Looking Backward While Pushing Forward

“We’re so old, Becky. Becky, we are so old.” This palindromic couplet came from the ex-boyfriend I hadn’t seen in over ten years. We had been in a brief and mildly dysfunctional relationship ten years before that, back when I was twenty and he was thirty. We had remained friends after our breakup and, after a few years absence, regained contact through the contemporary perpetual This is Your Life-esque reunion of social media

Single or Dual Resources: The Role of Working Memory in Syntactic Processing

Within the field of psycholinguistics there are those who argue for a close relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and syntactic processing (Just and Carpenter, 1992) and those who argue that there is no such relationship (Waters and Caplan, 1996b; 2004). Despite years of research, empirical data has yet to settle this disagreement, perhaps because a number of methodological differences between studies from each side make direct comparisons of data nearly impossible. The current study was designed to partially replicate three previous studies using their own experimental sentence types in a self-paced word-by-word reading paradigm in order to examine the effects of several methodological factors, including judgment type and object-relative clause construction, on performance in the syntactic processing task. In Experiment 1 we used Just and Carpenter’s (1992) true/false judgment and found data theoretically consistent with their main results which supported a relationship between WMC and syntactic processing, but only for sentence sets constructed in the manner of Waters and Caplan (1996b; 2004). In Experiment 2 we used Waters and Caplan’s (1996b; 2004) acceptability judgment with the same stimulus sets and found no support for a WMC-syntactic processing relationship. Finally, in Experiment 3 we used a grammaticality judgment with the same stimulus sets and once again found no support for a WMC-syntactic processing relationship. Together, the results of all three experiments suggest that a number of methodological factors that have been previously considered irrelevant in the syntactic processing task in fact produce significant changes in the results that in turn alter the conclusions drawn. In particular, we found evidence that judgment type can alter overall reading times, suggesting that task demands may cause participants to alter their processing strategies in the task. Our results also illustrate that the pattern of results can depend largely upon the method of object-relative clause construction used for the task

Sequential anomaly detection in the presence of noise and limited feedback

This paper describes a methodology for detecting anomalies from sequentially observed and potentially noisy data. The proposed approach consists of two main elements: (1) {\em filtering}, or assigning a belief or likelihood to each successive measurement based upon our ability to predict it from previous noisy observations, and (2) {\em hedging}, or flagging potential anomalies by comparing the current belief against a time-varying and data-adaptive threshold. The threshold is adjusted based on the available feedback from an end user. Our algorithms, which combine universal prediction with recent work on online convex programming, do not require computing posterior distributions given all current observations and involve simple primal-dual parameter updates. At the heart of the proposed approach lie exponential-family models which can be used in a wide variety of contexts and applications, and which yield methods that achieve sublinear per-round regret against both static and slowly varying product distributions with marginals drawn from the same exponential family. Moreover, the regret against static distributions coincides with the minimax value of the corresponding online strongly convex game. We also prove bounds on the number of mistakes made during the hedging step relative to the best offline choice of the threshold with access to all estimated beliefs and feedback signals. We validate the theory on synthetic data drawn from a time-varying distribution over binary vectors of high dimensionality, as well as on the Enron email dataset.Comment: 19 pages, 12 pdf figures; final version to be published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Developing Understandings of Collaborative Partnerships Between University and Community

University faculty define collaborative partnerships with the community and examine how collaborative partnerships engender community-based research and the learning process of students in the College of Public Service. Considerations include how students are acculturated, specific benefits to learning, unanticipated benefits, and the unexpected challenges of collaborative partnerships between a university and a community

