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Browsing Open Scholarship and Data by Type "Preprint"
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Item Correcting What’s True: Testing Competing Claims about Health Misinformation on Social Media(American Behavioral Scientist, 2022-02) Vraga, Emily, K.; Bode, LeticiaThis study expands on existing research about correcting misinformation on social media. Using an experimental design, we explore the effects of three truth signals related to stories shared on social media: whether the person posting the story says it is true, whether the replies to the story say it is true, or whether the story itself is actually true. Our results suggest that individuals should not share misinformation in order to debunk it, as audiences assume sharing is an endorsement. Additionally, while two responses debunking the post do reduce belief in the post’s veracity and argument, this process occurs equally when the story is false (thereby reducing misperceptions) as when it is true (thus creating misperceptions). Our results have implications for individuals interested in correcting health misinformation on social media and for the organizations who support their efforts.Item Defining and Measuring Coproduction: Deriving Lessons from Practicing Local Government Managers(Public Administration Review, 2022) Brudney, Jeffrey; Cheng, Yuan (Daniel); Lucas, MeijsFollowing a lapse in scholarly attention, coproduction, the joint production of services by government officials and citizens, has re-emerged as an important topic. However, the field lacks information on broad parameters of coproduction implementation and how public managers view coproduction. To address the lacuna, this study examines patterns of implementation of coproduction in a national sample of municipalities and counties in the U.S. According to their chief administrators, nearly half these governments have implemented one or more stages of coproduction, although co-delivery of services occurs least often. Empirical analysis suggests that the implementation of coproduction, as perceived by local government managers, can be measured along a unidimensional scale and that this measurement scale is robust across different subgroups. We also find that local governments that have larger population, provide more services, have more professional forms of administration, and are located in the western U.S. more often implement elements of coproduction.Item Demographics and Conflict(2016) Andregg, Michael M.Demographics and Conflict Introduction to an Ancient Paradigm: population growth, environmental degradation, rising death rates and conflicts, exodus, war or genocide. People have been killing each other since before the beginning of written history, as recorded by the broken bones of people massacred long before writing was invented. One of the quiet reasons for the really large scale killings called genocides and wars is demographics, the statistics of birth rates, death rates, growth rates and migrations into or out of territories. This dimension is under-covered by those who focus on the statements or acts of key leaders. Commanders of war typically describe their reasons in political, religious or military terms, not demographics. But they were also often driven by forces they barely understood and could not control. The Mayan Empire probably fell that way. Easter Island certainly did. And the deserts of North Africa are filled with ruins from cities and empires that thrived … before the forests and farmable land turned into desert. The Kenyans have a saying: “First came forests, then man, then the deserts.” Therefore this chapter will show how simple births, deaths and migrations lead to an iron law of biology. This law observes that all living populations eventually achieve equilibrium with their environment, which means birth rates equal death rates and the population neither grows nor declines, or they die. Populations that try to grow forever become extinct or suffer catastrophic death rates. The modern case of Syria disintegrating after 2010 will be considered in some detail, because it also shows how global factors like climate change can trigger chaos. Syria’s population growth rate in 2011 was 2.4% per year, but when half its population was displaced by civil wars and about 6 million fled, its growth rate became sharply negative. At least 250,000 people died by violence alone. This will be followed by a short section on “Human Nature, Nurture, Free Will and War” because that topic has generated much commentary over centuries, with large implications if one accepts the simplistic conclusions that people are either born “innately” warlike, or rather “innately” social and cooperative. Truth is that people can be either one or the other depending on circumstances, and that much neglected factor “free will” or personal decisions. Finally we close with how a few more complicated demographics like “pyramidal” vs. “columnar” age distributions, and distorted sex ratios may influence the probability of organized armed conflict on earth today and in the future.Item Do vector plane waves form complete basis of solutions to Maxwell's equations? Introduction to Generalized Plane Wave Solutions(2018-04-27) Aryan, SauravAs the title says, this article questions the well established belief that the vector plane waves form a complete basis of solutions to Maxwell's equations. Vector solutions to Maxwell's equations are presented here, which have planar wave-fronts and transverse electric and magnetic fields but spatially varying polarization. They form a one-parameter family specified by integer $n$, and are termed as \textit{generalized vector plane waves}. The known vector plane wave solution with spatially uniform polarization, referred to as \textit{conventional vector plane waves} in this article, is a subset of this family obtained for $n = 0$. In contradiction to the established belief, it is shown that these \textit{generalized vector plane waves} with spatially varying polarization (for $n \neq 0$) cannot be expressed as superposition of conventional vector plane waves. The family of solutions also includes the interesting cases of radially and azimuthally polarized plane waves for $n=1$.Item From recovery resilience to transformative resilience: How digital platforms reshape public service