LGBTQ+ community foundation in the Pacific Northwest, restructured its grantmaking as part of a broader organization-wide commitment to racial justice.

Through an embedded case study, the authors followed Pride Foundation in the first year of transforming its grantmaking to address two questions: the factors foundations should consider when exploring participatory grantmaking, and how a foundation can best navigate a …

Grassroots Environmental Justice Work And Philanthropy: Challenges And Opportunities, Jennifer S. Ramirez, Ana I. Baptista, Molly Greenberg, Adrienne Perovich, Anna Yulsman, Antonio Lopez, Andrew Rosenberg

The Foundation Review

Across the United States, grassroots groups within the environmental justice movement are leading important work on the front lines of the climate crisis, especially in marginalized communities. Despite the importance of these organizations, the philanthropic sector has devoted the lion’s share of environmental funding to more mainstream nonprofits.

Building Equity and Alignment for Environmental Justice and the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School conducted a landscape assessment study of environmental funders and grassroots environmental justice organizations in the Gulf South and the Midwest. The study had four research aims: gain a greater understanding of environmental justice funding, …

Lead, Advise, Witness: Shifting Mindsets To Achieving Impact At Scale, Jeffrey Sunshine, Bernadette Sangalang

The Foundation Review

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation created Starting Smart and Strong, a 10-year, place-based initiative in three California communities, to develop and test solutions that support parents, caregivers, and educators as they prepare young children to be healthy and ready for school. The initiative brings together public and private partners to create comprehensive early learning systems, with a focus on impact at scale.

Seven years into Starting Smart and Strong, we offer key insights into our experiences as program staff managing this complex initiative and how our approach to scaling impact has shifted over the course of the strategy. Listening …

Faith-Based Public Foundations: Identifying The Field And Assessing Its Impact, Allison K. Ralph, Brad R. Fulton, Samuel Allen

The Foundation Review

Charitable activity is a core tenet of most faith traditions, and many charitable organizations have a religious identity. However, little is known about the prevalence and scale of faith-based foundations, and how they differ from secular foundations.

This article identifies the field of public foundations, differentiates between faith-based and secular foundations, and compares their characteristics by analyzing Form 990 data. An analysis of these data estimates that 24% of all public charities operate as foundations and that 17% of public foundations are faith-based. These findings are used to generate first-ever estimates for the entire field of public foundations.

This analysis …

Examining The Effects Of A Bike And E-Bike Lending Program On Commuting Behavior, Dillon T. Fitch, Zeyu Gao, Lucy Noble, Terry Mac

Mineta Transportation Institute

In 2015, Google added a new transportation demand management (TDM) program to increase bike commuting to their two main campuses in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, California. An initial survey of employees indicated that bike ownership and worry about maintenance were primary bicycling barriers. With this information, Google began a program that loaned high-quality electric-assisted and conventional bicycles for a period of six months at no cost to interested employees. This research evaluates the effectiveness of the program at changing travel behavior to the corporate campuses by using self-reported and smartphone-integrated travel data. The lending program at Google represents one of, …

Examining The Effects Of Precision Scheduled Railroading On Intercity Passenger And High-Speed Rail Service, John G. Green, Francis J. Miller

Mineta Transportation Institute

More than just scheduling terminal-to-terminal trips for trains, “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR) creates entire point-to-point trip plans for individual railroad shipments. Since precision execution was first put into practice, the benefits to shipment arrival reliability and to freight railroads’ profitability have been demonstrated by its use in several Class One freight railroads. However, the effects of the PSR operating strategy on passenger railway operations in shared freight/passenger corridors has not been studied in detail. This research examines the effects of PSR railroad operations on passenger railways, including measuring “Host Railroad Minutes of Delay per 10,000 Train-Miles” and “On-Time Performance” of …

