‘Children not trophies’: an ethnographic study of private family law practice in England

The welfare of the child in the context of private family law proceedings is of significant international interest. This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of private law proceedings in England, which explored legal professionals’ experiences of and practice within space and place. Data are derived from interviews with professionals, and observations from the waiting areas, canteens, interview rooms and offices of lawyers who represent parents in private family law proceedings. The paper focuses on winners and losers in the area of private family law, and the ‘trophy’, the child, who appears to be lost in the battleground of legal proceedings, but remains the ultimate prize. The concept of space is explored before moving to reflect upon the data from the interviews. The themes that emerge from the data are the relationships between the public space of the court and the vulnerability of the parties as they attempt with greater or less ease, to navigate the complexities of this formal and procedurally driven space. This paper explores the idea of the child as the ultimate ‘trophy’ within private law proceedings to consider its significance for family justice practice in England, and to elicit a greater understanding of the importance of space and place in private law proceedings that have remained largely unexplored

Innovative business, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship

Innovation is not merely the development of something new, especially in the world today. There are different types of innovation, as well as different ways to apply it. Dr. Nancy Forster-Holt, a professor at the College of Business here at the University of Rhode Island, brought insight to these burning questions during her discussion of innovation in the business world. First, I will discuss the two types of innovation and how they play a part, then I will discuss innovation in the business model, the production process, and the final product itself. I will provide solid examples of forms of innovation, and how they represent innovation in a world where everything has already been thought of

A Deployable Stiffened Biconvex Mast

Deployable structures are a common spacecraft configuration feature. Deployables are used to configure spacecraft inertia properties, provide expanded antenna aperture and solar array area, or to provide separation between spacecraft components. Lightsat design would be especially enhanced by small size lightweight deployable structures. A review of the state of the art of deployable structures has been conducted and shows that these devices can be divided into two categories: one, rollable mast of the stem, bistem, or stacer types; and two, folding trusses. The rollable masts are generally of open section and susceptible to thermal excitation. Folding trusses are not available in small size. To address these design challenges, a rollable closed section biconvex mast was design, constructed, and experimentally evaluated. The mast was constructed of composites to obtain high stiffness and low weight and to exploit the relative ease with which a shaped cross section can be fabricated. The mast has a lenticular cross section that can be flattened to allow it to be stowed around a drum. Once on orbit, the mast is unrolled and opens up to the lenticular cross section. A novel stiffener has also been developed which increases the capability of the section. Design characteristics and test results are presented

Frontline direct care workers experiences of providing domiciliary care towards the end of life:a systematic literature review and narrative synthesis

Background An ageing population heralds a greater demand for palliative and end of life care. Many people approaching the end of life rely on domiciliary care services provided by a para-professional workforce. Despite low pay and status, these workers provide personal and social care to people at a difficult time in their lives. Little is known about the impact of this work on the workers themselves or how they are trained, supervised and supported. Methods A systematic search was conducted in six databases. All study designs were included. Titles and abstracts of retrieved papers were screened by two researchers working independently. Findings were analysed using a narrative synthesis approach. Results Of 747 retrieved references, 12 papers from six countries in four continents were selected for inclusion in the review. Few studies dealt directly with the experiences of direct care workers themselves. Most considered them as part of multi-professional care networks with many focusing on issues relating to the professionals involved in the teams under consideration. Internationally and within nations, workers job titles varied and in some cases obscured job role. Where this role was clear, there was much overlap between domestic, personal, social and health related tasks. There was little evidence of a consistent approach to training and supporting staff involved in care towards the end of life and a paucity of ‘voice’ for these workers in published studies. Conclusion The experiences of direct care workers in palliative homecare is poorly studied. There is considerable variability in how workers are named, the work they do, and who they report to. More research that privileges the voice of these workers and identifies the impact on them of caring for those approaching the end of life is required so that employing agencies may consider how to improve the training, supervision and support of this essential frontline workforce

