Masslessness of ghosts in equivariantly gauge-fixed Yang--Mills theories

We show that the one-loop ghost self-energy in an equivariantly gauge-fixed Yang--Mills theory vanishes at zero momentum. A ghost mass is forbidden by equivariant BRST symmetry, and our calculation confirms this explicitly. The four-ghost self interaction which appears in the equivariantly gauge-fixed Yang--Mills theory is needed in order to obtain this result.Comment: 8 pages, revte

Grit and Legal Education

One factor that has received much attention in recent years is “grit,” which has been defined as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Although grit has been studied in a number of different contexts, grit is understudied in the context of legal education. In light of the existing research regarding grit and performance, and the ongoing interest in law student learning, motivation, and performance, we undertook a research project to investigate the relationship between grit and law school academic performance. Although we hypothesized that grit would be positively related to law school GPA, we did not find a statistically significant relationship (positive or negative) between grit and law school GPA. In addition to examining the relationship between grit and law school GPA, we also conducted exploratory analyses to compare the grit scores of women and men. These analyses indicated a statistically significant difference between the grit levels of female and male participants, with female participants having higher levels of grit. The results of our research project raise questions about the role of grit in legal education and, most importantly, point the way for future research regarding grit, legal education, and law practice. The remainder of this article will discuss our research and the implications of this research. Specifically, Part II of the article situates our research within existing research regarding grit and performance, and regarding the law school experiences of female and male law students. Part III describes the methodology of our research project. Part IV presents the results of the project. Part V of the article discusses these results and the implications of these results. Part V also discusses the limitations of this research and identifies avenues for further research regarding law students and grit. Part VI concludes

Prospectus, April 11, 2007

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2007/1009/thumbnail.jp

Three Cs of Translating Evidence‐Based Programs for Youth and Families to Practice Settings

Despite the growing number of evidence‐based programs (EBPs) for youth and families, few are well‐integrated in service systems or widely adopted by communities. One set of challenges to widespread adoption of EBPs relates to the transfer of programs from research and development to practice settings. This is often because program developers have limited guidance on how to prepare their programs for broad dissemination in practice settings. We describe Three Cs of Translation, which are key areas that are essential for developers to translate their EBPs from research to practice settings: (1) Communicate the underlying theory in terms easily understandable to end users, (2) Clarify fidelity and flexibility, and (3) Codify implementation lessons and examples. Program developers are in the best position to describe their interventions, to define intervention core components, to clarify fidelity and flexibility, and to codify implementation lessons from intervention studies. We note several advantages for developers to apply the Three Cs prior to intervention dissemination and provide specific recommendations for translation. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113697/1/cad20111.pd

Prospectus, January 31, 2007

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2007/1002/thumbnail.jp

Selecting, Implementing and Adapting Youth Empowerment Solutions

YES is an evidence-based program that empowers youth to make positive changes in their communities and to work with adults who support their efforts. The goals of the YES program are to: 1) provide youth with opportunities for meaningful involvement in preventing youth violence and creating community change; 2) enhance the ability of adults to support youth in an empowerment framework; and 3) change the social and physical environment to reduce and prevent violence (especially youth violence). The purpose of this guide is to assist organizations and communities in making decisions about selecting, implementing and adapting the Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES) program. It is designed for individuals who are responsible for choosing, supervising and carrying out youth programs. This guide is intended to be used in conjunction with the Youth Empowerment Solutions for Peaceful Communities curriculum, which is available for download through the YES website: http://yes.sph.umich.edu/curriculum/CDC Foundationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110221/1/YES Adaptation Guide FINAL.pdfDescription of YES Adaptation Guide FINAL.pdf : YES Adaptation Guid

Prospectus, September 28, 2006

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2006/1021/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, April 18, 2007

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2007/1010/thumbnail.jp

Prospectus, March 7, 2007

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2007/1007/thumbnail.jp

Global, regional, and national under-5 mortality, adult mortality, age-specific mortality, and life expectancy, 1970–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

BACKGROUND: Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016. METHODS: We have evaluated how well civil registration systems captured deaths using a set of demographic methods called death distribution methods for adults and from consideration of survey and census data for children younger than 5 years. We generated an overall assessment of completeness of registration of deaths by dividing registered deaths in each location-year by our estimate of all-age deaths generated from our overall estimation process. For 163 locations, including subnational units in countries with a population greater than 200 million with complete vital registration (VR) systems, our estimates were largely driven by the observed data, with corrections for small fluctuations in numbers and estimation for recent years where there were lags in data reporting (lags were variable by location, generally between 1 year and 6 years). For other locations, we took advantage of different data sources available to measure under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) using complete birth histories, summary birth histories, and incomplete VR with adjustments; we measured adult mortality rate (the probability of death in individuals aged 15-60 years) using adjusted incomplete VR, sibling histories, and household death recall. We used the U5MR and adult mortality rate, together with crude death rate due to HIV in the GBD model life table system, to estimate age-specific and sex-specific death rates for each location-year. Using various international databases, we identified fatal discontinuities, which we defined as increases in the death rate of more than one death per million, resulting from conflict and terrorism, natural disasters, major transport or technological accidents, and a subset of epidemic infectious diseases; these were added to estimates in the relevant years. In 47 countries with an identified peak adult prevalence for HIV/AIDS of more than 0·5% and where VR systems were less than 65% complete, we informed our estimates of age-sex-specific mortality using the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP)-Spectrum model fitted to national HIV/AIDS prevalence surveys and antenatal clinic serosurveillance systems. We estimated stillbirths, early neonatal, late neonatal, and childhood mortality using both survey and VR data in spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression models. We estimated abridged life tables for all location-years using age-specific death rates. We grouped locations into development quintiles based on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and analysed mortality trends by quintile. Using spline regression, we estimated the expected mortality rate for each age-sex group as a function of SDI. We identified countries with higher life expectancy than expected by comparing observed life expectancy to anticipated life expectancy on the basis of development status alone. FINDINGS: Completeness in the registration of deaths increased from 28% in 1970 to a peak of 45% in 2013; completeness was lower after 2013 because of lags in reporting. Total deaths in children younger than 5 years decreased from 1970 to 2016, and slower decreases occurred at ages 5-24 years. By contrast, numbers of adult deaths increased in each 5-year age bracket above the age of 25 years. The distribution of annualised rates of change in age-specific mortality rate differed over the period 2000 to 2016 compared with earlier decades: increasing annualised rates of change were less frequent, although rising annualised rates of change still occurred in some locations, particularly for adolescent and younger adult age groups. Rates of stillbirths and under-5 mortality both decreased globally from 1970. Evidence for global convergence of death rates was mixed; although the absolute difference between age-standardised death rates narrowed between countries at the lowest and highest levels of SDI, the ratio of these death rates-a measure of relative inequality-increased slightly. There was a strong shift between 1970 and 2016 toward higher life expectancy, most noticeably at higher levels of SDI. Among countries with populations greater than 1 million in 2016, life expectancy at birth was highest for women in Japan, at 86·9 years (95% UI 86·7-87·2), and for men in Singapore, at 81·3 years (78·8-83·7) in 2016. Male life expectancy was generally lower than female life expectancy between 1970 and 2016, an