A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Early Childhood Intervention: Evidence from an Experimental Evaluation of the Incredible Years Parenting Program.

A number of researchers and policy makers have recently argued that the most effective way of dealing with long-run disadvantage and the intergenerational transmission of poverty is through early childhood intervention and in particular policies aimed at supporting the family. This study was part of a randomised evaluation of the Incredible Years Program, which is aimed at improving the skills and parenting strategies of parents who have children with conduct problems. The results show that the treatment significantly reduced behavioural problems in young children. Furthermore our detailed cost analysis, when combined with a consideration of the potential long-run benefits associated with the programme, suggest that the long-run rate of return to society from this program is likely to be relatively high.

Rethinking elite integration

AbstractIn tsarist Russia, elite integration was a crucial component of empire building. While the status claimed by, or ascribed to, non-Russian elites helped determine the relationship between core and periphery, elite integration had an equally important latitudinal dimension. Careful study of the nuances of this process in Tavrida province (the former Crimean khanate) suggests that the ennoblement of borderland figures engendered a reconceptualization of the implications and accessibility of noble status throughout the empire. The case of the Crimean murzas, explored in this article, suggests that we rethink the geography of social categories and the dynamics of the process through which officials and elites curated noble society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The murzas were a diminutive population – never more than 500 at a given time – but they were Muslims in an era of religious toleration, former vassals of the sultan in the age of Russian-Ottoman rivalry, and heirs to steppe traditions in the midst of Russia’s attempt to reinvent herself as a European state. Determining whether and how a murza might become a nobleman therefore had wide-ranging logistical and ideological implications for imperial society.RésuméDans la Russie tsariste, l’intégration des élites était une composante cruciale de l’édification de l’empire. Alors que les statuts auxquels prétendaient les élites non russes, ou qui leur étaient attribués, aidaient à déterminer la relation entre le centre et la périphérie, l’intégration des élites revêtait une dimension latitudinale non moins importante. Une étude attentive des nuances de ce processus dans la province de Tauride (l’ex-khanat de Crimée) suggère que l’anoblissement des personnages importants des régions limitrophes engendrait une reconceptualisation des implications et de l’accessibilité au statut de noble dans tout l’Empire. Le cas étudié dans cet article, celui des mourzas de Crimée, propose de repenser la géographie des catégories sociales et les dynamiques du processus par lequel les officiels et les élites organisaient la société noble à la fin du xviiie et au tout début du xixe siècle. Les mourzas formaient un groupe de population très peu nombreux – jamais plus de cinq cents individus à une époque donnée – mais ils étaient musulmans dans une période de tolérance religieuse, anciens vassaux du sultan à l’époque de la rivalité russo-ottomane et héritiers des traditions de la steppe alors que la Russie tentait de se réinventer comme un État européen. De ce fait, déterminer si et comment un mourza pouvait être anobli avait des implications idéologiques et logistiques très diverses pour la société impériale

Microwave oven fabricated hybrid memristor devices for non-volatile memory storage

© 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd. Novel hybrid non-volatile memories made using an ultra-fast microwave heating method are reported for the first time. The devices, consisting of aligned ZnO nanorods embedded in poly (methyl methacrylate), require no forming step and exhibit reliable and reproducible bipolar resistive switching at low voltages and with low power usage. We attribute these properties to a combination of the high aspect ratio of the nanorods and the polymeric hybrid structure of the device. The extremely easy, fast and low-cost solution based method of fabrication makes possible the simple and quick production of cheap memory cells

Solution-processed bilayer photovoltaic devices with nematic liquid crystals

The cross-linking of polymerisable liquid crystalline semiconductors is a promising approach to solution-processable, multilayer, organic photovoltaics. Here we demonstrate an organic bilayer photovoltaic with an insoluble electron-donating layer formed by cross-linking a nematic reactive mesogen. We investigate a range of perylene diimide (PDI) materials, some of which are liquid crystalline, as the overlying electron acceptor layer. We find that carrier mobility of the acceptor materials is enhanced by liquid crystallinity and that mobility limits the performance of photovoltaic devices. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis

Simulating Troublesome Contexts: How Multiple Roles within Ward-Based Simulations Promote Professional Nursing Competence

