The National Council on Crime and Delinquency's Evaluation of the Project Development of National Institute of Corrections/Child Welfare League of America's Planning and Intervention Sites Funded to Address the Needs of Children of Incarcerated Parents

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) was contracted by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) to conduct a process and outcome evaluation of program development for demonstration sites funded by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC). The grantees were to develop projects that would address the needs of children of incarcerated parents. There were ten demonstration sites, four of which received 18 month planning grants, and six of which received three year grants toimplement their intervention programs. The goal of the evaluation was to gain a better understanding of the processes involved in developing and implementing programs that address the needs of children of incarcerated parents

Archaeological Survey of 296 acres for the Houston 4 Project, Harris County, Texas

In June 2016, Gray & Pape, Inc. of Houston, Texas, at the request of Benchmark Ecological Services, Inc., conducted marine and terrestrial cultural resources surveys on property proposed for development in Harris County, Texas. The Lead Agency for this project has not yet been identified but is assumed to be the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District. The goals of the survey were to establish whether or not previously unidentified buried archaeological resources were located within or immediately adjacent to the project’s Area of Potential Effects and if so to provide management recommendations for such resources. The survey was undertaken in accordance with requirements set forth by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, specifically requirements set forth by 36 CFR 800. The procedures to be followed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to fulfill the requirements set forth in the National Historic Preservation Act, other applicable historic preservation laws, and Presidential directives as they relate to the regulatory program of the United States Army Corps of Engineers (33 CFR Parts 320-334) are articulated in the Regulatory Program of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Part 325 -Processing of Department of the Army Permits, Appendix C -Procedures for the Protection of Historic Properties. All fieldwork and reporting activities were completed with reference to State laws and guidelines (the Antiquities Code of Texas). Survey and site identification followed Texas Antiquities Code standards. Work was conducted on lands owned and controlled by the Port of Houston Authority, a political subdivisions of the state of Texas, and thus required a Texas Antiquities Code permit prior to survey. Work was completed under Texas Antiquities Permit Number 7670. The project also contains a marine component which is being investigated under a separate marine permit application and separate report. The property boundary for this project is approximately 162 hectares (400 acres). However, approximately 42 hectares (104 acres) of that amount had been previously surveyed. Although the results of that survey are discussed in the current document, that portion of the project was excluded from the current investigation. Thus the current archaeological Area of Potential Effects amounts to 120 hectares (296 acres). Field investigation consisted of visual inspection and shovel testing within the Area of Potential Effects. Subsurface investigation here resulted in the excavation of 35 shovel tests, of which 34 were negative for archaeological deposits. Another 49 planned shovel tests were unexcavated due to a very low and wet landscape, which describes the majority of the project. The southern section of the project is also largely disturbed. Disturbances there included rip rap, heavy trash like cement fragments, tires, etc., existing pipelines, and existing cement or gravel laydown yards. One test contained a potentially human-modified stone flake but was found within a disturbed context and thus has a questionable provenance. No archaeological sites, standing structures, or other cultural resources were identified as a result of the survey. Based on the largely negative results of the archaeological investigation, Gray & Pape recommends no further work and that the project be allowed to proceed as planned. As specified under the conditions of Texas Antiquities Code Permit Number 7670, all project associated records are curated at the Center of Archaeological Studies at Texas State University

Pressure Injury and Restraint Prevalence Surveys: Saving Time and Dollars for Patient Care by Automating Manual Chart Abstraction

Bronson Healthcare Group performs quarterly pressure injury and restraint audits as part of the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI). The chart abstraction portion of the audit previously required nurses to manually abstract 31 data points. To save time and cost, we used Lean and PDSA process improvement tools to automate the chart abstraction portion of the audit, reducing the number of data points requiring manual abstraction to 2. We validated the automated abstraction by comparing it to abstractions done manually by the audit nurses. We found that an automated process has the potential to reduce the impact of human error inherent in manual abstraction

Infrared and Ultraviolet Observations of VIRGOHI 21 and NGC 4254's Outer Disk

We present the results of Spitzer and Galex observations of gas/dust and star formation activities in the extreme outer disk of Virgo galaxy NGC 4254 and its surrounding regions. These observations were motivated in part by the potential existence of a “dark galaxy” in the vicinity. In the intergalactic VIRGOHI 21 region where the free-floating HI gas is found, neither UV nor mid-IR shows corresponding emission, thus providing stringent upper limits on the stellar mass and star formation rate in these clouds.On the other hand, we find clearly discernible excess ultraviolet emission in parts of the extended disk of NGC 4254, which is yet unseen in the optical and infrared. These UV emission appears different from the so-called “XUV disks” of other nearby galaxies in both their distribution pattern and physical origin, which we suggest is directly related to the gas concentration of VIRGOHI 21

A Many Splendored Thing

A Many Splendored Thing is a summation of my artistic production during my masters

Assessing Potential Change in Louisiana Juvenile Detainee’s Knowledge and Attitude during Garden Programming

University-based horticulture departments have explored the relationship between garden programs and increased horticulture knowledge among primary and secondary students. Studies have established positive correlations between youth garden programs and increased garden knowledge. The objective of this research was to determine if participation in a garden workshop series had positive effects on youth detained in juvenile detention centers garden-based knowledge and immediate mood. Participation led to a 17% increase in garden-based knowledge (P ? 0.05) and a positive shift in mood (P ? 0.05) on two of the three days of the workshop series. Based on this experience, we highly recommend juvenile detention centers incorporate garden programming as additional educational opportunities for detained youth

Selective Processing of Sexual, Violent, and Neutral Information: a Study Comparing Individuals With and Without a History of Sexual Trauma.

The current research investigated processing biases that influence responding to emotionally relevant information in individuals with and without a history of sexual trauma. Previous research (MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986; MacLeod & Mathews, 1988; Mathews & MacLeod, 1985) has indicated that individuals with anxiety disorders shift their attention toward threatening stimuli, resulting in reduced reaction times to probes appearing near such stimuli. This effect has been found to be content specific, in that individuals with certain fears respond faster to information congruent with their concerns. The current study was undertaken to explore the possible differences in attention allocation to sexual, violent, and neutral words between women with a history of sexual trauma and those without. Using the dot probe task, individuals were presented with classes of target words (i.e., sexual, violent, neutral, or a combination of these) and were asked to detect and respond to a neutral stimulus (dot probe) that followed word pairs containing target words. It was hypothesized that individuals with a history of sexual trauma would be faster to detect the dot probe that followed sexual and violent words when compared to individuals with no such history. It was suggested that this would occur because women who have suffered a sexual trauma would experience anxiety concerning sexual and violent stimuli. This in turn would result in relevant stimuli capturing attention. Thus, they might exhibit content-specific processing with regard to information congruent with a sexually traumatic experience (i.e., sexual and violent information presented together). As is noted later, the current study did not find such an attentional bias toward threatening words. Although the group of individuals who had experienced a sexual trauma reported more anxiety, depression, sexual anxiety, and PTSD symptoms, these differences did not lead to the expected differences on dot probe detection latencies. In general, the study found that all participants tended to be slower to detect the probe when an emotional word (sexual or violent) was present. This is consistent with a theory that conceptualizes attention in a resource allocation context. Possible explanations for the failure to find hypothesized results are presented