Multidimensional measurement within adult protective services: design and initial testing of the tool for risk, interventions, and outcomes.

This study describes the development, field utility, reliability, and validity of the multidimensional Tool for Risk, Interventions, and Outcomes (TRIO) for use in Adult Protective Services (APS). The TRIO is designed to facilitate consistent APS practice and collect data related to multiple dimensions of typical interactions with APS clients, including the investigation and assessment of risks, the provision of APS interventions, and associated health and safety outcomes. Initial tests of the TRIO indicated high field utility, social worker "relevance and buy-in," and inter-rater reliability. TRIO concurrent validity was demonstrated via appropriate patterns of TRIO item differentiation based on the type of observed confirmed abuse or neglect; and predictive validity was demonstrated by prediction of the risk of actual APS recurrence. The TRIO is a promising new tool that can help meet the challenges of providing and documenting effective APS practices and identifying those at high risk for future APS recurrence

Team Coordination Dynamics of Winning NBA Teams

Predicting sports games outcomes is an endless pursuit shared by stakeholders ranging from fans to coaches to data scientists. We have begun investigating the value of positional data recorded during basketball gameplay with the goal of predicting outcomes from team dynamics as they emerge. We approached this problem by analyzing the “shape” of team movements on the court and investigated whether team dynamics in NBA games mimicked long-range correlated patterns observed in other team contexts. We analyzed 622 NBA games from an archival data set, including all area time series obtained for each of the four quarters. We fit a linear mixed-effects model with normalized α or percent determinism, as the outcome variable, and a fixed effect of win/loss and random team effects (i.e., random intercepts). These preliminary results suggest that analyzing positional data using time series data may provide meaningful information relating to game outcomes and team coordination dynamics

Thermodynamic Entropy And The Accessible States of Some Simple Systems

Comparison of the thermodynamic entropy with Boltzmann's principle shows that under conditions of constant volume the total number of arrangements in simple thermodynamic systems with temperature-independent heat capacities is TC/k. A physical interpretation of this function is given for three such systems; an ideal monatomic gas, an ideal gas of diatomic molecules with rotational motion, and a solid in the Dulong-Petit limit of high temperature. T1/2 emerges as a natural measure of the number of accessible states for a single particle in one dimension. Extension to N particles in three dimensions leads to TC/k as the total number of possible arrangements or microstates. The different microstates of the system are thus shown a posteriori to be equally probable, with probability T-C/k, which implies that for the purposes of counting states the particles of the gas are distinguishable. The most probable energy state of the system is determined by the degeneracy of the microstates.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Some Remarks about Variable Mass Systems

We comment about the general argument given to obtain the rocket equation as it is exposed in standard textbooks. In our opinion, it can induce students to a wrong answer when solving variable mass problems.Comment: 2 page

Sommerfeld's image method in the calculation of van der Waals forces

We show how the image method can be used together with a recent method developed by C. Eberlein and R. Zietal to obtain the dispersive van der Waals interaction between an atom and a perfectly conducting surface of arbitrary shape. We discuss in detail the case of an atom and a semi- infinite conducting plane. In order to employ the above procedure to this problem it is necessary to use the ingenious image method introduced by Sommerfeld more than one century ago, which is a generalization of the standard procedure. Finally, we briefly discuss other interesting situations that can also be treated by the joint use of Sommerfeld's image technique and Eberlein-Zietal method.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of Conference on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions (QFEXT11

Radiative damping: a case study

We are interested in the motion of a classical charge coupled to the Maxwell self-field and subject to a uniform external magnetic field, B. This is a physically relevant, but difficult dynamical problem, to which contributions range over more than one hundred years. Specifically, we will study the Sommerfeld-Page approximation which assumes an extended charge distribution at small velocities. The memory equation is then linear and many details become available. We discuss how the friction equation arises in the limit of "small" B and contrast this result with the standard Taylor expansion resulting in a second order equation for the velocity of the charge.Comment: 4 figure

Charge Fluctuations in the Edge States of N-S hybrid Nano-Structures

In this work we show how to calculate the equilibrium and non-equilibrium charge fluctuations in a gated normal mesoscopic conductor which is attached to one normal lead and one superconducting lead. We then consider an example where the structure is placed in a high magnetic field, such that the transport is dominated by edge states. We calculate the equilibrium and non-equilibrium charge fluctuations in the gate, for a single edge state, comparing our results to those for the same system, but with two normal leads. We then consider the specific example of a quantum point contact and calculate the charge fluctuations in the gate for more than one edge state.Comment: 4 pages with 1 figure. In published version the high magnetic field dynamics of the holes is treated incorrectly. An erratum is in preparatio

Changes in human walking dynamics induced by uneven terrain are reduced with ongoing exposure, but a higher variability persists

During walking, uneven terrain alters the action of the ground reaction force from stride to stride. The extent to which such environmental inconsistencies are withstood may be revealed by the regulation of whole-body angular momentum (L) during walking. L quantifies the balance of momenta of the body segments (thigh, trunk, etc.) about their combined center of mass, and remains close to zero during level walking. A failure to constrain L has been linked to falls. The aim of this study was to explore the ability of young adults to orchestrate their movement on uneven terrain, illustrated by the range of L (LR) and its variability (vLR). In eleven male adults, we observed significant increases in sagittal plane LR, and vLR in all three planes of motion during walking on an uneven in comparison to a flat surface. No reductions in these measures were observed within a 12-minute familiarisation period, suggesting that unimpaired adults either are unable to, or do not need to eliminate the effects of uneven terrain. Transverse plane LR, in contrast, was lower on immediate exposure, and then increased, pointing to the development of a less restrictive movement pattern, and would support the latter hypothesis

Diffractive orbits in isospectral billiards

Isospectral domains are non-isometric regions of space for which the spectra of the Laplace-Beltrami operator coincide. In the two-dimensional Euclidean space, instances of such domains have been given. It has been proved for these examples that the length spectrum, that is the set of the lengths of all periodic trajectories, coincides as well. However there is no one-to-one correspondence between the diffractive trajectories. It will be shown here how the diffractive contributions to the Green functions match nevertheless in a ''one-to-three'' correspondence.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure