Trends in Marital Dissolution by Women's Education in the United States

I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation (N = 16,452) to measure trends in marital dissolution rates for U.S. women by education level. In marriage cohorts from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, marital dissolution rates fell among women with a 4-year college degree or more, but remained high among women with less than a 4-year college degree. This diverging trend began in the mid-1970s and is not explained by recent increases in women's overall educational attainment, nor by recent increases in age at marriage timing and premarital childbearing. These results suggest a growing association between socioeconomic disadvantage and family instability.education, family demography, marital dissolution, social inequality

Reconfigurable Computing for Speech Recognition: Preliminary Findings

Continuous real-time speech recognition is a highly computationally-demanding task, but one which can take good advantage of a parallel processing system. To this end, we describe proposals for, and preliminary findings of, research in implementing in programmable logic the decoder part of a speech recognition system. Recognition via Viterbi decoding of Hidden Markov Models is outlined, along with details of current implementations, which aim to exploit properties of the algorithm that could make it well-suited for devices such as FPGAs. The question of how to deal with limited resources, by reconfiguration or otherwise, is also addressed

Implementation of Provably Stable MaxNet

MaxNet TCP is a congestion control protocol that uses explicit multi-bit signalling from routers to achieve desirable properties such as high throughput and low latency. In this paper we present an implementation of an extended version of MaxNet. Our contributions are threefold. First, we extend the original algorithm to give both provable stability and rate fairness. Second, we introduce the MaxStart algorithm which allows new MaxNet connections to reach their fair rates quickly. Third, we provide a Linux kernel implementation of the protocol. With no overhead but 24-bit price signals, our implementation scales from 32 bit/s to 1 peta-bit/s with a 0.001% rate accuracy. We confirm the theoretically predicted properties by performing a range of experiments at speeds up to 1 Gbit/sec and delays up to 180 ms on the WAN-in-Lab facility

The chiral and flavour projection of Dirac-Kahler fermions in the geometric discretization

It is shown that an exact chiral symmetry can be described for Dirac-Kahler fermions using the two complexes of the geometric discretization. This principle is extended to describe exact flavour projection and it is shown that this necessitates the introduction of a new operator and two new structures of complex. To describe simultaneous chiral and flavour projection, eight complexes are needed in all and it is shown that projection leaves a single flavour of chiral field on each.Comment: v2: 17 pages, Latex. 5 images eps. Added references, reformatted and clarification of some point

Atom-wave diffraction between the Raman-Nath and the Bragg regime: Effective Rabi frequency, losses, and phase shifts

We present an analytic theory of the diffraction of (matter) waves by a lattice in the "quasi-Bragg" regime, by which we mean the transition region between the long-interaction Bragg and "channelling" regimes and the short-interaction Raman-Nath regime. The Schroedinger equation is solved by adiabatic expansion, using the conventional adiabatic approximation as a starting point, and re-inserting the result into the Schroedinger equation to yield a second order correction. Closed expressions for arbitrary pulse shapes and diffraction orders are obtained and the losses of the population to output states otherwise forbidden by the Bragg condition are derived. We consider the phase shift due to couplings of the desired output to these states that depends on the interaction strength and duration and show how these can be kept negligible by a choice of smooth (e.g., Gaussian) envelope functions even in situations that substantially violate the adiabaticity condition. We also give an efficient method for calculating the effective Rabi frequency (which is related to the eigenvalues of Mathieu functions) in the quasi-Bragg regime.Comment: Minor additions, more concise text. To appear in Phys. Rev. A. 20 pages, 10 figure

Prevalence of androgenicanabolic steroid use in adolescents in two regions of South Africa

Objective. To determine the prevalence of androgenicanabolic steroid (AAS) use  among schoolchildren in two geographically separate regions of South Africa.Design. Self-reported questionnaire.Population. Standard 10 schoolchildren (16 - 18 years) were selected, 1 136 from region A and 1 411 from region B.Results. The prevalence of AAS use in the overall populationwas 14.4/1 000. There were significant diHerences in prevalence of AAS use between the two regions (5.9/1 000 v. '22.7/1 000; P < 0.0005). There was significantly higher use in males (28.2/1 000) compared with females (0.7/1 000) (p < 0.005). Gymnasia were the most common source of AAS. Although there were regional diHerences in general knowledge about AAS, general knowledge scores were low across all the groups. Male sports participants who used AAS experienced significantly higher  pressure to perform than their non-user counterparts in both regions.Conclusions. Regional differences in AAS use and general knowledge about AAS need to be considered before a meaningful programme can be implemented to reduce the use of AAS by South African schoolchildren

Metamorphic Domain-Specific Languages: A Journey Into the Shapes of a Language

External or internal domain-specific languages (DSLs) or (fluent) APIs? Whoever you are -- a developer or a user of a DSL -- you usually have to choose your side; you should not! What about metamorphic DSLs that change their shape according to your needs? We report on our 4-years journey of providing the "right" support (in the domain of feature modeling), leading us to develop an external DSL, different shapes of an internal API, and maintain all these languages. A key insight is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution or no clear superiority of a solution compared to another. On the contrary, we found that it does make sense to continue the maintenance of an external and internal DSL. The vision that we foresee for the future of software languages is their ability to be self-adaptable to the most appropriate shape (including the corresponding integrated development environment) according to a particular usage or task. We call metamorphic DSL such a language, able to change from one shape to another shape

