Entwicklung ländlicher Kommunen

Due to a revision of the land utilisation plan the town Lichtenberg had initiated a civic participation. After four official workshops the citizens decided to continue on their own. The article describes a best practice example of a citizen’s action committee. The citizens develop concepts and work pro bono for their community. Their aim is to prepare the town for future challenges. The citizen’s action committee works closely together with the town’s council. In the meantime there are three projects that have been finished successfully. One project–the development of a shared vision–is described more detailed. The author summarizes experiences that could be beneficial for other citizen’s action committees.     

After the Storm: How Race,Class, and Immigration Concerns Influenced Beliefs About the Katrina Evacuees*

Objective. In September 2005, approximately 150,000 Gulf Coast residents fled to Houston, Texas, seeking shelter following Hurricane Katrina. Since the majority of evacuees were poor African Americans, the political and social consequences of the storm inspired a national dialogue on race and class. However, in Houston, the discourse on Katrina evacuees also involved immigration concerns. The city's distinction as a gateway to new arrivals influenced the dialogue on the evacuees' impact on the local area. This article assesses the extent to which race, class, and immigration concerns influenced Houstonians' beliefs about the Katrina evacuees. Methods. We analyze data from the 2006 and 2008 Houston Area Survey in order to assess attitudes toward these newcomers at two distinct time periods: within six months of their arrival and then again more than two years later. Results. Our findings show that both national and local factors influenced beliefs about the Katrina evacuees. Conclusions. The dynamics of race/ethnicity and apprehension toward immigrants drove largely antagonistic beliefs about the mostly poor, mostly black new arrivals.     

Clean and green organizing in urban neighborhoods: Measuring perceived and objective outcomes

ABSTRACT

One way in which urban community organizations attempt to improve neighborhood health is through cleaning and greening efforts. Few studies have evaluated how such efforts are related to changes in both residents’ perceptions of neighborhoods and objective community-wide cleaning and greening indicators over time. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative data collected during an evaluation of a community-building initiative in two communities, results show how neighborhood changes in cleaning and greening were reflected in perceived and objective measures and how these measures compare across different time periods and sub-groups of residents within the two target communities. We provide suggestions for additional ways that future evaluations of urban cleaning and greening efforts can examine the impact.     

Presenting DEA graphically

This paper introduces a methodology that permits presentation of the results of data envelopment analysis (DEA) graphically. A specialized form of multi-dimensional scaling, Co-Plot, enables presentation of the DEA results in a two-dimensional space, hence in a clear, understandable manner. When plotting ratios rather than original data, DEA efficient units can be visualized clearly, as well as their connections to specific variables and/or ratios. Furthermore, Co-Plot can be used in an exploratory data analysis to identify outliers, whose data require additional scrutiny, and potentially inconsequential variables that could be aggregated or removed from the analysis with little effect on the subsequent DEA results.     

Understanding the role of facial asymmetry in human face identification

Face recognition has important applications in forensics (criminal identification) and security (biometric authentication). The problem of face recognition has been extensively studied in the computer vision community, from a variety of perspectives. A relatively new development is the use of facial asymmetry in face recognition, and we present here the results of a statistical investigation of this biometric. We first show how facial asymmetry information can be used to perform three different face recognition tasks—human identification (in the presence of expression variations), classification of faces by expression, and classification of individuals according to sex. Initially, we use a simple classification method, and conduct a feature analysis which shows the particular facial regions that play the dominant role in achieving these three entirely different classification goals. We then pursue human identification under expression changes in greater depth, since this is the most important task from a practical point of view. Two different ways of improving the performance of the simple classifier are then discussed: (i) feature combinations and (ii) the use of resampling techniques (bagging and random subspaces). With these modifications, we succeed in obtaining near perfect classification results on a database of 55 individuals, a statistically significant improvement over the initial results as seen by hypothesis tests of proportions.     

“Seeing” is retrieving: Recovering emotional content in leadership ratings through visualization

Our purpose was to develop a new method of questionnaire administration that better captures the role of affect and embodied cognitions in leadership ratings. Study 1 participants visualized their current work supervisor or a neutral stimulus and provided ratings of their work supervisor. Study 2 participants viewed a leadership event and made ratings of leadership and affect. Participants later made identical ratings after visualization. In both quasi-experiments, participants' affect was more strongly related to their leadership ratings following leader visualization. Study 2 showed that participants' leadership and affect ratings were more consistent with their initial ratings, and it showed better episodic memory recall following leader visualization.     

Pricing and upper price bounds of relax certificates

Relax certificates are written on multiple underlying stocks. Their payoff depends on a barrier condition and is thus path-dependent. As long as none of the underlying assets crosses a lower barrier, the investor receives the payoff of a coupon bond. Otherwise, there is a cash settlement at maturity which depends on the lowest stock return. Thus, the products consist of a knock-out coupon bond and a knock-in claim on the minimum of the stock prices. In a Black-Scholes model setup, the price of the knock-out part can be given in closed (or semi-closed) form in the case of one or two underlyings only. With the exception of the trivial case of one underlying, the price of the knock-in minimum claim always has to be calculated numerically. Hence, we derive semi-closed form upper price bounds. These bounds are the lowest upper price bounds which can be calculated without the use of numerical methods. In addition, the bounds are especially tight for the vast majority of relax certificates which are traded at a discount relative to the corresponding coupon bond. This is also illustrated with market data.     

Facebook Bras and #digitalharems: Fantasies of Mimesis and the Transgressions of Aliaa Elmahdy and Amina Sboui

Abstract

This article presents a horizontal reading of Aliaa Elmahdy's and Amina Sboui's corporeal interventions alongside the efficacy of digital platforms in order to consider how algorithmic and normative protocols related to content filtering on social media amplify certain forms of political communication while prohibiting others. I argue that readings of Elmahdy's and Sboui's bodily politics through the lens of liberal feminism rely on what I call discourses of mimetic networking, where particular mediated events become reterritorialized as part of an archival knowledge of ‘Arabness’. This is done through the organization of data via hashtagging and content moderation, and through rhetorics of techno-optimism that mirror ‘first contact’ narratives which gender, racialize, and flatten complex and fluid engagements with new media in non-US/European contexts. The article concludes with a consideration of how the persistence of their corporeality relays with both normative and programmatic parameters online to make alternative visions of communication possible.     

Identifying Attributes of Relationship Management in Nonprofit Policy Advocacy

Relationship management has been identified as an important activity for policy advocacy, but little is known about the strategies that human service administrators use to develop and maintain relationships with policymakers. This exploratory study aimed at identifying attributes of relationship management strategies that are associated with policy advocacy outcomes. Data were gathered from a sample of 333 nonprofit human service providers in Florida. Controlling for organizational size, the findings indicated that several established dimensions of relationship management were associated with policy advocacy success: networking, sharing of tasks, and assurances. Post hoc analyses found that the relationship between policy advocacy success and the domains of access and openness were respectively mediated by networking and sharing of tasks. Implications for nonprofit administrators and researchers are discussed.