provision during and post COVID-19(Public Management Review, 2022-01) Shen, Yongdong; Cheng, Yuan (Daniel); Yu, JianxingThis paper investigates how government-sponsored digital platforms facilitated the transition from recovery resilience during COVID-19 to transformative resilience of city-level service provision post COVID-19. Using an in-depth case study of the Weijiayuan platform implemented in the Jiaxing City of China, we found that digital platforms played critical roles in both stages of COVID-19 and helped facilitate the transition from recovery resilience to transformative resilience. This transition was made possible by four conditions: adopting and experimenting digital platforms with public entrepreneurship, achieving a critical mass of usership, incentivizing the coproduction of public services, and generating accountability mechanisms for government responsiveness.Item Indian Forest Governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic(International Forestry Review, 2023) Rana, Pushpendra; Fleischman, ForrestMixed outcomes were observed in terms of the effectiveness of forest bureaucrats' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many forest officers were able to adapt and improvise new solutions to saving forests, wildlife and local livelihoods. Several officers failed to control forest offenses and did not support forest-based livelihoods. Old and outdated forest laws, exigencies-driven forest management and professional decay reduced administrative performance. Strengthening forests as a safety net, reforming forest laws, empowering communities and adopting proactive governance can help forest authorities and managers better respond to unpredictable events. The unexpected nature of COVID-19 tested the institutional strength and resilience of state agencies across the world. Preliminary evidence is presented on how reduced mobility due to COVID-19 affected the functioning of the Forest Department in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and triggered changes in forest use by local communities as perceived by forest officials. Our evidence shows mixed outcomes in terms of the effectiveness of the forest bureaucrats in handling the COVID-19 pandemic as assessed through their own perceptions and other forestry records. The positive and negative elements relating to the bureaucratic forest administration during the COVID-19 lockdown are presented, and some possible reasons behind these varying patterns across the state of Himachal Pradesh are suggested. Lessons drawn from the COVID-19 crisis that can help guide forest bureaucracies to deal effectively with unpredictable events in the future are presented.Item Intelligence Tradecraft for the Third Millennium(National Intelligence Academy of Romania (Mihai Viteazul), 2016) Andregg, Michael M.INTELLIGENCE TRADECRAFT FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM Argument The fifteen years that have already elapsed of the third millennium have posed new challenges to intelligence organizations. Old methods, concepts and approaches have gradually become obsolete as the nature of the threats faced by modern states evolved from the classical to the asymmetric. Further, technological developments, new actors, social movements and the growing need for accountability have changed intelligence organizations beyond anything known at the end of the previous century. Yet, while the outside world has evolved, intelligence theory remains anchored in approaches developed over the second half of the twentieth century. The classical confrontation of state actors, the overriding need for secrecy, the absence of private organizations in the intelligence field, all of these coupled with national perspectives still dominate conceptualization within intelligence theory. When confronting the practitioner of today, intelligence theory fails to represent a meaningful depiction of the reality that he or she interacts with on a daily basis. Within this context, the publication of a volume containing reflections on the interaction between third millennium realities and the intelligence organization becomes imperative. Issues of management and resilience, intelligence collection and analysis, counterintelligence and cyber-warfare, cooperation among states and with the business sector will be addressed in separate chapters of this book. Moreover, given the revival of debates on oversight and legality, the volume will offer meaningful responses to these challenges. This publication aims to construct a trans-Atlantic bridge, bringing together a Romanian and an American editor, engaged in a dialogue on topics central to the existence and role of intelligence organizations in the twenty-first century.Item $L_1$-regularized Quantile Regression with Many Regressors under Lean Assumptions(2019) Wang, Lan$L_1$-regularized quantile regression ($l_1$-QR) provides a fundamental technique for analyzing high-dimensional economic data that are heterogeneous with potentially heavy-tailed random errors. This paper investigates conditional quantile estimation when the number of regressors is larger than the sample size. It establishes that $l_1$-QR possesses properties resembling those of $L_1$-regularized least squares regression (or LS-Lasso) under generally weaker conditions and enjoys near-optimal performance for a much richer class of error distributions, including some error distributions for which the performance of LS-Lasso is sub-optimal. Our results build upon and substantially generalize the earlier interesting work of Belloni and Chernozhukov (2011) and Wang (2013). We obtain interesting properties for $l_1$-QR in several novel directions under both the popular hard sparsity assumption and a more relaxed soft sparsity condition that allows many regressors to have small effects. These new theoretical guarantees fill important gaps in the literature and render strong support for the applicability of quantile regression in the high-dimensional setting.Item Laws, markets, and local politics drive outcomes of Minnesota’s county managed forests(Journal of Forestry, 2021) Fleischman, Forrest; Schmitz, Marissa; Poljacik, KelseyThere are frequently calls to increase local government control over forests in the US. Minnesota’s county forests contain approximately 30% of all local government managed forests in the United