Time for Reform: Aging Out and On Their Own

This report describes how the current foster care system fails to provide a permanent family for every child and the difficulty children have staying connected to family and friends while in foster care. The report also presents the state-by-state data on the number of youth who have aged out of foster care and describes the problems young adults have when they have to face the future without a permanent family to support them

Time for Reform: Investing in Prevention: Keeping Children Safe at Home

Describes the prevention and reunification services needed in child welfare programs to reduce abuse and help families stay together. Recommends changes to the child welfare financing structure to allow states to lower the need for foster care

Local stability of a gravitating filament: a dispersion relation

Filamentary structures are ubiquitous in astrophysics and are observed at various scales. On a cosmological scale, matter is usually distributed along filaments, and filaments are also typical features of the interstellar medium. Within a cosmic filament, matter can contract and form galaxies, whereas an interstellar gas filament can clump into a series of bead-like structures which can then turn into stars. To investigate the growth of such instabilities, we derive a local dispersion relation for an idealized self-gravitating filament, and study some of its properties. Our idealized picture consists of an infinite self-gravitating and rotating cylinder with pressure and density related by a polytropic equation of state. We assume no specific density distribution, treat matter as a fluid, and use hydrodynamics to derive the linearized equations that govern the local perturbations. We obtain a dispersion relation for axisymmetric perturbations and study its properties in the (k_R, k_z) phase space, where k_R and k_z are respectively the radial and longitudinal wavenumbers. While the boundary between the stable and unstable regimes is symmetrical in k_R and k_z and analogous to the Jeans criterion, the most unstable mode displays an asymmetry that could constrain the shape of the structures that form within the filament. Here the results are applied to a fiducial interstellar filament, but could be extended for more astrophysical systems such as cosmological filaments and tidal tails.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, published in A&

Chafee Plus Ten: A Vision For the Next Decade

On the tenth anniversary of the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Act of 1999, this paper takes a close look at what has been learned since the law's enactment. It discusses the data and research findings, implications for society, a gives a vision for the next decade on an effective service system and strong policies that support youth in successfully transitioning to adulthood

DYNAMIC RESPONSE OF A SIMPLY SUPPORTED VISCOELASTIC BEAM OF A FRACTIONAL DERIVATIVE TYPE TO A MOVING FORCE LOAD

In the paper, the dynamic response of a simply supported viscoelastic beam of the fractional derivative type to a moving force load is studied. The Bernoulli-Euler beam with the fractional derivative viscoelastic Kelvin-Voigt material model is considered. The Riemann-Liouville fractional derivative of the order 0 < ¬ 1 is used. The forced-vibration solution of the beam is determined using the mode superposition method. A convolution integral of fractional Green's function and forcing function is used to achieve the beam response. Green's function is formulated by two terms. The first term describes damped vibrations around the drifting equilibrium position, while the second term describes the drift of the equilibrium position. The solution is obtained analytically whereas dynamic responses are calculated numerically. A comparison between the results obtained using the fractional and integer viscoelastic material models is performed. Next, the effects of the order of the fractional derivative and velocity of the moving force on the dynamic response of the beam are studied. In the analysed system, the effect of the term describing the drift of the equilibrium position on the beam deflection is negligible in comparison with the first term and therefore can be omitted. The calculated responses of the beam with the fractional material model are similar to those presented in works of other authors

Cross-linguistic influence in third-language acquisition: Learning Mandarin Chinese (L3) through the medium of English (L2)

Artykuł recenzowany / peer-reviewed articleInterferencja (znana także jako transfer językowy) L1 to wpływ pierwszego języka na produkcję lub odbiór języka drugiego (L2). Większość badań dotyczących zjawiska interferencji koncentruje się na procesie przyswajania i produkcji zachodzącym pomiędzy językiem ojczystym a pierwszym nauczanym językiem obcym. Jednakże tego typu transfer językowy może również dotyczyć posługiwania się drugim językiem obcym (L3). Artykuł przedstawia głównie spostrzeżenia poczynione podczas prowadzenia zajęć z języka chińskiego (L3) dla mieszanej (Polacy/Ukraińcy) grupy początkujących. Zajęcia były prowadzone w języku angielskim (L2) (poziom angielskiego grupy: B2). W ostatnich latach coraz więcej badań prowadzonych jest nad tematem wpływu międzyjęzykowego w postaci transferu zarówno z L1, jak i z L2 w odbiorze L3, a niektóre badania pokazują, że wpływ L2 na opanowanie sprawności językowych w L3 może być bardziej istotny niż wpływ L1. Celem pracy było zatem stwierdzenie, jaki wpływ ma L1 i L2 na produkcję L3 oraz czy przewagę pod tym względem ma L1, czy L2. Stwierdzono, że na gramatykę najbardziej wpływał L2, a na fonetykę – L1. Przykłady transferu semantycznego były nieliczne

Microrheological Characterisation of Anisotropic Materials

We describe the measurement of anisotropic viscoelastic moduli in complex soft materials, such as biopolymer gels, via video particle tracking microrheology of colloid tracer particles. The use of a correlation tensor to find the axes of maximum anisotropy, and hence the mechanical director, is described. The moduli of an aligned DNA gel are reported, as a test of the technique; this may have implications for high DNA concentrations in vivo. We also discuss the errors in microrheological measurement, and describe the use of frequency space filtering to improve displacement resolution, and hence probe these typically high modulus materials.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Replaced after refereeing/ improvement. Main results are the same. The final, published version of the paper is here http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v73/e03190

A DESCRIPTION OF LICHEN COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND THE IMPACTS OF SPRUCE BEETLE DISTURBANCE IN NORTHWESTERN COLORADO

Spruce beetle disturbance has affected millions of acres of forest throughout North America and Europe, but thus far little research has investigated how this disturbance influences lichen communities. To address this problem, we studied lichen communities and habitat characteristics within 44 plots across a chronosequence of spruce beetle damage spanning 1996–2017 in northwestern Colorado. We found 82 species of lichens, few habitat differences among spruce beetle disturbance classes, and only the most recently affected plots (2012–2017) had significantly different lichen community structure relative to remaining areas. Two primary gradients explained the majority of variation of lichen community structure within our study area. The first gradient was related to forest location and substrate, with the positive end of the axis associated with the Routt NF, higher partially decayed wood, and more bare ground, while the negative end of axis one was associated with plots located in the Roosevelt NF which had higher lichen species richness, more heavily-decayed wood, and more lichen and plant understory cover. The second gradient described lichen community trends related to canopy closure on the positive end of the axis while higher wind speeds and heavily decayed logs were associated with the negative end of this gradient. We suggest that differences in habitat characteristics that we noted as related to spruce beetle disturbance, were instead due to our sampling method and large plot size. Further we speculate that recovery of understory plants and subalpine fir may compensate for the loss of spruce, manifesting as minimal differences in forest structure and lichen community structure across beetle disturbance classes. Slow recovery times of lichens could have also inhibited our ability to detect a response to spruce beetle disturbance. Future researchers should further examine the response of lichens to spruce beetle response since this disturbance type will continue to affect native forests and associated organisms into the foreseeable future