Board composition, process, and activism: evidence within American firms

This study provided an empirical test of the effects of compositional and process variables on board activism. The attributes examined were functional area knowledge, independence, duality, and effort norms. The findings from this study provided support for the positive relationships between both functional area knowledge and effort norms and board activism. The strong relationship between effort norms and activism indicates the importance of process variables in board research and the need for additional research using process variables in a board context giving further insight into board activism and governance. Additionally, the relationship between functional area knowledge and board activism highlights how boards ability to meet cognitive demands is critical in board performance. These results as well as future research directions are examined in the discussion.board activism, board governance, board attributes, strategic management.

Evaluating High School Students’ Constitutional and Civic Literacy: A Case Study of the Washington, DC Chapter of the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project

The United States maintains a reputation as a vibrant, participatory democracy. Yet, paradoxically, formal civics education has essentially disappeared from America’s public high schools, particularly urban public schools serving low-income and minority students. The Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, which is offered at almost zero cost to public schools and districts, developed as a response to the need for civics education in high schools and as a way to train future lawyers in public speaking, leadership, and counseling. In an effort to support the growth of the Marshall-Brennan Project all over the country, the authors of this piece came together to study the Marshall-Brennan Project’s efficacy in Washington, DC during the 2010-2011 academic year. This Essay is based on a comprehensive data set of students in fifteen classes in twelve Washington, DC public and public charter schools during the 2010-2011 academic year. Students were asked substantive questions related to the curriculum, as well as their likelihood of participating in civic activities such as voting and jury service. The results indicate increased constitutional knowledge and higher likelihood of civic participation, although there is room for improvement. The Essay ends with two conclusions. First, the authors seek to inspire a subsequent, larger study of the efficacy of the Marshall-Brennan model of training law students to teach high school students about the Constitution. Second, until a larger study is conducted, the authors draw from the 2010-2011 data to suggest changes to the current model, including a greater focus on drawing connections between civic knowledge and civic action

Phase I Study of the Safety and Pharmacokinetics of Plerixafor in Children Undergoing a Second Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation for Relapsed or Refractory Leukemia

AbstractThe safety, pharmacokinetics, and biological effect of plerixafor in children as part of a conditioning regimen for chemo-sensitization in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) have not been studied. This is a phase I study of plerixafor designed to evaluate its tolerability at dose of .24 mg/kg given intravenously on day −4 (level 1); day −4 and day −3 (level 2); or day −4, day −3, and day −2 (level 3) in combination with fludarabine, thiotepa, melphalan, and rabbit antithymocytic globulin for a second allogeneic HSCT in children with refractory or relapsed leukemia. Immunophenotype analysis was performed on blood and bone marrow before and after plerixafor administration. Twelve patients were enrolled. Plerixafor at all 3 levels was well tolerated without dose-limiting toxicity. Transient gastrointestinal side effects of National Cancer Institute–grade 1 or 2 in severity were the most common adverse events. The area under the concentration-time curve increased proportionally to the dose level. Plerixafor clearance was higher in males and increased linearly with body weight and glomerular filtration rate. The clearance decreased and the elimination half-life increased significantly from dose level 1 to 3 (P < .001). Biologically, the proportion of CXCR4+ blasts and lymphocytes both in the bone marrow and peripheral blood increased after plerixafor administration

Multi-campaign ship and aircraft observations of marine cloud condensation nuclei and droplet concentrations

In-situ marine cloud droplet number concentrations (CDNCs), cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), and CCN proxies, based on particle sizes and optical properties, are accumulated from seven field campaigns: ACTIVATE; NAAMES; CAMP2EX; ORACLES; SOCRATES; MARCUS; and CAPRICORN2. Each campaign involves aircraft measurements, ship-based measurements, or both. Measurements collected over the North and Central Atlantic, Indo-Pacific, and Southern Oceans, represent a range of clean to polluted conditions in various climate regimes. With the extensive range of environmental conditions sampled, this data collection is ideal for testing satellite remote detection methods of CDNC and CCN in marine environments. Remote measurement methods are vital to expanding the available data in these difficult-to-reach regions of the Earth and improving our understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions. The data collection includes particle composition and continental tracers to identify potential contributing CCN sources. Several of these campaigns include High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) and polarimetric imaging measurements and retrievals that will be the basis for the next generation of space-based remote sensors and, thus, can be utilized as satellite surrogates

Subcortical brain volume, regional cortical thickness, and cortical surface area across disorders: findings from the ENIGMA ADHD, ASD, and OCD Working Groups

Objective Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are common neurodevelopmental disorders that frequently co-occur. We aimed to directly compare all three disorders. The ENIGMA consortium is ideally positioned to investigate structural brain alterations across these disorders. Methods Structural T1-weighted whole-brain MRI of controls (n=5,827) and patients with ADHD (n=2,271), ASD (n=1,777), and OCD (n=2,323) from 151 cohorts worldwide were analyzed using standardized processing protocols. We examined subcortical volume, cortical thickness and surface area differences within a mega-analytical framework, pooling measures extracted from each cohort. Analyses were performed separately for children, adolescents, and adults using linear mixed-effects models adjusting for age, sex and site (and ICV for subcortical and surface area measures). Results We found no shared alterations among all three disorders, while shared alterations between any two disorders did not survive multiple comparisons correction. Children with ADHD compared to those with OCD had smaller hippocampal volumes, possibly influenced by IQ. Children and adolescents with ADHD also had smaller ICV than controls and those with OCD or ASD. Adults with ASD showed thicker frontal cortices compared to adult controls and other clinical groups. No OCD-specific alterations across different age-groups and surface area alterations among all disorders in childhood and adulthood were observed. Conclusion Our findings suggest robust but subtle alterations across different age-groups among ADHD, ASD, and OCD. ADHD-specific ICV and hippocampal alterations in children and adolescents, and ASD-specific cortical thickness alterations in the frontal cortex in adults support previous work emphasizing neurodevelopmental alterations in these disorders

Treating juveniles as adults in the justice system: A case study of decision making and case processing.

