Is Twenty-two Months Beyond the Best Interest of the Child? ASFA\u27s Guidelines for the Termination of Parental Rights

This Note first discusses the legal precedents, child development theories, and policies regarding reasonable efforts and parental termination that led to the enactment of ASFA. Next, it examines Illinois\u27s and New York\u27s different responses to ASFA. It also introduces the debate over congregate care as an alternative for those children who may never be returned to a parent\u27s care, but whom are unlikely to be adopted. Lastly, it argues that the New York system is more workable than the Illinois system given the complexities of the foster care system. This Note concludes by arguing the federal government\u27s rigid time frame for parental termination is overly simplistic because it makes it difficult for decision makers to account for various individual circumstances

Analysing regulatory systems in mixed public-private health systems: a new assessment tool and its application in India

Health systems in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the Asia-Pacific region can be characterised as mixed public-private systems, with common features such as blurred boundaries between public and private sectors, low government investment in public services and ineffectual policies and institutions for regulating health care.As a result, they encounter a range of performance issues, including poor quality and inequitable coverage of health services, health providers who exploit their market position for personal gain and high out-of-pocket expenditure for users, particularly the poor.Such problems reflect failures in the regulation of health care providers. However, in LMICs there is often little information on the specific nature of these failures or their causes to guide national and sub-national authorities in strengthening the regulation of their health systems.The Nossal Institute for Global Health and the Public Health Foundation of India collaborated in the development of a structured assessment tool that can be used to describe and assess regulatory systems and organisations and to identify gaps in the design, and failures in the implementation, of regulatory systems. The tool was then tested by assessing the regulatory systems at two sites in India with very different demographics and health care systems: Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.&nbsp

Design of frequency filters with active current elements

Tato bakalářská práce je věnována návrhu kmitočtových filtrů s proudovými aktivními prvky. V úvodní části se věnuji popisu základních vlastností a dělení filtrů. Dále jsou pak uvedeny některé možnosti postupu při navrhování takového filtru. Prvek CMI (Current Mirror and Inverter) se jeví jako nejvhodnější možnost řešení pro aplikace pracující v čistě proudovém módu. Název tohoto prvku by se dal přeložit jako Proudové zrcadlo a invertor, což i plně vystihuje jeho funkci. K návrhovým účelům slouží jeho zobecněná verze GCMI. Konkrétněji je v této práci popsána metoda návrhu pomocí autonomního obvodu vycházející z plné admitanční sítě s jedním i se dvěma aktivními prvky CMI. Z každé admitanční sítě je vždy odvozeno několik autonomních obvodů s minimálně čtyřmi pasivními prvky. Jednotlivé autonomní obvody jsou pak spolu s jejich charakteristickou rovnicí uvedeny v přehledné tabulce. Na závěr je ukázán návrh vybraného multifunkčního kmitočtového filtru pracujícího jak v proudovém tak v napěťovém módu i s jednotlivými charakteristikami pro jeho různé přenosové funkce.This bachelor's thesis deal with designing frequency filters with current active elements. Preamble is devoted to description of basic properties and division of filters. Next part presents some way of designing frequency filter. The element CMI (Current Mirror and Inverter) seems like optimal possible solution for application working in purely current mode. To design purposes serves generalized version GCMI. This thesis describes way of designing the autonomous circuit based on full admitance nets with one and two active elements CMI. Several autonomous circuits with four or five passive elements are derived from every admitance network. Individual autonomous circuits are then presented in chart with their characteristic equation. In conclusion is shown design of selected multifunction frequency filter working in current mode as in voltage mode together with characterization for its various transmission functions.

Demonstration Application of Algorithms for Closed Areas Filling in 2D

Tato práce se zabývá postupy použitými při vyplňování uzavřených oblastí ve 2D. V dokumentu jsou popsány algoritmy, které se k tomuto účelu nejčastěji využívají. Text popisuje obě hlavní skupiny těchto metod, tedy algoritmy vektorové i algoritmy rastrové. Jsou zde popsány klady a zápory jednotlivých vyplňovacích metod. Pro některé algoritmy jsou zde rovněž uvedeny optimalizace, nebo další možnosti jejich implementace. Další část tohoto textu se zabývá popisem implementace uvedeným metod s možností krokování jejich postupu. Závěr textu se věnuje popisu tříd, které jsou použité v aplikaci. Je zde také popsáno grafické uživatelské rozhraní.This thesis describes methods used for filling closed areas in 2D. This text describes the most frequently used algorithms for this task. The first part of thesis describes both the main groups, vector algorithms and raster algorithms. Positives and negatives of these algorithms are described. For few of these algorithms is also mentioned how to optimize this algorithms or how to implement them using a different way. Next part of this text describes implementation of these algorithms for purpose of tracing them into. Last part of this text describes classes used in application. Also graphic user interface is described here.

