The effectiveness of parenting programmes: a review of Campbell reviews

Parenting practices predict important outcomes for children, and parenting programmes are potentially effective means of supporting parents to promote optimal parenting for pre-adolescent children. The aim of this review was to evaluate the effectiveness of parenting programmes by summarising findings of relevant systematic reviews published in the Campbell Library. Six Campbell systematic reviews evaluated the effectiveness of a range of parenting programmes in the primary and secondary prevention of behavioural problems (among children aged 0 – 3 years), early onset conduct disorder (among children aged 3 – 12 years), outcomes for parents and children with ADHD, outcomes for particular groups of parents and children (i.e., with intellectual disabilities and teenagers), and the psychosocial functioning of parents. The findings of these reviews show that parenting programmes can be effective in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of children in the first 12 years of life, in addition to enhancing the psychosocial wellbeing of their parents. The findings also suggest that further research is needed to assess effectiveness of programmes for specific subgroups of parents (e.g., fathers, teenagers, parents with intellectual disabilities) and to assess the long-term effectiveness of parenting programmes

Views of Coaching Practice Expressed by School-Based Coaches

This study reports on the views of coaching expressed by school-based coaches and coaching experts in response to observing the practice of a novice coach featured in a video. Researchers hypothesized that a coach participant\u27s observations about another coach\u27s practice would be a useful tool for examining participants\u27 beliefs about coaching. Researchers compared responses from school-based coaches to the responses of coaching experts and views expressed in leading coaching literature in order to examine the variation in school-based coaches\u27 views. Analysis of responses from both practicing coaches and coaching experts revealed eight themes that describe components of the videotaped coaching cycle: 1) coaching relationships; 2) the use of praise by the coach; 3) discussions of student learning; 4) how coaches respond to teachers\u27 questions; 5) how coaches prompt reflection; 6) how coaches address teacher knowledge and learning; 7) discussions of mathematics content; and, 8) facilitation of the coaching session. The analysis also revealed that these themes correspond to accepted domains of coaching knowledge reported in the coaching literature

Dust yields in clumpy SN shells: SN 1987A revisited

We present a study of the effects of clumping on the emergent spectral energy distribution (SED) from dusty supernova (SN) shells illuminated by a diffuse radiation source distributed throughout the medium. (...) The fully 3D radiation transport problem is solved using a Monte Carlo code, MOCASSIN, and we present a set of models aimed at investigating the sensitivity of the SEDs to various clumping parameters. We find that, contrary to the predictions of analytical prescriptions, the combination of an optical and IR observational data set is sufficient to constrain dust masses even in the case where optically thick clumps are present. Using both smoothly varying and clumped grain density distributions, we obtain new estimates for the mass of dust condensed by the Type II SN 1987A by fitting the optical and infrared spectrophotometric data of Wooden et al. (1993) at two epochs (day 615 and day 775). (...) From our numerical models we derive dust masses for SN 1987A that are comparable to previous analytic clumped graphite grain mass estimates, and at least two orders of magnitude below the 0.1-0.3 Msol that have been predicted to condense as dust grains in primordial core collapse supernova ejecta. This low condensation efficiency for SN 1987A is in contrast to the case of SN 2003gd, for which a dust condensation efficiency as large as 0.12 has recently been estimated. (Abridged)Comment: accepted for publication in MNRAS. The paper contains 15 figures and 1 tabl

Early Dust Formation and a Massive Progenitor for SN 2011ja?

SN 2011ja was a bright (I = -18.3) Type II supernova occurring in the nearby edge on spiral galaxy NGC 4945. Flat-topped and multi-peaked H-alpha and H-beta spectral emission lines appear between 64 - 84 days post-explosion, indicating interaction with a disc-like circumstellar medium inclined 30-45 degrees from edge-on. After day 84 an increase in the H- and K-band flux along with heavy attenuation of the red wing of the emission lines are strong indications of early dust formation, likely located in the cool dense shell created between the forward shock of the SN ejecta and the reverse shock created as the ejecta plows into the existing CSM. Radiative transfer modeling reveals both ~1.5 x 10^-4 Msun of pre-existing dust located ~ 10^16.7 cm away and ~ 5 x 10^-5 Msun of newly formed dust. Spectral observations after 1.5 years reveal the possibility that the fading SN is located within a young (3-6 Myr) massive stellar cluster, which when combined with tentative 56Ni mass estimates of 0.2 Msun may indicate a massive (> 25 Msun) progenitor for SN 2011ja.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, submitted to MNRAS awaiting final referee repor

