Policing the Campus: Academic Repression, Surveillance, and the Occupy Movement

Book review of Policing the Campus: Academic Repression, Surveillance, and the Occupy Movement, edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and David Gabbard (2013)

Do consumers really want credit card reform?

Earlier this year, several bills were introduced in Congress to curb what many consumer advocates have described as abusive credit card practices. These bills were intended to keep credit card issuers from penalizing consumers for paying their card balances in full each month. In unveiling one of the measures, Congressman John LaFalce declared, "[Consumers] should not be tricked or trapped into escalating interest rates and unnecessary fees. And they clearly deserve better than to be punished for paying off debt and for responsibly using their credit cards."> Apparently, many consumers agree. According to a November 1996 survey by Money magazine, 79 percent of respondents supported legislation to restrict how credit card issuers set fees and account terms.> With such strong consumer support for credit card reform, it is not surprising that Congress responded. In fact, Congress has repeatedly considered similar measures, some even more restrictive, such as proposals to cap the interest rate charged on credit card accounts. These measures have in common one potentially disturbing feature: if passed into law, they each would impose price controls on credit card accounts.> Combs and Schreft address whether such legislative efforts can achieve the stated objective of benefiting consumers. They find that consumers as a whole generally do not benefit from reform measures of the type studied. The effective price of a credit card account might not fall for many---or any---consumers as a result of such pricing restrictions, and credit availability is likely to be reduced, at least to some consumers. Thus, consumers should think twice before asking for pricing restrictions on credit cards.Credit cards

Policing the Campus: Academic Repression, Surveillance, and the Occupy Movement

Book review of Policing the Campus: Academic Repression, Surveillance, and the Occupy Movement, edited by Anthony J. Nocella II and David Gabbard (2013)

Prairie Farms Dairy, Inc.: Economic Impact of a Dairy Cooperative [This report is now at http://purl.umn.edu/180971]

This report is now at http://purl.umn.edu/180971Dairy cooperative, fluid milk, processing, distribution, history, economic impact., Livestock Production/Industries,

Liquid rocket performance computer model with distributed energy release Interim final report, 15 Aug. 1969 - 15 Aug. 1970

Liquid propellant rocket engine performance computer program with distributed energy releas

Building validation tools for knowledge-based systems

The Expert Systems Validation Associate (EVA), a validation system under development at the Lockheed Artificial Intelligence Center for more than a year, provides a wide range of validation tools to check the correctness, consistency and completeness of a knowledge-based system. A declarative meta-language (higher-order language), is used to create a generic version of EVA to validate applications written in arbitrary expert system shells. The architecture and functionality of EVA are presented. The functionality includes Structure Check, Logic Check, Extended Structure Check (using semantic information), Extended Logic Check, Semantic Check, Omission Check, Rule Refinement, Control Check, Test Case Generation, Error Localization, and Behavior Verification

Testing validation tools on CLIPS-based expert systems

The Expert Systems Validation Associate (EVA) is a validation system which was developed at the Lockheed Software Technology Center and Artificial Intelligence Center between 1986 and 1990. EVA is an integrated set of generic tools to validate any knowledge-based system written in any expert system shell such as C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS), ART, OPS5, KEE, and others. Many validation tools have been built in the EVA system. In this paper, we describe the testing results of applying the EVA validation tools to the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Fault Diagnosis, Isolation, and Reconfiguration (FDIR) expert system, written in CLIPS, obtained from the NASA Johnson Space Center

The role of leadership capacity in sustaining the school improvement initiative of schoolwide positive behavior supports

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 20, 2007)Vita.Thesis (Ed. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2007.The purpose for this study was to examine what occurred within schools successfully implementing and sustaining school change through the examination of characteristics of leadership capacity. Leadership capacity was identified as broad-based, skillful participation that promoted the advancement of the capabilities of many organizational members to lead (Lambert, 2005b). The intent of the mixed design examination was to provide insights into building leadership capacity for sustaining lasting school improvement, thus impacting student achievement. Research indicated that schools successful in sustaining school improvement build capacity for leadership within the organization (Harris & Lambert, 2003). The characteristics of leadership capacity were studied in school organizations implementing the school improvement initiative known as Schoolwide Positive Behavior Supports (SW-PBS) by investigating the factors within the school organization that resulted in some schools developing the leadership capacity to implement and sustain change while other school organizations implementing the same change initiative did not sustain the initiative effectively. Quantitative analysis used to compare responses of teachers in schools identified as successfully sustaining school improvement with responses of teachers in schools identified as not yet successfully sustaining improvement resulted in the finding that there was a significant difference between the two school groups in all of the characteristics of leadership capacity. The effective size for each of the leadership capacity characteristics was positive and each characteristic was statistically significant for schools successfully sustaining school improvement. Principals of schools successful in sustaining school improvement demonstrated behaviors that promoted, supported, and encouraged the building of leadership capacity for lasting school improvement. Successful school leadership builds trust, develops focus for the school, and convenes dialogue about teaching and learning. Implications for successful school leadership for sustaining school improvement involves taking additional care to enable broad teacher involvement in creating meaning and committing to the values that meaning represents for the school, in sharing knowledge through questioning and inquiry, to participate fully in decision-making based on evidence, and reflecting on how practice impacts student learning.Includes bibliographical reference