1,320 research outputs found
Hollywood Homeless Youth Point-in-Time Estimate Project: An Innovative Method for Enumerating Unaccompanied Homeless Youth
Homeless youth are greatly undercounted in the United States. Census methods for homeless adults are inappropriate for homeless youth; thus, nationally, organizations are determining new methods for counting homeless youth. In collaboration with the Hollywood Homeless Youth Partnership, we utilized an agency-based approach to count and survey all homeless youth entering their facilities and encountered on their outreach activities. Between October 19 and October 25, 2012, 460 unique homeless youth were counted and surveyed in Hollywood. Of these, 222 experienced literal homelessness on the night of Thursday, October 18, 2012, and 381 experienced literal homelessness within the previous year. Literal homelessness refers to youth who are either living in emergency or transitional housing or living on the streets or in parks, abandoned buildings, cars, subway tunnels, or other places not meant for human habitation. Of the surveyed youth who experienced literal homelessness in the last year, 65% were male, their average age was 21 years, their average age of first literal homelessness experience was17 years, and 43% were from Los Angeles. Our week-long, agency-based approached was successful in enumerating homeless youth in Hollywood.
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Timothy McGee, editor, with A. G. Rigg and David N. Klausner. Singing Early Music: The Pronunciation of European Languages in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance
Singing Early Music is designed primarily as a practical handbook for performers based on sound linguistic scholarship. It offers important advice to singers and choral conductors, and it is of interest to musicologists and literary scholars as well. Much of the information presented was not easily accessible to performers prior to the book's publication, and this information has been gathered and presented in a clear, concise, interesting, and, above all, convenient fashion. This is an eminently useful book, but it needs to be used with discretion
Vortices in self-gravitating disks
Vortices are believed to greatly help the formation of km sized planetesimals
by collecting dust particles in their centers. However, vortex dynamics is
commonly studied in non-self-gravitating disks. The main goal here is to
examine the effects of disk self-gravity on the vortex dynamics via numerical
simulations. In the self-gravitating case, when quasi-steady gravitoturbulent
state is reached, vortices appear as transient structures undergoing recurring
phases of formation, growth to sizes comparable to a local Jeans scale, and
eventual shearing and destruction due to gravitational instability. Each phase
lasts over 2-3 orbital periods. Vortices and density waves appear to be coupled
implying that, in general, one should consider both vortex and density wave
modes for a proper understanding of self-gravitating disk dynamics. Our results
imply that given such an irregular and rapidly changing, transient character of
vortex evolution in self-gravitating disks it may be difficult for such
vortices to effectively trap dust particles in their centers that is a
necessary process towards planet formation.Comment: to appear in the proceedings of Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and The
Sun, 15th Cambridge Workshop, St. Andrews, Scotland, July 21-25, 200
Introducing a Hybrid Method of Radiative Transfer in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics
We present a new method of incorporating radiative transfer into Smoothed
Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). There have been many recent attempts at radiative
transfer in SPH (Stamatellos et al 2005, 2005, Mayer et al 2007, Whitehouse and
Bate 2006), however these are becoming increasingly complex, with some methods
requiring the photosphere to be mapped (which is often of non-trivial geometric
shape), and extra conditions to be applied there (matching atmospheres as in
Cai et al (2008), or specifying cooling at the photosphere as in Mayer et al
(2007)). The method of identifying the photosphere is usually a significant
addition to the total simulation runtime, and often requires extra free
parameters, the changing of which will affect the final results. Our method is
not affected by such concerns, as the photosphere is constructed implicitly by
the algorithm without the need for extra free parameters. The algorithm used is
a synergy of two current formalisms for radiative effects: a) the polytropic
cooling formalism proposed by Stamatellos et al (2007), and b) flux-limited
diffusion, used by many authors to simulate radiation transport in the
optically thick regime (e.g. Mayer et al 2007). We present several tests of
this method: (1) The evolution of a 0.07 solar mass protoplanetary disc around
a 0.5 solarmass star (Pickett et al 2003, Mejia et al 2005, Boley et al 2006,
Cai et al 2008); (2) The collapse of a non-rotating 1 solar mass molecular
cloud (Masunaga & Inutsuka 2000, Stamatellos et al 2007); (3) The thermal
relaxation of temperature fluctuations in an static homogeneous sphere
(Masunaga et al 1998, Spiegel 1957, Stamatellos et al 2007)Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the Cool Stars 15
conferenc
Managing the transition : enhancing the efficiency of Eastern European governments
The transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe requires eliminating some institutions and practices and introducing new agencies with new goals, staffed by people with different attitudes and behavior. After interviewing 42 World Bank experts and other experts in the donor and academic communities, the author synthesizes their views on World Bank member countries in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia): Giving a broad-brush overview of what is known about capacity constraints in key public institutions involved in the transition. Identifying current and proposed actions of the World Bank and other donors. Indicating critical institutional issues on which future operational work and research might focus. The author finds that a consensus has emerged on five principles that establish the socially acceptable domain for government economic activity in Eastern Europe: (1) Retreat from the discredited central government, as subnational governments and private enterprises assume many functions of