Understanding Families\u27 Definitions and Perspectives of Family-Centered Early Intervention Programs.

While both the federal and Louisiana state infant/toddler legislation and early childhood special education best practices literature of the late eighties and nineties provided impetus for family-centered early intervention, neither provided specific guidelines on how professionals were to implement the same. In order for early interventionists to provide effective services to individual families they must be able to evaluate and understand how each family they served defined an individualized family service plan as being family centered. This qualitative study extended the knowledge and constructed an understanding of how select families in the Acadiana area, whose children were Part H eligible, defined family-centered early intervention services, based on their experiences and interactions with family members and systems outside the family. Family diversities, such as socioeconomic status, gender, geographic location, and ethnic background, generated both similarities and differences in the definitions. Specifically, participant observation of early intervention sessions, individual interviews with families, and document analysis (Spradley, 1979, 1980) were used over the four month period of this study. Eight families participated in the study including three of African American and five of European American ethnic backgrounds. Four of the five European American families were of Acadiana heritage. The other demographics of the families were evenly divided between rural and urban residents and low and middle socioeconomic status. Two fathers and six mothers were a part of the group. All of these eight families wanted in some way to define the framework of their child\u27s early intervention program including what services were needed, the intensity of the services, and their own level of involvement. The desire for control crossed gender, locale, socioeconomic status, and ethnic lines. These selected families wanted professionals to listen to them, to provide them choices, and respond to their concerns. The family service coordination system was not working for these families. They needed an early intervention program sensitive to their unique preferences. Family-centered intervention required an understanding of their preferences as they had developed from the interaction of their diversities and experiences

On an Occurrence of Gold in Maine

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Regulating the employment dynamics of domestic supply chains

This paper sheds light on the role that the regulation of primarily domestic, rather than global, supply chains could play in protecting and enhancing standards of workplace health and safety, as well as employment standards more generally. The analysis presented confirms the potential relevance of such regulation in these regards. However, it also reinforces existing evidence pointing to the fact that only very rarely will market-related considerations on their own prompt purchasers to seek to directly influence the employment practices of their suppliers. The paper ends therefore by highlighting a number of key issues relating to the design of regulatory initiatives aimed at protecting and enhancing employment conditions within supply chains

Perivascular mast cells promote neointimal elastin deposition and suppress chronic vein graft restenosis in hyperlipidaemic mice.

Aims: Mast cells are versatile innate immune cells and are reported to promote vascular inflammation and neointimal lesion formation, thereby contributing to the development of vascular stenosis and atherosclerosis. However, it is not clear whether mast cells also regulate vascular matrix remodelling in established neointima. This study addressed the hypothesis that perivascular mast cells regulate neointimal matrix remodelling using a mouse vein graft model. Methods: The impact of mast cells on neointimal remodelling was investigated using mast cell-deficient animals in both normolipidaemic (KitW-sh/W-sh) and hyperlipidaemic (apoE-/-KitW-sh/W-sh) conditions. The effect of perivascular mast cells on vascular matrix remodelling, including collagen and elastin deposition, was investigated using a local mast cell reconstitution method that selectively repopulated mast cells around the carotid artery (where the vein graft was inserted) in KitW-sh/W-sh mice. Results: In normolipidaemic vein grafts (KitW-sh/W-sh vs. the wild type control C57BL/6J), collagen synthesis was not affected by mast cell deficiency at 4 weeks. In contrast, neointimal elastin was reduced by 6.5-fold in mast cell-deficient KitW-sh/W-sh mice, which was prevented by perivascular mast cell reconstitution. Mast cell deficiency induced a similar reduction in neointimal elastin in hyperlipidaemic mice (apoE-/-KitW-sh/W-sh vs. apoE-/-), with a significant increase in cell proliferation and neointimal area at 4 week. Conclusion: Mast cells appear to promote elastin deposition in vein grafts and this may lead to further suppression of cell proliferation and neointimal thickening under hyperlipidaemic conditions

The narrative potential of the British Birth Cohort Studies

This paper draws attention to the narrative potential of longitudinal studies such as the British Birth Cohort Studies (BBCS), and explores the possibility of creating narrative case histories and conducting narrative analysis based on information available from the studies. The BBCS have historically adopted a quantitative research design and used structured interviews and questionnaires to collect data from large samples of individuals born in specific years. However, the longitudinal nature of these studies means that they follow the same sample of individuals from birth through childhood into adult life, and this leads to the creation of data that can be understood as a quantitative auto/biography

On the Estimation of Bivariate Return Curves for Extreme Values

In the multivariate setting, defining extremal risk measures is important in many contexts, such as finance, environmental planning and structural engineering. In this paper, we review the literature on extremal bivariate return curves, a risk measure that is the natural bivariate extension to a return level, and propose new estimation methods based on multivariate extreme value models that can account for both asymptotic dependence and asymptotic independence. We identify gaps in the existing literature and propose novel tools for testing and validating return curves and comparing estimates from a range of multivariate models. These tools are then used to compare a selection of models through simulation and case studies. We conclude with a discussion and list some of the challenges.Comment: 41 pages (without supplementary), 11 figures, 2 table