Distribution of Time-Averaged Observables for Weak Ergodicity Breaking

We find a general formula for the distribution of time-averaged observables for systems modeled according to the sub-diffusive continuous time random walk. For Gaussian random walks coupled to a thermal bath we recover ergodicity and Boltzmann's statistics, while for the anomalous subdiffusive case a weakly non-ergodic statistical mechanical framework is constructed, which is based on L\'evy's generalized central limit theorem. As an example we calculate the distribution of $\bar{X}$: the time average of the position of the particle, for unbiased and uniformly biased particles, and show that $\bar{X}$ exhibits large fluctuations compared with the ensemble average $$.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Optimal Population Codes for Space: Grid Cells Outperform Place Cells

Rodents use two distinct neuronal coordinate systems to estimate their position: place fields in the hippocampus and grid fields in the entorhinal cortex. Whereas place cells spike at only one particular spatial location, grid cells fire at multiple sites that correspond to the points of an imaginary hexagonal lattice. We study how to best construct place and grid codes, taking the probabilistic nature of neural spiking into account. Which spatial encoding properties of individual neurons confer the highest resolution when decoding the animal’s position from the neuronal population response? A priori, estimating a spatial position from a grid code could be ambiguous, as regular periodic lattices possess translational symmetry. The solution to this problem requires lattices for grid cells with different spacings; the spatial resolution crucially depends on choosing the right ratios of these spacings across the population. We compute the expected error in estimating the position in both the asymptotic limit, using Fisher information, and for low spike counts, using maximum likelihood estimation. Achieving high spatial resolution and covering a large range of space in a grid code leads to a trade-off: the best grid code for spatial resolution is built of nested modules with different spatial periods, one inside the other, whereas maximizing the spatial range requires distinct spatial periods that are pairwisely incommensurate. Optimizing the spatial resolution predicts two grid cell properties that have been experimentally observed. First, short lattice spacings should outnumber long lattice spacings. Second, the grid code should be self-similar across different lattice spacings, so that the grid field always covers a fixed fraction of the lattice period. If these conditions are satisfied and the spatial “tuning curves” for each neuron span the same range of firing rates, then the resolution of the grid code easily exceeds that of the best possible place code with the same number of neurons

Temperature effects on the 15-85-micron spectra of olivines and pyroxenes

Far-infrared spectra of laboratory silicates are normally obtained at room temperature even though the grains responsible for astronomical silicate emission bands seen at wavelengths >20 micron are likely to be at temperatures below ~150 K. In order to investigate the effect of temperature on silicate spectra, we have obtained absorption spectra of powdered forsterite and olivine, along with two orthoenstatites and diopside clinopyroxene, at 3.5+-0.5 K and at room temperature (295+-2K). To determine the changes in the spectra the resolution must be increased from 1 to 0.25 cm^-1 at both temperatures since a reduction in temperature reduces the phonon density, thereby reducing the width of the infrared peaks. Several bands observed at 295 K split at 3.5 K. At 3.5 K the widths of isolated single bands in olivine, enstatites and diopside are ~ 90% of their 295 K-widths. However, in forsterite the 3.5-K-widths of the 31-, 49- and 69-micron bands are, respectively, 90%, 45% and 31% of their 295 K widths. Due to an increase in phonon energy as the lattice contracts, 3.5-K-singlet peaks occur at shorter wavelengths than do the corresponding 295-K peaks; the magnitude of the wavelength shift increases from \~ 0-0.2 micron at 25 micron to ~0.9 micron at 80 micron. Changes in the relative absorbances of spectral peaks are also observed. The temperature dependence of lambda_pk and bandwidth shows promise as a means to deduce characteristic temperatures of mineralogically distinct grain populations. In addition, the observed changes in band strength with temperature will affect estimates of grain masses and relative mineral abundances inferred using room-temperature laboratory data.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures including figures 3a and 3b. includes latex and eps files. Accepted by MNRAS on 15th March 200