Analysis and Assessment of the Reimbursement Rates and Mechanisms for Kentucky’s Publicly Funded Ferries

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) reimburses publicly operated ferries, including when they cease operations due to severe weather or unforeseen events. Reimbursement procedures are not codified in law and are largely based on historical practice. To determine how the Cabinet should handle reimbursement, funding, oversight of ferry services moving forward, the Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC) reviewed practices adopted by 10 other states and conducted a detailed analysis of Kentucky’s current approach. Of the states KTC examined, only Tennessee reimburses ferry operations for closures (at 50 percent of the normal hourly rate for a period up to 48 hours). Half of the states KTC examined make state funding available for ferry operations, others either devolve oversight to the local level or provide no funding assistance. In Kentucky, operating standards for ferry services are not consistent and no uniform method has been devised to calculate reimbursement rates. In light of these findings, KYTC should create detailed auditing guidelines to improve the consistency of ferry service financial statements; pursue funding sources it has not previously taken advantage of, and generate long-term forecasts of the state’s ferry operations. Lastly, the Cabinet should ask the General Assembly to revisit and modify several statutes pertaining to ferries which contain outdated language that has little relevance to the modern transportation system

LGBT issues in the HRD and adult education literature: Past research and future needs

Issues related to human resource development (HRD) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people such as workplace inclusion, employee affinity groups, and LGBT-specific diversity initiatives are being addressed in organizations more often now than ever before. This paper explores the existing literature on LGBT issues in HRD and adult education through a systemic review in order to determine what research exists and what future directions are necessary. This review revealed a small core of research related to these issues. Existing work is mainly conceptual, and there is a lack of quantitative work. Topics of focus are related to organizational change and diversity efforts, with very little research on HR policy, career development, and workplace education. Key findings include that HR professionals have primarily served in a reactive role, rather than leading on these issues. Keywords: HRD research; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); sexual minorities; diversity Issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in United States (U.S.) workplaces have captured the attention of organizations recently, causing favorable changes in relatively short time periods. The Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index measures an employer’s “commitment to equal treatment of employees, consumers, and investors, irrespective of [an employee’s] sexual orientation or gender identity and expression” (Corporate Equality Index, 2007, p. 12) using a scale of 0-100 percent. The 2010 report noted that 305 businesses received a perfect 100 percent rating. That number was a 45 percent increase over the previous year, and those 305 businesses represent over 9.3 million full-time employees (Corporate Equality Index, 2010). Even in these challenging economic times, “the Corporate Equality Index once again demonstrates that businesses recognize the importance of working with and providing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers and consumers” (Corporate Equality Index, 2010, p. 1). From a research standpoint, however, LGBT workplace issues have not received a great deal of attention. Ragins (2004) notes that they “constitute one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce” (p. 35). An examination of LGBT workplace issues is appropriate for HRD researchers. LGBT individuals constitute a sexual minority (Kameny, 1971; Leonard, 2003) that could benefit from conceptual, empirical, and theoretical work connecting the issue of sexual minorities as a distinct group to diversity and other concerns of HRD. Is the lack of research-related attention on this topic related to lack of interest on the part of, or lack of acceptance by, the academic community? In 2008, Githens, Schmidt, Rocco, and Gedro hosted the first preconference on LGBT issues in HRD at the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) International Conference. AHRD proved to be slower in its acceptance of the topic. Schmidt and Githens (2010) reported that some reviewers for their preconference felt the topic was extremely important, however, one reviewer wondered whether it was a topic the organization wanted to promote and others questioned the importance of the topic in general. The session went on to become the highest-attended preconference held that year. Feedback from participants of the 2008 LGBT preconference demonstrated a demand for guidelines on evidence-based practice on LGBT issues in HRD. The purpose of this paper is to examine the literature in human resource development and adult education to determine what work has been done related to HRD, identify the topics which were covered, types of papers published, and research methods used and use this information to create a research agenda to address the intersection of LGBT issues and HRD. To do this, we searched the literature asking these questions: What types of articles are published (e.g., conceptual, literature reviews, empirical studies) and what methods are used? To what extent does the literature address the concerns of LGBT people? Do the articles published provide an adequate foundation for future research? What topics, trends, issues should form future research agendas? This review includes research from the fields of adult education and human resource development because of the close-knit and overlapping relationship between the two disciplines. Three of the four authors of this paper are in both fields, some graduate programs house programs of study in both fields, and some HRD programs grew from adult education programs. The search of the adult education literature begins in 1994 just before the first article by Hill (1995) was published on LGBT issues. Work on this topic in adult education spawned the work in HRD where the first article was published by Gedro, Cervero, & Johnson-Bailey (2002). The search of HRD literature begins in 2001 just before that first article appeared in Human Resource Development International. This review is organized as follows: A conceptual framework for diversity and LGBT inclusion will be presented followed by article analysis by content and by research approaches employed. Summary tables regarding article content and research approaches are then presented. Content-related and research approach-related themes will be discussed, followed by a discussion of gaps in current research and recommendations for future research