The Suuji Approach to Multi-Digit Addition: Using Length to Deepen Students’ Understanding of the Base 10 Number System

We describe the Suuji representation of numbers which aims to deepen elementary students’ understanding of the base 10 system. (“Suuji” means “number” in Japanese.) This representation takes a two pronged approach of (1) making the place value more explicit and (2) using length to represent numbers, thus allowing students to reason spatially. We taught multi-digit addition using the Suuji representation to 20 second and third grade students. The article uses lesson descriptions and student work to illustrate the Suuji approach, as well as its impact on student learning

Spiritual Formation in the Graduate School of Clinical Psychology at George Fox University

At its inception, the training model in the Graduate School of Clinical Psychology (GSCP) at George Fox University was informed by the approach inaugurated at Fuller Theological Seminary School of Psychology in the 1960s. In the original model, training in Christian religion/spirituality and theology accompanied training in professional psychology. In the interim, our culture, psychological knowledge, perceived psychological needs, and training programs have changed greatly. Here we report changes in religion/spirituality (RIS) training and integration over the last two decades. We describe our current spiritual formation structure and process, and program evaluation efforts. Over the past several years the GSCP has shifted from relying mainly on a cognitive approach involving Bible and theology courses (theoretical-conceptual integration) toward a more personal-experiential approach that includes team teaching of the theology and religion courses, an individualized spiritual direction experience spread over two years, and more intentional integration of RIS and spiritual formation components throughout the program. We anticipate this may be an ongoing area for further development in coming years as we seek to meet the needs of a changing student body with greater RIS diversity and largely postmodern worldviews

Mindfulness: An effective coaching tool for improving physical and mental health:

This article provides an overview of the mechanisms of action, evidence base, and practice of mindfulness, with an emphasis on how to easily incorporate this valuable skill into practice

Salmo salar and Esox lucius full-length cDNA sequences reveal changes in evolutionary pressures on a post-tetraploidization genome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Salmonids are one of the most intensely studied fish, in part due to their economic and environmental importance, and in part due to a recent whole genome duplication in the common ancestor of salmonids. This duplication greatly impacts species diversification, functional specialization, and adaptation. Extensive new genomic resources have recently become available for Atlantic salmon (<it>Salmo salar</it>), but documentation of allelic versus duplicate reference genes remains a major uncertainty in the complete characterization of its genome and its evolution.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>From existing expressed sequence tag (EST) resources and three new full-length cDNA libraries, 9,057 reference quality full-length gene insert clones were identified for Atlantic salmon. A further 1,365 reference full-length clones were annotated from 29,221 northern pike (<it>Esox lucius</it>) ESTs. Pairwise d_N/d_Scomparisons within each of 408 sets of duplicated salmon genes using northern pike as a diploid out-group show asymmetric relaxation of selection on salmon duplicates.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>9,057 full-length reference genes were characterized in <it>S. salar </it>and can be used to identify alleles and gene family members. Comparisons of duplicated genes show that while purifying selection is the predominant force acting on both duplicates, consistent with retention of functionality in both copies, some relaxation of pressure on gene duplicates can be identified. In addition, there is evidence that evolution has acted asymmetrically on paralogs, allowing one of the pair to diverge at a faster rate.</p

A cross-sample statistical model for SNP detection in short-read sequencing data

Highly multiplex DNA sequencers have greatly expanded our ability to survey human genomes for previously unknown single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, sequencing and mapping errors, though rare, contribute substantially to the number of false discoveries in current SNP callers. We demonstrate that we can significantly reduce the number of false positive SNP calls by pooling information across samples. Although many studies prepare and sequence multiple samples with the same protocol, most existing SNP callers ignore cross-sample information. In contrast, we propose an empirical Bayes method that uses cross-sample information to learn the error properties of the data. This error information lets us call SNPs with a lower false discovery rate than existing methods