The Reality of Measuring Human Service Programs: Results of a Survey

In the summer of 2013, Idealware created and distributed a survey to learn how human service organizations from their own mailing list are actually using technology to measure and evaluate the outcomes of their programs. The suvey looked at a general overview of outcomes measurement and program evaluation topics, from how frequently they look at data and how much time they spend doing so to what types of metrics the organizations were tracking. To further understand the realities of measuring program effectiveness, Idealware conducted a site visit and interview of three human service organizations in Portland, Maine. The results clearly show that the respondents are struggling to measure their programs

De Novo Microdeletion Spanning YWHAE and CRK in an Individual with Intellectual Disability and Stunted Growth

In this report, we present a case of a 20-year-old female with congenital intellectual disability, stunted growth, and hypothyroidism. Competitive genetic hybridization (CHG) revealed a loss of a portion of 17p13.3 at least 195 Kb in size, not present in either parent. This area of chromosome 17 is associated with Miller-Dieker Syndrome (MDS) and Isolated Lissencephaly Sequence (ILS), but these conditions are related predominantly to PAFAH1B1, which is not included in the patient’s deletion

A Consumers Guide to Grants Management Systems

This in-depth report has been expanded to look at the features and processes used by 28 grants management systems to help private foundations accept and review applications and track grants throughout their life cycles. This report compares the strengths and weaknesses of these different grants management packages to see how they stack up against 19 high-level categories and details the functionality of each against more than 180 specific criteria. For the first time, this edition also includes survey data collected from nonprofit and foundation staff members who use these systems regarding their experience with the training, support, and implementation services offered by the vendors.The grants management software marketplace has never had a better set of options to support efficient and effective grantmaking, and we designed this report to help grantmakers understand how all these options compare.Download the report for free from any of the three partners websites: Idealware.org (www.idealware.org), GMNetwork.org (www.gmnetwork.org), or TagTech.org (www.tagtech.org)This edition reviews the following systems: Altum Easygrants, Altum proposalCENTRAL, Bromelkamp Akoya.net, Bromelkamp First Pearl, Closerware GrantMaker, Cybergrants, DonationXchange, Dulles Technology Partners WebGrants, Foundant Grant Lifecyle Manager, FluidReview, FusionLabs GE/Spectrum, Good Done Great Grant Management System, GrantStream GrantRight, JK Group EasyMatch, MicroEdge GIFTS, MicroEdge GIFTS Alta, MicroEdge, GIFTS Online, MOSAIC GEMS, NPower FoundationConnect, Oceanpeak Inc., Common Grant Application, PhilanTech PhilanTrack, PowerOFFICE Software Systems Inc.PowerOffice, SmartSimple GMS360°, Solpath Fluxx, Versaic Grants, WESTAF GrantsOnline, Wizehive, and ZoomGrants

Lightbulb moment: electricity in the YWCA scrapbook

2015 University Libraries Undergraduate Research Award Winner---Between 1915 and 1917 the Young Women’s Christian Association at the State Normal and Industrial College (presently the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) created a scrapbook that largely focused on summer retreats in Black Mountain, NC.1 Photographs of the members posed in groups along with more candid pictures showing the girls participating in a variety of outdoor activities dominate a majority of the pages. However, about three-quarters ofthe way through the scrapbook there is a conspicuous collage of clippings which relate to electrical lighting. Even more peculiar than its placement, is the fact that during the creation of the scrapbook, the lightbulb was nearing forty years old.2 However, electricity did not spread evenly or as quickly through different regions of the United States, and many people were not exposed to it in their domestic lives until the 1930s. Those who experienced electricity for thefirst time often responded with awe, and incorporated it into their ideas of progress and modernity. The electricity-centric clippings in the YWCA scrapbook demonstrate this, as they show a personalized view of the technology that illustrates the societal impact of lighting in the early 20th century

Origins of the extragalactic background at 1mm from a combined analysis of the AzTEC and MAMBO data in GOODS-N

We present a study of the cosmic infrared background, which is a measure of the dust obscured activity in all galaxies in the Universe. We venture to isolate the galaxies responsible for the background at 1mm; with spectroscopic and photometric redshifts we constrain the redshift distribution of these galaxies. We create a deep 1.16mm map (sigma ~ 0.5mJy) by combining the AzTEC 1.1mm and MAMBO 1.2mm datasets in GOODS-N. This combined map contains 41 secure detections, 13 of which are new. By averaging the 1.16mm flux densities of individually undetected galaxies with 24um flux densities > 25uJy, we resolve 31--45 per cent of the 1.16mm background. Repeating our analysis on the SCUBA 850um map, we resolve a higher percentage (40--64 per cent) of the 850um background. A majority of the background resolved (attributed to individual galaxies) at both wavelengths comes from galaxies at z > 1.3. If the ratio of the resolved submillimeter to millimeter background is applied to a reasonable scenario for the origins of the unresolved submillimeter background, 60--88 per cent of the total 1.16mm background comes from galaxies at z > 1.3.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. The combined map is publicly available at http://www.astro.umass.edu/~pope/goodsn_mm

The springtime influence of natural tropical Pacific variability on the surface climate of the Ross Ice Shelf, West Antarctica: implications for ice shelf thinning