Who Wants to Return Home? A Survey of Sudanese Refugees in Kakuma, Kenya

With the goal of better understanding some of the psychological factors related to refugees’ desire to return home, surveys were administered to 235 South Sudanese refugees living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Respondents were asked about how much they wanted to return to Sudan, their emotional reactions about returning, their views on the prospects for peace, their expectations regarding how they would be received upon return, and their concerns about specific challenges they might face. In addition, they completed an inventory measuring their personal beliefs about issues in five domains: vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness in regard to prospective returnees to Sudan. A large majority was very eager to repatriate. Individual differences in attitudes toward returning were significantly linked to the strength of their beliefs in the five domains. Stronger beliefs about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, and helplessness were associated with more negative perceptions of return, while a stronger belief about returnee superiority was correlated with a more favourable perspective on repatriation.Dans le but de mieux comprendre quelques-uns des facteurs psychologiques liés au désir des réfugiés de retourner chez eux, des enquêtes ont été conduites auprès de 235 réfugiés originaires du sud Soudan et vivant dans le camp de réfugiés de Kakuma, au Kenya. On posa aux répondants des questions sur l’intensité de leur désir de retourner au Soudan, leurs réactions émotionnelles par rapport à toute la question du retour, leur point de vue sur les perspectives pour la paix, leurs attentes quant à la façon dont ils seraient reçus au retour, et leurs préoccupations quant aux défis spécifiques qui pourraient les confronter. En plus, ils complétèrent aussi un inventaire de personnalité permettant d’évaluer leurs croyances personnelles sur des questions relatives à cinq domaines : la vulnérabilité, l’injustice, la méfiance, la supériorité, et le sentiment d’impuissance par rapport aux éventuels candidats au retour au Soudan. La grande majorité était très désireuse de rentrer au pays. Les différences individuelles dans les attitudes par rapport au retour étaient étroitement liées à l’intensité de leur croyance dans les cinq domaines. Une croyance plus forte dans la vulnérabilité, l’injustice, la méfiance, et le sentiment d’impuissance était associée à des perceptions plutôt négatives sur le retour, alors qu’une croyance plus forte quant à la supériorité du réfugié revenant chez lui était corrélée avec une perspective plus favorable sur le retour

Help seeking, trust and intimate partner violence: Social connections amongst displaced and non-displaced Yezidi women and men in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq

Replaced AM with VoR 2020-08-31.Background: Conflict and displacement impact the social fabric of communities through the disruption of social connections and the erosion of trust. Effective humanitarian assistance requires understanding the social capital that shapes patterns of help seeking in these circumstances - especially with stigmatised issues such as violence against women (VAW) and intimate partner violence (IPV).Methods: A novel social mapping methodology was adopted amongst a Yezidi population displaced by ISIS occupation and a neighbouring settled Yezidi population in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq in late 2016. Six participatory workshops were conducted to identify available resources with respect to: meeting basic needs, dispute resolution and VAW. Subsequently, 51 individual interviews were conducted (segmented by gender and settlement status) to identify connectedness to, and trust in, the resources identified, with a focus on IPV against women.Results: 90% of participants reported God as a key source of help in the previous six months, representing the most widely cited resource. Following God, the most accessed and trusted resources were family and community, with NGO (non-governmental organisation) provision being the least. Women drew more strongly upon familial resources than men (Χ2=5.73, df=1, p=0.017). There was reduced trust in resources in relation to seeking help with IPV. A distinction between trust to provide emotional support and trust to resolve issues was identified. Settled women were 1.6 times more likely to trust community members and government services and 3.7 times more likely to trust NGOs than displaced women.Conclusions: Mapping social connections and trust provides valuable insight into the social capital available to support help seeking in populations of humanitarian concern. For these Yezidi populations, family, religious and community resources were the most widely utilised and trusted. Trust was mostly reserved for family and their main religious leader regarding IPV against women. Lack of trust appeared to be a major barrier to stronger engagement with available NGO provision, particularly amongst displaced women. The role of faith and religious resources for this population is clearly significant, and warrants an explicitly faith-sensitive approach to humanitarian assistance.https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-020-00305-w14pubpu

