12,926 research outputs found
Identifying and responding to people with mild learning disabilities in the probation service
It has long been recognised that, like many other individuals, people with learningdisabilities find their way into the criminal justice system. This fact is not disputed. Whathas been disputed, however, is the extent to which those with learning disabilities arerepresented within the various agencies of the criminal justice system and the ways inwhich the criminal justice system (and society) should address this. Recently, social andlegislative confusion over the best way to deal with offenders with learning disabilities andmental health problems has meant that the waters have become even more muddied.Despite current government uncertainty concerning the best way to support offenders withlearning disabilities, the probation service is likely to continue to play a key role in thesupervision of such offenders. The three studies contained herein aim to clarify the extentto which those with learning disabilities are represented in the probation service, toexamine the effectiveness of probation for them and to explore some of the ways in whichprobation could be adapted to fit their needs.Study 1 and study 2 showed that around 10% of offenders on probation in Kent appearedto have an IQ below 75, putting them in the bottom 5% of the general population. Study 3was designed to assess some of the support needs of those with learning disabilities in theprobation service, finding that many of the materials used by the probation service arelikely to be too complex for those with learning disabilities to use effectively. To addressthis, a model for service provision is tentatively suggested. This is based on the findings ofthe three studies and a pragmatic assessment of what the probation service is likely to becapable of achieving in the near future
Implementing Health Impact Assessment as a Required Component of Government Policymaking: A Multi-Level Exploration of the Determinants of Healthy Public Policy
It is widely understood that the public policies of ānon-healthā government sectors have greater impacts on population health than those of the traditional healthcare realm. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a decision support tool that identifies and promotes the health benefits of policies while also mitigating their unintended negative consequences. Despite numerous calls to do so, the Ontario government has yet to implement HIA as a required component of policy development. This dissertation therefore sought to identify the contexts and factors that may both enable and impede HIA use at the sub-national (i.e., provincial, territorial, or state) government level.
The three integrated articles of this dissertation provide insights into specific aspects of the policy process as they relate to HIA. Chapter one details a case study of purposive information-seeking among public servants within Ontarioās Ministry of Education (MOE). Situated within Ontarioās Ministry of Health (MOH), chapter two presents a case study of policy collaboration between health and ānon-healthā ministries. Finally, chapter three details a framework analysis of the political factors supporting health impact tool use in two sub-national jurisdictions ā namely, QuĆ©bec and South Australia.
MOE respondents (N=9) identified four components of policymaking ādue diligenceā, including evidence retrieval, consultation and collaboration, referencing, and risk analysis. As prospective HIA users, they also confirmed that information is not routinely sought to mitigate the potential negative health impacts of education-based policies. MOH respondents (N=8) identified the bureaucratic hierarchy as the brokering mechanism for inter-ministerial policy development. As prospective HIA stewards, they also confirmed that the ministry does not proactively flag the potential negative health impacts of non-health sector policies. Finally, ālessons learnedā from case articles specific to QuĆ©bec (n=12) and South Australia (n=17) identified the political factors supporting tool use at different stages of the policy cycle, including agenda setting (āpolicy elitesā and āpolitical cultureā), implementation (ājurisdictionā), and sustained implementation (āinstitutional powerā).
This work provides important insights into āreal lifeā policymaking. By highlighting existing facilitators of and barriers to HIA use, the findings offer a useful starting point from which proponents may tailor context-specific strategies to sustainably implement HIA at the sub-national government level
2022-1 A Partial Identification Approach to Identifying the Determinants of Human Capital Accumulation: An Application to Teachers
This paper views teacher quality through the human capital perspective. Teacher quality exhibits substantial growth over teachersā careers, but why it improves is not well understood. I use a human capital production function nesting On-the-Job-Training (OJT) and Learning-by-Doing (LBD) and experimental variation from Glewwe et al. (2010), a teacher incentive pay experiment in Kenya, to discern the presence and relative importance of these forces. The identified set for the OJT and LBD components has a closed-form solution, which depends on experimentally estimated average treatment effects. The results provide evidence of an LBD component, as well as an informative upper bound on the OJT component
Data-to-text generation with neural planning
In this thesis, we consider the task of data-to-text generation, which takes non-linguistic
structures as input and produces textual output. The inputs can take the form of
database tables, spreadsheets, charts, and so on. The main application of data-to-text
generation is to present information in a textual format which makes it accessible to
a layperson who may otherwise find it problematic to understand numerical figures.
The task can also automate routine document generation jobs, thus improving human
efficiency. We focus on generating long-form text, i.e., documents with multiple paragraphs. Recent approaches to data-to-text generation have adopted the very successful
encoder-decoder architecture or its variants. These models generate fluent (but often
imprecise) text and perform quite poorly at selecting appropriate content and ordering
it coherently. This thesis focuses on overcoming these issues by integrating content
planning with neural models. We hypothesize data-to-text generation will benefit from
explicit planning, which manifests itself in (a) micro planning, (b) latent entity planning, and (c) macro planning. Throughout this thesis, we assume the input to our
generator are tables (with records) in the sports domain. And the output are summaries
describing what happened in the game (e.g., who won/lost, ..., scored, etc.).
We first describe our work on integrating fine-grained or micro plans with data-to-text generation. As part of this, we generate a micro plan highlighting which records
should be mentioned and in which order, and then generate the document while taking
the micro plan into account.
We then show how data-to-text generation can benefit from higher level latent entity planning. Here, we make use of entity-specific representations which are dynam ically updated. The text is generated conditioned on entity representations and the
records corresponding to the entities by using hierarchical attention at each time step.
