Challenges in the assessment of aggression in high-risk youth: Testing the fit of the Form-Function Aggression Measure

Recent efforts have focused on disentangling the forms (e.g., overt and relational) and functions (e.g., instrumental and reactive) of aggression. The Form-Function Aggression Measure (FFAM; Little, Jones, Henrich, & Hawley, 2003) shows promise in this regard; however, it is a new measure and its psychometric properties across different populations are unknown. The current study tested the underlying structure of the FFAM using confirmatory factor analysis in male and female high-risk adolescents (n= 381). Results indicated that none of the models tested demonstrated an acceptable fit in either males or females. However, a 6-factor model comprised of pure-overt, reactive-overt, instrumental-overt, pure-relational, reactive-relational, and instrumental-relational subtypes provided an improved fit relative to other models in both males and females. A multi-form, multi-function model equivalent to the model proposed by Little and colleagues (2003) also evidenced a relatively improved fit, highlighting the utility of disentangling form from function when examining aggression. Implications and challenges for assessing the forms and functions of aggression among high-risk adolescents are discussed

An optimization approach coupling pre-processing with model regression for enhanced chemometrics

Chemometric methods are broadly used in the chemical and biochemical sectors. Typically, derivation of a regression model follows data preprocessing in a sequential manner. Yet, preprocessing can significantly influence the regression model and eventually its predictive ability. In this work, we investigate the coupling of preprocessing and model parameter estimation by incorporating them simultaneously in an optimization step. Common model selection techniques rely almost exclusively on the performance of some accuracy metric, yet having a quantitative metric for model robustness can prolong model up-time. Our approach is applied to optimize for model accuracy and robustness. This requires the introduction of a novel mathematical definition for robustness. We test our method in a simulated set up and with industrial case studies from multivariate calibration. The results highlight the importance of both accuracy and robustness properties and illustrate the potential of the proposed optimization approach toward automating the generation of efficient chemometric models

Probabilistic predictions for partial least squares using bootstrap

Modeling the uncertainty in partial least squares (PLS) is made difficult because of the nonlinear effect of the observed data on the latent space that the method finds. We present an approach, based on bootstrapping, that automatically accounts for these nonlinearities in the parameter uncertainty, allowing us to equally well represent confidence intervals for points lying close to or far away from the latent space. To show the opportunities of this approach, we develop applications in determining the Design Space for industrial processes and model the uncertainty of spectroscopy data. Our results show the benefits of our method for accounting for uncertainty far from the latent space for the purposes of Design Space identification, and match the performance of well established methods for spectroscopy data

Energy Expenditure of Grade Four School Children in Western Australia

A composite team from the Public Health Service, the West Australian Institute of Technology, and the Graylands Teachers College conducted surveys on grade 7 children in 1974, and grade 4 children in 1975. The intention of the surveys was to find some relationship between the energy expenditure and the energy intake of each age group. As there is little information concerning the activity patterns of West Australian children the findings of these surveys would serve as a basis for more detailed reports into the physical fitness, activity and dietary balance of children in today\u27s changing society. The study reported below is of the 1975 survey conducted on grade 4 children

Language and social/emotional problems identified at a universal developmental assessment at 30 months

Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

Characterization of an Ionization Readout Tile for nEXO

A new design for the anode of a time projection chamber, consisting of a charge-detecting "tile", is investigated for use in large scale liquid xenon detectors. The tile is produced by depositing 60 orthogonal metal charge-collecting strips, 3~mm wide, on a 10~\si{\cm} $\times$ 10~\si{\cm} fused-silica wafer. These charge tiles may be employed by large detectors, such as the proposed tonne-scale nEXO experiment to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Modular by design, an array of tiles can cover a sizable area. The width of each strip is small compared to the size of the tile, so a Frisch grid is not required. A grid-less, tiled anode design is beneficial for an experiment such as nEXO, where a wire tensioning support structure and Frisch grid might contribute radioactive backgrounds and would have to be designed to accommodate cycling to cryogenic temperatures. The segmented anode also reduces some degeneracies in signal reconstruction that arise in large-area crossed-wire time projection chambers. A prototype tile was tested in a cell containing liquid xenon. Very good agreement is achieved between the measured ionization spectrum of a $^{207}$Bi source and simulations that include the microphysics of recombination in xenon and a detailed modeling of the electrostatic field of the detector. An energy resolution $\sigma/E$=5.5\% is observed at 570~\si{keV}, comparable to the best intrinsic ionization-only resolution reported in literature for liquid xenon at 936~V/\si{cm}.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, as publishe

Sensitivity and discovery potential of the proposed nEXO experiment to neutrinoless double beta decay

The next-generation Enriched Xenon Observatory (nEXO) is a proposed experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta ($0\nu\beta\beta$) decay in $^{136}$Xe with a target half-life sensitivity of approximately $10^{28}$ years using $5\times10^3$ kg of isotopically enriched liquid-xenon in a time projection chamber. This improvement of two orders of magnitude in sensitivity over current limits is obtained by a significant increase of the $^{136}$Xe mass, the monolithic and homogeneous configuration of the active medium, and the multi-parameter measurements of the interactions enabled by the time projection chamber. The detector concept and anticipated performance are presented based upon demonstrated realizable background rates.Comment: v2 as publishe