Financially Overextended: College Attendance as a Contributor to Foreclosures During the Great Recession

Although subprime mortgage lending and unemployment were largely responsible for the wave of foreclosures during the Great Recession, additional sources of financial risk may have exacerbated the crisis. We hypothesize that many parents sending children to college were financially overextended and vulnerable to foreclosure as the economy contracted. With commuting zone panel data from 2006 to 2011, we show that increasing rates of college attendance across the income distribution in one year predict a foreclosure rate increase in subsequent years, net of fixed characteristics and changes in employment, refinance debt, house prices, and 19-year-old population size. We find similar evidence of college-related foreclosure risk using longitudinal household data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our findings uncover a previously overlooked dimension of the foreclosure crisis, and highlight mortgage insecurity as an inadvertent consequence of parental investment in higher education.     

Community-Based Design Research: Learning Across Generations and Strategic Transformations of Institutional Relations Toward Axiological Innovations

The socio-ecological challenges facing communities in the 21st century are building towards a critical conjuncture of history, culture, power, and profound inequity. Scholars working in the service of social transformation and improving the wellbeing of communities are calling for creative, deliberate, and consequential interventions. Tharp & O’Donnell (this issue) call for increased engagement between Cultural-Community Psychology and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to lead this kind of call. Drawing from our experiences in community based design research, we argue for cultivating axiological innovations in research and interventions. We explore three examples including: critical historicity, inter-generational learning, and strategic transformations of institutional relations.     

Cognitively automated assembly processes: a simulation based evaluation of performance

The numerical control of an experimental assembly cell with two robots--termed a cognitive control unit (CCU)--is able to simulate human information processing at a rule-based level of cognitive control. To enable the CCU to work on a large range of assembly tasks expected of a human operator, the cognitive architecture SOAR is used. The CCU can plan assembly processes autonomously and react to ad-hoc changes in assembly sequences effectively. Extensive simulation studies have shown that cognitive automation based on SOAR is especially suitable for random parts supply, which reduces planning effort in logistics. Conversely, a disproportional increase in processing time was observed for deterministic parts supply, especially for assemblies containing large numbers of identical parts. In this contribution, the effect of phase-shifts in deterministic part supply is investigated for assemblies containing maximal different parts. It can be shown that the concept of cognitive automation is as well suitable for these planning problems.     

Projective (2n,n,λ,1)-designs

A projective (2n,n,λ,1)-design is a set $\text{D}$ of n element subsets (called blocks) of a 2n-element set V having the properties that each element of V is a member of λ blocks and every two blocks have a non-empty intersection. This paper establishes existence and non-existence results for various projective (2n,n,λ,1)-designs and their subdesigns.     

A Review of Trauma Specific Treatments (TSTs) for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Clinical Social Work Journal - Trauma is a significant public health concern that has widespread and adverse effects on people. There is a high prevalence of trauma and PTSD in general populations,...     

Assessing manual lifting tasks based on segment angle interpolations

This study investigates the effects of the number of interpolation points on the prediction accuracy of segment angle trajectory during lifting. Ten participants performed various lifting tasks while a motion tracking system recorded their movements. Two-point through ten-point equal time-spaced segment angles extracted from major segment trajectory data captured by the motion tracking system were used to re-generate the whole body lifting motion by using polynomial and cubic spline interpolation methods. The root mean square error (RMSE) between the reference (motion tracking system) and the estimated (interpolation method) segment angle trajectories were calculated to quantify the prediction accuracy. The results showed that the cubic spline interpolation will yield a smaller RMSE value than one based on the polynomial interpolation. While increasing the number of interpolation points can reduce the RMSE of the estimated segment angle trajectories, there was a diminishing advantage in continuing to add interpolation points. A sensitivity analysis suggests that if the estimation of the segment angles at each interpolation point deviates considerably from the real value, and cannot be controlled at a low level (<10 (), the use of higher number of interpolation points will not improve the estimation accuracy.     

Investigating the Relationship Between Real Estate Agents,Segregation, and House Prices: Steering and Upselling in New York State

This article leverages a unique data set, recently developed regression methods, and qualitative interviews to investigate the multiple ways real estate agents produce housing inequality. We find that the clustering of agents in and around certain neighborhoods correlates positively with house prices. Our results also show a significant relationship between agent concentration and racial segregation. Our qualitative data reveal how agents engage in steering and upselling. The findings enhance our understanding of mechanisms in the housing market, and provide more empirical clarity on the role real estate agents play in asset and place inequality.     

A novel wearable measurement system for ambulatory assessment of joint loading in the occupational setting

It is know that biomechanical overexposure of the joints is an important cause of occupational injuries. This paper presents a novel wearable measurement system for automated assessment of joint loading in the occupational setting. The wearable measurement system consists of a full body inertial sensor motion capture system which can be worn under the clothes and shoes instrumented with 3D force sensors (ForceShoes). Promising results have been found for the performance of the inertial sensor system and the ForceShoe, separately. Validation experiments are in preparation in which the performance of the combined measurements system will be tested in the laboratory by comparing the assessed joint loading to the joint loading assessed by a conventional state-of-the-art lab-based method.     

From False Premises to False Conclusions. On Pierre Bourdieu’s Alleged Sociological Determinism

Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological determinism is a recurrent issue in French as well as in Anglo-Saxon sociology. Accusations of ‘determinism’ are very often coupled with the enunciation of a mechanistic and rigid structuralist vision of society which would result in a ‘reproductivist’ approach of social relations. In such a perspective, social change would be hardly possible. Without ignoring Bourdieu’s particular attention to structural constraints, in this article my intention will be to refute the accusations of social determinism by showing in a synthetic manner why it would be if not completely erroneous, but at least simplistic to define Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology as one only focusing on reproductive tendencies and thus being incapable of dealing with the possibility of social change.