David Turcotte

Over the past three years, increased rates of mortgage foreclosures in the U.S. have had devastating impacts on indi- viduals, communities, organizations and government. In the nonprofit sector, community development corporations (CDCs) are key actors in foreclosure prevention. This paper develops dynamic and stochastic programming models to assist community-based organizations in choosing foreclosed properties for acquisition and redevelopment, taking into account uncertain market conditions that change over time. We analytically study a dynamic programming model under certain dominance relationships and characterize the optimal property acquisition policy. We then seek insights for the general stochastic model through a multistage stochastic programming formulation and its numerical analysis.

Over the past three years, increased rates of mortgage foreclosures in the U.S. have had devastating impacts on indi- viduals, communities, organizations and government. In this paper we present dynamic and stochastic programming models to assist community-based organizations in the allocation of resources to foreclosed properties for acquisition and redevelopment, taking into account uncertain market conditions that change over time. Specifically, we extend previous results in the literature to include some special case models that do not contain the restrictive assumption of dominance relationships.

Semiconductor micro and nanofabrication lithography techniques for application in microelectronics as well as in micromechanics and optoelectronics can gain significantly from using a dry resist process, since it enables the deposition of a very uniform lithographically sensitive layer on a potentially very small area. This would otherwise be extremely difficult to achieve by using a traditional spin coated resist, such

In this presentation we describe an application of value-focused thinking and decision analysis to the design and evaluation of strategies for housing development especially in urban communities affected by the ongoing foreclosure crisis. This is part of a multi-campus, multi-disciplinary effort to study decision processes of community development corporations (CDCs) acquiring and redeveloping foreclosed properties for neighborhood stabilization.

The recent housing foreclosure crisis has had devastating impacts on individuals and their communities. To mitigate some of these impacts a number of community-based organizations are acquiring foreclosed properties in efforts to support neighborhood stabilization and revitalization. Examples of actions taken on these foreclosed properties include: land-banking, rehabilitation, demolition and re-sale or/re-rental. These actions have the potential to minimize blight,

... Yousef Awad, Eric Lavallee, Jacques Beauvais, Dominique Drouin, Pan Yang, David Turcotte, Lau Kien Mun. ... K. Marumoto, H. Yabe, S. Aya, K. Kitamura, K. Sasaki, K. Kise, and T. Miyachi, “Fabrication of x-ray masks for giga-bit DRAM by using a SiC membrane and W--Ti ...

ABSTRACT A multi-site case study applies value-focused thinking methods in a community-engaged research framework within three organizations. All three organizations are community development corporations (CDCs), a type of community-based organization which directs assets and efforts toward housing stock and neighborhood improvement. Objectives hierarchies were developed for the three sites. A set of common aspects of these structures suggest ways to operationalize the generic mission of CDCs. Other aspects which vary across sites can be related to specific characteristics of the organizations and the communities in which they operate. The process of applying value-focused thinking is also compared across the organizations. The organizations made judgments about which modeling efforts would be useful at different stages of the study. These judgments are interpreted with respect to the technology acceptance model. They suggest that community-based operations research practitioners will find organizations similar to those in the study to be especially receptive to qualitative construction of objectives hierarchies.

An important challenge that community-university partnerships face is how to maintain themselves in the face of changing goals, priorities, and funding. Partnerships often form as a result of some sort of "spark:" an incident, perhaps, or the identification of a shared need or common concern. Often, external funding is sought to provide the majority of resources for the establishment of a partnership and for the implementation of the partnership's action plan. Whatever external funding is obtained is typically of short duration. The funding will not continue over time. And usually the funding comes with stipulations about allowable partnership approaches; inevitably the priorities of one funder will differ from those of another. These issues of the maintenance of partnership in the face of shifting funding and priorities are ones that confront most community-university partnerships. This article examines these issues through the lens of an environmental justice partnership that has existed for nearly a decade, has undergone many changes in who is involved, and has operated with funding from many different sources, including the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, the entities in the partnerships, while they share certain environmental objectives, are sometimes at odds on particular goals when the needs of the agencies differ. Further complicating this issue of continuity is the reality that partners, on occasion, must shift priorities after partnership goals are established. The experiences of this environmental justice partnership shed light on the kinds of struggles community-university partnerships face when they hope to avoid being undermined by the larger concerns of the funders or by the power brokers in their individual organizations. This article examines approaches that community-university partnerships might take to remain resilient in the face of changing goals, priorities and funding.

Masks for low energy electron proximity projection lithography (LEEPL) require thin membranes, which in turn make the development of low-distortion masks a critical issue for this technology. By using an evaporated resist, a flip side fabrication process is presented here in which mask patterning is carried out with the mask in the same orientation that it will have in the

A novel and effective approach to nano-fabrication lithography is the vapour deposition of the negative tone electron beam resists QSR-5 and QSR-15 (Quantiscript"s sterol based resist) onto a substrate. Vapour deposition is especially conducive for patterning thin delicate membranes (e.g. advanced masks for X-ray lithography - XRL, and Low Energy Electron Proximity Projection Lithography - LEEPL), that are susceptible to

[Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films 22, 1040 (2004)]. Yousef Awad, Eric Lavallée, Kien Mun Lau, Jacques Beauvais, Dominique Drouin, Melanie Cloutier, David Turcotte, Pan Yang, Prasad Kelkar. Abstract. ...

Over the past three years, increased rates of mortgage foreclosures in the U.S. have had devastating impacts on indi- viduals, communities, organizations and government. In the nonprofit sector, community development corporations (CDCs) are key actors in foreclosure prevention. This paper develops dynamic and stochastic programming models to assist community-based organizations in choosing foreclosed properties for acquisition and redevelopment, taking into account uncertain market conditions that change over time. We analytically study a dynamic programming model under certain dominance relationships and characterize the optimal property acquisition policy. We then seek insights for the general stochastic model through a multistage stochastic programming formulation and its numerical analysis.

In order to meet the long term goals of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, it is important to demonstrate that X-ray masks can be fabricated at resolutions well below the 100 nm barrier. This paper presents results on the use of ...