Photometric Trends in the Visible Solar Continuum and Their Sensitivity to the Center-to-Limb Profile

Solar irradiance variations over solar rotational time-scales are largely determined by the passage of magnetic structures across the visible solar disk. Variations on solar cycle time scales are thought to be similarly due to changes in surface magnetism with activity. Understanding the contribution of magnetic structures to total solar irradiance and solar spectral irradiance requires assessing their contributions as a function of disk position. Since only relative photometry is possible from the ground, the contrasts of image pixels are measured with respect to a center-to-limb intensity profile. Using nine years of full-disk red and blue continuum images from the Precision Solar Photometric Telescope at the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (PSPT/MLSO), we examine the sensitivity of continuum contrast measurements to the center-to-limb profile definition. Profiles which differ only by the amount of magnetic activity allowed in the pixels used to determine them yield oppositely signed solar cycle length continuum contrast trends; either agreeing with the result of Preminger et al. (2011) showing negative correlation with solar cycle or disagreeing and showing positive correlation with solar cycle. Changes in the center-to-limb profile shape over the solar cycle are responsible for the contradictory contrast results, and we demonstrate that the lowest contrast structures, internetwork and network, are most sensitive to these. Thus the strengths of the full-disk, internetwork, and network photometric trends depend critically on the magnetic flux density used in the quiet-sun definition. We conclude that the contributions of low contrast magnetic structures to variations in the solar continuum output, particularly to long-term variations, are difficult, if not impossible, to determine without the use of radiometric imaging.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. 11 pages, 5 figure

Partnership and the Politics of Care: Advocates' Role in Passing and Implementing California's Law to Extend Foster Care

This report traces the history of the California's Fostering Connections to Success Act legislation from its introduction in the California State Assembly, through its passage and signing, and ultimately to its innovative and extensive implementation planning process. The report aims to document the California experience, highlighting its successes and challenges, so that other states may benefit, potentially smoothing the legislative and implementation processes there. Beyond telling the story of extended care, this report also focuses on two other issues. The first is the strong role played by a group of stakeholders (e.g., advocates, foundations, county administrators) in passing this bill and seeing it through implementation planning. We find that their central involvement was a result of their own desire to see the policy through to implementation, the limited capacity of state government agencies to implement such complex legislation, and the willingness of foundations to help fund implementation planning. The second is the degree to which research evidence was used in both the legislative and implementation planning phases. Our findings about use of evidence indicate that for research to be effective in shaping legislative decisions, it needs to be more timely and geared to policymakers' concerns. In particular, research on specific state-level contexts is greatly valued. For legislation that concerns sympathetic populations, testimonial or discursive evidence can be just as effective with legislators as research evidence. Moreover, in times of budgetary constraint, research evidence about cost effectiveness may be as important as research evidence about program or policy effectiveness

Memo from CalYOUTH: Early Findings on Extended Foster Care and Legal Permanency

This memo provides an early look at the relationship between extended foster care in California and the ways that older adolescents exit care in the state. Examining trends in exits from shortly before to immediately after the implementation of extended care, we find some evidence that, in the extended care era, fewer older adolescents are exiting care before their 18th birthday than before the law was implemented. However, rather than being the result of a reduction in exits to legal permanency, this shift has more to do with an increase in the likelihood that youth will remain in care rather than emancipate prior to age 18, run away from care, or experience other unwanted exits

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

Review of \u3cem\u3eFailure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships\u3c/em\u3e. Clare Huntington. Reviewed by Mark E. Courtney

Clare Huntington, Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships. Oxford University Press (2014), 352 pages, $45.00 (hardcover)

Becoming Adults: One-Year Impact Findings from the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation

Young adults with histories of foster care or juvenile justice custody experience poor outcomes across a number of domains, on average, relative to their peers. While government funding for services targeting these groups of young people has increased in recent years, research on the effectiveness of such services is limited, and few of the programs that have been rigorously tested have been found to improve outcomes. The Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation is testing whether the Transitional Living program, operated by the social service organization Youth Villages, makes a difference in the lives of young people with histories of foster care or juvenile justice custody. The program, which was renamed "YVLifeSet" in April 2015, is intended to help these young people make a successful transition to adulthood by providing intensive, individualized, and clinically focused case management, support, and counseling

The reliability of 10 km treadmill time trial performance and the effect of different high intensity interval training strategies on 10 km running performance and associated physiological parameters

The reliability and validity of a performance test is important in research to detect meaningful performance differences following an intervention. In accordance with this, the aim of the first study of this thesis was to investigate the reliability and validity of a self-paced 10 km treadmill time trial. This performance measure was then used in the main section of this thesis. This comprised a large training intervention study aimed to answer specific questions following three different high intensity interval training programmes. In particular, changes in 10 km running performance were investigated with respect to various physiological parameters, both immediately following the training intervention, as well as during a subsequent three-week taper period. Methods In the first study, a group of well-trained male runners (n = 8) completed four 10 km treadmill time trials and two 10 km track time trials. Comparisons in performance time were made between the 10 km treadmill time trials to determine the typical percent error between these trials. Additionally, comparisons were made between the track and treadmill time trials. In the second study, well-trained male runners(n = 32) were randomly assigned to one of four groups; a control group, a 400 m interval group, a 1600 m interval group and a mixed (400 m and 1600 m) interval group. The intensity of the intervals was based on the participants' current 10 km time trial time. The high intensity training interventions consisted of eight interval sessions (twice per week) over a four-week period followed by a three-week singlestep30% reduction in total training volume (while maintaining training frequency and some intensity) in all groups

Extending Foster Care to Age 21: Weighing the Costs to Government against the Benefits to Youth

The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 allows states to claim federal reimbursement for the costs of caring for and supervising Title IV-E eligible foster youth until their 21st birthday. This issue brief provides preliminary estimates of what the potential costs to government and the benefits to young people would be if states extend foster care to age 21. The analysis focuses on the increase in postsecondary educational attainment associated with allowing foster youth to remain in care until they are 21 years old and the resulting increase in lifetime earnings associated with postsecondary education. Researchers estimate that lifetime earnings would increase an average of two dollars for every dollar spent on keeping foster youth in care beyond age 18

California Youth Transitions to Adulthood Study (CalYOUTH): Early Findings from the Child Welfare Worker Survey

This report presents findings from the Child Welfare Worker Survey, an on-line survey of 235 California child welfare workers and their perceptions of key characteristics of the service delivery context of extended foster care, including: the availability of transitional living services; coordination between the child welfare system and other service systems such as county courts; and youth attitudes toward extended care. This report provides a valuable snapshot of how youths' caseworkers, central players in the implementation of extended foster care, perceive young people making the transition to adulthood out of care and the service context for that transition

The Measure of Adaptive Performance (MAP) scale: A confirmatory factor analysis with law enforcement officers

This study attempted to validate the Measurement of Adaptive Performance (MAP) using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on a group of law enforcement officials. The adaptability literature lacks construct clarity, so developing reliable and valid scales is a critical step toward conducting research that can answer important questions related to adaptability. Understanding employee adaptability would lead to better selection and retention practices because employers would have scientific information available to help them make better decisions about current and future employees. The results provide some evidence of the MAP model being a good fit for the data. Further research should be done to empirically examine the MAP