The Transformation Process of Fathers of Children with Disabilities: An Exploratory Case Study

While the vital role that fathers play in the development of their children is emphasized in recent literature, the majority of research relative to child development focuses on mothers. This imbalance is even more evident relative to research with parents of children with disabilities, leaving human service providers with few evidence based practices for appropriately addressing the needs of fathers raising children with disabilities. Research suggests that having a child with a disability, while challenging, can also have a significant positive impact on the family system and potentially offer a transformational experience for the parent. Guided by a theoretical model of transformational outcomes, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate how two veteran fathers of children with disabilities describe their transformative process. Using qualitative inquiry methods, the fathers’ were interviewed and their narratives were transcribed and analyzed to discover emerging themes. Findings indicated that laughter was a prominent emotion throughout the narrative and that the fathers used both positive and negative descriptors to define their experiences. Implications of these findings for human service professionals supporting families of children with disabilities are discussed. Attending to the unique needs of fathers can improve the overall functionality of the family system

Afghan Languages in a Larger Context of Central and South Asia

The pioneer Western investigator of the languages of Afghanistan, Georg Morgenstierne, who began his work in 1924, called Afghanistan linguistically “one of the most interesting countries on earth.” Linguistic work by local scholars began in the following generation. When one of us [Spooner] first met Dr. A. G. Ravan Farhadi (the author of Le Persan Parlé en Afghanistan, 1953) in Kabul in 1972, he announced that in the latest count the number of languages known in Afghanistan had reached 48

Graph reasoning with context-aware linearization for interpretable fact extraction and verification

This paper presents an end-to-end system for fact extraction and verification using textual and tabular evidence, the performance of which we demonstrate on the FEVEROUS dataset. We experiment with both a multi-task learning paradigm to jointly train a graph attention network for both the task of evidence extraction and veracity prediction, as well as a single objective graph model for solely learning veracity prediction and separate evidence extraction. In both instances, we employ a framework for per-cell linearization of tabular evidence, thus allowing us to treat evidence from tables as sequences. The templates we employ for linearizing tables capture the context as well as the content of table data. We furthermore provide a case study to show the interpretability our approach. Our best performing system achieves a FEVEROUS score of 0.23 and 53% label accuracy on the blind test data

Ongoing over-exploitation and delayed responses to environmental change highlight the urgency for action to promote vertebrate recoveries by 2030

To safeguard nature, we must understand the drivers of biodiversity loss. Time-delayed biodiversity responses to environmental changes (ecological lags) are often absent from models of biodiversity change, despite their well-documented existence. We quantify how lagged responses to climate and land-use change have influenced mammal and bird populations around the world, while incorporating effects of direct exploitation and conservation interventions. Ecological lag duration varies between drivers, vertebrate classes and body size groupings-e.g. lags linked to climate-change impacts are 13 years for small birds, rising to 40 years for larger species. Past warming and land conversion generally combine to predict population declines; however, such conditions are associated with population increases for small mammals. Positive effects of management (>+4% annually for large mammals) and protected areas (>+6% annually for large birds) on population trends contrast with the negative impact of exploitation (<-7% annually for birds), highlighting the need to promote sustainable use. Model projections suggest a future with winners (e.g. large birds) and losers (e.g. medium-sized birds), with current/recent environmental change substantially influencing abundance trends to 2050. Without urgent action, including effective conservation interventions and promoting sustainable use, ambitious targets to stop declines by 2030 may already be slipping out of reach

Rapid uranium-series age screening of carbonates by laser ablation mass spectrometry

AbstractUranium-series dating is a critical tool in quaternary geochronology, including paleoclimate work, archaeology and geomorphology. Laser ablation (LA) methods are not as precise as most isotope dilution methods, but can be used to generate calendar ages rapidly, expanding the range of dating tools that can be applied to late Pleistocene carbonates. Here, existing LA methods are revisited for corals (cold- and warm-water) and speleothems spanning the last 343 thousand years (ka). Measurement of the required isotopes (238U, 234U, 230Th and 232Th) is achieved by coupling a laser system to a multi-collector inductively-coupled-plasma mass spectrometer (MC-ICPMS) using a combination of a single central ion counter and an array of Faraday cups. Each sample analysis lasts for ∼4.3 min, and fifty samples can be measured in 12 h with an automated set up, after a day of sample preparation. The use of different standard materials and laser systems had no significant effect on method accuracy. Uncertainty on the measured (230Th/238U) activity ratios ranges from 5.4% to 7.6% for (230Th/238U) ratios equal to 0.7 and 0.1 respectively. Much of this uncertainty can be attributed to the heterogeneity of the standard material (230Th/238U) at the length scale of LA. A homogeneous standard material may therefore improve measurement uncertainty but is not a requirement for age-screening studies. The initial (234U/238U) of coral samples can be determined within ∼20‰, making it useful as a first indicator of open-system behaviour. For cold-water corals, success in determination of (232Th/238U) – which can affect final age accuracy – by LA depended strongly on sample heterogeneity. Age uncertainties (2 sigma) ranged from <0.8 ka at 0–10 ka, ∼1.5 ka at 20 ka to ∼15 ka at 125 ka. Thus, we have demonstrated that U-series dating by LA-MC-ICPMS can be usefully applied to a range of carbonate materials as a straightforward age-screening technique