740 research outputs found
Reporting of child maltreatment during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in New York City from March to May 2020
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Background: School closures and other public health responses have decreased the extent that children interact with mandated reporters and other professionals trained to detect child maltreatment. Objective: To assess associations between the pandemic public health response and the number of allegations of child abuse or neglect. Methods: This study analyzed monthly data from New York City of the number of child maltreatment allegations, stratified by reporter type (e.g., mandated reporter, education personnel, healthcare personnel), as well as the number of Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations warranting child welfare preventative services. SARIMA models were trained using data from January 2015 to February 2020 to predict expected values for March, April, and May 2020. Observed values were compared against predicted values at an alpha of .05. Results: Substantially fewer allegations of child maltreatment were reported than expected in March (-28.8 %, deviation: 1848, 95 % CI: [1272, 2423]), April (-51.5 %, deviation: 2976, 95 % CI: [2382, 3570]), and May 2020 (-46.0 %, deviation: 2959, 95 % CI: [2347, 3571]). Significant decreases in child maltreatment reporting were also noted for all reporter subtypes examined for March, April, and May 2020. Fewer CPS investigations warranted preventative services than expected in March 2020 (-43.5 %, deviation: 303, 95 % CI: [132, 475]). Conclusions: Precipitous drops in child maltreatment reporting and child welfare interventions coincided with social distancing policies designed to mitigate COVID-19 transmission. In light of these findings, educators and healthcare providers must be especially vigilant when engaging online with children and their families for signs of child abuse and/or neglect
LABCAT: Locally adaptive Bayesian optimization using principal component-aligned trust regions
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular method for optimizing expensive
black-box functions. BO has several well-documented shortcomings, including
computational slowdown with longer optimization runs, poor suitability for
non-stationary or ill-conditioned objective functions, and poor convergence
characteristics. Several algorithms have been proposed that incorporate local
strategies, such as trust regions, into BO to mitigate these limitations;
however, none address all of them satisfactorily. To address these
shortcomings, we propose the LABCAT algorithm, which extends trust-region-based
BO by adding principal-component-aligned rotation and an adaptive rescaling
strategy based on the length-scales of a local Gaussian process surrogate model
with automatic relevance determination. Through extensive numerical experiments
using a set of synthetic test functions and the well-known COCO benchmarking
software, we show that the LABCAT algorithm outperforms several
state-of-the-art BO and other black-box optimization algorithms
Management of hydrogen sulphide generation at a Kraft mill effluent plant
Communities surrounding an integrated Kraft mill noticed odours from the millâs effluent treatment plant. A project was therefore commissioned by the mill to proactively manage the odours from both the pulp-processing operations and the effluent treatment plant. This project formed part of a co-ordinated study that was implemented by the mill to limit emissions of the total reduced sulphur (TRS) components from the pulp mill operations. It was found that sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB) converted the sulphates present in the effluent to hydrogen sulphide (H2S) by dissimilatory respiration. The combined use of a nitrate-releasing biomodifier (BulabÂź 9518) and an anthraquinone sulphate-reduction inhibitor (BusperseÂź 2432) was effective in reducing both SRB activity and H2S levels. The average aqueous H2S levels (40 mg/â) were reduced to between 92% and 99%.Keywords: biomodifiers, hydrogen sulphide, Kraft mill effluent plant, sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB), anthraquinone, sulphate reduction inhibition, sodium nitrat
The Recovery of Platinum, Palladium, and Gold from a Cyanide Heap Solution, with use of Ion Exchange Resins
Ion exchange resins were investigated for the effective recovery of platinum, palladium, and gold from a pregnant cyanide heap leach solution. Screening results indicated that strong-base anion exchange resins proved to be most effective in the recovery of these metal cyanides. Gold was selectively recovered with the use of Minix, while effective recovery of gold, platinum, and palladium over the base metals, copper, and iron, was achieved with Amberlite PWA-5. Successful elution of these metal cyanides was possible from both Minix and Amberlite PWA-5, using a 2M potassium thiocyanate solution at ambient temperature. Acidic thiourea was unable to elute platinum from either Minix or Amberlite PWA-5. Effective elution of palladium and gold were, however, achieved with use of acidic thiourea. Using these results, two conceptual flow diagrams for the recovery of these metals from cyanide solutions are proposed
Crocidolite in the districts of Prieska and Hay
From Introduction: The belt of hilly country extending from the southern extremity of the Doornbergen, through Prieska, Niekerkshoop, Griquatown and Kuruman, to a point far north or the latter, constitutes a region or great scientific and economic interest. Spoken of generally as the âBlue Asbestos Beltâ, it has ramifications stretching in north, and north-westerly directions from Prieska. In the south it is known as the Doornbergen, passing into the âAsbestos Mountainsâ north of the Orange River, while farther north it becomes the Kuruman Hills. This large area is unique in that enormous deposits of fibrous crocido1ite or "blue asbestos" are known to occur scattered more or less irregularly over the entire belt. The mineral, often accompanied by some or all of its variations and alteration products, has been reported from nearly every farm, excepting only that portion covered by Ongeluk Volcanics, and the UPPER BEDS OF THE LOWER GRIQUATOWN SERIES, which thus form the only interruption to an otherwise unbroken extension of crocidolite bearing strata
Usable pasts forum: critically engaging food security
In this inaugural Usable Pasts Forum, we make the case that archaeology has a critical role to play in reframing approaches to food security in the African continent
Degenerate Gaussian factors for probabilistic inference
In this paper, we propose a parametrised factor that enables inference on
Gaussian networks where linear dependencies exist among the random variables.
Our factor representation is effectively a generalisation of traditional
Gaussian parametrisations where the positive-definite constraint of the
covariance matrix has been relaxed. For this purpose, we derive various
statistical operations and results (such as marginalisation, multiplication and
affine transformations of random variables) that extend the capabilities of
Gaussian factors to these degenerate settings. By using this principled factor
definition, degeneracies can be accommodated accurately and automatically at
little additional computational cost. As illustration, we apply our methodology
to a representative example involving recursive state estimation of cooperative
mobile robots.Comment: Accepted by International Journal of Approximate Reasoning on 17
January 202
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