Idaho v. Wright: Who Can Speak For the Children Now?

This note discusses how the Court reached the decision in Idaho v. Wright to exclude the hearsay testimony of a child abuse victim. The note examines the Court\u27s reasoning and the effects which the exclusion of hearsay testimony of child abuse victims may have on future prosecutions. The note concludes that the Court\u27s decision is likely to add chaos into the already difficult and complex arena of child abuse prosecution

Improving Interview Skills in College Students Using Behavioral Skills and In Situ Training

Successful interviewing skills help maximize the probability that a job candidate will make a positive impression upon a prospective employer. An area of continued concern related to potential employee readiness involves performance in interviews. Questions remain regarding the effectiveness of higher educational systems to develop the variety of efficient skills necessary for students to showcase the full array of their qualifications within an interview. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is a behavior analytic training package that has been shown to increase appropriate interview skills. In situ training (IST), also known as in-the-moment-training, has been offered as a method to improve the effectiveness of BST. The purpose of the present study aimed to extend the results of Stocco, Thompson, Hart, and Soriano (2017) in using BST to improve interview skills of college students by adding in situ training as an additional training component. Across all participant there was an improvement in interview skills. More specifically, BST with IST showed greater acquisition, maintenance, and generalization compared to BST only

Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning.

Executive functions (EFs) in childhood predict important life outcomes. Thus, there is great interest in attempts to improve EFs early in life. Many interventions are led by trained adults, including structured training activities in the lab, and less-structured activities implemented in schools. Such programs have yielded gains in children's externally-driven executive functioning, where they are instructed on what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. However, it is less clear how children's experiences relate to their development of self-directed executive functioning, where they must determine on their own what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. We hypothesized that time spent in less-structured activities would give children opportunities to practice self-directed executive functioning, and lead to benefits. To investigate this possibility, we collected information from parents about their 6-7 year-old children's daily, annual, and typical schedules. We categorized children's activities as "structured" or "less-structured" based on categorization schemes from prior studies on child leisure time use. We assessed children's self-directed executive functioning using a well-established verbal fluency task, in which children generate members of a category and can decide on their own when to switch from one subcategory to another. The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The opposite was true of structured activities, which predicted poorer self-directed executive functioning. These relationships were robust (holding across increasingly strict classifications of structured and less-structured time) and specific (time use did not predict externally-driven executive functioning). We discuss implications, caveats, and ways in which potential interpretations can be distinguished in future work, to advance an understanding of this fundamental aspect of growing up

Ultracold atoms in multiple-radiofrequency dressed adiabatic potentials

We present the first experimental demonstration of a multiple-radiofrequency dressed potential for the configurable magnetic confinement of ultracold atoms. We load cold $^{87}$Rb atoms into a double well potential with an adjustable barrier height, formed by three radiofrequencies applied to atoms in a static quadrupole magnetic field. Our multiple-radiofrequency approach gives precise control over the double well characteristics, including the depth of individual wells and the height of the barrier, and enables reliable transfer of atoms between the available trapping geometries. We have characterised the multiple-radiofrequency dressed system using radiofrequency spectroscopy, finding good agreement with the eigenvalues numerically calculated using Floquet theory. This method creates trapping potentials that can be reconfigured by changing the amplitudes, polarizations and frequencies of the applied dressing fields, and easily extended with additional dressing frequencies.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Rare variants contribute disproportionately to quantitative trait variation in yeast.

How variants with different frequencies contribute to trait variation is a central question in genetics. We use a unique model system to disentangle the contributions of common and rare variants to quantitative traits. We generated ~14,000 progeny from crosses among 16 diverse yeast strains and identified thousands of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for 38 traits. We combined our results with sequencing data for 1011 yeast isolates to show that rare variants make a disproportionate contribution to trait variation. Evolutionary analyses revealed that this contribution is driven by rare variants that arose recently, and that negative selection has shaped the relationship between variant frequency and effect size. We leveraged the structure of the crosses to resolve hundreds of QTLs to single genes. These results refine our understanding of trait variation at the population level and suggest that studies of rare variants are a fertile ground for discovery of genetic effects

The dynamics of the serum concentration of CEA, CA15-3 and CA19-9 and survival in patients treated for advanced breast and colorectal cancer. The determination of the prognostic correlates of changes in tumour markers CEA, CA15-3 and CA19-9 during chemotherapy treatment for advanced breast and colorectal cancer.

