A Call to Action: Los Angeles' Quest to Achieve Community Safety

"A Call To Action: Los Angeles' Quest To Achieve Community Safety" is a report and policy brief telling the story of L.A.'s extraordinary experiment to keep kids safe in the City of Los Angeles' worst gang zones, and laying out a new comprehensive set of recommendations. The document also explains Advancement Project's comprehensive violence reduction strategy and shows how it could be used in other communities suffering from gang violence. The report, assembled by Advancement Proejct's Urban Peace and Healthy City programs, highlights progress the City of L.A. has made toward greater public safety, and how to build on those successes to achieve comprehensive community safety in places where children are still exposed to chronic trauma and violence.Five Years of ProgressIn 2007 Advancement Project released "A Call to Action: A Case for a Comprehensive Solution to L.A.'s Gang Violence Epidemic", a roadmap that explained why Los Angeles' 30-year "war on gangs" was failing to quell gangs and gang violence and laid out a comprehensive set of recommendations to reverse course. Since then, Advancement Project has worked closely with City officials to put these recommendations into place.Los Angeles has seen greater success in decreasing gang violence with gang-related crime reduced by over 15% and 35% fewer gang-related homicides surrounding neighborhoods served by the Mayor's Gang Reduction & Youth Development (GRYD) Office and by Summer Night Lights, a summer violence reduction strategy. In 2010 the homicide rate was at its lowest since the 1960s.Success in significantly reducing violence can be attributed in part to the following:Catalyst to City's new approach to gang violence: Based on the 2007 report recommendations to create a central entity that manages gang violence prevention in areas where violence was concentrated, the City of L.A. created the GRYD Office to focus public resources where it is needed the most -- on 12 gang violence hot zones identified in conjunction with community leaders.Transformation of L.A. Police Department: The LAPD has transformed the way it deals with gangs, from an overbroad suppression strategy to relationship-based, problem-solving policing.Training gang interventionists: The Urban Peace Academy was established to train gang interventionists, the only publicly funded training program in the nation for gang interventionists. The academy has trained more than 1,200 gang interventionists and more than 400 police officers to work together, which has resulted in collaboration and shared accountability to achieve public safety.In fact, efforts in Los Angeles have been so successful that other cities across the nation are working to adopt some of the strategies that have succeeded in Los Angeles.Time for a New Call to ActionDespite amazing gains in violence reduction for the City of Los Angeles as a whole, there is still much left to do. We are not yet fully cured of this complex epidemic -- the conditions that spawn and sustain gang violence remain largely unchanged in L.A.'s most vulnerable communities. We continue to require holistic, systemic, and politically difficult solutions."A Call to Action: Los Angeles' Quest to Achieve Community Safety"explains why, despite these significant accomplishments, the City faces a number of ongoing challenges and opportunities for investment.The Urban Peace program advocates for the leadership of the City and County of Los Angeles to publicly commit to achieving the following goals:GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY: Government at every level must be held accountable for the basic safety of every child.SCALING UP PREVENTION, INTERVENTION, AND TARGETED SUPPRESSION: The City and County of Los Angeles must bring up to scale prevention and intervention efforts to meet the need in the hot zones in a culturally competent way.ACHIEVE FEAR-FREE SCHOOLS: Beyond Safe Passages to and from school, all students should attend public schools free of bullying, gang intimidation, and all forms of fear.REGIONALLY COORDINATED COUNTY AGENCIES: County agencies must cooperate with each other and with the City to achieve reductions in violence, trauma, and crime.BUILD A REENTRY NETWORK: The County must seize realignment as an opportunity to make coordinated, seamless reintegration a reality for its citizens returning from incarceration.EQUITABLE COMMUNITY BUILDING: These neighborhoods must receive the same capital, business, educational, and infrastructure investment from which affluent Los Angeles already benefits.CREATE VIABLE EMPLOYMENT: There needs to be an immediate economic and employment plan for the hot zone communities of Los Angeles.Ending the public safety inequity that renders gang violence hot zone communities invisible to the rest of Los Angeles means we must provide youth greater alternatives that preempt gang joining. Political will is necessary to pull together a truly comprehensive solution with real government-community partnerships at both the City and County level, tailored to yield and sustain results for each individual neighborhood. Los Angeles cannot rest until every family and every child enjoy the first of all civil rights -- safety -- and the first of all freedoms -- freedom from violence

‘Different Courses, Different Outcomes?’ A comparative study of Communicative Competence in English Language learners following ‘Academic’ and ‘International Understanding’ courses at High Schools in Japan

