The evaluation of a summer youth scheme for children with disabilities: a brief report on the findings from an evaluation of the Special Needs Advisoryand Activities Project (SNAAP)

Questionnaires were distributed to 7 parents who had children involved in the SNAAP summer youth scheme, along with 7 staff members. Interviews were also carried out with 11 children accessing the SNAAP service. All questionnaires and interviews were developed to provide a detailed evaluation of the SNAAP summer youth scheme. The questionnaires distributed to both parents and staff evaluated the progression of the children and their overall satisfaction with the scheme. The interviews carried out on the children focused on their overall perceptions and satisfaction with SNAAP’s summer youth scheme. The overall aim of the study was to evaluate SNAAP’s existing summer youth scheme and identify any needs or areas of development for the future

Examining the experiences of a short break scheme amongst adolescents with disabilities (service users) and their parents

The present research explored the impact of local short break scheme on the strengths and difficulties of disabled adolescents and their parents. At the end of the scheme disabled children (N=11) took part in semi-structured interviews to evaluate their experiences of the scheme. Data was also collected from their parents (N=7), who completed questionnaires measuring their strengths and difficulties (SDQ, Goodman, 2001) and levels of parental stress (PSI, Abdin, 1995). The findings highlighted that short break schemes can have numerous beneficial effects on disabled adolescent’s health, development and wellbeing. Moreover, the findings suggest that these potential benefits extend beyond the scheme participants to their parents. Finally, areas for future developments emerged, including: funding for more resources, development of young people’s skills, implementing more activities, provide a longer scheme and most significantly the need to develop young adult short break schemes to help aid the transition into adulthood for those from 18 years of age

Evaluating the impact of a defender role-play intervention on adolescent's defender intentions and responses towards name-calling

Researchers and anti-bullying organisations have increasingly turned their attention to the role of bystanders in tackling bullying and peer victimisation (e.g. name-calling). The objective of this study was to develop and assess the impact of a role-play programme designed to strengthen adolescent’s defending behaviour to name-calling. This was measured in two contexts: defending intentions in an outgroup name-calling scenario and cyber-defender behaviour in a scripted online peer interaction. Participants (N = 121, Mage = 12.90 years) were randomly assigned to either a role-play condition or a control condition. Results showed that defender intentions in an outgroup name-calling scenario were higher in the role-play condition, compared to the control; in addition, cyber-defender behaviour was more likely and quicker in the role-play condition, compared to the control. Defender self-efficacy was found to be significantly higher in the role-play condition, and mediated the effect of the role-play programme on defender intentions. Findings also revealed that defender intentions were positively correlated with cyber-defender behaviour, highlighting a link between intentions and behaviour. Implications for theory and practice are discussed

Energy density and pressure of long wavelength gravitational waves

Inflation leads us to expect a spectrum of gravitational waves (tensor perturbations) extending to wavelengths much bigger than the present observable horizon. Although these gravity waves are not directly observable, the energy density that they contribute grows in importance during the radiation- and dust-dominated ages of the universe. We show that the back reaction of tensor perturbations during matter domination is limited from above, since gravitational waves of wavelength $\lambda$ have a share of the total energy density $\Delta \rho(\lambda)/\rho$ during matter domination that is at most equal to the share of the total energy density that they had when the mode $\lambda$ exited the Hubble radius $H^{-1}$ during inflation. This work is to be contrasted to that of Sahni, who analyzed the energy density of gravity waves only insofar as their wavelengths are smaller than $H^{-1}$. Such a cut-off in the spectral energy of gravity waves leads to the breakdown of energy conservation, and we show that this anomaly is eliminated simply by taking into account the energy density and pressure of long wavelength gravitational waves as well as short wavelength ones.Comment: Updated one reference; 17 pages, no figure

Methods for Reducing False Alarms in Searches for Compact Binary Coalescences in LIGO Data

The LIGO detectors are sensitive to a variety of noise transients of non-astrophysical origin. Instrumental glitches and environmental disturbances increase the false alarm rate in the searches for gravitational waves. Using times already identified when the interferometers produced data of questionable quality, or when the channels that monitor the interferometer indicated non-stationarity, we have developed techniques to safely and effectively veto false triggers from the compact binary coalescences (CBCs) search pipeline

One Loop Back Reaction On Power Law Inflation

We consider quantum mechanical corrections to a homogeneous, isotropic and spatially flat geometry whose scale factor expands classically as a general power of the co-moving time. The effects of both gravitons and the scalar inflaton are computed at one loop using the manifestly causal formalism of Schwinger with the Feynman rules recently developed by Iliopoulos {\it et al.} We find no significant effect, in marked contrast with the result obtained by Mukhanov {\it et al.} for chaotic inflation based on a quadratic potential. By applying the canonical technique of Mukhanov {\it et al.} to the exponential potentials of power law inflation, we show that the two methods produce the same results, within the approximations employed, for these backgrounds. We therefore conclude that the shape of the inflaton potential can have an enormous impact on the one loop back-reaction.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX 2 epsilo

Searches for Gravitational Waves from Binary Neutron Stars: A Review

A new generation of observatories is looking for gravitational waves. These waves, emitted by highly relativistic systems, will open a new window for ob- servation of the cosmos when they are detected. Among the most promising sources of gravitational waves for these observatories are compact binaries in the final min- utes before coalescence. In this article, we review in brief interferometric searches for gravitational waves emitted by neutron star binaries, including the theory, instru- mentation and methods. No detections have been made to date. However, the best direct observational limits on coalescence rates have been set, and instrumentation and analysis methods continue to be refined toward the ultimate goal of defining the new field of gravitational wave astronomy.Comment: 30 pages, 5 Figures, to appear in "Short-Period Binary Stars: Observations, Analyses, and Results", Ed.s Eugene F. Milone, Denis A. Leahy, David W. Hobil

Renormalizing Heavy Quark Effective Theory at O(1/m_Q^3)

We present a calculation of the renormalized HQET Lagrangian at order O(1/m_Q^3) in the one particle sector. The anomalous dimensions of local operators and time ordered products of dimension 7 contributing at this order are calculated in the one loop approximation. We show that a careful treatment of the time ordered products is necessary to arrive at a gauge independent renormalized lagrangian. Our result sets the stage for an investigation of reparametrization invariance at O(1/m_Q^3).Comment: Latex, epsfig. Improved teXnology and modified conclusions. The complete paper, including figures, is also available via anonymous ftp at ftp://ttpux2.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/ , or via www at http://www-ttp.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/cgi-bin/preprints

Influence of synaptic depression on memory storage capacity

Synaptic efficacy between neurons is known to change within a short time scale dynamically. Neurophysiological experiments show that high-frequency presynaptic inputs decrease synaptic efficacy between neurons. This phenomenon is called synaptic depression, a short term synaptic plasticity. Many researchers have investigated how the synaptic depression affects the memory storage capacity. However, the noise has not been taken into consideration in their analysis. By introducing "temperature", which controls the level of the noise, into an update rule of neurons, we investigate the effects of synaptic depression on the memory storage capacity in the presence of the noise. We analytically compute the storage capacity by using a statistical mechanics technique called Self Consistent Signal to Noise Analysis (SCSNA). We find that the synaptic depression decreases the storage capacity in the case of finite temperature in contrast to the case of the low temperature limit, where the storage capacity does not change