Children’s views and experiences of their contact with social workers: a focused review of the evidence

"The review is ... aimed at exploring children’s reported experiences in terms of their relationship with social workers, as well as their views about social work tasks, and their perceptions concerning what makes a ‘good social worker’. The review also aimed to discuss the implications for initial qualification and continuing professional development in social work and to identify potential areas for further research." - Exec. summar

Research governance in children's services: the scope for new advice (Research report DFE-RR072)

"In 2009, following a period of informal consultation with key stakeholders, the former DCSF commissioned the work reported here, with the following overarching aims: to identify and evaluate existing arrangements for research governance and ethics review in children’s services in England; and to make recommendations for the future development of those governance arrangements, with the overall goal of ensuring a more coherent and transparent system, that is proportionate to the governance needs and ethical risks in research with users of children’s services." - Page iii

Children's views and experiences of their contact with social workers : a review of the evidence

A literature review focusing on children's experiences of their contact with social workers, and identifying implications for policy and practice. The paper was subject to peer review

Advocacy for looked after children and children in need: achievements and challenges

This briefing paper offers a summary of the key findings of ‘Advocacy for looked after children and children in need: achievements and challenges’, the first national study of children’s advocacy in England. The study was prepared for the Department of Health and the DfES. The study was undertaken for a number of reasons: despite the relatively rapid increase in the number of advocacy services for children and young people over the last decade or so, relatively little is known about the extent to which advocacy makes a positive difference to the lives of individual children or to developments in children’s services more generally. Evidence also suggests that, in order to reduce the scope for conflict or confusion, there is a need to raise awareness about the principles and practices of advocacy among practitioners and policy makers working in the field of children’s health and social care. This study sought to address these gaps in knowledge and to create a platform for an evidence-based debate about the future of advocacy for children and young people

Student attitudes to entrepreneurship

This study on Student Attitudes to Entrepreneurship investigates the image which university students have of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. It is an initial exploratory/empirical study, which looks at the situation in Germany, Romania, Latvia, Italy and Austria. The study, based on questionnaires, shows that there are significant differences but also common features to the image of entrepreneurship and attitudes to it in the five countries. It is interesting to note that the students polled in connection with the study tended to have a neutral to positive/very positive image of entrepreneurs.attitude, attributes, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, opinion.

Feedback in Tournaments under Commitment Problems: The-ory and Experimental Evidence

In this paper, we analyze a principal's optimal feedback policy in tournaments. We close a gap in the literature by assuming the principal to be unable to commit to a certain policy at the beginning of the tournament. Our analysis shows that in equilibrium the principal reveals in-termediate information regarding the agents’ previous performances if these performances are not too different. Moreover, we investigate a situation where the principal is not able to credi-bly communicate her information. Having presented our formal analysis, we test these results using data from laboratory experiments. The experimental findings provide some support for the model

Assessing functional novelty of PSI structures via structure-function analysis of large and diverse superfamilies

The structural genomics initiatives have had as one of their aims to improve our understanding of protein function by providing representative structures for many structurally uncharacterised protein families. As suggested by the recent assessment of the Protein Structure Initiative (Structural Genomics Initiative, funded by the NIH), doubts have arisen as to whether Structural Genomics as initially planned were really beneficial to our understanding of biological issues, and in particular of protein function.
A few protein domain superfamilies have been shown to account for unexpectedly large numbers of proteins encoded in fully sequenced genomes. These large superfamilies are generally very diverse, spanning a wide range of functions, both in terms of molecular activities and biological processes. Some of these superfamilies, such as the Rossmann-fold P-loop nucleotide hydrolases or the TIM-barrel glycosidases, have been the subject of extensive structural studies which in turn have shed light on how evolution of the sequence and structure properties produce functional diversity amongst homologues. Recently, the Structure-Function Linkage Database (SFLD) has been setup with the aim of helping the study of structure-function correlations in such superfamilies. Since the evolutionary success of these large superfamilies suggests biological importance, several Structural Genomics Centers have focused on providing full structural coverage for representatives of all sequence families in these superfamilies.
In this work we evaluate structure/function diversity in a set of these large superfamilies and attempt to assess the quality and quantity of biological information gained from Structural Genomics.
&#xa

Generation of continuous variable Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entanglement via the Kerr nonlinearity in an optical fiber

We report on the generation of a continuous variable Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement using an optical fiber interferometer. The Kerr nonlinearity in the fiber is exploited for the generation of two independent squeezed beams. These interfere at a beam splitter and EPR entanglement is obtained between the output beams. The correlation of the amplitude (phase) quadratures is measured to be 4.0±0.2 (4.0±0.4)dB below the quantum noise limit. The sum criterion for these squeezing variances 0.80±0.03<2 verifies the nonseparability of the state. The product of the inferred uncertainties for one beam (0.64±0.08) is well below the EPR limit of unity