The Church And A Faction

https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/1412/thumbnail.jp

Collaborative Approach to Adoptive Placement of Infants in Minnesota: An Effectiveness Assessment of the African American Adoption Project

It is documented that many Blacks are overlooked as viable resources by adoption agencies for the many Block children needing families. The African American Adoption Project (AAAP) worked cooperatively with four private adoption agencies for the adoptive placement of twenty-five Black infants. This research analyzed the impact of AAAP\u27s services to Block infants, birth families, adoptive families and to the four private adoption agencies. Due to the secrecy and confidentiality surrounding the subject of adoption, unobtrusive strategies were developed to analyze AAAP\u27s qualitative impact. This study revealed that through AAAP, on average, Black infants waited much shorter for adoptive homes, birth parents had a greater choice of adoptive families from which to select, Black adoptive parents had barriers eliminated from the adoption process and the private agencies were more effectively and efficiently able to serve Black adoptions but absorbed greater financial costs for participating with the AAAP collaborative

The Effect of Interpolation of Performance Test Items on Stanford-Binet Scores

The clinical psychologist frequently wishes to obtain both performance and verbal I.Q.\u27s on a child at a single session. To maintain interest and rapport, examiners have sometimes adopted the practice of interpolating the performance sub-tests between the verbal test levels. Since this constitutes a deviation from the conditions under which the Binet test has been standardized, the question has arisen as to whether this practice affects the scores obtained on the two tests. The present experiment was designed to provide an answer to this question

On Chiral Symmetry Restoration at Finite Density in Large N_c QCD

At large N_c, cold nuclear matter is expected to form a crystal and thus spontaneously break translational symmetry. The description of chiral symmetry breaking and translational symmetry breaking can become intertwined. Here, the focus is on aspects of chiral symmetry breaking and its possible restoration that are by construction independent of the nature of translational symmetry breaking---namely spatial averages of chiral order parameters. A system will be considered to be chirally restored provided all spatially-averaged chiral order parameters are zero. A critical question is whether chiral restoration in this sense is possible for phases in which chiral order parameters are locally non-zero but whose spatial averages all vanish. We show that this is not possible unless all chirally-invariant observables are spatially uniform. This result is first derived for Skyrme-type models, which are based on a nonlinear sigma model and by construction break chiral symmetry on a point-by-point basis. A no-go theorem for chiral restoration (in the average sense) for all models of this type is obtained by showing that in these models there exist chirally symmetric order parameters which cannot be spatially uniform. Next we show that the no-go theorem applies to large N_c QCD in any phase which has a non-zero but spatially varying chiral condensate. The theorem is demonstrated by showing that in a putative chirally-restored phase, the field configuration can be reduced to that of a nonlinear sigma model.Comment: 12 pages, 1 tabl

Precise Repair of mPing Excision Sites is Facilitated by Target Site Duplication Derived Microhomology

A key difference between the Tourist and Stowaway families of miniature inverted repeat transposable elements (MITEs) is the manner in which their excision alters the genome. Upon excision, Stowaway-like MITEs and the associated Mariner elements usually leave behind a small duplication and short sequences from the end of the element. These small insertions or deletions known as “footprints” can potentially disrupt coding or regulatory sequences. In contrast, Tourist-like MITEs and the associated PIF/Pong/Harbinger elements generally excise precisely, returning the genome to its original state. The purpose of this study was to determine the mechanisms underlying these excision differences, including the role of the host DNA repair mechanisms

Parallelization of Kinetic Theory Simulations

Numerical studies of shock waves in large scale systems via kinetic simulations with millions of particles are too computationally demanding to be processed in serial. In this work we focus on optimizing the parallel performance of a kinetic Monte Carlo code for astrophysical simulations such as core-collapse supernovae. Our goal is to attain a flexible program that scales well with the architecture of modern supercomputers. This approach requires a hybrid model of programming that combines a message passing interface (MPI) with a multithreading model (OpenMP) in C++. We report on our approach to implement the hybrid design into the kinetic code and show first results which demonstrate a significant gain in performance when many processors are applied.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, conference proceeding

Can we explain machine learning-based prediction for rupture status assessments of intracranial aneurysms?

Although applying machine learning (ML) algorithms to rupture status assessment of intracranial aneurysms (IA) has yielded promising results, the opaqueness of some ML methods has limited their clinical translation. We presented the first explainability comparison of six commonly used ML algorithms: multivariate logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLPNN), and Bayesian additive regression trees (BART). A total of 112 IAs with known rupture status were selected for this study. The ML-based classification used two anatomical features, nine hemodynamic parameters, and thirteen morphologic variables. We utilized permutation feature importance, local interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME), and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) algorithms to explain and analyze 6 Ml algorithms. All models performed comparably: LR area under the curve (AUC) was 0.71; SVM AUC was 0.76; RF AUC was 0.73; XGBoost AUC was 0.78; MLPNN AUC was 0.73; BART AUC was 0.73. Our interpretability analysis demonstrated consistent results across all the methods; i.e., the utility of the top 12 features was broadly consistent. Furthermore, contributions of 9 important features (aneurysm area, aneurysm location, aneurysm type, wall shear stress maximum during systole, ostium area, the size ratio between aneurysm width, (parent) vessel diameter, one standard deviation among time-averaged low shear area, and one standard deviation of temporally averaged low shear area less than 0.4 Pa) were nearly the same. This research suggested that ML classifiers can provide explainable predictions consistent with general domain knowledge concerning IA rupture. With the improved understanding of ML algorithms, clinicians’ trust in ML algorithms will be enhanced, accelerating their clinical translation

Resistant tissues of modern marchantioid liverworts resemble enigmatic Early Paleozoic microfossils

Absence of a substantial pretracheophyte fossil record for bryophytes (otherwise predicted by molecular systematics) poses a major problem in our understanding of earliest land-plant structure. In contrast, there exist enigmatic Cambrian–Devonian microfossils (aggregations of tubes or sheets of cells or possibly a combination of both) controversially interpreted as an extinct group of early land plants known as nematophytes. We used an innovative approach to explore these issues: comparison of tube and cell-sheet microfossils with experimentally degraded modern liverworts as analogues of ancient early land plants. Lower epidermal surface tissues, including rhizoids, of Marchantia polymorpha and Conocephalum conicum were resistant to breakdown after rotting for extended periods or high-temperature acid treatment (acetolysis), suggesting fossilization potential. Cell-sheet and rhizoid remains occurred separately or together depending on the degree of body degradation. Rhizoid break-off at the lower epidermal surface left rimmed pores at the centers of cell rosettes; these were similar in structure, diameter, and distribution to pores characterizing nematophyte cell-sheet microfossils known as Cosmochlaina. The range of Marchantia rhizoid diameters overlapped that of Cosmochlaina pores. Approximately 14% of dry biomass of Marchantia vegetative thalli and 40% of gametangiophores was resistant to acetolysis. Pre- and posttreatment cell-wall autofluorescence suggested the presence of phenolic compounds that likely protect lower epidermal tissues from soil microbe attack and provide dimensional stability to gametangiophores. Our results suggest that at least some microfossils identified as nematophytes may be the remains of early marchantioid liverworts similar in some ways to modern Marchantia and Conocephalum