174 research outputs found
Parent Empowerment and Mental Health: Understanding Parent Perceptions of the Educational Experience
Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are important partners with schools in ensuring effective education, and it is important to examine the factors that influence parent perceptions of their children’s educational experience. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among parent empowerment, parent mental health, and perceptions of children’s educational experience in 176 parents of children with ASD. Parent empowerment and mental health were found to be significant predictors of parents’ perceptions of their child’s educational experience. The importance of understanding constructs such as empowerment and mental health and how they relate to school satisfaction is discussed
Low-Background gamma counting at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility
The next generation of low-background physics experiments will require the
use of materials with unprecedented radio-purity. A gamma-counting facility at
the Kimballton Underground Research Facility (KURF) has been commissioned to
perform initial screening of materials for radioactivity primarily from
nuclides in the 238U and 232Th decay chains, 40K and cosmic-ray induced
isotopes. The facility consists of two commercial low-background high purity
germanium (HPGe) detectors. A continuum background reduction better than a
factor of 10 was achieved by going underground. This paper describes the
facility, detector systems, analysis techniques and selected assay results.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to NIM
Plugged in: Electronics use in youth and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Although electronic technology currently plays an integral role for most youth, there are growing concerns of its excessive and compulsive use. The current study documents patterns and impact of electronics use in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to typically developing peers. Participants included 172 parents of typically developing individuals and 139 parents of individuals with an ASD diagnosis, ranging in age from 6 to 21 years. Parents completed an online survey of demographics and the frequency, duration, and problematic patterns of electronics use in their youth and young adults. Individuals with ASD were reported to use certain electronics more often in the last month and on an average day, and had greater compulsive Internet and video game use than individuals without ASD. Across both samples, males used video games more often than females. Compared to parents of individuals without ASD, parents of individuals with ASD were significantly more likely to report that electronics use was currently having a negative impact. The implications of problematic electronics use for individuals with ASD are discussed
Status of the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR experiment
The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR neutrinoless double beta-decay experiment is
currently under construction at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in
South Dakota, USA. An overview and status of the experiment are given.Comment: 8 pages, proceeding from VII International Conference on
Interconnections between Particle Physics and Cosmology (PPC 2013), submitted
to AIP proceeding
Improving Photoelectron Counting and Particle Identification in Scintillation Detectors with Bayesian Techniques
Many current and future dark matter and neutrino detectors are designed to
measure scintillation light with a large array of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs).
The energy resolution and particle identification capabilities of these
detectors depend in part on the ability to accurately identify individual
photoelectrons in PMT waveforms despite large variability in pulse amplitudes
and pulse pileup. We describe a Bayesian technique that can identify the times
of individual photoelectrons in a sampled PMT waveform without deconvolution,
even when pileup is present. To demonstrate the technique, we apply it to the
general problem of particle identification in single-phase liquid argon dark
matter detectors. Using the output of the Bayesian photoelectron counting
algorithm described in this paper, we construct several test statistics for
rejection of backgrounds for dark matter searches in argon. Compared to simpler
methods based on either observed charge or peak finding, the photoelectron
counting technique improves both energy resolution and particle identification
of low energy events in calibration data from the DEAP-1 detector and
simulation of the larger MiniCLEAN dark matter detector.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figure
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