Investigating Trade-offs For Fair Machine Learning Systems

Fairness in software systems aims to provide algorithms that operate in a nondiscriminatory manner, with respect to protected attributes such as gender, race, or age. Ensuring fairness is a crucial non-functional property of data-driven Machine Learning systems. Several approaches (i.e., bias mitigation methods) have been proposed in the literature to reduce bias of Machine Learning systems. However, this often comes hand in hand with performance deterioration. Therefore, this thesis addresses trade-offs that practitioners face when debiasing Machine Learning systems. At first, we perform a literature review to investigate the current state of the art for debiasing Machine Learning systems. This includes an overview of existing debiasing techniques and how they are evaluated (e.g., how is bias measured). As a second contribution, we propose a benchmarking approach that allows for an evaluation and comparison of bias mitigation methods and their trade-offs (i.e., how much performance is sacrificed for improving fairness). Afterwards, we propose a debiasing method ourselves, which modifies already trained Machine Learning models, with the goal to improve both, their fairness and accuracy. Moreover, this thesis addresses the challenge of how to deal with fairness with regards to age. This question is answered with an empirical evaluation on real-world datasets

Digital Writing, Word Processors and Operations in Texts: How Student Writers Use Digital Resources in Academic Writing Processes

This study explores the use of digital technologies in the writing of an academic assignment. Fine-grained studies on student writing processes are scarce in previous research. In relation to the increasing demands on students’ writing, as well as the debate on students’ poor writing (Malmström, 2017), these issues are important to address. In this study, screen captures of five students’ essay processes are analyzed. The results show that students handle text at different levels: they make use of one or more word processors, arrange texts spatially on screens and use resources to operate directly in texts. Above all these actions seem to meet the need to move and navigate within one’s own text, an aspect that could be especially important in relation to the academic genre and for handling texts as artifacts in activity (Castelló & Iñesta, 2012; Prior, 2006). The results of the study point to the importance of making digital writing practices visible, especially those that could create possibilities to intertwine digital texts, thereby enhancing potentials for academic writing and meaning-making

Computational Study of the Mechanisms Underlying Oscillation in Neuronal Locomotor Circuits

In this thesis we model two very different movement-related neuronal circuits, both of which produce oscillatory patterns of activity. In one case we study oscillatory activity in the basal ganglia under both normal and Parkinsonian conditions. First, we used a detailed Hodgkin-Huxley type spiking model to investigate the activity patterns that arise when oscillatory cortical input is transmitted to the globus pallidus via the subthalamic nucleus. Our model reproduced a result from rodent studies which shows that two anti-phase oscillatory groups of pallidal neurons appear under Parkinsonian conditions. Secondly, we used a population model of the basal ganglia to study whether oscillations could be locally generated. The basal ganglia are thought to be organised into multiple parallel channels. In our model, isolated channels could not generate oscillations, but if the lateral inhibition between channels is sufficiently strong then the network can act as a rhythm-generating ``pacemaker'' circuit. This was particularly true when we used a set of connection strength parameters that represent the basal ganglia under Parkinsonian conditions. Since many things are not known about the anatomy and electrophysiology of the basal ganglia, we also studied oscillatory activity in another, much simpler, movement-related neuronal system: the spinal cord of the Xenopus tadpole. We built a computational model of the spinal cord containing approximately 1,500 biologically realistic Hodgkin-Huxley neurons, with synaptic connectivity derived from a computational model of axon growth. The model produced physiological swimming behaviour and was used to investigate which aspects of axon growth and neuron dynamics are behaviourally important. We found that the oscillatory attractor associated with swimming was remarkably stable, which suggests that, surprisingly, many features of axonal growth and synapse formation are not necessary for swimming to emerge. We also studied how the same spinal cord network can generate a different oscillatory pattern in which neurons on both sides of the body fire synchronously. Our results here suggest that under normal conditions the synchronous state is unstable or weakly stable, but that even small increases in spike transmission delays act to stabilise it. Finally, we found that although the basal ganglia and the tadpole spinal cord are very different systems, the underlying mechanism by which they can produce oscillations may be remarkably similar. Insights from the tadpole model allow us to predict how the basal ganglia model may be capable of producing multiple patterns of oscillatory activity