central government. (2) Improved channels of communication between governments and their citizens, in response to increasing demand for more transparent policy and an institutionalized voice for the public in policymaking. (3) A hospitable business environment, which means clarification of property rights; policy stability, consistency, and accountability; low-cost provision of government services and infrastructure; and the protection of agents from abuses in the marketplace. (4) Concern for public welfare and social justice, as citizens of post-communist Eastern Europe hope to obtain both the familiar basic securities (job security, subsidized consumption, and universal access to basic health care and education) as well as new rights and freedoms. (5) Efficient government administration at all levels, under the scrutiny ofelected legislatures, citizens groups, and internal audit and review agencies. The author identifies five areas in which external institutional assistance is needed: (1) policy advice on a range of issues; (2) more in-depth technical assistance; (3) a large-scale training effort to help close Eastern Europe's massive skills gap in economics and business; (4) diagnostic research; and (5) the design of broad, medium-term action plans. For each of these issues, the author describes numerous measures to be pursued.National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,ICT Policy and Strategies,Public Sector Economics&Finance
Analysis of permanent magnets as elasmobranch bycatch reduction devices in hook-and-line and longline trials
Previous studies indicate that elasmobranch fishes (sharks,
skates and rays) detect the Earth’s geomagnetic field by indirect magnetoreception through electromagnetic
induction, using their ampullae of Lorenzini. Applying this concept, we evaluated the capture of elasmobranchs in the presence of permanent magnets in hook-and-line and inshore
longline fishing experiments. Hooks with neodymium-iron-boron magnets significantly reduced the capture of
elasmobranchs overall in comparison with control and procedural control hooks in the hook-and-line experiment.
Catches of Atlantic sharpnose shark (Rhizoprionodon terraenovae) and smooth dogfish (Mustelus canis) were signif icantly reduced with magnetic hook-and-line treatments, whereas catches of spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias) and clearnose skate (Raja eglanteria) were not.
Longline hooks with barium-ferrite magnets significantly reduced total elasmobranch capture when compared with control hooks. In the longline study, capture of blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) and southern stingrays (Dasyatis americana) was reduced on magnetic hooks, whereas
capture of sandbar shark (Carcharhinus plumbeus) was not affected. Teleosts, such as red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus), Atlantic croaker (Micropogonias undulatus), oyster toadfish
(Opsanus tau), black sea bass (Centropristis striata), and the bluefish (Pomatomas saltatrix), showed no hook preference in either hook-and-line or longline studies. These results indicate that permanent magnets, although eliciting species-specific capture trends, warrant further investigation in commercial longline and recreational fisheries, where bycatch mortality is a leading contributor to declines in elasmobranch populations
Social Network Based Substance Abuse Prevention via Network Modification (A Preliminary Study)
Substance use and abuse is a significant public health problem in the United
States. Group-based intervention programs offer a promising means of preventing
and reducing substance abuse. While effective, unfortunately, inappropriate
intervention groups can result in an increase in deviant behaviors among
participants, a process known as deviancy training. This paper investigates the
problem of optimizing the social influence related to the deviant behavior via
careful construction of the intervention groups. We propose a Mixed Integer
Optimization formulation that decides on the intervention groups, captures the
impact of the groups on the structure of the social network, and models the
impact of these changes on behavior propagation. In addition, we propose a
scalable hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm that combines Mixed Integer
Programming and Large Neighborhood Search to find near-optimal network
partitions. Our algorithm is packaged in the form of GUIDE, an AI-based
decision aid that recommends intervention groups. Being the first quantitative
decision aid of this kind, GUIDE is able to assist practitioners, in particular
social workers, in three key areas: (a) GUIDE proposes near-optimal solutions
that are shown, via extensive simulations, to significantly improve over the
traditional qualitative practices for forming intervention groups; (b) GUIDE is
able to identify circumstances when an intervention will lead to deviancy
training, thus saving time, money, and effort; (c) GUIDE can evaluate current
strategies of group formation and discard strategies that will lead to deviancy
training. In developing GUIDE, we are primarily interested in substance use
interventions among homeless youth as a high risk and vulnerable population.
GUIDE is developed in collaboration with Urban Peak, a homeless-youth serving
organization in Denver, CO, and is under preparation for deployment
From antiangiogenesis to hypoxia: current research and future directions
Angiogenesis has long been recognized as an essential element in tumor growth. Since the conception of antiangiogenesis for cancer therapeutics, great strides have been made in understanding the molecular biology underlying angiogenesis, both in cancer and in physiology. By capitalizing on these advancements through bench-to-bedside research, potent antiangiogenic agents have been developed and tested. To date, the clinical results of most of these antiangiogenic agents have not met expectations. Even with the most successful agents, such as bevacizumab, used either as single agents or in combination with chemotherapy, gains in overall survival of cancer patients have been modest in most cases. In this article, the authors present the evolving views of antiangiogenic therapy, review recent experimental and clinical studies on antiangiogenesis, and address the fundamental role of hypoxia in tumor progression, which may be key to improving the efficacy of antiangiogenic therapy
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