Distance as a barrier to child and adolescent mental health service access in post-Katrina Orleans Parish

Socially vulnerable populations are more susceptible to the impacts of natural disasters than other groups. An aspect of social vulnerability is lack of access to resources following a disaster. Distance is one barrier that prevents socially vulnerable populations from accessing services. Using 2000 U.S. Census Bureau data and current outpatient child and adolescent mental health facilities in post-Katrina Orleans Parish, Louisiana, this thesis seek to understand if those facilities are located farther from block groups with higher percentages of demographically disadvantaged residents than from block groups with lower percentages of demographically disadvantaged residents. Block group demographic disadvantage is defined in terms of the percent of residents who are African American, the percent of individuals living in poverty, and the percent of households headed by females with children under 18 years old. The sample had 483 block groups in Orleans Parish. Pearson’s r and OLS regression were run comparing linear distance (dependent variable) with the independent variables of percent African American, percent poverty, and percent female-headed households with children under 18 years old. In the bivariate analysis, percent African American and female-headed households were not significantly correlated with linear distance. Percent poverty had a significant negative correlation with linear distance. While the negative association between poverty and distance remained in the in the multivariate analysis, percent African American and percent female-headed were positively correlated, as predicted. ArcGIS was used to create maps showing the percent African-American, poor, and female-headed households in Orleans Parish. The location of the outpatient child and adolescent mental health services were mapped out as well. Analyzing the locations of these facilities showed that there is a lack of facilities in the east of Orleans Parish. Policy planners should consider alternative approaches to providing mental health care for children and adolescents that may reside in non-poor areas with large percentages of African American. Current locations should be maintained since they are near the poorest block groups in the parish. More study is needed for understanding why distance becomes significant for block groups with higher percentages African American or female-headed households with children under 18 years old

Participation rates in Aimhigher West: analysis and comparisons

Two linked reports on widening participation in the Aimhigher West partnership area. These conclude, inter alia, that local factors such as school outcomes, labour market conditions and ethnic mix make a significant contribution to defining the higher education participation rate

Adaptive resource allocation for QoE-aware mobile communication networks

A real-time adaptive resource allocation algorithm considering the end user's Quality of Experience (QoE) in the context of video streaming service is presented in this work. An objective no-reference quality metric, namely Pause Intensity (PI), is used to control the priority of resource allocation to users during the scheduling process. An online adjustment has been introduced to adaptively set the scheduler's parameter and maintain a desired trade-off between fairness and efficiency. The correlation between the data rates (i.e. video code rates) demanded by users and the data rates allocated by the scheduler is taken into account as well. The final allocated rates are determined based on the channel status, the distribution of PI values among users, and the scheduling policy adopted. Furthermore, since the user's capability varies as the environment conditions change, the rate adaptation mechanism for video streaming is considered and its interaction with the scheduling process under the same PI metric is studied. The feasibility of implementing this algorithm is examined and the result is compared with the most commonly existing scheduling methods

Building and implementing knowledge: research and innovation inspired by the evolution of modern stadia.

This paper summarises how the evolution and advancement in sports stadia design within Arup, over the last 10 years, has been used as a catalyst for applied research programmes. The North West Structures Group has collaborated with several universities (UK and US based) to advance technical knowledge and understanding, and to ensure on-going innovation. Five doctoral research programmes have been produced focussing on critical issues such as crowd induced vibration, robustness of cable supported structures subjected to high velocity fragment impact, structural and geometrical optimisation and, design management. This paper will highlight some of the results obtained from each of these research programmes and how they have and can be filtered back into design. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate how opportunities can be seized when working on design projects to collaborate with universities and provide a platform for project based innovation in the construction industry

ImpaCT2: the impact of information and communication technologies on pupil learning and attainment

The report explores the impact of networked technologies on patterns of use of ICT in English, Mathematics and Science at Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 and the relative gain for high ICT users versus low ICT users in each of these subjects. This publication reports primarily on the outcomes of Strand 1, but draws on some material from the other strands of the study. ImpaCT2 was a major longitudinal study (1999-2002) involving 60 schools in England, its aims were to: identify the impact of networked technologies on the school and out-of-school environment; determine whether or not this impact affected the educational attainment of pupils aged 8 - 16 years (at Key Stages 2, 3, and 4); and provide information that would assist in the formation of national, local and school policies on the deployment of ICT

The 6dF Galaxy Survey: a low-redshift benchmark for bulge-dominated galaxies

The 6dF Galaxy Survey provides a very large sample of galaxies with reliable measurements of Lick line indices and velocity dispersions. This sample can be used to explore the correlations between mass and stellar population parameters such as age, metallicity and [alpha/Fe]. Preliminary results from such an analysis are presented here, and show that age and metallicity are significantly anti-correlated for both passive and star-forming galaxies. Passive galaxies have strong correlations between mass and metallicity and between age and alpha-element over-abundance, which combine to produce a downsizing relation between age and mass. For old passive galaxies, the different trends of M/L with mass and luminosity in different passbands result from the differential effect of the mass-metallicity relation on the luminosities in each passband. Future work with this sample will examine the Fundamental Plane of bulge-dominated galaxies and the influence of environment on relations between stellar population parameters and mass.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in "Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Bulges", Proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 245 (Oxford, 16-20 July 2007), eds Martin Bureau, Lia Athanassoula, Beatriz Barbu

Frenetic: A High-Level Language for OpenFlow Networks

Network administrators must configure network devices to simultaneously provide several interrelated services such as routing, load balancing, traffic monitoring, and access control. Unfortunately, most interfaces for programming networks are defined at the low level of abstraction supported by the underlying hardware, leading to complicated programs with subtle bugs. We present Frenetic, a high-level language for OpenFlow networks that enables writing programs in a declarative and compositional style, with a simple "program like you see every packet" abstraction. Building on ideas from functional programming, Frenetic offers a rich pattern algebra for classifying packets into traffic streams and a suite of operators for transforming streams. The run-time system efficiently manages the low-level details of (un)installing packet-processing rules in the switches. We describe the design of Frenetic, an implementation on top of OpenFlow, and experiments and example programs that validate our design choices.Office of Naval Research grant N00014-09-1-0770 "Networks Opposing Botnets

Creating a Multifarious Cyber Science Major

Existing approaches to computing-based cyber undergraduate majors typically take one of two forms: a broad exploration of both technical and human aspects, or a deep technical exploration of a single discipline relevant to cybersecurity. This paper describes the creation of a third approach—a multifarious major, consistent with Cybersecurity Curricula 2017, the ABET Cybersecurity Program Criteria, and the National Security Agency Center for Academic Excellence—Cyber Operations criteria. Our novel curriculum relies on a 10-course common foundation extended by one of five possible concentrations, each of which is delivered through a disciplinary lens and specialized into a highly relevant computing interest area serving society’s diverse cyber needs. The journey began years ago when we infused cybersecurity education throughout our programs, seeking to keep offerings and extracurricular activities relevant in society’s increasingly complex relationship with cyberspace. This paper details the overarching design principles, decision-making process, benchmarking, and feedback elicitation activities. A surprising key step was merging several curricula proposals into a single hybrid option. The new major attracted a strong initial cohort, meeting our enrollment goals and exceeding our diversity goals. We provide several recommendations for any institution embarking on a process of designing a new cyber-named major