Children\u27s cognitive processing of abuse as described in investigative interviews.

A great deal of research has examined ways in which investigative interviewers can elicit accurate information from children. More recently, research has studied children’s own thoughts or comprehension of abuse, and how these types of statements relate to disclosure, others’ perceptions of child witnesses, and psychological trauma. However, little research has investigated multiple types of children’s thoughts about abuse as they occur in an actual investigative interview. The current study examined seven types of statements children made about their abuse in a sample of 86 transcripts of investigative interviews conducted by Child Protective Services and a police department in a mid-sized Ontario city. Children interviewed ranged from 4- to 17-years-of-age, with approximately equal numbers of males and females. Type of abuse disclosed in the interviews ranged from verbal abuse to sexual abuse. Two coders independently coded each transcript for seven statement types: expected consequences of disclosure, actual consequences of disclosure, minimization, justification for either self, perpetrator, or other, and blame. Whether the statements were elicited by an interviewer prompt or mentioned spontaneously by the child was also coded. Results demonstrated that children blamed the perpetrator more than any other statement type, consistent with previous research. Analyses also revealed a significant relationship between abuse type and children’s statements, and alleged perpetrator and children’s statements. Results from the current study have implications for disclosure, treatment of psychological trauma, and how parents, social workers, police officers, attorneys, and judges view children’s statements

Initial Development of Surface Fuel Models for The Netherlands

Estimating the spread of wildland fire is growing concern in the Netherlands, where fire events at the wildland urban interface is a growing concern with a changing climate. A multi-year project was initiated in 2012 to obtain field-based fuel measurements to be used to estimate wildland fire spread for surface fire. The overall objective was to develop either custom fuel models or utilize existing Northern American fuel models to fuel conditions in some of the hazardous vegetation in the Netherlands. Over a four-year period, 96 plots were established, a wide variety of fuel parameters measured, and ANOVA (p ≤ 0.1) and Duncan’s MRT used to place these into 56 different vegetation communities. Following multiple permutations in Behaveplus, the 56 communities were consolidated into 28 different fuel models. It was then attempted to use these fuel models as input variables in a Dutch-developed wildland fire spread model. Some fuel models produced similar fire spread, and since they were within relatively similar communities, were combined, resulting in 21 working fuel models. The results of this project will provide land managers, fire brigades and landowners more accurate wildland fire spread estimations, improving safety of the public in this densely populated country. The results of this project will contribute to more accurate and detailed calculations of the NBVM (Dutch wildfire spreadmodel). The NBVM will provide necessary information, to be able to reduce the risk on uncontrollable wildfires, via wildfire prevention measurements and during an incident, to support decision making

Nonlinear Response of HTSC Thin Film Microwave Resonators in an Applied DC Magnetic Field

The non-linear microwave surface impedance of patterned YBCO thin films, was measured using a suspended line resonator in the presence of a perpendicular DC magnetic field of magnitude comparable to that of the microwave field. Signature of the virgin state was found to be absent even for relatively low microwave power levels. The microwave loss was initially found to decrease for small applied DC field before increasing again. Also, non-linearities inherent in the sample were found to be substantially suppressed at low powers at these applied fields. These two features together can lead to significant improvement in device performance.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX type, Uses IEEE style files, 600 dpi PostScript file with color figures available at http://sagar.physics.neu.edu/preprints.html Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivit

Comments on "Vortex Glass and Lattice Melting Transitions in a YNi_2B_2C Single Crystal"

Recently, Mun et.al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., 76, 2790 (1996)) have published their results on single crystal YNi_2B_2C, claiming that their experimental observations can be explained in terms of formation of Vortex Glass and Lattice melting. Our experiments, carried out on samples obtained from the SAME source, reveal a much richer phase diagram and span wider regions of experimental parameter space than Mun et. al. that encompasses most of their observations. We speculate that this material has anomalous intrinsic properties and the results cannot be explained by simple models about the flux lattice.Comment: 1 page, LaTeX type, 1 PostScript figure, Uses PRABIB.STY file, 600 dpi PS file available at http://sagar.physics.neu.edu/preprints.html To appear in Physical Review Letter

Measuring the benefit of increased transparency and control in news recommendation

