A Police Probation Partnership: One City\u27s Response to Serious Habitual Juvenile Offending

The purpose of this study is to explore a police/probation collaboration in a large Western police department. While many of these collaborative approaches to crime and disorder have been formed, there has been scant empirical research conducted on their effectiveness. As such, this study explores the implementation and impact of a formal collaboration on both the police and probation departments, the juveniles targeted by the collaboration and the local juvenile justice system. In addition, this thesis addresses whether police and probation departments can maintain coordinating relationships to equitably, efficiently and effectively control delinquency in one Western city. This study is mainly qualitative in that observations and unstructured interviews provide most of the data. This qualitative analysis is based on 105 hours of fieldwork and 34 unstructured interviews between January 26, 2000 and February 10, 2000. Quantitative agency data were also collected for descriptive analyses of the program’s selection process, as well as the types of juveniles participating in the program. The findings from this study suggest that the police/probation collaboration in Doggington operates inside an exchange system. As such, the collaboration has mended strained relationships between the police and probation departments. In addition, the collaboration is impacting both the juveniles participating in the program, as well as the local juvenile justice system. The analysis of Doggington’s police/probation collaboration provides an excellent example of how two interdependent criminal justice agencies dealt with their conflicting ideologies and effectively coordinated in order to produce what appear to be equitable, efficient, and, possibly, effective results

Space shuttle nonmetallic materials age life prediction

The chemiluminescence from samples of polybutadiene, Viton, Teflon, Silicone, PL 731 Adhesive, and SP 296 Boron-Epoxy composite was measured at temperatures from 25 to 150 C. Excellent correlations were obtained between chemiluminescence and temperature. These correlations serve to validate accelerated aging tests (at elevated temperatures) designed to predict service life at lower temperatures. In most cases, smooth or linear correlations were obtained between chemiluminescence and physical properties of purified polymer gums, including the tensile strength, viscosity, and loss tangent. The latter is a complex function of certain polymer properties. Data were obtained with far greater ease by the chemiluminescence technique than by the conventional methods of study. The chemiluminescence from the Teflon (Halon) samples was discovered to arise from trace amounts of impurities, which were undetectable by conventional, destructive analysis of the sample

Shifting lenses on Youth LIteracy and Identity

Racialized youth, especially those who attend chronically underperforming schools in US\u27s poor and urban communities, can be likened to singing canaries. These young people risk their lives by entering educational institutions that are not equipped to properly prepare them for the future. Historically, the canary served to warn coal miners of the presence of dangerous gases. When the canary stopped singing or was found dead, the miners knew a serious problem required immediate attention. Like canaries, racialized youth in inner-city schools are a litmus test for the health of the entire educational system in the US. In this article they first offer a diverse set of lenses for looking at issues of literacy and identity among racialized youth. By shifting their gaze beyond the concepts of risk and failure they challenge school librarians to adopt more-constructive lenses that change how they see (and consequently support) the literacy and identity needs of marginalized youth

The Effect of Macro Information Environment Change on the Quality of Management Earnings Forecasts

The 1990s were characterized by substantial increases in the performance of and investor reliance on financial analysts. Because managers possess superior private information and issue forecasts to align investors’ expectations with their own, we predict that managers increased the quality of their earnings forecasts during the 1990s in order to keep pace with the improved forward-looking information provided by financial analysts, upon which investors increasingly relied. Using a sample of 2,437 management earnings forecasts, we document an increase in management earnings forecast precision, management earnings forecast accuracy, and managers’ tendency to explain earnings forecasts in 1993-1996 relative to 1983-1986. Given that these forecast characteristics are linked to greater informativeness and credibility, we also document that the information content of management earnings forecasts, as measured by the strength of share price responses to forecast news, increased in 1993 -1996 relative to 1983-1986. As expected, the increased information content of management forecasts primarily occurred for firms covered by financial analysts

EFFECTS OF PRESENCE, COPRESENCE, AND FLOW ONLEARNING OUTCOMES IN 3D LEARNING SPACES

The level of satisfaction and effectiveness of 3D virtual learning environments were examined. Additionally, 3D virtual learning environments were compared with face-to-face learning environments. Students that experienced higher levels of flow and presence also experienced more satisfaction but not necessarily more effectiveness with 3D virtual learning environments. There were no significant differences between satisfaction and effectiveness of 3D virtual learning environments and face-to-face environments. These findings suggest that 3D virtual learning environments can be made to provide high levels of learning satisfaction. Additionally, these findings suggest that 3D virtual learning environments may be a viable delivery method for instruction and training because they compare favorably with face-to-face learning environments

New horizons for newborn brain protection: enhancing endogenous neuroprotection.

