In Search of a Forever Home: Raising the Standards for Our Kids

There are currently 12,167 children in foster care in Minnesota and 32% experienced multiple placements in 2014. Many children are entering foster care due to concerns of child behavior, parental chemical use, or allegations of maltreatment. After an often unexpected separation from their family, children are then expected to adapt to a new foster family with a new set of family norms and rules. Many children are moved between multiple foster homes, or are returned to their caregivers only to be placed back in foster care at a later time. In the wake of media reports revealing stories of child mortality due to abuse and neglect, Governor Dayton issued an executive order for a Task Force to examine pre-court protections protocols, screening, family assessment, resources to provide adequate services, and supervisory oversight to the child protection system. What was left out of the executive order was what happens to children following pre-court protection and long-term impacts of children within Minnesota’s child welfare system

Robust semi-automated path extraction for visualising stenosis of the coronary arteries

Computed tomography angiography (CTA) is useful for diagnosing and planning treatment of heart disease. However, contrast agent in surrounding structures (such as the aorta and left ventricle) makes 3-D visualisation of the coronary arteries difficult. This paper presents a composite method employing segmentation and volume rendering to overcome this issue. A key contribution is a novel Fast Marching minimal path cost function for vessel centreline extraction. The resultant centreline is used to compute a measure of vessel lumen, which indicates the degree of stenosis (narrowing of a vessel). Two volume visualisation techniques are presented which utilise the segmented arteries and lumen measure. The system is evaluated and demonstrated using synthetic and clinically obtained datasets

Effect of Quadratic Zeeman Energy on the Vortex of Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensates

The spinor Bose-Einstein condensate of atomic gases has been experimentally realized by a number of groups. Further, theoretical proposals of the possible vortex states have been sugessted. This paper studies the effects of the quadratic Zeeman energy on the vortex states. This energy was ignored in previous theoretical studies, although it exists in experimental systems. We present phase diagrams of various vortex states taking into account the quadratic Zeeman energy. The vortex states are calculated by the Gross-Pitaevskii equations. Several new kinds of vortex states are found. It is also found that the quadratic Zeeman energy affects the direction of total magnetization and causes a significant change in the phase diagrams.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

SOFIA observations of far-infrared hydroxyl emission toward classical ultracompact HII/OH maser regions

The hydroxyl radical (OH) is found in various environments within the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Milky Way and external galaxies, mostly either in diffuse interstellar clouds or in the warm, dense environments of newly formed low-mass and high-mass stars, i.e, in the dense shells of compact and ultracompact HII regions (UCHIIRs). Until today, most studies of interstellar OH involved the molecule's radio wavelength hyperfine structure (hfs) transitions. These lines are generally not in LTE and either masing or over-cooling complicates their interpretation. In the past, observations of transitions between different rotational levels of OH, which are at far-infrared wavelengths, have suffered from limited spectral and angular resolution. Since these lines have critical densities many orders of magnitude higher than the radio wavelength ground state hfs lines and are emitted from levels with more than 100 K above the ground state, when observed in emission, they probe very dense and warm material. We probe the warm and dense molecular material surrounding the UCHIIR/OH maser sources W3(OH), G10.62-0.39 and NGC 7538 IRS1 by studying the $^2\Pi_{{1/2}}, J = {3/2} - {1/2}$ rotational transition of OH in emission and, toward the last source also the molecule's $^2\Pi_{3/2}, J = 5/2 - 3/2$ ground-state transition in absorption. We used the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to observe these OH lines, which are near 1.84 THz ($163 \mu$m) and 2.51 THz ($119.3 \mu$m). We clearly detect the OH lines, some of which are blended with each other. Employing non-LTE radiative transfer calculations we predict line intensities using models of a low OH abundance envelope versus a compact, high-abundance source corresponding to the origin of the radio OH lines.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A (SOFIA/GREAT special issue

Hidden Sp(2s+1)- or SO(2s+1)-symmetry and new exactly solvable models in ultracold atomic systems

The high spin ultracold atom models with a special form of contact interactions, i.e., the scattering lengthes in the total spin-$2,4 \cdots$ channels are equal but may be different from that in the spin-0 channel, is studied. It is found that those models have either $Sp(2s+1)$-symmetry for the fermions or $SO(2s+1)$-symmetry for the bosons in the spin sector. Based on the symmetry analysis, a new class of exactly solvable models is proposed and solved via the Bethe ansatz. The ground states for repulsive fermions are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Coreless vortex ground state of the rotating spinor condensate