Personalized news experiences powered by recommender systems permeate our lives and have the potential to influence not only our opinions, but also our decisions. At the same time, the content and viewpoints contained within news recommendations are driven by multiple factors, including both personalization and editorial selection. Explanations could help users gain a better understanding of the factors contributing to the news items selected for them to read. Indeed, recent works show that explanations are essential for users of news recommenders to understand their consumption preferences and set intentions in line with their goals, such as goals for knowledge development and increased diversity of content or viewpoints. We give examples of such works on explanation and interactive interface interventions which have been effective in influencing readers' consumption intentions and behaviors in news recommendations. However, the state-of-the-art in news recommender systems currently fall short in terms of evaluating such interventions in live systems, limiting our ability to measure their true impact on user behavior and opinions. To help understand the true benefit of these interfaces, we therefore call for improving the realism of studies for news.</p

Personalizing a parenting app:parenting-style surveys beat behavioral reading-based models

The present study set out to personalize a digital library aimed at new parents by reordering articles to match users' inferred interests. The interests were inferred from reading behavior as well as parenting styles measured through surveys. As prior research has shown that parenting styles are related to how parents take care of their children, these styles are likely to be related to what content a parent is interested in. The present study compared personalization based on parenting styles against other types of personalization. We conducted a user study with 106 participants, in which we compared the effects of four different approaches of personalization to our users' reading behavior and user experience: a non-personalized baseline, personalization based on reading behavior, personalization based on parenting styles measured through surveys, and a hybrid personalization based on both reading behavior and parenting styles. We found that while the reading behavior was not significantly influenced by different types of personalization, participants had a better user experience with our survey-based approach. They indicated they perceived a higher level of personalization and satisfaction with the system, even though in terms of objective metrics this approach performed worse.Part of Workshop 4: Theory-Informed User Modeling for Tailoring and Personalizing Interfaces - HUMANIZE</p

The extended star formation history of omega Centauri

For the first time, the abundances of a large sample of subgiant and turn-off region stars in omega Centauri have been measured, the data base being medium resolution spectroscopy from FORS2 at the VLT. Absolute iron abundances were derived for about 400 member stars from newly defined line indices with an accuracy of +/-0.15 dex. The abundances range between -2.2<[Fe/H]<-0.7 dex, resembling the large metallicity spread found for red giant branch stars. The combination of the spectroscopic results with the location of the stars in the colour magnitude diagram has been used to estimate ages for the individual stars. Whereas most of the metal-poor stars are consistent with a single old stellar population, stars with abundances higher than [Fe/H]=-1.3 dex are younger. The total age spread in omega Cent is about 3 Gyr. The monotonically increasing age-metallicity relation seems to level off above [Fe/H]=-1.0 dex. Whether the star formation in omega Cen occured continuously or rather episodically has to be shown by combining more accurate abundances with highest quality photometry.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Letters

Electronic quantization in dielectric nanolaminates

The scientific background in the field of the laser induced damage processes in optical coatings has been significantly extended during the last decades. Especially for the ultra-short pulse regime a clear correlation between the electronic material parameters and the laser damage threshold could be demonstrated. In the present study, the quantization in nanolaminates is investigated to gain a deeper insight into the behavior of the blue shift of the bandgap in specific coating materials as well as to find approximations for the effective mass of the electrons. The theoretical predictions are correlated to the measurements. © 2016 SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.Ministry for Science and Culture of Lower SaxonyVolkswagen Stiftun

Critical State Flux Penetration and Linear Microwave Vortex Response in YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-x} Films

The vortex contribution to the dc field (H) dependent microwave surface impedance Z_s = R_s+iX_s of YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-x} thin films was measured using suspended patterned resonators. Z_s(H) is shown to be a direct measure of the flux density B(H) enabling a very precise test of models of flux penetration. Three regimes of field-dependent behavior were observed: (1) Initial flux penetration occurs on very low field scales H_i(4.2K) 100Oe, (2) At moderate fields the flux penetration into the virgin state is in excellent agreement with calculations based upon the field-induced Bean critical state for thin film geometry, parametrized by a field scale H_s(4.2K) J_c*d 0.5T, (3) for very high fields H >>H_s, the flux density is uniform and the measurements enable direct determination of vortex parameters such as pinning force constants \alpha_p and vortex viscosity \eta. However hysteresis loops are in disagreement with the thin film Bean model, and instead are governed by the low field scale H_i, rather than by H_s. Geometric barriers are insufficient to account for the observed results.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX type, Uses REVTeX style files, Submitted to Physical Review B, 600 dpi PostScript file with high resolution figures available at http://sagar.physics.neu.edu/preprints.htm