Intrapartum-related events are the third leading cause of childhood mortality worldwide and result in one million neurodisabled survivors each year. Infants exposed to a perinatal insult typically present with neonatal encephalopathy (NE). The contribution of pure hypoxia-ischaemia (HI) to NE has been debated; over the last decade, the sensitising effect of inflammation in the aetiology of NE and neurodisability is recognised. Therapeutic hypothermia is standard care for NE in high-income countries; however, its benefit in encephalopathic babies with sepsis or in those born following chorioamnionitis is unclear. It is now recognised that the phases of brain injury extend into a tertiary phase, which lasts for weeks to years after the initial insult and opens up new possibilities for therapy.There has been a recent focus on understanding endogenous neuroprotection and how to boost it or to supplement its effectors therapeutically once damage to the brain has occurred as in NE. In this review, we focus on strategies that can augment the body's own endogenous neuroprotection. We discuss in particular remote ischaemic postconditioning whereby endogenous brain tolerance can be activated through hypoxia/reperfusion stimuli started immediately after the index hypoxic-ischaemic insult. Therapeutic hypothermia, melatonin, erythropoietin and cannabinoids are examples of ways we can supplement the endogenous response to HI to obtain its full neuroprotective potential. Achieving the correct balance of interventions at the correct time in relation to the nature and stage of injury will be a significant challenge in the next decade

Internationally trained pharmacists in Great Britain: what do registration data tell us about their recruitment?

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Amplitude dependent frequency, desynchronization, and stabilization in noisy metapopulation dynamics

The enigmatic stability of population oscillations within ecological systems is analyzed. The underlying mechanism is presented in the framework of two interacting species free to migrate between two spatial patches. It is shown that that the combined effects of migration and noise cannot account for the stabilization. The missing ingredient is the dependence of the oscillations' frequency upon their amplitude; with that, noise-induced differences between patches are amplified due to the frequency gradient. Migration among desynchronized regions then stabilizes a "soft" limit cycle in the vicinity of the homogenous manifold. A simple model of diffusively coupled oscillators allows the derivation of quantitative results, like the functional dependence of the desynchronization upon diffusion strength and frequency differences. The oscillations' amplitude is shown to be (almost) noise independent. The results are compared with a numerical integration of the marginally stable Lotka-Volterra equations. An unstable system is extinction-prone for small noise, but stabilizes at larger noise intensity

Cross-slot extensional rheometry and the steady-state extensional response of long chain branched polymer melts

Stress-optical measurements at a flow stagnation point in confined geometries such as the cross-slot provide an elegant way to perform extensional testing for polymer melts. This technique is especially useful for samples which have a steady-state that cannot be reached (easily) in standard elongational rheometry, for example, highly branched polymers which show a non-homogeneous deformation that occurs in stretching experiments for Hencky strains above 4. In contrast to filament stretching, the cross-slot provides one point at which steady-state extensional flow may be sustained indefinitely. In this study, a Cambridge multi-pass rheometer [ Coventry, K. D., and M. R. Mackley, J. Rheol. 52, 401–415 (2008) ] is used to generate planar elongational flow in a cross-slot geometry for different polyethylene melts. The experimental results are compared to finite element flow simulations using the multi-mode Pompom constitutive equations. The steady-state elongational viscosity at the stagnation point is computed from the flow-induced stress birefringence and the strain-rate determined from numerical calculations of the flow field. We apply this technique to a range of different branched high- and low-density polyethylene melts. This demonstrates both the effectiveness of this technique and shows how the stress distribution in a complex flow depends on molecular structure. Cross slot extensional rheometry therefore provides a very promising technique for parameterizing molecular constitutive equations for LCB melts