The Impact of Placing Adolescent Males into Foster Care on their Education, Income Assistance and Incarcerations

Understanding the causal impacts of taking youth on the margins of risk into foster care is an element of the evidence-base on which policy development for this crucial function of government relies. Yet, there is little research looking at these causal impacts; neither is there much empirical work looking at long-term outcomes. This paper focuses on estimating the impact of placing 16 to 18 year old male youth into care on their rates of high school graduation, and post-majority income assistance receipt and incarceration. Two distinct sources of exogenous variation are used to generate instrumental variables, the estimates from which are interpreted in a heterogeneous treatment effects framework as local average treatment effects (LATEs). And, indeed, each source of exogenous variation is observed to estimate different parameters. While both instruments are in accord in that placement in foster care reduces (or delays) high school graduation, the impact of taking youth into care on income assistance use has dramatically different magnitudes across the two margins explored, and, perhaps surprisingly, one source of exogenous variation causes an increase, and the other a decrease, in the likelihood of the youth being incarcerated by age 20. Our results suggest that it is not enough to ask whether more or fewer children should be taken into care; rather, which children are, and how they are, taken into care matter for long-term outcomes.foster care, local average treatment effects

The impact of placing adolescent males into foster care on their education, income assistance and incarcerations

Understanding the causal impacts of taking youth on the margins of risk into foster care is an element of the evidence-base on which policy development for this crucial function of government relies. Yet, there is little research looking at these causal impacts; neither is there much empirical work looking at long-term outcomes. This paper focuses on estimating the impact of placing 16 to 18 year old male youth into care on their rates of high school graduation, and post-majority income assistance receipt and incarceration. Two distinct sources of exogenous variation are used to generate instrumental variables, the estimates from which are interpreted in a heterogeneous treatment effects framework as local average treatment effects (LATEs). And, indeed, each source of exogenous variation is observed to estimate different parameters. While both instruments are in accord in that placement in foster care reduces (or delays) high school graduation, the impact of taking youth into care on income assistance use has dramatically different magnitudes across the two margins explored, and, perhaps surprisingly, one source of exogenous variation causes an increase, and the other a decrease, in the likelihood of the youth being incarcerated by age 20. Our results suggest that it is not enough to ask whether more or fewer children should be taken into care; rather, which children are, and how they are, taken into care matter for long-term outcomes

Electric field sensing with a scanning fiber-coupled quantum dot

We demonstrate the application of a fiber-coupled quantum-dot-in-a-tip as a probe for scanning electric field microscopy. We map the out-of-plane component of the electric field induced by a pair of electrodes by measurement of the quantum-confined Stark effect induced on a quantum dot spectral line. Our results are in agreement with finite element simulations of the experiment. Furthermore, we present results from analytic calculations and simulations which are relevant to any electric field sensor embedded in a dielectric tip. In particular, we highlight the impact of the tip geometry on both the resolution and sensitivity.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Eccentric self-forced inspirals into a rotating black hole

We develop the first model for extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) into a rotating massive black hole driven by the gravitational self-force. Our model is based on an action angle formulation of the method of osculating geodesics for eccentric, equatorial (i.e., spin-aligned) motion in Kerr spacetime. The forcing terms are provided by an efficient spectral interpolation of the first-order gravitational self-force in the outgoing radiation gauge. We apply a near-identity (averaging) transformation to eliminate all dependence of the orbital phases from the equations of motion, while maintaining all secular effects of the first-order gravitational self-force at post-adiabatic order. This implies that the model can be evolved without having to resolve all $\mathcal{O}(10^6)$ orbit cycles of an EMRI, yielding an inspiral model that can be evaluated in less than a second for any mass-ratio. In the case of a non-rotating central black hole, we compare inspirals evolved using self-force data computed in the Lorenz and radiation gauges. We find that the two gauges generally produce differing inspirals with a deviation of comparable magnitude to the conservative self-force correction. This emphasizes the need for including the (currently unknown) dissipative second order self-force to obtain gauge independent, post-adiabatic waveforms

New calculations of the PNC Matrix Element for the JπTJ^{\pi}T 0+1,0−1^{+}1,0^{-}1 doublet in 14^{14}N

A new calculation of the predominantly isoscalar PNC matrix element between the $J^{\pi}T$ $0^{+}1,0^{-}1$ (E$_{x} \approx$ 8.7 MeV) states in $^{14}$N has been carried out in a (0+1+2+3+4)$\hbar \omega$ model space with the Warburton-Brown interaction. The magnitude of the PNC matrix element of 0.22 to 0.34 eV obtained with the DDH PNC interaction is substantially suppressed compared with previous calculations in smaller model spaces but shows agreement with the preliminary Seattle experimental data. The calculated sign is opposite to that obtained experimentally, and the implications of this are discussed.Comment: REVTEX, 28 page

The anatomy of digging mammals

Anatomy may be one of the oldest sciences, but current work at Murdoch University is providing valuable insights into the ecology and evolution of Australian wildlife

Fano resonance resulting from a tunable interaction between molecular vibrational modes and a double-continuum of a plasmonic metamolecule

Coupling between tuneable broadband modes of an array of plasmonic metamolecules and a vibrational mode of carbonyl bond of poly(methyl methacrylate) is shown experimentally to produce a Fano resonance, which can be tuned in situ by varying the polarization of incident light. The interaction between the plasmon modes and the molecular resonance is investigated using both rigorous electromagnetic calculations and a quantum mechanical model describing the quantum interference between a discrete state and two continua. The predictions of the quantum mechanical model are in good agreement with the experimental data and provide an intuitive interpretation, at the quantum level, of the plasmon-molecule coupling

Discontinuous Galerkin Discretizations of the Boltzmann Equations in 2D: semi-analytic time stepping and absorbing boundary layers

We present an efficient nodal discontinuous Galerkin method for approximating nearly incompressible flows using the Boltzmann equations. The equations are discretized with Hermite polynomials in velocity space yielding a first order conservation law. A stabilized unsplit perfectly matching layer (PML) formulation is introduced for the resulting nonlinear flow equations. The proposed PML equations exponentially absorb the difference between the nonlinear fluctuation and the prescribed mean flow. We introduce semi-analytic time discretization methods to improve the time step restrictions in small relaxation times. We also introduce a multirate semi-analytic Adams-Bashforth method which preserves efficiency in stiff regimes. Accuracy and performance of the method are tested using distinct cases including isothermal vortex, flow around square cylinder, and wall mounted square cylinder test cases.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figure

Locally suppressed transverse-field protocol for diabatic quantum annealing

Diabatic quantum annealing (DQA) is an alternative algorithm to adiabatic quantum annealing that can be used to circumvent the exponential slowdown caused by small minima in the annealing energy spectrum. We present the locally suppressed transverse-field (LSTF) protocol, a heuristic method for making stoquastic optimization problems compatible with DQA. We show that, provided an optimization problem intrinsically has magnetic frustration due to inhomogeneous local fields, a target qubit in the problem can always be manipulated to create a double minimum in the energy gap between the ground and first excited states during the evolution of the algorithm. Such a double energy minimum can be exploited to induce diabatic transitions to the first excited state and back to the ground state. In addition to its relevance to classical and quantum algorithmic speedups, the LSTF protocol enables DQA proof-of-principle and physics experiments to be performed on existing hardware, provided independent controls exist for the transverse qubit magnetization fields. We discuss the implications on the coherence requirements of the quantum annealing hardware when using the LSTF protocol, considering specifically the cases of relaxation and dephasing. We show that the relaxation rate of a large system can be made to depend only on the target qubit, presenting opportunities for the characterization of the decohering environment in a quantum annealing processor