Involving and Engaging Parents of Children with IEPs

This study explored parents’ views of the educational experience of children with Individual Education Plans. The research goal was to determine how parents are meaningfully involved and engaged in the development and monitoring of educa-tion programs for their children. The primary data source for the study was 31 interviews with parents, analysed using qualitative thematic analysis; additional data came from parent questionnaires, which provided further information about parents’ experiences. This mixed methods study describes the nature of parent in-volvement and engagement in schools, particularly in Individual Education Plan development and implementation. The study also examined how parent involve-ment and engagement (a) relate to parents’ satisfaction with school programs and (b) are contextualized within inclusive practice for children with disabilities. The findings of the study are discussed in relation to the broader literature on parent involvement and engagement

Probing the Geometry of Warped String Compactifications at the LHC

Warped string compactifications, characterized by non-singular behavior of the metric in the infrared (IR), feature departures from the usual anti-de Sitter warped extra dimensions. We study the implications of the smooth IR cutoff for Randall-Sundrum (RS) type models. We find that the phenomenology of the KK gravitons (including their masses and couplings) depends sensitively on the precise shape of the warp factor in the IR. In particular, we analyze the warped deformed conifold and find that the spectrum differs significantly from that of RS, and present a simple prescription (a mass gap ansatz) which can be used to study the phenomenology of IR modifications to 5-d warped extra dimensions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; v2. typos corrected, references added, improved resolution of Figure

The Lived Experience of the Adolescent Sex Offender: A Phenomenological Case Study

Treatment for adolescents with sexually maladaptive behaviors is a continuing intervention that is changing and developing as greater understanding about this population of adolescents is obtained. The majority of treatment programs for adolescent sexually maladaptive behavior contain programming components that include cognitive distortions/thinking errors. Interviews including a conceptual mapping exercise were conducted with four adolescents adjudicated to a secure care program for sexual behaviors. All four boys completed an interview and a conceptual map of their perceived experiences as an adolescent with sexual maladaptive behaviors. All interviews were audio recorded. Analysis of the interviews and conceptual mappings yielded five themes present in the boys’ experience as well as a consideration of the role early trauma may have in the establishment of cognitive distortion development. Contributing environmental and familial factors also play an important part in sustaining cognitive distortion. Main themes include: loss of responsible father or father figure, inability to regulate emotion, lack of personal and parental boundaries, and early exposure to pornography. The contributing influence of responsible male father figures may play an even greater role in the lives of young males than originally thought. How the adolescent inaccurately perceives his environment— in essence what he tells himself and continues to tell himself to make sense of his world—are building blocks in the development and continuation of thinking errors/cognitive distortions used to commit and justify sexual offending behaviors

The Lived Experience of the Adolescent Sex Offender: A Phenomenological Case Study

Treatment for adolescents with sexually maladaptive behaviors is a continuing intervention that is changing and developing as greater understanding about this population of adolescents is obtained. The majority of treatment programs for adolescent sexually maladaptive behavior contain programming components that include cognitive distortions/thinking errors. Interviews including a conceptual mapping exercise were conducted with four adolescents adjudicated to a secure care program for sexual behaviors. All four boys completed an interview and a conceptual map of their perceived experiences as an adolescent with sexual maladaptive behaviors. All interviews were audio recorded. Analysis of the interviews and conceptual mappings yielded five themes present in the boys’ experience as well as a consideration of the role early trauma may have in the establishment of cognitive distortion development. Contributing environmental and familial factors also play an important part in sustaining cognitive distortion. Main themes include: loss of responsible father or father figure, inability to regulate emotion, lack of personal and parental boundaries, and early exposure to pornography. The contributing influence of responsible male father figures may play an even greater role in the lives of young males than originally thought. How the adolescent inaccurately perceives his environment— in essence what he tells himself and continues to tell himself to make sense of his world—are building blocks in the development and continuation of thinking errors/cognitive distortions used to commit and justify sexual offending behaviors

Probing the Geometry of Warped String Compactifications at the Large Hadron Collider