We then combine planning with the high level organization of entities, events, and
their interactions. Such coarse-grained macro plans are learnt from data and given
as input to the generator. Finally, we present work on making macro plans latent
while incrementally generating a document paragraph by paragraph. We infer latent
plans sequentially with a structured variational model while interleaving the steps of
planning and generation. Text is generated by conditioning on previous variational
decisions and previously generated text.
Overall our results show that planning makes data-to-text generation more interpretable, improves the factuality and coherence of the generated documents and re duces redundancy in the output document
Increased lifetime of Organic Photovoltaics (OPVs) and the impact of degradation, efficiency and costs in the LCOE of Emerging PVs
Emerging photovoltaic (PV) technologies such as organic photovoltaics (OPVs) and perovskites (PVKs) have the potential to disrupt the PV market due to their ease of fabrication (compatible with cheap roll-to-roll processing) and installation, as well as their significant efficiency improvements in recent years. However, rapid degradation is still an issue present in many emerging PVs, which must be addressed to enable their commercialisation. This thesis shows an OPV lifetime enhancing technique by adding the insulating polymer PMMA to the active layer, and a novel model for quantifying the impact of degradation (alongside efficiency and cost) upon levelized cost of energy (LCOE) in real world emerging PV installations.
The effect of PMMA morphology on the success of a ternary strategy was investigated, leading to device design guidelines. It was found that either increasing the weight percent (wt%) or molecular weight (MW) of PMMA resulted in an increase in the volume of PMMA-rich islands, which provided the OPV protection against water and oxygen ingress. It was also found that adding PMMA can be effective in enhancing the lifetime of different active material combinations, although not to the same extent, and that processing additives can have a negative impact in the devices lifetime.
A novel model was developed taking into account realistic degradation profile sourced from a literature review of state-of-the-art OPV and PVK devices. It was found that optimal strategies to improve LCOE depend on the present characteristics of a device, and that panels with a good balance of efficiency and degradation were better than panels with higher efficiency but higher degradation as well. Further, it was found that low-cost locations were more favoured from reductions in the degradation rate and module cost, whilst high-cost locations were more benefited from improvements in initial efficiency, lower discount rates and reductions in install costs
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH
Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on peopleās lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)
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Seeing Below The Surface Of Mars: Volatile sublimation in the martian regolith
The discovery of buried carbon dioxide (CO2) ice between water (H2O) ice layers within the martian south polar layered deposits has renewed interest in subsurface CO2 ice. In this thesis, subsurface CO2 ice stability is explored using a 1-D thermal and vapour diļ¬usion numerical model that simulates three phases of H2O, two phases of CO2, and adsorption of both for the ļ¬rst time.
Numerical experiments were run to examine how these two ices inļ¬uence one another, under a variety of ice-layer conļ¬gurations that are expected to be valid for Mars. The results demonstrate that an overlying near-surface H2O ice-ļ¬lled regolith layer increases subsurface CO2 ice stability by an order of magnitude. This stability increases further with the addition of an underlying H2O ice-ļ¬lled regolith layer. The initial porosity and geological materials used to represent the subsurface also have a large inļ¬uence on CO2 ice stability. The porosity limits the vapour diļ¬usion rate, while the geological materials inļ¬uence thermal conductivity and, therefore, subsurface temperatures.
Simulations at diļ¬erent orbital obliquities demonstrate that CO2 ice stability in the polar regions is greatest at low obliquities and smallest at high obliquities. The reverse is true for the equatorial regions. At higher obliquities (>45ā¦) and atmospheric pressures, the results suggest subsurface CO2 ice deposition could occur in the equatorial region.
The model results suggest that a 0.7ā27 km CO2 ice layer could sublimate away while 1 m of low-porosity H2O ice forms (in 14ā550 kyr depending on method) in the south polar layered deposits. The results also suggest CO2 ice sublimation is dependent on obliquity: ā¼0.15 km sublimates at low obliquity and ā¼1.9 km sublimates at high
obliquity over 100 kyr.
The subsurface model is a useful tool for future investigations into the historical behaviour of ices on Mars, particularly during the Noachian period when the CO2 frost-point temperature was higher
Public-Private Participation in Funding University Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Nigerian Case-Study for Sustainable Development
The developing countries in Africa still cannot withstand the pressure of the highly competitive global education market. Together with the large numbers of people who make a living in various innovative companies, these countries have solved key contemporary issues affecting global education. For this reason, it is necessary to actively respond to current technological innovation and educational challenges and to eliminate new technology graduates who can effectively interact with students through the responsive expansion of education and training. Expansion of education can produce effective expansion that promotes educational development, but due to budget constraints, most African governments cannot successfully and sustainably implement such educational programs. This is difficult. However, public-private partnership efforts provide a way out of this financial dilemma. The Sub-Saharan Africa initiative has achieved important educational objectives, such as: ensuring relevance for quality; secure funding for sustainability and establish resource mobilization partnerships and connections; and promote international cooperation. This discussion is relevant to the basic conditions for a successful public-private partnership with educational institutions and extended education and sheds light on the impact, lessons, and challenges. The public is increasingly concerned about the importance of higher education in the 21st century. This chapter explores some of the key functions of an innovative education system that supports the development of education in Nigeria and enhances peopleās ability to use information. Nigeriaās education system re-emphasizes the importance of public and private universities, but the country does not have a sustainable education system and well-equipped educational institutions to support peopleās ability to use information, learning, education, and research activities
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