Is Twenty-two Months Beyond the Best Interest of the Child? ASFA\u27s Guidelines for the Termination of Parental Rights

This Note first discusses the legal precedents, child development theories, and policies regarding reasonable efforts and parental termination that led to the enactment of ASFA. Next, it examines Illinois\u27s and New York\u27s different responses to ASFA. It also introduces the debate over congregate care as an alternative for those children who may never be returned to a parent\u27s care, but whom are unlikely to be adopted. Lastly, it argues that the New York system is more workable than the Illinois system given the complexities of the foster care system. This Note concludes by arguing the federal government\u27s rigid time frame for parental termination is overly simplistic because it makes it difficult for decision makers to account for various individual circumstances

Analysing regulatory systems in mixed public-private health systems: a new assessment tool and its application in India

Health systems in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the Asia-Pacific region can be characterised as mixed public-private systems, with common features such as blurred boundaries between public and private sectors, low government investment in public services and ineffectual policies and institutions for regulating health care.As a result, they encounter a range of performance issues, including poor quality and inequitable coverage of health services, health providers who exploit their market position for personal gain and high out-of-pocket expenditure for users, particularly the poor.Such problems reflect failures in the regulation of health care providers. However, in LMICs there is often little information on the specific nature of these failures or their causes to guide national and sub-national authorities in strengthening the regulation of their health systems.The Nossal Institute for Global Health and the Public Health Foundation of India collaborated in the development of a structured assessment tool that can be used to describe and assess regulatory systems and organisations and to identify gaps in the design, and failures in the implementation, of regulatory systems. The tool was then tested by assessing the regulatory systems at two sites in India with very different demographics and health care systems: Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.&nbsp

Design of frequency filters with active current elements

Tato bakalářská práce je věnována návrhu kmitočtových filtrů s proudovými aktivními prvky. V úvodní části se věnuji popisu základních vlastností a dělení filtrů. Dále jsou pak uvedeny některé možnosti postupu při navrhování takového filtru. Prvek CMI (Current Mirror and Inverter) se jeví jako nejvhodnější možnost řešení pro aplikace pracující v čistě proudovém módu. Název tohoto prvku by se dal přeložit jako Proudové zrcadlo a invertor, což i plně vystihuje jeho funkci. K návrhovým účelům slouží jeho zobecněná verze GCMI. Konkrétněji je v této práci popsána metoda návrhu pomocí autonomního obvodu vycházející z plné admitanční sítě s jedním i se dvěma aktivními prvky CMI. Z každé admitanční sítě je vždy odvozeno několik autonomních obvodů s minimálně čtyřmi pasivními prvky. Jednotlivé autonomní obvody jsou pak spolu s jejich charakteristickou rovnicí uvedeny v přehledné tabulce. Na závěr je ukázán návrh vybraného multifunkčního kmitočtového filtru pracujícího jak v proudovém tak v napěťovém módu i s jednotlivými charakteristikami pro jeho různé přenosové funkce.This bachelor's thesis deal with designing frequency filters with current active elements. Preamble is devoted to description of basic properties and division of filters. Next part presents some way of designing frequency filter. The element CMI (Current Mirror and Inverter) seems like optimal possible solution for application working in purely current mode. To design purposes serves generalized version GCMI. This thesis describes way of designing the autonomous circuit based on full admitance nets with one and two active elements CMI. Several autonomous circuits with four or five passive elements are derived from every admitance network. Individual autonomous circuits are then presented in chart with their characteristic equation. In conclusion is shown design of selected multifunction frequency filter working in current mode as in voltage mode together with characterization for its various transmission functions.

Demonstration Application of Algorithms for Closed Areas Filling in 2D

Tato práce se zabývá postupy použitými při vyplňování uzavřených oblastí ve 2D. V dokumentu jsou popsány algoritmy, které se k tomuto účelu nejčastěji využívají. Text popisuje obě hlavní skupiny těchto metod, tedy algoritmy vektorové i algoritmy rastrové. Jsou zde popsány klady a zápory jednotlivých vyplňovacích metod. Pro některé algoritmy jsou zde rovněž uvedeny optimalizace, nebo další možnosti jejich implementace. Další část tohoto textu se zabývá popisem implementace uvedeným metod s možností krokování jejich postupu. Závěr textu se věnuje popisu tříd, které jsou použité v aplikaci. Je zde také popsáno grafické uživatelské rozhraní.This thesis describes methods used for filling closed areas in 2D. This text describes the most frequently used algorithms for this task. The first part of thesis describes both the main groups, vector algorithms and raster algorithms. Positives and negatives of these algorithms are described. For few of these algorithms is also mentioned how to optimize this algorithms or how to implement them using a different way. Next part of this text describes implementation of these algorithms for purpose of tracing them into. Last part of this text describes classes used in application. Also graphic user interface is described here.