Warped string compactifications, characterized by the nonsingular behavior of the metric in the infrared (IR), feature departures from the usual anti–de Sitter warped extra dimensions. We study the implications of the smooth IR cutoff for Randall-Sundrum- (RS-)type models. We find that the phenomenology of the Kaluza-Klein gravitons (including their masses and couplings) depends sensitively on the precise shape of the warp factor in the IR. In particular, we analyze the warped deformed conifold, find that the spectrum differs significantly from that of RS, and present a simple prescription (a mass-gap ansatz) that can be used to study the phenomenology of IR modifications to 5D warped extra dimensions

Heritable variation in telomere length predicts mortality in soay sheep

Telomere length (TL) is considered an important biomarker of whole-organism health and aging. Across humans and other vertebrates, short telomeres are associated with increased subsequent mortality risk, but the processes responsible for this correlation remain uncertain. A key unanswered question is whether TL–mortality associations arise due to positive effects of genes or early-life environment on both an individual’s average lifetime TL and their longevity, or due to more immediate effects of environmental stressors on within-individual TL loss and increased mortality risk. Addressing this question requires longitudinal TL and life history data across the entire lifetimes of many individuals, which are difficult to obtain for long-lived species like humans. Using longitudinal data and samples collected over nearly two decades, as part of a long-term study of wild Soay sheep, we dissected an observed positive association between TL and subsequent survival using multivariate quantitative genetic models. We found no evidence that telomere attrition was associated with increased mortality risk, suggesting that TL is not an important marker of biological aging or exposure to environmental stress in our study system. Instead, we find that among-individual differences in average TL are associated with increased lifespan. Our analyses suggest that this correlation between an individual’s average TL and lifespan has a genetic basis. This demonstrates that TL has the potential to evolve under natural conditions, and suggests an important role of genetics underlying the widespread observation that short telomeres predict mortality

An international conversation on disabled children's childhoods: Theory, ethics and methods

This article brings together members of the International Advisory Committee for the Inclusive Early Childhood Service System (IECSS) project, a longitudinal study of interactions with institutional processes when families have a young child with disabilities. The article introduces international discourses on early childhood development (both individual and community) and raises questions about the ethics of these discourses in the context of historical and current global inequalities. We consider the exporting of professional discourses from the global north to the global south through directives from global institutions, and the imposition of medical thinking onto the lives of disabled children. We discuss theoretical positions and research methods that we believe may open up possibilities for change

Probing the Geometry of Warped String Compactifications at the LHC

Warped string compactifications, characterized by the nonsingular behavior of the metric in the infrared (IR), feature departures from the usual anti?de Sitter warped extra dimensions. We study the implications of the smooth IR cutoff for Randall-Sundrum- (RS-)type models. We find that the phenomenology of the Kaluza-Klein gravitons (including their masses and couplings) depends sensitively on the precise shape of the warp factor in the IR. In particular, we analyze the warped deformed conifold, find that the spectrum differs significantly from that of RS, and present a simple prescription (a mass-gap ansatz) that can be used to study the phenomenology of IR modifications to 5D warped extra dimensions

Re‐Imagining Inclusion Through the Lens of Disabled Childhoods

The purpose of this article is to contribute new insights to critical disability and disabled children’s childhood studies that center on the valuing of disabled children’s lives—a guiding purpose in the disability justice movement. We use published findings from the Inclusive Early Childhood Service System project, a longitudinal, institutional ethnography of the ways that families and children are organized around categories of disability, which show social inclusions and exclusions before and during the pandemic. These findings illuminate: (a) institutional flexibility for the purpose of social inclusion and isolation during the pandemic as a result of institutional organization; (b) the impact of institutional decisions around closures, remote programs, and support on families’ choices and self‐determination; and (3) the ways safety is differently applied and rationalized for disabled children allowing institutions to exclude disabled children and families. We use critical disability studies and disabled children’s childhood studies to interpret these findings and position the valuing of disabled children’s lives with a call for disability justice actions