Abstract In Japan, where the traditional focus of English teaching has been on knowledge of a foreign language as a system, increasing emphasis is now being placed on the ability to communicate internationally. Achieving competence in a foreign language may be the result of many factors including teaching methodology, instructional materials and personal motivation. This thesis examines how much communicative ability depends on classroom input, and how important other factors are in achieving success in written and spoken English. Two different English courses currently offered in Japanese high schools – ‘International Understanding’ and general/academic – are examined, and their effect on communicative competence, language knowledge, motivation and attitudes to teaching and learning English are analysed. Two groups of learners were traced throughout their 1st-year at senior high school, and their learning experiences are situated within the educational, and specifically English language learning, context of Japan, where the influence of societal pressures and public examinations conflicts with the need to learn English as a means of global communication. After locating the research within the literature on communicative language teaching (CLT) and EFL policy and practice in Japan, a working definition of communicative competence is proposed against which to evaluate the communicative ability of the learners. A mixed-method approach was taken to gather data on the teaching and learning process on the two courses, employing questionnaires, interviews, classroom observation and tests of written and spoken communicative competence and overall proficiency in English. The findings demonstrate that those learners following the International Understanding course have generally increased their communicative competence as measured by essay and oral interview tests, and have improved their scores in an English proficiency test recognised in Japan as a marker of academic achievement, to a statistically greater degree over those learners following a traditional EFL course. Significant differences were also confirmed in motivation. Although further research into similar specialist English courses is needed, this study provides one case in which the two opposing goals of ELT in Japan of communicative competence and academic achievement successfully converge. The implications of the study are that with relatively small changes in teaching methods, yet substantial changes in teacher attitudes, the problem of communicative ability in Japan might be addressed

City as lens: (re)imagining youth in Glasgow and Hong Kong

In recent years, a paradox has emerged in the study of youth. On the one hand, in the context of the processes of globalization, neoliberalism and precarity, the patterning of leisure and work for young people is becoming increasingly convergent across time and space. On the other hand, it is clear that young people’s habits and dispositions remain deeply tied to local places, with global processes filtered and refracted through specific cultural contexts. Against this backdrop, drawing on an Economic and Social Research Council/Research Grants Council (ESRC/RGC)-funded study of contemporary youth in Glasgow and Hong Kong, this article seeks to explore the role of the city as a mediating lens between global forces and local impacts. Utilizing both historical and contemporary data, the article argues that despite parallels in the impact of global forces on the structure of everyday life and work, young people’s leisure habits remain rooted in the fates and fortunes of their respective cities

CO2: Adsorption on palagonite and the Martian regolith

Possible scenarios for the evolution of the Martian climate are discussed. In the interest of determining an upper limit on the absorptive capacity of the Martian regolith, researchers examined the results of Fanale and Cannon (1971, 1974) for CO2 adsorption on nontronite and basalt. There appeared to be a strong proportionality between the capacity of the absorbent and its specific surface area. A model of the Martian climate is given that allows the researchers to make some estimates of exchangeable CO2 abundances

Effect of fluid restriction on hydration status in man.

Hydration status and the effects of hypohydration have been the topic of much public and scientific debate in recent years. While many physiological responses to hypohydration have been studied extensively, the subjective responses to hypohydration have largely been ignored. The present investigation was designed to investigate the physiological responses and subjective feelings resulting from 13, 24 and 37 h of fluid restriction (FR) and to compare these with a euhydration (EU) trial of the same duration in fifteen healthy volunteers. The volunteers were nine men and six women of mean age 30 (sd 12) years and body mass 71.5 (sd 13.4) kg. Urine and blood samples were collected and subjective feelings recorded on a 100 mm verbally anchored questionnaire at intervals throughout the investigation. In the EU trial the subjects maintained their normal diet. Body mass decreased by 2.7 (sd 0.6) % at 37 h in the FR trial and did not change significantly in the EU trial. Food intake in the FR trial (n 10) provided an estimated water intake of 487 (sd 335) ml and urinary losses (n 15) amounted to 1.37 (sd 0.39) litres. This is in comparison with an estimated water intake of 3168 (sd 1167) ml and a urinary loss of 2.76 (sd 1.11) litres in the EU trial. Plasma osmolality and angiotensin II concentrations increased from 0-37 h with FR. Plasma volume decreased linearly throughout the FR trial amounting to a 6.2 (sd 5.1) % reduction by 37 h. Thirst increased from 0-13 h of FR then did not increase further (P>0.05). The subjects reported feelings of headache during the FR trial and also that their ability to concentrate and their alertness were reduced

Visualisation of fingermarks and grab impressions on dark fabrics using silver vacuum metal deposition

Vacuum metal deposition (VMD) involves the thermal evaporation of metal (silver) in a vacuum, resulting in a uniform layer being deposited on the specimen being treated. This paper examines the use of silver on dark fabrics, thus offering a simpler operation and more obvious colouration to that of the traditional use of gold and zinc metals which must be evaporated separately. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of fabric type, donor, mark age and method of fingermark deposition on the quality of marks visualised using silver VMD. This was achieved by collecting fingermark deposits from fifteen donors, of both sexes and various ages, by a grab or a press method. Four different fabrics: satin, polyester, polycotton and cotton were studied over a 10 day timeline of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 21 and 28 + days. It was found that satin and polyester gave the most positive results, with polyester often producing excellent ridge detail. Cotton and polycotton were less successful with no ridge detail being observed. The donors also had an observable effect on the results obtained probably due to variations in secretions produced or pressures applied during specimen collection. The age of the mark or the method of mark deposition had little influence on the results obtained. Silver VMD is a viable process for visualising marks on certain dark fabrics and has the advantage over gold/zinc VMD in that the marks visualised are light in colour which contrasts well against the dark background

Grooming Behavior and Competitive Dominance in the Albino Rat

An experiment sought to compare dominance manifested in water competition under two levels of deprivation, with grooming activity in a non-deprived state. While competitive dominance was significantly related to motivational level, grooming emerged as a more stable indicator of social ascendance, and did not require prior manipulation of a biological state. The implications of this observation for broader aspects of social motivation arc discussed