Observational records starting in the 1950s show West Antarctica is amongst the most rapidly warming regions on the planet. Together with increased intrusions of warm circumpolar deep water (CDW) onto the continental shelf due to local wind forcing (the primary mechanism in recent decades), this has resulted in enhanced surface and basal melting of floating ice shelves and an associated acceleration and thinning of West Antarctic outlet glaciers, increasing the rate of global sea level rise. In this study, it is shown that during the austral spring season, significant surface warming across West Antarctica has shifted westward to the Ross Ice Shelf in recent decades in response to enhanced cyclonic circulation over the Ross Sea. These circulation changes are caused by a Rossby wave train forced by increasing sea surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific, which is tied to the springtime shift of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) to its negative phase after 1992. While the local wind trends enhance warm air advection and surface warming across the Ross Ice Shelf, the strong easterly component of the wind trends reduces the likelihood for intrusions of CDW onto the continental shelf in this region. This suggests that during spring there are competing mechanisms of surface and basal melting of the Ross Ice Shelf, both of which are closely tied to natural tropical Pacific decadal variability. Moreover, that the projected transition of the IPO back to its positive phase in the coming decade, though likely to reduce surface warming on the Ross Ice Shelf, could increase the risk of disintegration of Ross Sea ice shelves due to increased intrusions of CDW and enhanced basal melting

Psychophysiological Sensing and State Classification for Attention Management in Commercial Aviation

Attention-related human performance limiting states (AHPLS) can cause pilots to lose airplane state awareness (ASA), and their detection is important to improving commercial aviation safety. The Commercial Aviation Safety Team found that the majority of recent international commercial aviation accidents attributable to loss of control inflight involved flight crew loss of airplane state awareness, and that distraction of various forms was involved in all of them. Research on AHPLS, including channelized attention, diverted attention, startle / surprise, and confirmation bias, has been recommended in a Safety Enhancement (SE) entitled "Training for Attention Management." To accomplish the detection of such cognitive and psychophysiological states, a broad suite of sensors has been implemented to simultaneously measure their physiological markers during high fidelity flight simulation human subject studies. Pilot participants were asked to perform benchmark tasks and experimental flight scenarios designed to induce AHPLS. Pattern classification was employed to distinguish the AHPLS induced by the benchmark tasks. Unimodal classification using pre-processed electroencephalography (EEG) signals as input features to extreme gradient boosting, random forest and deep neural network multiclass classifiers was implemented. Multi-modal classification using galvanic skin response (GSR) in addition to the same EEG signals and using the same types of classifiers produced increased accuracy with respect to the unimodal case (90 percent vs. 86 percent), although only via the deep neural network classifier. These initial results are a first step toward the goal of demonstrating simultaneous real time classification of multiple states using multiple sensing modalities in high-fidelity flight simulators. This detection is intended to support and inform training methods under development to mitigate the loss of ASA and thus reduce accidents and incidents

Evidence for a wide range of UV obscuration in z ~ 2 dusty galaxies from the GOODS-Herschel survey

Dusty galaxies at z ~ 2 span a wide range of relative brightness between rest-frame mid-infrared (8um) and ultraviolet wavelengths. We attempt to determine the physical mechanism responsible for this diversity. Dust-obscured galaxies (DOGs), which have rest-frame mid-IR to UV flux density ratios > 1000, might be abnormally bright in the mid-IR, perhaps due to prominent AGN and/or PAH emission, or abnormally faint in the UV. We use far-infrared data from the GOODS-Herschel survey to show that most DOGs with 10^12 L_Sun < L_IR < 10^13 L_Sun are not abnormally bright in the mid-IR when compared to other dusty galaxies with similar IR (8--1000um) luminosities. We observe a relation between the median IR to UV luminosity ratios and the median UV continuum power-law indices for these galaxies, and we find that only 24% have specific star formation rates which indicate the dominance of compact star-forming regions. This circumstantial evidence supports the idea that the UV- and IR-emitting regions in these galaxies are spatially coincident, which implies a connection between the abnormal UV faintness of DOGs and dust obscuration. We conclude that the range in rest-frame mid-IR to UV flux density ratios spanned by dusty galaxies at z ~ 2 is due to differing amounts of UV obscuration. Of galaxies with these IR luminosities, DOGs are the most obscured. We attribute differences in UV obscuration to either: 1) differences in the degree of alignment between the spatial distributions of dust and massive stars, or 2) differences in the total dust content.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures. Accepted by Ap

Intellectual Disability Related to De Novo Germline Loss of the Distal End of the P-Arm of Chromosome 17: A Case Report

Hypothesis/Purpose: In this report we present a case of a 20-year-old female with congenital intellectual disability, stunted growth, and hypothyroidism. Competitive genetic hybridization (CHG) revealed a loss of 17p13.3, and the deletion was not present in either parent. This deletion has not previously been characterized, but mutations on the p-arm of chromosome 17 are responsible for Miller-Dieker Syndrome and Isolated Lissencephaly Sequence, both of which share symptoms in common with the patient. Methods: Peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were used for karyotyping and competitive genetic hybridization (CHG). Bioinformatic analysis was carried out using the Genome Data Viewer (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/gdv). Results: Karyotype was found to be normal, but CGH revealed a deletion of the tail end of the p-arm of chromosome 17, 17p13.3. At least 134 genes are present in this genomic location, and 35 of them are uncharacterized. Both Miller-Dieker Syndrome (MDS) and Isolated Lissencephaly Sequence (ILS) are characterized by a smooth cerebral cortex and intellectual disability, but the patient’s symptoms more closely mirror MDS because muscle tone was normal. The patient was significantly shorter than peers, but growth hormone therapy over the course of several years allowed the patient to reach a normal height, albeit shorter than her siblings and parents. The list of genes deleted will be investigated to determine if a single gene is likely responsible for the phenotype. Conclusions: Here we present a patient with intellectual disability and a previously uncharacterized deletion on chromosome 17. Similar, though not identical conditions have been previously reported, but not well characterized indicating that the present patient could possibly have one of these conditions. Further directions include investigation of the deleted genes to determine a probable cause for the symptoms exhibited