We study the ground state of the rotating spinor condensate and show that for slow rotation the ground state of the ferromagnetic spinor condensate is a coreless vortex. While coreless vortex is not topologically stable, we show that there is an energetic threshold for the creation of a coreless vortex. This threshold corresponds to a critical rotation frequency that vanishes as the system size increases. Also, we demonstrate the dramatically different behavior of the spinor condensate with anti-ferromagnetic interactions. For anti-ferromagnetic spinor condensate the angular momentum as a function of rotation frequency exhibits the familiar staircase behavior, but in contrast to an ordinary condensate the first step is to the state with angular momentum 1/2 per particle.Comment: v2: Numerical parameters for trapping frequency in z-direction and for the particle number changed. Two new citations added ([13] and [22]). More discussion in chapter III A. added. A new Figure 4 added, former figure 4 changed to Figure

Supplemental Information 2: Raw data for the reliability data

Background. The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software consists of over one-hundred computerized tests based on classic and novel cognitive neuropsychology and behavioral neurology measures. Although the PEBL tests are becoming more widely utilized, there is currently very limited information about the psychometric properties of these measures.Methods. Study I examined inter-relationships among nine PEBL tests including indices of motor-function (Pursuit Rotor and Dexterity), attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance and Time-Wall), working memory (Digit Span Forward), and executive-function (PEBL Trail Making Test, Berg/Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Iowa Gambling Test, and Mental Rotation) in a normative sample (N = 189, ages 18–22). Study II evaluated test–retest reliability with a two-week interest interval between administrations in a separate sample (N = 79, ages 18–22).Results. Moderate intra-test, but low inter-test, correlations were observed and ceiling/floor effects were uncommon. Sex differences were identified on the Pursuit Rotor (Cohen’s d = 0.89) and Mental Rotation (d = 0.31) tests. The correlation between the test and retest was high for tests of motor learning (Pursuit Rotor time on target r = .86) and attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance response time r = .79), intermediate for memory (digit span r = .63) but lower for the executive function indices (Wisconsin/Berg Card Sorting Test perseverative errors = .45, Tower of London moves = .15). Significant practice effects were identified on several indices of executive function.Conclusions. These results are broadly supportive of the reliability and validity of individual PEBL tests in this sample. These findings indicate that the freely downloadable, open-source PEBL battery (http://pebl.sourceforge.net) is a versatile research tool to study individual differences in neurocognitive performance

Energies and damping rates of elementary excitations in spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensed gases

Finite temperature Green's function technique is used to calculate the energies and damping rates of elementary excitations of the homogeneous, dilute, spin-1 Bose gases below the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature both in the density and spin channels. For this purpose the self-consistent dynamical Hartree-Fock model is formulated, which takes into account the direct and exchange processes on equal footing by summing up certain classes of Feynman diagrams. The model is shown to fulfil the Goldstone theorem and to exhibit the hybridization of one-particle and collective excitations correctly. The results are applied to the gases of ^{23}Na and ^{87}Rb atoms.Comment: 26 pages, 21 figures. Added 2 new figures, detailed discussio

Towards a conceptualization of young people’s political engagement: a qualitative focus group study

Disenchantment with politics and low electoral turnout does not mean young people are not engaged with politics. However, our understanding of what being ‘politically engaged’ entails is somewhat challenged by the lack of consensus concerning the definition of this particular concept. Furthermore, existing conceptualizations of political engagement and participation (offline and online) often center on a limited set of political action items, failing to realize that a person can be politically engaged but not participate in political actions. Despite attempts to understand how young people themselves define politics, there are insufficient youth specific explanations of what being politically engaged means. In the present study, focus groups including young people (18–24 years) were conducted to examine understandings of political engagement. Participants were also asked to group a set of items they considered most accurately assessed this construct. Using the results, a conceptualization is proposed taking into account young people’s definitions of political engagement; this suggests that young people consider political engagement to have emotional and cognitive dimensions but also to be conceptually distinct from political participation