Heterogeneous Attentions For Solving Pickup And Delivery Problem Via Deep Reinforcement Learning, Jingwen Li, Liang Xin, Zhiguang Cao, Andrew Lim, Wen Song, Jie Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, there is an emerging trend to apply deep reinforcement learning to solve the vehicle routing problem (VRP), where a learnt policy governs the selection of next node for visiting. However, existing methods could not handle well the pairing and precedence relationships in the pickup and delivery problem (PDP), which is a representative variant of VRP. To address this challenging issue, we leverage a novel neural network integrated with a heterogeneous attention mechanism to empower the policy in deep reinforcement learning to automatically select the nodes. In particular, the heterogeneous attention mechanism specifically prescribes attentions for each role of the …

The Impact Of Ride-Hail Surge Factors On Taxi Bookings, Sumit Agarwal, Ben Charoenwong, Shih-Fen Cheng, Jussi Keppo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We study the role of ride-hailing surge factors on the allocative efficiency of taxis by combining a reduced-form estimation with structural analyses using machine-learning-based demand predictions. Where other research study the effect of entry on incumbent taxis, we use higher frequency granular data to study how location-time-specific surge factors affect taxi bookings to bound the effect of customer decisions while accounting for various confounding variables. We find that even in a unique market like Singapore, where incumbent taxi companies have app-based booking systems similar to those from ride-hailing companies like Uber, the estimated upper bound on the cross-platform substitution between …

Missing Perspectives: Women In The Military From Service To Civilian Life, Rosalinda Maury, Corri Zoli, Daniel Fay, Adam Pritchard, Mirza Tihic, Rachel K. Linsner, Jeanette Harvie, Jennifer L. Akin, C. C. Rivera

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Women have served in America’s wars and conflicts throughout our history. The contributions made by the women in the military both in and out of service cannot be overstated. Women in the military have used their skills and experiences from their military service to make achievements in their careers and their communities. Information and data in this document are from various sources centered on service experience, transition, employment, entrepreneurship, and higher education.

A Proposed Governance Model For The Adoption Of Geoparks In Australia, Alan Briggs, David Newsome, Ross Dowling

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose: Good governance is crucial in establishing and managing geoparks and is a requirement by UNESCO if global status is to be achieved. Australia has three levels of government, government agencies and not for profit organisations that can assist in the reintroduction of geoparks to Australia. This paper examines a range of governance models used by UNESCO Global Geoparks. Design/methodology/approach: This paper explores mechanisms that could be applied in the reintroduction of geoparks into Australia and considers how future geoparks might be managed. The suggested model is based on a review of existing UNESCO Global Geopark governance and their management …

Evidence Integration For Coherent Nexus Policy Design: A Mediterranean Perspective On Managing Water-Energy Interactions, Sarah Giest, Ishani Mukherjee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Nexus governance increasingly relies on using data to design policy measures. At the intersection of different policy fields, such as energy and water, data is seen to shed light on complex challenges and have the ability to measure both problems and solutions systematically. In order to analyze the challenges linked to data use in the context of nexus governance, we use a policy design lens and more specifically the perspective of organizational policy instruments to look at the Mediterranean region. We focus on how the design of organizational tools enables or impedes policy coherence and thereby the efficacy of data …

Do Veterans Seek Mental Health Counseling?, Jonathan D. Williams

Journal of Graduate Education Research

The purpose of this non-experimental study was to determine if there is a difference in attitudes towards seeking mental health services between veterans and civilians. Participants were a convenience sample of 54 veterans and civilians from around the United States. The participants completed a survey, that was introduced through social media, to determine their attitude towards seeking mental health services. An analysis of the results revealed that there is not a significant difference between veterans’ and civilians’ attitudes towards seeking mental health services.

Program Pembentukan Dan Peningkatan Kapasitas Petani Pesisir Dompak Laut Sebagai Pemberdayaan Masyarakat Pesisir, Klemensia Michelle Novely Horista, Ety Rahayu

Jurnal Pembangunan Manusia

Indonesia as a maritime country has many coastal community groups. But unfortunately, the various efforts to develop the blue economy have not been able to improve the welfare of these community groups. Most of them choose to depend on the fisheries and tourism sectors, even though Indonesia's marine potential is vast and there is much that can still be developed. Coastal communities are not aware of the climate crisis that is getting worse and can threaten the security of the environment where they live. Based on this, the CarbonEthics Foundation seeks to be a solution by prioritizing training and education …