A strong future for young people leaving out-of-home care

Young people leaving care or who have left care are over-represented in the statistics on homelessness, early school leaving and contact with the criminal justice system. They are also more likely to have children at an early age and are at greater risk of having their own child taken into care. Improving outcomes for young people who are leaving care requires a dual focus on improving the quality of care and providing better support to young people as they are transitioning from care. UnitingCare Chidlren Young People and Famliies has conducted a review of Australian and international policy and program approaches relevant to improving outcomes for young people who are transitioning from OOHC to adulthood. This paper sets out the key learnings from this review. The paper focuses on the policy changes that are needed for young people who are transitioning from care across the leaving and aftercare phases. It includes a six-point plan to improve outcomes for young people who are transitioning from OOHC to adulthood. While the paper focuses particularly on the NSW policy context it will also have relevance to readers in other Australian states and territories.   &nbsp

Addressing high rates of school suspension

This policy paper examines the impact of rising rates of school suspension on vulnerable children and young people. Often, the students suspended from school are those who can least afford to be absent from the classroom. Indeed, certain groups of students, including children and young people in out-of-home care, Aboriginal students and children with disabilities are suspended at disproportionate rates. Research indicates that school suspension is not effective because it doesn’t address the underlying issues which lead to disruptive behavior. Moreover, suspension intensifies academic difficulties, impairs employment prospects, places strains on family relationships and increases the risk of the student becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. The paper identifies four key areas where action is required to build learning environments that are inclusive of our most vulnerable children and young people and to turn around the high rates of school suspension

User benefits and funding strategies

A three-step, systematic method is described for selecting relevant and highly beneficial payloads for the Interim Upper Stage (IUS) that will be used with the space shuttle until the space tug becomes available. Viable cost-sharing strategies which would maximize the number of IUS payloads and the benefits obtainable under a limited NASA budget were also determined

A Gravitational Redshift Determination of the Mean Mass of White Dwarfs. DBA and DB Stars

We measure apparent velocities (v_app) of absorption lines for 36 white dwarfs (WDs) with helium-dominated atmospheres -- 16 DBAs and 20 DBs -- using optical spectra taken for the European Southern Observatory SN Ia progenitor survey (SPY). We find a difference of 6.9+/-6.9 km/s in the average apparent velocity of the H-alpha lines versus that of the HeI 5876AA for our DBAs. This is a measure of the blueshift of this He line due to pressure effects. By using this as a correction, we extend the gravitational redshift method employed by Falcon et al. (2010) to use the apparent velocity of the HeI 5876AA line and conduct the first gravitational redshift investigation of a group of WDs without visible hydrogen lines. We use biweight estimators to find an average apparent velocity, _BI, (and hence average gravitational redshift, _BI) for our WDs; from that we derive an average mass, _BI. For the DBAs, we find _BI = 40.8+/-4.7 km/s and derive _BI = 0.71 +0.04 -0.05 Msun. Though different from of DAs (32.57 km/s) at the 91% confidence level and suggestive of a larger DBA mean mass than that for normal DAs derived using the same method (0.647 +0.013 -0.014 Msun; Falcon et al. 2010), we do not claim this as a stringent detection. Rather, we emphasize that the difference between _BI of the DBAs and of normal DAs is no larger than 9.2 km/s, at the 95% confidence level; this corresponds to roughly 0.10 Msun. For the DBs, we find ^He_BI = 42.9+/-8.49 km/s after applying the blueshift correction and determine _BI = 0.74 +0.08 -0.09 Msun. The difference between ^He_BI of the DBs and of DAs is less than or equal to 11.5 km/s (~0.12 Msun), at the 95% confidence level. The gravitational redshift method indicates much larger mean masses than the spectroscopic determinations of the same sample by Voss et al. (2007)...Comment: Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal, 10 pages double-column, 3 figures, 5 table

Radical liberal values-based practice.

Values based practice is a radical view of the place of values in medicine which develops from a philosophical analysis of values, illness and the role of ethical principles. It denies two attractive and traditional views of medicine: that diagnosis is a merely factual matter and that the values that should guide treatment and management can be codified in principles. But it goes further in the adoption of a radical liberal view: that right or good outcome should be replaced by right process. I describe each of these three claims but caution against the third

A Comprehensive Spectroscopic Analysis of DB White Dwarfs

We present a detailed analysis of 108 helium-line (DB) white dwarfs based on model atmosphere fits to high signal-to-noise optical spectroscopy. We derive a mean mass of 0.67 Mo for our sample, with a dispersion of only 0.09 Mo. White dwarfs also showing hydrogen lines, the DBA stars, comprise 44% of our sample, and their mass distribution appears similar to that of DB stars. As in our previous investigation, we find no evidence for the existence of low-mass (M < 0.5 Mo) DB white dwarfs. We derive a luminosity function based on a subset of DB white dwarfs identified in the Palomar-Green survey. We show that 20% of all white dwarfs in the temperature range of interest are DB stars, although the fraction drops to half this value above Teff ~ 20,000 K. We also show that the persistence of DB stars with no hydrogen features at low temperatures is difficult to reconcile with a scenario involving accretion from the interstellar medium, often invoked to account for the observed hydrogen abundances in DBA stars. We present evidence for the existence of two different evolutionary channels that produce DB white dwarfs: the standard model where DA stars are transformed into DB stars through the convective dilution of a thin hydrogen layer, and a second channel where DB stars retain a helium-atmosphere throughout their evolution. We finally demonstrate that the instability strip of pulsating V777 Her white dwarfs contains no nonvariables, if the hydrogen content of these stars is properly accounted for.Comment: 74 pages including 30 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Application of Ion Cyclotron Resonance to the Study of Inelastic Excitation by Low-Energy Electrons

The geometry of the resonance cell employed for ion cyclotron resonance spectroscopy (1-3) is ideally suited for studying inelastic excitation by low-energy electrons. It has been shown that the electron beam traverses a parabolic potential well between the trapping electrodes, the depth of which is approximately half the applied trapping voltage (3,4). Low-energy electrons generated by impact excitation of an atomic or molecular energy level can be trapped in the resonance cell if their final translational energy is insufficient to escape the preset depth of the potential well. These electrons can be drifted from the source of the resonance region by applying the usual static drift field E normal to the primary magnetic field H (4). The electron drift velocity in this crossed field geometry, given by cE/H, is independent of both charge and mass. For typical values of E and H the drift velocity is in the range of 10^1-10^3 cm/sec. In the lower range of accessible drift velocities, the residence time of electrons in the resonance cell approaches 0.1 sec