Practices to improve communication between birth parents and permanent families

Background: Support to maintain important family relationships is seen as a right for children in permanent care in Australia. In New South Wales, newly legislated permanency principles prioritise open adoption over long-term foster care and require plans for ongoing, face-to-face (known as direct) birth family contact for children in permanent placements. Countries with similar child welfare systems do not place the same emphasis on contact after permanent removal and it is especially uncommon to see direct contact given priority in open adoption. The problem: There is mixed evidence on the benefits of contact for children in permanent care. The quality of the relationship between birth relatives and caregivers is critical to the success of contact. Casework support is key to promoting understanding and communication between children’s birth parents and permanent carers or adoptive parents. The emerging permanency model in New South Wales does not yet have an evidence base and most caseworkers lack the skills to help these families build a constructive relationship in the interests of ongoing contact for children. The solution: Casework practices developed for use in child welfare placements elsewhere may be successfully applied to New South Wales to help build the practical skills needed to facilitate openness, empathy and respectful interactions. These practices need to be tested and refined to build an evidence base on what works to support ongoing direct contact for children who are permanently removed from parental care

Projection of holograms from photorefractive OASLMs

Liquid crystals doped with fullerenes and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) act as good optical nonlinear materials. We have used these materials to build optically-addressed spatial light modulators (OASLMs). The devices comprise a single layer of doped liquid crystal acting as an active layer. Undoped LC devices with surfaces coated with fullerenes are also studied. Such OASLMs allow recording of phase holograms, and we record by imaging pre-calculated pre-recorded holograms. Writing is performed at normal incidence and reading at 45° oblique incidence. Both transmission and reflection modes of operation are used. Experimental results as well as comparison with commercially available OASLMs are presented

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Displays Based on Dynamic Phase-Only Holography

Static holographic displays of high quality are works of art. We are creating commercial displays using dynamic phase-only spatial light modulators (SLMs). The main advantages of this approach are light efficiency and fault tolerance. When polarized lasers are used as the illumination source, there is no requirement for polarizers in the light engine. Moreover, the illumination beam can be directed towards bright points of the image and away from dark regions. Due to the many-to-one correspondence between the pixels in the SLM and the points in the image, faults in high complexity SLMs will be annealed in the image. Compared with normal displays where etendue is of overriding importance for light efficiency, holographic displays favor small pixel devices. Smaller pixel devices generate a larger reconstruction which improves the etendue for a second stage imaging system

Resolution in optically addressed spatial light modulators based on dye-doped liquid crystals

Dye-doped nematic liquid crystals (LCs) are studied as materials for single-layer optically addressed spatial light modulators. The dopant is 2,5-azo-substituted anthraquinone (ASAQ) dye. The resolution in the ASAQ-doped LC systems does not depend on the device thickness (in the 5–125   μm range). The efficiency increases with the increase of the thickness and begins to saturate in devices thicker than 40   μm. The limiting resolution in the thick devices is 400 line pairs per millimeter. The limitations of performance (efficiency and resolution) in the studied systems are discussed

Projection of holograms from photorefractive OASLMs

Liquid crystals doped with fullerenes and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) act as good optical nonlinear materials. We have used these materials to build optically-addressed spatial light modulators (OASLMs). The devices comprise a single layer of doped liquid crystal acting as an active layer. Undoped LC devices with surfaces coated with fullerenes are also studied. Such OASLMs allow recording of phase holograms, and we record by imaging pre-calculated pre-recorded holograms. Writing is performed at normal incidence and reading at 45° oblique incidence. Both transmission and reflection modes of operation are used. Experimental results as well as comparison with commercially available OASLMs are presented

How foster carers experience agency support for birth family contact.

Long‐term foster carers in New South Wales, Australia, are being encouraged to consider open adoption of the child in their care. This includes an agreement to facilitate direct or face‐to‐face birth family contact without agency support. There is little Australian research on the factors that influence decisions to adopt children from out‐of‐home care. A mixed methods study was conducted to address this gap. An online survey (n = 76) and four focus groups (n = 30) were conducted with foster carers across New South Wales. Descriptive and thematic analysis was undertaken. Results related to birth family contact are reported. Birth family contact was an area of widespread concern among foster carers. The theme of Relationships with birth family included four subordinate themes: (a) disputed purpose, (b) supervision versus independence, (c) ambivalence about agencies, and (d) establishing boundaries. Foster carers viewed birth family contact as extremely challenging due to its effects on children and interactions with agency staff. For open adoption or guardianship to become the preferred permanency option for children over long‐term foster care, carers will need ongoing and appropriate professional support with contact

Broad spectrum measurement of the birefringence of an isothiocyanate based liquid crystal

Tunable materials with high anisotropy of refractive index and low loss are of particular interest in the microwave and terahertz range. Nematic liquid crystals are highly sensitive to electric and magnetic fields and may be designed to have particularly high birefringence. In this paper we investigate birefringence and absorption losses in an isothiocyanate based liquid crystal (designed for high anisotropy) in a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, namely 0.1–4 GHz, 30 GHz, 0.5–1.8 THz, and in the visible and near-infrared region (400 nm–1600 nm). We report high birefringence (Δn = 0.19 − 0.395) and low loss in this material. This is attractive for tunable microwave and terahertz device applications