Goldey–Beacom College

The topic of apportionment is a central focus of study for legislatures around the world, whether the goal is to allocate seats to political parties, or to allocate seats to the member states of a federation. The first goal is sought by parliaments employing proportional representation for parties; the second goal is sought by the United States House of Representatives and the European Parliament. Many of the leading apportionment methods were created in the late 18<sup>th</sup> century in response to requirements listed in the United States Constitution. No apportionment method perfectly satisfies all desirable properties, particularly the properties of integrality, proportionality, and quota. The Largest Remainder method satisfies quota but suffers from other paradoxes; the divisor methods like the Greatest Divisors, Major Fractions (Arithmetic Mean), Equal Proportions (Geometric Mean), Harmonic Mean, and Smallest Divisor methods satisfy proportionality but may fail quota. Some apportionment methods like Greatest Divisor unfairly favor larger parties and states, and others like Smallest Divisor unfairly favor smaller parties and states. We introduce a new method for Congressional apportionment that creates the apportionment all at once, rather than determining seats one at a time. This method always satisfies quota. It partially resembles the familiar Huntington monotone divisor methods and indeed creates a quota-capped divisor method, but can be compared as well to largest remainder methods.

The integration of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems with multi-agent architectures presents a transformative approach to real-time financial decision making. This paper introduces a novel framework that combines agentic RAG systems with Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration to address the challenges of dynamic financial markets. Our proposed multi-agent framework demonstrates significant improvements in decision accuracy, response time, and contextual relevance compared to traditional financial decision support systems. Through comprehensive evaluation on real-world financial datasets, we show that our system achieves 23.7% higher accuracy in market prediction tasks and reduces decision latency by 41.2%. The framework incorporates specialized agents for market analysis, risk assessment, and regulatory compliance, orchestrated through a sophisticated MCP integration layer. This research contributes to the emerging field of AI-driven financial services by providing a scalable, interpretable, and robust solution for complex financial decision making scenarios.

The Leech lattice occupies a central place in exceptional mathematics and coding theory, but because it is 24-dimensional, its geometric structure is difficult to visualize. We elucidate a coordinate system employed in Conway’s and Sloane’s <i>Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups</i> to describe and to illustrate the environs of the Leech lattice’s deep holes but never explained in that book. By using this coordinate system for the deep holes, we are able to provide colorful diagrams for the environs of several deep holes. The most interesting of those deep holes is <I>E</I><sub>8</sub><sup>3</sup>, and we describe a new<i> E</i><sub>8</sub><sup>3 </sup>-based coordinate system for the Leech lattice. We enumerate the Delaunay cells of the Leech lattice immediately neighboring a Delaunay cell of type<i> E</i><sub>8</sub><sup>3</sup>, neighboring in the sense of intersecting the latter cell in a 23-dimensional face. There are 729 such faces, but fewer isometry classes of neighboring cells, including both deep holes and shallow holes. We also enumerate the Delaunay cells of the Leech lattice in close proximity to a Delaunay cell of type<i> E</i><sub>8</sub><sup>3</sup>, close in the sense of having all vertices less than <i>√2.2</i> distant from the center of<i> E</i><sub>8</sub><sup>3</sup>; the latter’s circumradius is √2. Neither of the two classes of Delaunay cells enumerated below is a subset of the other. We next consider conjectures about the Leech lattice and the several lattices with similar properties, most especially the lattices <i>ℤ </i>, A<sub>2</sub>, <i>ℤ </i><sup>2</sup>, D<sub>4</sub>, and E<sub>8</sub>. Other lattices sharing fewer optimality properties include the Coxeter-Todd lattice K<sub>12</sub> and the Barnes-Wall lattice Λ<sub>16</sub>. The properties of greatest interest are those involving various measures of high degrees of symmetry, as well as various measures of high efficiency in packing and covering. Our culminating theorem is a partial classification of lattices that have very strong properties similar to those of the Leech lattice.

This paper highlights the importance of involving academic librarians in the development of ethical AI policies. The Academic Librarian Framework for Ethical AI Policy Development (ALF Framework) is introduced, recognizing librarians’ unique skills and expertise. The paper discusses the benefits of their involvement, including expertise in information ethics and privacy, practical experience with AI tools, and collaborations. It also addresses challenges, such as limited awareness, institutional resistance, resource constraints, interdisciplinary collaboration, and evolving AI technologies, offering practical solutions. By actively involving librarians, institutions can develop comprehensive and ethical AI policies that prioritize social responsibility and respect for human rights.

