The family drug & alcohol court (FDAC) evaluation project

This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the first pilot Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in Britain. FDAC is a new approach to care proceedings, in cases where parental substance misuse is a key element in the local authority decision to bring proceedings. It is being piloted at the Inner London Family Proceedings Court in Wells Street. Initially the pilot was to run for three years, to the end of December 2010, but is now to continue until March 2012. The work is co-funded by the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families), the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the three pilot authorities (Camden, Islington and Westminster). The evaluation was conducted by a research team at Brunel University, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and the Home Office. FDAC is a specialist court for a problem that is anything but special. Its potential to help break the inter-generational cycle of harm associated with parental substance misuse goes straight to the heart of public policy and professional practice. Parental substance misuse is a formidable social problem and a key factor in around a third of long-term cases in children’s services in some areas. It is a major risk factor for child maltreatment, family separation and offending in adults, and for poor educational performance and substance misuse by children and young people. The parents’ many difficulties create serious problems for their children and place major demands on health, welfare and criminal justice services. For these reasons, parental substance misuse is a cross-cutting government agenda. FDAC is distinctive because it is a court-based family intervention which aims to improve children’s outcomes by addressing the entrenched difficulties of their parents. It has been adapted to English law and practice from a model of family treatment drug courts that is used widely in the USA and is showing promising results with a higher number of cases where parents and children were able to remain together safely, and with swifter alternative placement decisions for children if parents were unable to address their substance misuse successfully. The catalysts for the FDAC pilot were the encouraging evidence from the USA and concerns about the response to parental substance misuse through ordinary care proceedings in England: poor coordination of adult and children’s services; late interventions to protect children; delays in reaching decisions in court; and soaring costs of proceedings, linked to the cost of expert evidence.The work is co-funded by the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families), the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the three pilot authorities (Camden, Islington and Westminster).1 The evaluation was conducted by a research team at Brunel University, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and the Home Office

Variabilidade Genética em populações naturais de Leporinus piau (Anostomidae, Characiformes) da bacia do Rio Itapecuru.

Resumo - A espécie Leporinus piau encontra-se amplamente distribuída na América do Sul ocorrendo com frequência na bacia do rio Itapecuru, Estado do Maranhão. Esta espécie constitui importante recurso pesqueiro de grande valor econômico. Na tentativa de conhecer os índices de variabilidade genética de L. piau, sequências do gene rRNA 16S foram obtidas de espécimes oriundos do alto, médio e baixo curso da bacia do rio Itapecuru. A análise de um fragmento de 481 pb revelou a presença de 10 haplótipos e uma elevada diversidade haplotípica h= 0,7247. A matriz de divergência genética para esses haplótipos mostrou altos índices variando de 0,2 a 1,9%, sendo que os mais elevados (0,9 a 1,9%) foram observados para o haplótipo três (H3) de ocorrência no alto, médio e baixo curso da bacia do rio Itapecuru. Altos níveis de variabilidade genética intra e interpopulacional e a ocorrência de haplótipos com elevados valores de divergência genética sugere uma diferenciação genética para esta espécie. No entanto, a análise molecular de variância não mostrou estruturação entre as populações de L. piau do Rio Itapecuru representando assim um único estoque

The Impact of Low Back Pain on the Quality of Life of Children between 6 and 12 Years of Age

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of low back pain on the perceived health-related quality of life of children between 6 and 12 years of age. This is a cross-sectional study of three hundred seventy-seven students from three schools (two private and one public) located in the city of Botucatu, São Paulo. Data were collected using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL, version 4.0), a questionnaire comprising questions on personal background, sociodemographic and socioeconomic information, and a questionnaire about quality of life. Comparisons were made between groups with and without low back pain. The chi-squared test was used for analyzing categorical variables, and the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was used for continuous variables. According to the findings obtained in this study, it was observed that low back pain in the last month was reported by 27.3% of the total participants. The perceived health-related quality of life was lower among individuals who had low back pain, and the scores of physical and emotional functioning domains were also lower in the presence of low back pain. The prevalence of low back pain among children and adolescents is relatively high. Furthermore, the repercussions of low back pain may lead to a lower overall perception of the health-related quality of life in this population and affect aspects of physical and emotional functioning.This research was funded by Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), grant number 88882.441619/2019-01

Boulder deposition during major tsunami events

A remarkable accumulation of marine boulders located above the present spring tide level has occurred in two coastal lowlands of the Algarve (Portugal). The size-interval of the particles studied here is seldom reported in the literature in association with extreme events of coastal inundation, thus making this study of relevance to many other coasts worldwide. The spreads of boulders extend several hundred meters inland and well beyond the present landward limit of storm activity. The marine origin of the boulders is demonstrated by well-developed macro-bioerosion sculpturing and in situ skeletal remains of endolithic shallow marine bivalves. The good state preservation of the fossils within the boulders indicates that abrasion duringtransport and redeposition was not significant. We envisage boulder deposition as having taken place during the Lisbon tsunami of ad 1755 through the simultaneous landward entrainment of coarse particles from nearshore followed by rapid shoreward suspended-dominated transport and non-graded redeposition that excluded significant sorting by weight or boulder dimensions. We use numerical hydrodynamic modeling of tsunami (and storm) waves to test the observational data on boulder dimensions (density, size, distribution) on the most likely processes of sediment deposition. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of the study of boulder deposits in tsunami reconstruction. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Galaxy Bias and non-Linear Structure Formation in General Relativity

