The Risk of Risk: An Exploration of the Impact of “Risk” on Child Welfare Decision-making

Objective: In this paper, child welfare decision-making is critically assessed in relation to Beck’s (1992) concept of ‘risk society’. Three key decisions made by child welfare workers during the initial investigation are examined in order to illustrate how risk influences the type of investigative approach used, the determinations about child maltreatment, and the services provided to children and families and to link theory with policy and practice. Methods: The three exploratory studies all utilize secondary data from several cycles of the Ontario Incidence Study, which collects information directly from frontline child protection workers about incidence of reported maltreatment. Two studies utilize bivariate and multivariate analyses of maltreatment only investigations and risk only investigations respectively, to explore the profile of children and families investigated for various forms of maltreatment and for risk of future maltreatment where no maltreatment has been reported and to explore factors influencing worker decisions to substantiate maltreatment and risk. The third study utilized Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) analysis in addition to bivariate analyses to examine the decision about the type of response to use. Results: The results indicate that despite child welfare policies introduced over the past 10 years in attempts to balance the focus on risk, the overall rates of substantiated maltreatment and risk only investigations have not changed. The research also revealed that when controlling for multiple factors found in previous studies to influence substantiation decisions, the workers’ perception of the future risk of maltreatment emerged as the strongest influence on their decision to substantiate maltreatment. Families investigated for future risk of maltreatment were found to be different in several important ways from families investigated for maltreatment and factors that influenced workers’ decision to substantiate risk and maltreatment were also different. Children who were maltreated received fewer services from child welfare and were referred to outside services less frequently than children who had not been maltreated but were perceived to be at future risk of maltreatment. Only 10% of all investigations in Ontario were cases with significant protection concerns yet only 30% of these cases receive a traditional forensic investigation (most receive a customized response intended for less serious cases). Exposure to intimate partner violence was the factor which had the most significant influence on the workers’ decision regarding the type of investigation but surprisingly severe physical harm and sexual abuse did not emerge as significant factors. Conclusion: Child protection practice and decision making is complex and risk discourses have had a significant impact on both. Despite policy changes introduced over the past ten years to mediate the negative impact of risk technologies on child welfare decision-making, several risks of risk emerged in the findings including directing attention away from helping children who have already been harmed to a focus on children who are at risk of future maltreatment; contributing to a focus on blaming parents instead of attending to social issues; and reduced opportunities for successful engagement of families. Differential response does not appear to have been successful in addressing the changing needs of families serviced by the Child Welfare system in Ontario. These studies suggest that differential response has not assisted in reducing the number of families subjected to a child welfare investigation nor has it resulted in a tighter more precise classification of reports ensuring that investigations are used when most required. Taken together these studies provide a compelling argument for Ontario to rethink the current approach to both child safety and child and family well-being

Equity on demand : examining gender disparity in the writers for original scripted series on popular streaming services 2013-2017

With the rise in production of original content for Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, the amount of content being produced has increased overall (Adalian & Fernandez, 2017). As a result, the number of employment opportunities has equally risen. However, women’s share of those opportunities remains stagnant across all platforms, at or below 30% in both nations (Lauzen, 2020; Creative Skillset, 2010). This thesis investigates how the advent of SVoD original content production has affected the employment of women television writers; whether or not women writers working in SVoD writers’ rooms experience their employment in ways similar to women writers working in broadcast and cable; and how, if at all, SVoD providers have adapted their working and employment practices to provide an improved working environment for women in writers’ rooms for original scripted series. The research undertaken here employed a mixed methods approach to present quantitative and qualitative data in support of the main arguments. Quantitative data collection analysed the credits of all original scripted series made by Netflix, Amazon and Hulu between 2013 and 2017, to identify women’s share of credits as a whole and to determine the levels of seniority at which they were able to work in those series. Second, a qualitative interview component identified key thematic areas in which women writers clearly experience their employment differently from male colleagues. Six detailed case studies investigate how specific women writers experienced working in writers rooms for major scripted series.. Those experiences are then analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explicate the participants’ interpretations more deeply, drawing conclusions around themes like motherhood, industry entry, professional networking, and the environment of SVoD writers’ rooms.The conclusion from this investigation is that, despite the demonstrable rise in actual production activity, women’s share of and experience in writing for television remained largely unchanged. Gender-based disparity, stereotyping, sexism and sexual harassment remain as important but regrettable markers within the industry

Toward an Energy Efficient Language and Compiler for (Partially) Reversible Algorithms

We introduce a new programming language for expressing reversibility, Energy-Efficient Language (Eel), geared toward algorithm design and implementation. Eel is the first language to take advantage of a partially reversible computation model, where programs can be composed of both reversible and irreversible operations. In this model, irreversible operations cost energy for every bit of information created or destroyed. To handle programs of varying degrees of reversibility, Eel supports a log stack to automatically trade energy costs for space costs, and introduces many powerful control logic operators including protected conditional, general conditional, protected loops, and general loops. In this paper, we present the design and compiler for the three language levels of Eel along with an interpreter to simulate and annotate incurred energy costs of a program.Comment: 17 pages, 0 additional figures, pre-print to be published in The 8th Conference on Reversible Computing (RC2016