The war for talent is an ongoing problem for organizations. This study examined strategic talent management in the workplace. It compared three talent management dimensions including: a) attraction b) selection and c) retention in hard skills and soft skills. The research reviewed the barriers to effective talent management and successful policies. The author conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 human resources (HR) professionals, focusing on strategic talent management dimensions in hard skills and soft skills. Responses from the interviews were coded and details about the differences were summarized. The data from the interviews were evaluated using chi-square analyses to identify statistically significant differences in HR professionals’ perceptions of strategic talent management in hard skills versus soft skills. The research suggested plausible reasons for the significant differences in managers’ perceptions of talent management effectiveness in hard skills and soft skills. These results create a comprehensive framework for organizations to develop strategic talent management guidelines.

As travel activity has gained attention as one of the essential ways of understanding the sustainable growth of social tourism, a growing number of research projects have been conducted to elucidate the relationship between residents’ travel quantity (frequency) and quality (experience) in both macro and micro perspectives. Yet, very little research has highlighted that travel opportunities are not equally available to residents, especially a longitudinal perspective. The current study classified domestic travelers into four distinct classes using four years of longitudinal data from 5054 Korean residents. Latent growth curve modeling (LGCM) and growth mixture modeling (GMM) were employed to find out (1) the optimal number of classes, (2) the longitudinal travel frequency trajectory of each class, and (3) the distinctive demographic and travel characteristics of the four classes. This study provides some practical implications for policymakers when optimizing available resources for sustainable travel opportunities to relevant target sub-populations. Furthermore, detailed step-by-step analytic tutorials are also introduced for the extended application of longitudinal latent variable analysis in the tourism and hospitality fields, providing additional insights for relevant stakeholders.

Michelle Demeter and Haley K. Holmes have compiled a guidebook with strategies for public and academic librarians to design library programming. This book is part of an ongoing Practical Guides for...

The library has experienced many conversations with colleagues at the college in different departments lately related to the library tools and services it offers. Some of these conversations have included senior administrators, who have at some point directly supervised the library. In order for senior administrators to advocate for the library, librarians must educate them on the tools and services the library offers to its customers. Springshare’s LibApps is one such tool that has been integral to library operations. In the few years since the library has subscribed to Springshare’s LibApps’ suite of tools, Office of Institutional Research & Training (OIRT) has successfully utilized this library-specific tool, which has justified the annual renewal of this software tool by senior administration. For more departments at the college to adopt these tools and integrate them into their day-to-day tasks, librarians must educate customers (student, staff, and faculty) as well as administration about this and other library-specific tools. Since Springshare markets to and for librarians and as more librarians write about how this tool can be used for a variety of different applications, then other departments college-wide will become aware of and then adopt Springshare’s LibApps’ suite of tools.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to use Song’s 2004 survey to assess this institution’s international business students’ perceptions and expectations of library services to improve the quality of services provided.Design/methodology/approachThe authors of this study deployed Song’s 2004 survey, with his permission, to 775 international undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the Fall 2016 semester using the online survey tool Qualtrics.FindingsThe current study compared Song’s 2004 survey results (n = 143) with the researchers’ results (n = 149). The response rate of the current survey deployment was 19.2%. This research focused on the comparison of this institution’s Chinese business students’ (n = 71) perceptions of library use and services in 2016 with Song’s Chinese students’ perceptions (n = 24) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (UIUC) in 2004. The researchers asked the international business students (UG and GR) to rate their perceived importance of five topics of library services: personal study area, public computers, electronic resources, group meeting space and virtual reference. Overall students (n = 149) rated personal study area as being the most important library service (4.34; moderately important) and virtual reference as being the least important library service (3.33; neutral).Originality/valueOverall the library literature is limited with respect to studies that compare the perceptions and expectations of library services of international students from China, who are studying business at universities or colleges in the USA.

The Graston technique (GT) is prescribed to increase range of motion (ROM) in pathological patients, however little evidence exists regarding the effect GT has on healthy soft tissue joint ROM. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect GT would have on ankle dorsifl xion when compared with traditional static stretching (TS) among 50 healthy track and field volunteers. Participants were randomly assigned to a GT, TS, or control group. GT yielded a greater increase in talocrural joint dorsifl xion when compared with TS. GT seems to provide mobility to healthy tissue, such as fascia and muscle not previously reported.