Fair decarbonisation of housing in the UK: a sufficiency approach

This paper addresses a neglected aspect of the UK housing crisis: how to rapidly but fairly decarbonise the housing stock to meet tough net zero targets while meeting housing needs of the entire population. To do so the authors adopt a radical approach based on sufficiency. The sufficiency approach is based on determining both a housing floor – a decent minimum standard for all – and a housing ceiling - above which lies unsustainable excess. The authors define these thresholds in terms of bedrooms and floorspace and analyse the distribution of housing in England. They find that excess housing is widespread, concentrated in home ownership, particularly outright ownership, and characterised by above average emissions per square metre. They conclude that current policies based solely on energy efficiency and increasing housing supply cannot achieve agreed decarbonisation goals while securing decent accommodation for those who are housing deprived. To do this will require new policies that distinguish between sufficient and excess housing and more effective use of the housing stock to meet housing needs within planetary boundaries

CT3 as an Index of Knowledge Domain Structure: Distributions for Order Analysis and Information Hierarchies

The problem with which this study is concerned is articulating all possible CT3 and KR21 reliability measures for every case of a 5x5 binary matrix (32,996,500 possible matrices). The study has three purposes. The first purpose is to calculate CT3 for every matrix and compare the results to the proposed optimum range of .3 to .5. The second purpose is to compare the results from the calculation of KR21 and CT3 reliability measures. The third purpose is to calculate CT3 and KR21 on every strand of a class test whose item set has been reduced using the difficulty strata identified by Order Analysis. The study was conducted by writing a computer program to articulate all possible 5 x 5 matrices. The program also calculated CT3 and KR21 reliability measures for each matrix. The nonparametric technique of Order Analysis was applied to two sections of test items to stratify the items into difficulty levels. The difficulty levels were used to reduce the item set from 22 to 9 items. All possible strands or chains of these items were identified so that both reliability measures (CT3 and KR21) could be calculated. One major finding of this study indicates that .3 to .5 is a desirable range for CT3 (cumulative p=.86 to p=.98) if cumulative frequencies are measured. A second major finding is that the KR21 reliability measure produced an invalid result more than half the time. The last major finding is that CT3, rescaled to range between 0 and 1, supports De Vellis' guidelines for reliability measures. The major conclusion is that CT3 is a better measure of reliability since it considers both inter- and intra-item variances

Critical Issues: Defining and Debunking Misconceptions in Health, Education, Criminal Justice, and Social Work/Social Services

The University of Houston Downtown Committee for the Journal of Family Strengths introduces Volume 18, Issue 1: Critical Issues: Defining and Debunking Misconceptions in Health, Education, Criminal Justice, and Social Work/Social Services

Measuring change and changing measures: The development of a torture survivor specific measure of change

Freedom from Torture is a UK-based human rights organisation dedicated to the treatment and rehabilitation of torture survivors. The organisation has been working towards the development of a clinical outcome tool for a number of years, and the purpose of this paper is to (a) describe the process of developing the tool and the final tool itself, and (b) to outline the system which Freedom from Torture has established to collect, record and analyse the data produced. A review of the literature revealed that existing measures were not appropriate for measuring psychological and emotional change amongst torture survivors; therefore the organisation undertook to develop a tool specifically designed for this target group. The clinical outcome tool was developed collaboratively by Freedom from Torture clinicians, clients, interpreters and an external consultant. Initial discussions took place with clinicians and clients to develop an understanding of what psychosocial wellbeing and psychosocial distress meant to this unique population of torture survivors, and which issues and features should be included in the clinical outcome tool. A process of discussion and testing of potential approaches led to the development of a draft clinical outcome tool which was translated into 15 languages and then pilot tested with 151 clients. The data from the pilot study was analysed and used to produce the final version of the clinical outcome tool. The clinical outcome tool was formally rolled out across the organisation's five centres in April 2014. Clinicians working with adult clients have been completing it at the beginning of therapy and then again at regular intervals. The data from the first year is currently being analysed, and the experiences of clinicians, clients and interpreters of using the clinical outcome tool are being reviewed, with a view to continuing to develop and improve the tool and the processes by which it is used. Ultimately, the data will be used to improve the services offered to survivors of torture in the UK.https://irct.org/media-and-resources/publications#torture-journalsch_iih26pub4374pub