Improving Transition Outcomes: Resource Mapping Workshop: Service Provider Survey

Service provider survey tool from the Improving Transition Outcomes Resource Mapping Workshops

State of Iowa Directory of certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprises, September 2007

The Iowa DOT takes affirmative action to ensure that Disadvantaged Business Enterprises have the maximum practical opportunity to get Iowa DOT contracts for construction, professional, and technical service. The Iowa DOT also has taken specific steps to ensure there is no discrimination in the awarding and administering of contracts. The department's DBE Program, which has been developed under this policy, is administered by the Office of Contracts.

Fiscal Year 2007 Workforce, Business Service Training Annual Report

Annual Report

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, How to Find Reputable In-Home Health Care and Service Plans, January 2008

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: How to Find Reputable In-Home Health Care and Service Plans

Does privatising public service provision reduce accountability?

This paper studies how privatising service provision (shifting control rights and contractualobligations to providers) affects accountability. There are two main effects. (1) Privatisation demotivates governments from investigating and responding to public demands, since providers then hold up service adaptations. (2) Privatisation demotivates the public from mobilising to pressure for service adaptations, since providers then indirectly holdup the public by inflating the government s cost of implementing these adaptations. So, when choosing governance mode, politicians may be biased towards privatising as a way to escape public attention; relatedly, privatising utilities may reduce public pressure and increase consumer prices.

Consumer Advisory Bulletin, "Should I Buy the Service Contract?", January 2008

The Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division receives hundreds of calls and consumer complaints every year. Follow these tips to avoid unexpected expense and disappointments. This record is about: "Should I Buy the Service Contract?"

Education, disease prevalence and health service utilization in the Swiss National Health Survey "SOMIPOPS".

The relation among education, disease prevalence, and frequency of health service utilization was analyzed using data from the Swiss National Health Survey SOMIPOPS, conducted in 1981-1983 on a randomly selected sample of 4,255 individuals, representative of the entire Swiss population. The prevalence of several important cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, osteoarticular, and psychiatric disorders was higher among less educated individuals; only allergic conditions were directly associated with indicators of social class. More educated individuals reported lower frequencies of general practitioner visits, but higher frequencies of specialized consultations. These findings confirm that education is an important determinant not only of mortality but also of morbidity and health-care utilization and require careful consideration in terms of the planning and evaluation of health services.

Midwest Regional Rail Passenger Initiative and Passenger Rail Service in Iowa Status Report

This report is submitted as required per Iowa Code section 327J.3(5), "The director shall report annually to the general assembly concerning the development and operation of the midwest regional rail system and the state's passenger rail service."

Managing competition in professional services and the burden of inertia

Professional services require certain organizational patterns in order to avoid information asymmetries and external effects. These same patterns are used within production structures involving various degrees of monopoly. However, competitive restraints are justified today only when substantial external effects are clearly present, whereas information asymmetries hardly justify such restraints because reputational investments have become widespread in the economy and are relatively efficient in overcoming such asymmetries. As a consequence, innovation in the production of externalities can make competitive constraints unnecessary.

Teaching, research and service: Experience and opinions of accounting Spanish academics

Research, teaching and service are the main activities carried out in almost all European universities. Previous research, which has been mainlycentred in North-American universities, has found solid results indicatingthat research and teaching are not equally valued when deciding on facultypromotion. This conclusion creates a potential conflict for accountingacademics on how to distribute working time in order to accomplish personalcareer objectives. This paper presents the results of a survey realisedin two European countries: Spain and the United Kingdom, which intendedto explore the opinions and personal experience of accounting academicsworking in these countries. Specifically, we focus on the following issues:(i) The impact of teaching and service on time available for research;(ii) The integration of teaching and research; (iii) The perceived valueof teaching and research for career success and (iv) The interaction betweenprofessional accounting and accounting research. The results show thatboth in Spain and in the United Kingdom there is a conflict between teachingand research, which has its origin in the importance attached to researchactivities on promotion decisions. It also seems evident that so far, theconflict is being solved in favour of research in prejudice of teaching.

Audit report on the South Central Iowa Regional E-911 Service Board for the year ended June 30, 2007

Audit report on the South Central Iowa Regional E-911 Service Board for the year ended June 30, 2007

Cardio respiratory activity in high-anxious vs. low-anxious professional music students before and during performance

Questionnaire studies indicate that high-anxious musicians may suffer from hyperventilation symptoms before and/or during performance. Reported symptoms include amongst others shortness of breath, fast or deep breathing, dizziness and thumping heart. However, no study has yet tested if these self-reported symptoms reflect actual cardio respiratory changes. Disturbances in breathing patterns and hyperventilation may contribute to the often observed poorer performance of anxious musicians under stressful performance situations. The main goal of this study is to determine if music performance anxiety is manifest physiologically in specific correlates of cardio respiratory activity. We studied 74 professional music students divided into two groups (i.e. high-anxious and lowanxious) based on their self-reported performance anxiety in three distinct situations: baseline, private performance (without audience), public performance (with audience). We measured a) breathing patterns, end-tidal carbon dioxide (EtCO2, a good non-invasive estimator for hyperventilation), ECG and b) self-perceived emotions and self-perceived physiological activation. The poster will concentrate on the preliminary results of this study. The focus will be a) on differences between high-anxious and low-anxious musicians regarding breaths per minute and heart rate and b) on the response coherence between self-perceived palpitations and actual heart rate.