Over the last several decades, legislative changes have opened the boundary between the juvenile and criminal justice systems by increasing the population of juveniles eligible to be treated as adults and shifting power from judges to prosecutors for making decisions to treat juveniles as adults. Using a mixed methods design, this study analyzes the impact of this legislation in Wayne County, Michigan by examining decisions to label and process juveniles as adults. Data collected include quantitative case and outcome data on youth eligible to be tried as adults over a 6-year period; in-depth interviews with 38 judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other court actors; and ethnographic observations of court hearings. At the state level, a key effect of these changes has been an increase in the number of juveniles going into the adult system despite dramatic declines in juvenile crime. With regard to the decision-making process, a key effect has been the reshaping and reorganization of this process, where decisions to label juveniles as adults are isolated in the prosecutor's office, the direct role of other actors in these decisions is almost eliminated, and prosecutors have greater control over whether a juvenile is ultimately sentenced as an adult. In making these decisions, prosecutors focus largely on the juvenile's age and offense, rather than on individual background characteristics and experiences. They are also influenced by the range of alternatives available, including a middle option to designate youth to be tried as adults in the juvenile court and existing resources for treating youth in the juvenile system. However, prosecutors' decisions are also shaped by other sources of meaning created through competition with other court actors over values, ideology, resources, and power. Thus, this dissertation highlights the importance of context in shaping the application of the power to treat juveniles as adults. Further, it shows how contextual characteristics have different influences at the various decision-making points. Through the use of multiple methods and inclusion of a range of individual and contextual factors, this dissertation presents a conceptual framework that can be useful in guiding the examination of transfer decision making in other courts.Ph.D.CriminologyLawSocial SciencesSocial workUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124564/2/3150093.pd

The Future for Social Work in Juvenile and Adult Criminal Justice

Critical contemporary issues in juvenile and adult criminal justice are identified followed by an examination of particular issues for social workers, including the increase in incarceration, the over representation of people of color, and the numerous negative effects on children. The various roles for social workers in the criminal justice systems are presented and discussed. The paper also addresses the decline of social work professionals in the criminal justice systems and why it is imperative that the pattern be reversed now that there is growing interest in the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders

Why youth leave care: Understandings of adulthood and transition successes and challenges among youth aging out of child welfare

Child welfare policies and practices are changing to allow more youth to remain in care beyond age 18. Yet, the majority of youth do not stay. Given recent evidence suggesting that remaining in care may be beneficial, there is a need to understand why youth leave. Using data gathered from in-depth interviews with young people aging out of care, this paper explores this question, relating it to youths' understandings of adulthood and the successes and challenges they face during their transitions. We find that youth leave care because of misunderstanding and misinformation about the requirements for remaining in care, as well as because of a desire for autonomy and independence. Specifically, many youth equated adulthood with independence, and thus felt that they needed to leave care to achieve adulthood. Unfortunately, these efforts to be independent often hinder youths' development of supportive relationships, which they reported to be one of the greatest challenges in their transitions. Based on these findings, we conclude by challenging the conflation of adulthood and independence, as well as of childhood and dependence, calling for connected autonomy as a goal for child welfare involved young people of all ages.Child welfare Aging out Emerging adulthood Independence Interdependence

Evolutionary Theory and Kinship Foster Care: An Initial Test of Two Hypotheses

Public child welfare systems increasingly rely on kin to serve as foster parents. This study tests two hypotheses concerning kinship foster care that have been formulated based on evolutionary theory and behavioral biology research. The first hypothesis is that on average foster children are likely to benefit from higher levels of parental investment and realize better outcomes if placed with kin rather than non-kin foster parents. The second hypothesis is that on average children in kinship foster care placements are likely to benefit from higher levels of parental investment and realize better outcomes if placed with some types of kin than others. The study uses a large administrative data set from an urban county human services system to compare children who had ever lived in kinship foster care with children who had lived only in non-kin foster care on four primary outcome measures. The study’s findings fail to support fully the first hypothesis. While a smaller percentage of children who had ever been placed in kinship foster care received mental health services following their initial kinship placement, a larger percentage of kinship care children received drug and alcohol treatment services following their initial kinship placement. The differences between the two groups concerning the outcomes of juvenile detention and county jail are not statistically significant. The study also uses a small data set from the primary kinship care agency in the project county to compare outcome measures among placements with different types of kin. The study’s findings fail to support the second hypothesis. The comparison of placements with different types of kin reveals no significant differences in the percentage of children who had experienced mental health services, drug and alcohol treatment services, juvenile detention, or county jail following their primary kinship placement. In addition, the study compares the number of placements for children placed in kinship care within the first three months with the number of placements for children placed only in non-kin foster care or in kinship care after three months, finding that kinship placements were less stable than non-kin placements. This finding is inconsistent with prior comparative research on kinship placements. The study’s results provide guidance for further research in this area