Providing Foster Care for Young Adults: Early Implementation of California's Fostering Connections Act

This report examines the planning process for implementing California's Fostering Connections to Success Act, as well as the new law's early implementation. It is based on data collected from in-depth interviews with key informants who played a critical role in passage of the law, in implementation planning, or in early implementation at the county and state level and from focus groups with young people who stood to benefit directly from the legislation. Although extended foster care is likely to look different in different states, California's experience offers many lessons from which other states might learn

U.S. Airspace Integration: Perspectives of the FAA UAS Test Site Program

In an effort to integrate unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system, congress mandated action by the Federal Aviation Administration under the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. It required the formation of six test sites that would conduct unmanned aircraft operations in an effort to assist the FAA in its task to form safety regulations regarding unmanned aircraft. The FAA has been heavily criticized for its slow movement and inability to meet deadlines. The purpose of this study is to gather perceptions of the FAA’s unmanned aircraft systems test site program. Using a qualitative approach, interviews were conducted with some of the test sites to gain insight of the current status of the test site program after its first year. This study provides information on what otherwise is a very limited researched area, and discovers the complexity of the test site program including the advancements made and the difficult system in which it operates. As a result, themes emerged including lack of support from the FAA, confusion of test sites roles, and the uncertain future of the test site program

Orbispaces and their Mapping Spaces via Groupoids: A Categorical Approach

In this paper, we give an accessible introduction to the theory of orbispaces via groupoids. We define a certain class of topological groupoids, which we call orbigroupoids. Each orbigroupoid represents an orbispace, but just as with orbifolds and Lie groupoids, this representation is not unique: orbispaces are Morita equivalence classes of orbigroupoids. We show how to formalize this equivalence by defining the category of orbispaces as a bicatecory of fractions from the category of orbigroupoids. We focus particularly on laying the groundwork for future work in creating mapping objects for orbispaces which are themselves orbispaces, and providing a concrete description of how this mapping space construction will get its orbispace structure. Throughout this paper, we illustrate our definitions and results with numerous examples which we hope will be useful in seeing how the categorical point of view is used to study these spaces

The Field-Building and Grantee Experimentation Role of Foundations in Impact Investing as Illustrated by a Gender-Lens Investing Case Example

This article argues for foundations to play two critical roles in the impact investing ecosystem: to commission and/or support research that helps build more equitable and socially just impact investing and to fund grantee-specific experimentation in areas of impact investing and social enterprise that are nascent or developing. To illustrate what this can look like, this article presents action research conducted on gender-lens investing, describing in detail a 2019 Mastercard Foundation grant to Engineers Without Borders Canada. The project involved two main goals: testing and developing gender-lens investing tools and processes with seed-stage investees during pre- or post-investment phases and evaluating the implementation of Engineers Without Borders Canada’s gender-lens investing strategy and the assumptions underpinning it. Field-building products that resulted from the grant included a report on the lessons learned and a comprehensive literature review on gender-lens investing in sub-Saharan Africa that contributes to a growing evidence base. This article details the purpose, approach, results, and immediate impact of the action research and evaluation for Engineers Without Borders Canada for Mastercard Foundation and for the field. Further, the article highlights how the grant continues to impact Engineers Without Borders and the participating ventures today, and why it is important for foundations to play the role of field builder and make grants to support experimentation and field building, especially around issues of equity

Basin bifurcations, oscillatory instability and rate-induced thresholds for AMOC in a global oceanic box model

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) transports substantial amounts of heat into the North Atlantic sector, and hence is of very high importance in regional climate projections. The AMOC has been observed to show multi-stability across a range of models of different complexity. The simplest models find a bifurcation associated with the AMOC `on' state losing stability that is a saddle node. Here we study a physically derived global oceanic model of Wood {\em et al} with five boxes, that is calibrated to runs of the FAMOUS coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model. We find the loss of stability of the `on' state is due to a subcritical Hopf for parameters from both pre-industrial and doubled CO${}_2$ atmospheres. This loss of stability via subcritical Hopf bifurcation has important consequences for the behaviour of the basin of attraction close to bifurcation. We consider various time-dependent profiles of freshwater forcing to the system, and find that rate-induced thresholds for tipping can appear, even for perturbations that do not cross the bifurcation. Understanding how such state transitions occur is important in determining allowable safe climate change mitigation pathways to avoid collapse of the AMOC.Comment: 18 figure

Findings from the California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH): Conditions of Foster Youth at Age 17

This report presents findings from the Baseline Youth Survey, providing the most comprehensive view to date of young people approaching the transition to adulthood from foster care in the wake of the federal Fostering Connections Act. Information gathered during interviews with 727 youths who were an average of 17 years old at the time, offers insight into the needs and aspirations of transition-age foster youth. Study findings can help inform efforts to improve policies and services for foster youths' transitioning to adulthood

Open Access, Nonexclusive Licensing, Author Rights

An overview of copyright in relation to author contracts, a hands-on exercise reviewing an author publication agreement, and pointers about talking with authors about their publication agreements. Also includes an overview of Creative Commons licensing and how open access policies can change the copyright default for authors and provide a legal mechanism for institutions to share author works

Assessment of Social Support Among High School Athletes

In volume 4, Issue 1 of the JSMAHS you will find Professional Research Abstracts, as well as Bachelor Student REsearch Abstracts and Case Reports. Thank you for viewing this 4th Annual OATA Special Editio

EDUC 3310/ENVI 3310: The Natural Environment and Well-Being

Course Description The course introduces students to the benefits of natural environments on human health and well-being. Topics of study include the historical and cultural traditions of human’s connections to nature, theoretical frameworks and mechanisms of human/nature connections, implementation of interdisciplinary research agendas, as well as implications for education, diversity, health policy, and urban planning. A significant portion of the course will take place in the field, where students will explore local and regional parks, nature-based educational settings, and the practice of forest therapy. While most field work will take place during the 3-hour course time frame, there will be one full-day field trip required, plus additional local field work completed in small groups outside of class time