Measurement of the ground-state distributions in bistable mechanically interlocked molecules using slow scan rate cyclic voltammetry

In donor–acceptor mechanically interlocked molecules that exhibit bistability, the relative populations of the translational isomers—present, for example, in a bistable [2]rotaxane, as well as in a couple of bistable [2]catenanes of the donor–acceptor vintage—can be elucidated by slow scan rate cyclic voltammetry. The practice of transitioning from a fast scan rate regime to a slow one permits the measurement of an intermediate redox couple that is a function of the equilibrium that exists between the two translational isomers in the case of all three mechanically interlocked molecules investigated. These intermediate redox potentials can be used to calculate the ground-state distribution constants, K. Whereas, (i) in the case of the bistable [2]rotaxane, composed of a dumbbell component containing π-electron-rich tetrathiafulvalene and dioxynaphthalene recognition sites for the ring component (namely, a tetracationic cyclophane, containing two π-electron-deficient bipyridinium units), a value for K of 10 ± 2 is calculated, (ii) in the case of the two bistable [2]catenanes—one containing a crown ether with tetrathiafulvalene and dioxynaphthalene recognition sites for the tetracationic cyclophane, and the other, tetrathiafulvalene and butadiyne recognition sites—the values for K are orders (one and three, respectively) of magnitude greater. This observation, which has also been probed by theoretical calculations, supports the hypothesis that the extra stability of one translational isomer over the other is because of the influence of the enforced side-on donor–acceptor interactions brought about by both π-electron-rich recognition sites being part of a macrocyclic polyether

Amphipoda Crustacea IV. Families Aristiidae, Cyphocarididae, Endevouridae, Lysianassidae, Scopelocheiridae, Uristidae

(150pp.

Magnetoresistance of a 2-dimensional electron gas in a random magnetic field

We report magnetoresistance measurements on a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) made from a high mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, where the externally applied magnetic field was expelled from regions of the semiconductor by means of superconducting lead grains randomly distributed on the surface of the sample. A theoretical explanation in excellent agreement with the experiment is given within the framework of the semiclassical Boltzmann equation.Comment: REVTEX 3.0, 11 pages, 3 Postscript figures appended. The manuscript can also be obtained from our World Wide Web server: http://roemer.fys.ku.dk/randmag.ht

Comparing the MRI Appearance of the Lymph Nodes and Spleen in Wild-Type and Immuno-Deficient Mouse Strains

The goal of this study was to investigate the normal MRI appearance of lymphoid organs in immuno-competent and immuno-deficient mice commonly used in research. Four mice from each of four different mouse strains (nude, NOG, C57BL/6, CB-17 SCID (SCID)) were imaged weekly for one month. Images were acquired with a 3D balanced steady state free precession (bSSFP) sequence. The volume of the lymph nodes and spleens were measured from MR images. In images of nude and SCID mice, lymph nodes sometimes contained a hyperintense region visible on MRI images. Volumes of the nodes were highly variable in nude mice. Nodes in SCID mice were smaller than in nude or C57Bl/6 mice (p<0.0001). Lymph node volumes changed slightly over time in all strains. The spleens of C57Bl/6 and nude mice were similar in size and appearance. Spleens of SCID and NOG mice were significantly smaller (p<0.0001) and abnormal in appearance. The MRI appearance of the normal lymph nodes and spleen varies considerably in the various mouse strains examined in this study. This is important to recognize in order to avoid the misinterpretation of MRI findings as abnormal when these strains are used in MRI imaging studies

Mesoscopic Superconducting Disc with Short-Range Columnar Defects

Short-range columnar defects essentially influence the magnetic properties of a mesoscopic superconducting disc.They help the penetration of vortices into the sample, thereby decrease the sample magnetization and reduce the upper critical field. Even the presence of weak defects split a giant vortex state (usually appearing in a clean disc in the vicinity of the transition to a normal state) into a number of vortices with smaller topological charges. In a disc with a sufficient number of strong enough defects vortices are always placed onto defects. The presence of defects lead to the appearance of additional magnetization jumps related to the redistribution of vortices which are already present on the defects and not to the penetration of new vortices.Comment: 14 pgs. RevTex, typos and figures corrected. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Folding of a donor–acceptor polyrotaxane by using noncovalent bonding interactions

Mechanically interlocked compounds, such as bistable catenanes and bistable rotaxanes, have been used to bring about actuation in nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and molecular electronic devices (MEDs). The elaboration of the structural features of such rotaxanes into macromolecular materials might allow the utilization of molecular motion to impact their bulk properties. We report here the synthesis and characterization of polymers that contain π electron-donating 1,5-dioxynaphthalene (DNP) units encircled by cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) (CBPQT4+), a π electron-accepting tetracationic cyclophane, synthesized by using the copper(I)-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC). The polyrotaxanes adopt a well defined “folded” secondary structure by virtue of the judicious design of two DNP-containing monomers with different binding affinities for CBPQT4+. This efficient approach to the preparation of polyrotaxanes, taken alongside the initial investigations of their chemical properties, sets the stage for the preparation of a previously undescribed class of macromolecular architectures