Habitat relations of juvenile gopher tortoises and a preliminary report of Upper Respiratory Tract Disease (URTD) in gopher tortoises

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3040888

Supported work experience and its impact on young people with intellectual disabilities, their families and employers

Purpose – The Real Opportunities project set out to implement a number of the approaches identified through research that can assist transition to adulthood in nine local authority areas in Wales. Supported work experience was delivered by small job coaching teams in each area. The purpose of this paper is to establish the impact of the work experience and employment teams by describing the placements provided, any change in the skills of young people, and the responses to the placements by employers, young people and their families. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected over 24 months by participating employment services. Questionnaires were administered to employers. Interviews were carried out with a sub-sample of young people (24) participating and a family member (25). Findings – Over a 24-month period 297 young people received supported work experience. In total, 262 young people had an intellectual disability, 35 an autistic spectrum disorder. Up to three placements were delivered to each person, averaging five weeks per placement, with 405 placements in total. In total, 62 per cent of those with two placements had a different category of second work placement to their first. These numbers demonstrated that work experience in community placements is possible with support. Young people improved work skills significantly between first and second placements. Employers reported high satisfaction rates with the young person’s work in a range of key performance areas and company benefits from participation for other staff, company image and customer relations. Interviews with 24 young people and 25 of their family members reported satisfaction with support and placements. Six young people had paid work now, and 33 per cent said they would get a job at some future time. Families reported changes in young person’s outlook but their view of prospects of employment remained pessimistic due to the external environment. Research limitations/implications – Implications for future research are discussed. Practical implications – Implications for transition are discussed. Originality/value – The paper provides new insight into the impact of a large number of supported work experience placements

Commentary on 'Employment for all: United States disability policy'

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect on Rebecca Monteleone’s paper “Employment for all: United States Disability Policy” and provides a commentary on its implications for the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is to provide a comparison of the situation described in the article for the USA with that of the UK. Findings – There has been significant progress in legislation and policy relevant to the employment of people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) in the USA. They have achieved higher employment rates than the UK, but are still at lower levels of employment than other citizens. The importance of collecting data on the employment rates of people with ID to monitor policy effectiveness is clear. The US has a more comprehensive approach to transition to employment that the UK could learn from. The importance of job coaching to community-based employment is highlighted. The balance of investment between community and sheltered jobs appears to be the key to further growth of community-based employment rates. The detailed impact of welfare benefit regulation is important to motivation to work and changes need to be monitored from an ID perspective. Originality/value – This paper contributes to cross-cultural policy comparisons and underlines the value of comparing and contrasting legislation, policy and outcomes across countries

The impact of agency organisation and natural support on supported employment outcomes

Data was collected on nine supported employment agencies over one financial year on staffing ratio, staff qualifications, job finding approach, management structure, supervision arrangement, referral and funding sources, and typicalness of jobs and job placement approaches, replicating elements of Mank et al. (1997). Data was also collected on individual client wage and hours worked outcomes. An ANOVA revealed strong differences among agencies in hours worked, wages in the extent to which they acquired Job Acquisition, Compensation packages, Work Roles and Orientation and induction and programmes that were typical for the company they were placing into. An ANOVA on hours worked, wages earned and typicalness in these key processes revealed a significant independent effects of management model and job finding approach. Stepwise regression analysis was used to quantify the impact on wage and hours worked outcomes of management model. Job coach approach, staff ratio and typicalness in these four key areas. Significant Beta coefficients were found between monthly wage and hours worked and typicalness of Compensation, Work Roles and Orientation scores. Management model impacted only on monthly wages

Preliminary space mission design under uncertainty

This paper proposes a way to model uncertainties and to introduce them explicitly in the design process of a preliminary space mission. Traditionally, a system margin approach is used in order to take the min to account. In this paper, Evidence Theory is proposed to crystallise the inherent uncertainties. The design process is then formulated as an optimisation under uncertainties(OUU). Three techniques are proposed to solve the OUU problem: (a) an evolutionary multi-objective approach, (b) a step technique consisting of maximising the belief for different levels of performance, and (c) a clustering method that firstly identifies feasible regions.The three methods are applied to the Bepi Colombo mission and their effectiveness at solving the OUU problem are compared

A statistics-based reconstruction of high-resolution global terrestrial climate for the last 800,000 years.

Curated global climate data have been generated from climate model outputs for the last 120,000 years, whereas reconstructions going back even further have been lacking due to the high computational cost of climate simulations. Here, we present a statistically-derived global terrestrial climate dataset for every 1,000 years of the last 800,000 years. It is based on a set of linear regressions between 72 existing HadCM3 climate simulations of the last 120,000 years and external forcings consisting of CO2, orbital parameters, and land type. The estimated climatologies were interpolated to 0.5° resolution and bias-corrected using present-day climate. The data compare well with the original HadCM3 simulations and with long-term proxy records. Our dataset includes monthly temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, and 17 bioclimatic variables. In addition, we derived net primary productivity and global biome distributions using the BIOME4 vegetation model. The data are a relevant source for different research areas, such as archaeology or ecology, to study the long-term effect of glacial-interglacial climate cycles for periods beyond the last 120,000 years