Investigating Trade-offs For Fair Machine Learning Systems

Fairness in software systems aims to provide algorithms that operate in a nondiscriminatory manner, with respect to protected attributes such as gender, race, or age. Ensuring fairness is a crucial non-functional property of data-driven Machine Learning systems. Several approaches (i.e., bias mitigation methods) have been proposed in the literature to reduce bias of Machine Learning systems. However, this often comes hand in hand with performance deterioration. Therefore, this thesis addresses trade-offs that practitioners face when debiasing Machine Learning systems. At first, we perform a literature review to investigate the current state of the art for debiasing Machine Learning systems. This includes an overview of existing debiasing techniques and how they are evaluated (e.g., how is bias measured). As a second contribution, we propose a benchmarking approach that allows for an evaluation and comparison of bias mitigation methods and their trade-offs (i.e., how much performance is sacrificed for improving fairness). Afterwards, we propose a debiasing method ourselves, which modifies already trained Machine Learning models, with the goal to improve both, their fairness and accuracy. Moreover, this thesis addresses the challenge of how to deal with fairness with regards to age. This question is answered with an empirical evaluation on real-world datasets

Digital Writing, Word Processors and Operations in Texts: How Student Writers Use Digital Resources in Academic Writing Processes

This study explores the use of digital technologies in the writing of an academic assignment. Fine-grained studies on student writing processes are scarce in previous research. In relation to the increasing demands on students’ writing, as well as the debate on students’ poor writing (Malmström, 2017), these issues are important to address. In this study, screen captures of five students’ essay processes are analyzed. The results show that students handle text at different levels: they make use of one or more word processors, arrange texts spatially on screens and use resources to operate directly in texts. Above all these actions seem to meet the need to move and navigate within one’s own text, an aspect that could be especially important in relation to the academic genre and for handling texts as artifacts in activity (Castelló & Iñesta, 2012; Prior, 2006). The results of the study point to the importance of making digital writing practices visible, especially those that could create possibilities to intertwine digital texts, thereby enhancing potentials for academic writing and meaning-making

The concept of contradiction in the study of cognitive development

In the psychology of cognitive development contradiction has been studied for two reasons. The first is that contradiction has been hypothesised to play a causal role in cognitive development. The second is that progress in children's understanding of contradiction exemplifies the development of their logical thinking. This thesis examines children's responses to contradiction from both these viewpoints. The thesis is divided into three parts. In Part 1 the hypothesis that ,contradiction plays a causal role in development is examined. Following a discussion of the literature (Chapter 1), the definitions of the terms used in the thesis are introduced (Chapter 2). In this chapter three different situations in which contradictions can be presented are distinguished. These are: 1) a contradiction between two internally represented beliefs, 2) a contra­ diction between an internally represented belief and an external source of information, and 3) a contradiction between two external sources of information. Part 1 of the thesis is concerned only with situations 1 and 2. In Chapter 3, Experiment 1 is described. In this experiment children aged from 5 to 11 years were presented with tasks exemplifying situation and situation 2 contradictions. The experiment found that children's reactions to contradiction varied according to the type of situation used to present the contradiction. The experimental findings also raised a problem with the situation 1 method of presenting a contradiction. Experiment 2 was therefore conducted with a small sample of 5 and 6 year old children as a methodological exercise to test the validity of this method of presenting contradictions to children (Chapter 4). It was concluded that this situation does not provide clear data on the children's reactions to contradiction because conclusions drawn from its use are highly dependant on the inferences made by the experimenter. In the third experiment,5, 7, 9 and 11 year old children were presented with contradiction using the situation 2 method of presentation (Chapter 5). From this experiment it was concluded that children are undisturbed by contradictions and simply assume that either their belief or the external source of information is incorrect. They consequently eliminate the contradiction. In Chapter 6 the evidence from the first three experiments is reviewed and integrated and it is concluded that there is no evidence to show that contradiction plays a causal role in cognitive development. In Part 2 of the thesis the understanding of contradiction as an examp1 e of log ica1 thinking is examined. Chapter 7 presents a review of the literature showing that there is some debate concerning the age at which children recognise and understand a contradiction in the situation 3 defined in Chapter 2 (a contradiction between two external sources of information). An experiment is then described (Chapter 8) in which 5 and 6 year old children were presented with a logical contradiction in a verbal form. It was found that 6 year old children could recognise the contradiction. This age is considerably lower than that found by several studies in the literature. One of these studies was then partially replicated (Chapter 9)with children of 5 to 11 years of age and it was found that children needed to be appreciably older than 6 years of age before recognising a contradiction. An apparent discrepancy between the findings of Experiment 5 and Experiment 4 therefore required explanation which is provided in Part 3 of the thesis. In Part 3 of the thesis the evidence from Parts 1 and 2 is integrated, and it is suggested that the use of the concept of "contradiction" to unify the situations used in experimentation, and the children's behaviours in these situations, is dysfunctional rather than functional. An alternative explanation is suggested, which is that two mechanisms are operating when the child reacts to a "contradiction". These are a test for consistency and a formal under­ standing of logic, including logical contradiction. The test for consistency is suggested to derive from the concept of identity and the formal understanding of logical contradiction from the development of formal operational thinking. Chapters 10 and 11 develop and illustrate these suggestions. It is finally proposed that the ideas presented in the final chapters provide one point of departure for future work in this area