Length scales probed by large scale structure surveys are becoming closer to the horizon scale. Further, it has been recently understood that non-Gaussianity in the initial conditions could show up in a scale dependence of the bias of galaxies at the largest distances. It is therefore important to include General Relativistic effects. Here we provide a General Relativistic generalization of the bias, valid both for Gaussian and non-Gaussian initial conditions. The collapse of objects happens on very small scales, while long-wavelength modes are always in the quasi linear regime. Around every collapsing region, it is therefore possible to find a reference frame that is valid for all times and where the space time is almost flat: the Fermi frame. Here the Newtonian approximation is applicable and the equations of motion are the ones of the N-body codes. The effects of long-wavelength modes are encoded in the mapping from the cosmological frame to the local frame. For the linear bias, the effect of the long-wavelength modes on the dynamics is encoded in the local curvature of the Universe, which allows us to define a General Relativistic generalization of the bias in the standard Newtonian setting. We show that the bias due to this effect goes to zero as the squared ratio of the physical wavenumber with the Hubble scale for modes longer than the horizon, as modes longer than the horizon have no dynamical effects. However, the bias due to non-Gaussianities does not need to vanish for modes longer than the Hubble scale, and for non-Gaussianities of the local kind it goes to a constant. As a further application, we show that it is not necessary to perform large N-body simulations to extract information on long-wavelength modes: N-body simulations can be done on small scales and long-wavelength modes are encoded simply by adding curvature to the simulation and rescaling the coordinates.Comment: 48 pages, 4 figures; v2: added references, JCAP published versio

A classification system for teachers’ motivational behaviors recommended in self-determination theory interventions

Teachers’ behavior is a key factor that influences students’ motivation. Many theoretical models have tried to explain this influence, with one of the most thoroughly researched being self-determination theory (SDT). We used a Delphi method to create a classification of teacher behaviors consistent with SDT. This is useful because SDT-based interventions have been widely used to improve educational outcomes. However, these interventions contain many components. Reliably classifying and labeling those components is essential for implementation, reproducibility, and evidence synthesis. We used an international expert panel (N = 34) to develop this classification system. We started by identifying behaviors from existing literature, then refined labels, descriptions, and examples using the Delphi panel’s input. Next, the panel of experts iteratively rated the relevance of each behavior to SDT, the psychological need that each behavior influenced, and its likely effect on motivation. To create a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of behaviors, experts nominated overlapping behaviors that were redundant, and suggested new ones missing from the classification. After three rounds, the expert panel agreed upon 57 teacher motivational behaviors (TMBs) that were consistent with SDT. For most behaviors (77%), experts reached consensus on both the most relevant psychological need and influence on motivation. Our classification system provides a comprehensive list of TMBs and consistent terminology in how those behaviors are labeled. Researchers and practitioners designing interventions could use these behaviors to design interventions, to reproduce interventions, to assess whether these behaviors moderate intervention effects, and could focus new research on areas where experts disagreed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved

A classification system for teachers’ motivational behaviors recommended in self-determination theory interventions.

Teachers’ behavior is a key factor that influences students’ motivation. Many theoretical models have tried to explain this influence, with one of the most thoroughly researched being self-determination theory (SDT). We used a Delphi method to create a classification of teacher behaviors consistent with SDT. This is useful because SDT-based interventions have been widely used to improve educational outcomes. However, these interventions contain many components. Reliably classifying and labeling those components is essential for implementation, reproducibility, and evidence synthesis.We used an international expert panel (N = 34) to develop this classification system. We started by identifying behaviors from existing literature, then refined labels, descriptions, and examples using the Delphi panel’s input. Next, the panel of experts iteratively rated the relevance of each behavior to SDT, the psychological need that each behavior influenced, and its likely effect on motivation. To create a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of behaviors, experts nominated overlapping behaviors that were redundant, and suggested new ones missing from the classification. After three rounds, the expert panel agreed upon 57 teacher motivational behaviors (TMBs) that were consistent with SDT. For most behaviors (77%), experts reached consensus on both the most relevant psychological need and influence on motivation. Our classification system provides a comprehensive list of TMBs and consistent terminology in how those behaviors are labeled. Researchers and practitioners designing interventions could use these behaviors to design interventions, to reproduce interventions, to assess whether these behaviors moderate intervention effects, and could focus new research on areas where experts disagreed

B decays

We review the prospects for B decay studies at the LHC. Contributing authors: J. Baines, S.P. Baranov, P. Bartalini, M. Beneke, E. Bouhova, G. Buchalla, I. Caprini, F. Charles, J. Charles, Y. Coadou, P. Colangelo, P. Colrain, J. Damet, F. De Fazio, A. Dighe, H. Dijkstra, P. Eerola, N. Ellis, B. Epp, S. Gadomski, P. Galumian, I. Gavrilenko, S. George, V.M. Ghete, V. Gibson, L. Guy, Y. Hasegawa, P. Iengo, A. Jacholkowska, R. Jones, A. Khodjamirian, E. Kneringer, P. Koppenburg, H. Korsmo, N. Labanca, L. Lellouch, M. Lehto, Y. Lemoigne, J. Libby, J. Matias, S. Mele, M. Misiak, A.M. Nairz, T. Nakada, A. Nikitenko, N. Nikitin, A. Nisati, F. Palla, E. Polycarpo, J. Rademacker, F. Rizatdinova, S. Robins, D. Rousseau, W. Ruckstuhl, M.A. Sanchis, O. Schneider, M. Shapiro, C. Shepherd-Themistocleous, P. Sherwood, L. Smirnova, M. Smizanska, A. Starodumov, N. Stepanov, Z. Xie, N. Zaitse