There is evidence that kinetics of tumour markers (TMs) CEA, CA15-3 and CA19-9 provide valuable information about disease state over time in patients with advanced breast and colorectal cancer but the literature contains differences in methodology so comparing findings is difficult. By modifying criteria developed by Rustin and colleagues [1-5] in ovarian carcinoma we have retrospectively identified a subset of patients (those with progressive (P) TMs) where survival is significantly reduced compared with those with responsive (R) TMs. This is true for CEA, CA15-3 and CA19-9 at the first chemotherapy given in advanced disease (chem1) (Hazard ratios (HR) = 9.99, 8.89, 5.75, P ¿ 0.001 in all cases) and CEA and CA19-9 at the second chemotherapy (chem2) (HR = 7.95, 9.00, P = 0.001 and 0.002 respectively) in patients with breast cancer. It is also true for CEA at chem1 in patients with colorectal cancer (HR = 2.51, P <0.001). Further studies are necessary to see if treatment directed by these criteria can influence survival. CEA and CA19-9 Rustin category in colorectal patients and CA15-3 Rustin category in breast patients correlated significantly with radiological category at chem1 and chem2 (CEA rs = 0.45 and 0.43, CA19-9 rs = 0.26 and 0.35, CA15-3 rs = 0.28 and 0.44). CA19-9 also correlates with radiological category at chem2 (rs = 0.38) in breast patients. This provides valuable information because RECIST criteria can delay radiological identification of disease progression compared with WHO criteria [6, 7] and new therapies may act to stabilise tumour growth rather than reduce it [8].Oncology Research Trust Fund at Airedale NHS Trus

Flexural anchorage performance and strengthening on negative moment regions using near-surface mounted retrofitting in reinforced concrete bridge girders

Large numbers of reinforced concrete deck girder (RCDG) bridges were built during the highway infrastructure boom of the 1950's. The advent of standardized deformed steel reinforcing bars during this time allowed for straight bar terminations in flexural tension regions. Designers of the time terminated reinforcing bars where they were no longer required by calculation and did not account for additional demands from the combination of shear and flexure. The design provisions of the time allowed higher shear stresses in the concrete than allowed in standards today which reduced the required quantity of transverse reinforcing steel. In addition, heavier trucks and higher traffic volumes on roadways today have greatly increased the service loading on these bridges. Engineers evaluating these older RCDG bridges often determine unsatisfactory load ratings due to flexural anchorage deficiencies in the girders, especially when the influence of shear is considered. These deficiencies result from inadequate capacity compared to current design standards due to poor cutoff details used in the initial design. Strengthening methods are necessary because comprehensive replacements of the large number of bridges are not economically feasible. Experimental research was conducted to evaluate the behavior of poorly detailed flexural anchorages and to develop methods to strengthen them. Realistic vintage girder specimens were constructed, retrofitted, instrumented, and tested to failure. The specimens reported in this thesis were full-scale inverted-T (IT) beams. Some of the specimens contained straight bar terminations crossing a preformed diagonal crack in the flexural tension region to investigate the influence of shear on the retrofit schemes. Instrumentation focused on measurement of the reinforcing steel stresses surrounding the diagonal crack and along the development length of the cutoff bars. Using results of past research to quantify the behavior of girders with straight-bar flexural anchorages in flexural tension regions, an innovative strengthening technique was developed using either near-surface mounted (NSM) stainless steel or titanium. Results from the NSM strengthening technique demonstrated the ability to delay or prevent flexural anchorage failures, with increased deformation capacities and increased strengths from 17% to 39% over baseline specimens. To show the success of this research and the immediate need for strengthened flexural anchorages, this research has already been implemented on a bridge in Mosier, Oregon. This groundbreaking research is described in detail in Appendix F

Blip glitches in Advanced LIGO data

Blip glitches are short noise transients present in data from ground-based gravitational-wave observatories. These glitches resemble the gravitational-wave signature of massive binary black hole mergers. Hence, the sensitivity of transient gravitational-wave searches to such high-mass systems and other potential short duration sources is degraded by the presence of blip glitches. The origin and rate of occurrence of this type of glitch have been largely unknown. In this paper we explore the population of blip glitches in Advanced LIGO during its first and second observing runs. On average, we find that Advanced LIGO data contains approximately two blip glitches per hour of data. We identify four subsets of blip glitches correlated with detector auxiliary or environmental sensor channels, however the physical causes of the majority of blips remain unclear

Dissociable effects of tryptophan supplementation on negative feedback sensitivity and reversal learning

Serotonin has been shown to modulate probabilistic reversal learning (PRL) and negative feedback sensitivity (NFS) in both animal and human studies. Whilst these two measures are tightly coupled, some studies have suggested that these may be mediated by independent mechanisms; the former, representing perseveration and cognitive flexibility, and the latter measuring the ability to maintain a response set (win-stay) at the expense of lose-shift behaviour when occasional misleading feedback has been presented. Here, we tested this hypothesis in 44 healthy participants who were administered tryptophan (22 placebo, 22 tryptophan), a presynaptic precursor to serotonin. We found a dissociable effect of tryptophan supplementation on PRL/NFS. Specifically, tryptophan administration increased NFS compared to the placebo group but had no effect on PRL. We discuss these findings in relation to presynaptic and postsynaptic mechanisms, receptor specificity, and dosage and with a particular focus on the acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) procedures