States. These forests are managed in ways that protect public access while providing a stable timber supply to mills. This happens because of the intersection of law, markets, and local politics. County forests are legally obligated to provide revenue to local tax districts while paying for management from money earned from timber sales. This pushes counties towards managing with the goal of providing a stable revenue stream from their lands, a goal which is supported by local politics in timber dependent counties. The result is that counties are more production-oriented than other public forestland managers, however they provide more consistent public access than private forest owners.Item Mobile Health Assessment of Traumatic Dental Injuries Using Smartphone Acquired Photographs: A Multicenter Diagnostic Accuracy Study(Telemedicine and e-Health, 2024) Huang, Boyen; Estai, Mohamed; Pungchanchaikul, Patimaporn; Quick, Karin; Ranjitkar, Sarbin; Fashingbauer, Emily; Askar, Abdirahim; Wang, Josiah; Diefalla, Fatma; Shenouda, Margaret; Seyffer, Danae; Louie, Jeffrey PBackground: Mobile health (mHealth) has an emerging potential for remote assessment of traumatic dental injuries (TDI) and support of emergency care. This study aimed to determine the diagnostic accuracy of TDI detection from smartphone-acquired photographs. Methods: The upper and lower anterior teeth of 153 individuals aged ≥ 6 years were photographed using a smartphone camera app. The photos of 148 eligible participants were reviewed independently by a dental specialist, two general dentists, and two dental therapists, using predetermined TDI classification and criteria. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and inter-rater reliability were estimated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the photographic method relative to the reference standard established by the dental specialist. Results: Of the 1,870 teeth screened, one-third showed TDI; and one-seventh of the participants had primary or mixed dentitions. Compared between the specialist’s reference standard and four dental professionals’ reviews, the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity for TDI versus non-TDI was 59-95% and 47-93%, respectively, with better performance for urgent types of TDI (78-89% and 99-100%, separately). The diagnostic consistency was also better for the primary/mixed dentitions than the permanent dentition. Conclusion: This study suggested a valid mHealth practice for remote assessment of TDI. A better diagnostic performance in the detection of urgent types of TDI and examination of the primary/mixed dentitions was also reported. Future directions include professional development activities involving dental photography and photographic assessment, incorporation of a machine learning technology to aid photographic reviews, and randomized controlled trials in multiple clinical settings.Item Questioning Kaufman: How Cross-Level Political Coalitions Interact with Organizational Structure(Public Administration Review, 2017) Fleischman, ForrestHerbert Kaufman's The Forest Ranger is considered a landmark study of how organizations can be structured to elicit compliance from field officials, yet there have been few attempts to validate Kaufman's claims. The author argues that the outcomes observed by Kaufman resulted from interplay between organizational structure and political context—a variable that Kaufman ignored. This argument is supported by case studies of two agencies with structures similar to Kaufman's U.S. Forest Service but poorer outcomes: the same agency today and India's forest departments. Both differences in organizational structure and poorer outcomes are found to be the result of political context. Specifically, coalitions assembled around agencies use the implementation process to shape outcomes in ways that could not be accomplished solely through changing laws or formal administrative structure. This points to the importance of building supportive field-level coalitions to complement administrative reforms.Item System Shock: Nonlocal Grassroots Response to COVID-19 at Ground Zero, Wuhan(Nonprofit Quarterly, 2022) Cheng, Yuan (Daniel); Wang, Xiaoyun; Zhang, XueshanChina’s policies and regulations vis-à-vis the nonprofit sector meant that very limited grassroots action took place during COVID-19’s first stages, and most came from those social organizations heavily managed and coordinated by local government . . . or by citizen self-help groups. These local GONGO chapters and local nonprofit organizations indeed played an instrumental role in Wuhan’s response to the crisis. But it was a collection of nonlocal nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups, with little professional experience in disaster relief and insufficient resources and local networks, that in the end emerged and managed to deliver aid.Item Who Stays, Who Goes, Who Knows? A State-Wide Survey of Child Welfare Workers(Child and Family Services Review, 2017-01) Griffiths, Austin; Royse, David; Culver, Kaylee; Piescher, Kristine; Zhang, YanchenChild welfare workforce turnover remains a significant problem with dire consequences. Designed to assist in its retention efforts, an agency supported state-wide survey was employed to capture worker feedback and insight into turnover. This article examines the quantitative feedback from a Southern state’s frontline child welfare workforce (N=511), examining worker intent to leave as those who intend to stay employed at the agency (Stayers), those who are undecided (Undecided), and those who intend to leave (Leavers). A series of One-Way ANOVAs revealed a stratified pattern of worker dissatisfaction, with stayers reporting highest satisfaction levels, followed by undecided workers, and then leavers in all areas (e.g., salary, workload, recognition, professional development, accomplishment, peer support, and supervision). A Multinomial Logistic Regression model revealed significant (and shared) predictors among leavers and undecided workers in comparison to stayers with respect to dissatisfaction with workload and professional development, and working in an urban area. Additionally, child welfare workers who intend to leave the agency in the next 12 months expressed significant dissatisfaction with supervision and accomplishment, and tended to be younger and professionals of color.