Nursing care is multifaceted and is practised within complex healthcare environments. Although the concept of competence itself is tenuous (Watson et al. 2002), achievement of nursing competencies remains an essential prerequisite for nurse registration in Ireland. The domains of nursing competence are: professional/ethical practice; holistic approaches to care and the integration of knowledge; organization and management of care; personal and professional development; and interpersonal relationships (An Bord Altranais 2005). At a conceptual level, these can be likened, somewhat, to threshold concepts insofar as they represent important transitions of practice and understanding. In this article, we illustrate how a ward-based simulation exercise with evolving scenarios and multiple role performances mimics ‘troublesome contexts’. We find that this exercise successfully promotes both nurse competence and understanding of threshold concepts through the embodiment of multiple identities (e.g. nurse, patient, relative, observer, etc.). Evaluations of this activity amongst a cohort of final year nursing students have consistently identified the transformative nature of this activity, particularly when acting in the ‘patient’ role. In this article, we describe the processes inherent in this simulation exercise and how the multiple layers of complexity are achieved. The very act of performing multiple identities and roles within an evolving complex environment we suggest, results in a consequential, transformed view (Meyer and Land 2003) of values, attitudes and behaviours in addition to enhancing nursing competence. Evidence of this is demonstrated in evaluations of the debriefing exercise undertaken immediately following simulation

Principles of entrepreneurship (ENT 530): Business model canvas: The Dee Dee’s Chocolate / Shawn O’Neill Anak Kelly

The Dee Dee’s Chocolate are established in the end of the 2019 year. It is a business that are selling popular foods that are usually in high demand during public holidays which is in Raya and Gawai Festive season. Besides this business is a partnership business as the owner of this company which is Shawn O’niel anak Kellly as an owner and with it’s her partnership with his mother which is Nora anak Nanta. It is established due to his mother want to have a business which is selling food. This is because due to her business experience at her young age, it gets the attention of his son. Therefore, its owner is willingly help his mother to fulfil her ambition due to his son has the same passion as her. Besides that, we start selling our product at the end of 2019 till this day. Even though there are some calamities that makes a difficulty to sell our product, it is not enough to break our determination to do our best to make our business to become successful than before. As we can see from the festive season that will be coming soon on June, it is a perfect opportunity to sell our product due to its high demand from people especially at the Kota Samarahan area. Even though there are some slides up and down within our business, we are able to execute our business task with a little difficulty. This is because we are selling our product at reasonable price but at high quality that can satisfy the needs of our customer. Despite having a competitor that sells similar product as us within the Samarahan area, it gives us a healthy competition between each other as it has its own pro and cons while executing the business. In order to keep up with other competitor advantages, we offer a delivery service of our product towards our customer in order to keep our business in good condition. Due to its good feedback from our customer, it shows a positive sign to our business to operate in a long period of time. Without the feedback and critics from our customer, our businesses might not be as successful as it happens on this day. Thus, it gives us a chance to fulfil our goals to be a successful company that are selling the Kuih Chocolate Almond London and Chocolate Cookies without having a problem

Heuristics and policies for online pickup and delivery problems

Master ThesisIn the last few decades, increased attention has been dedicated to a speci c subclass of Vehicle Routing Problems due to its signi cant importance in several transportation areas such as taxi companies, courier companies, transportation of people, organ transportation, etc. These problems are characterized by their dynamicity as the demands are, in general, unknown in advance and the corresponding locations are paired. This thesis addresses a version of such Dynamic Pickup and Delivery Problems, motivated by a problem arisen in an Australian courier company, which operates in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, where almost every day more than a thousand transportation orders arrive and need to be accommodated. The rm has a eet of almost two hundred vehicles of various types, mostly operating within the city areas. Thus, whenever new orders arrive at the system the dispatchers face a complex decision regarding the allocation of the new customers within the distribution routes (already existing or new) taking into account a complex multi-level objective function. The thesis thus focuses on the process of learning simple dispatch heuristics, and lays the foundations of a recommendation system able to rank such heuristics. We implemented eight of these, observing di erent characteristics of the current eet and orders. It incorporates an arti cial neural network that is trained on two hundred days of past data, and is supervised by schedules produced by an oracle, Indigo, which is a system able to produce suboptimal solutions to problem instances. The system opens the possibility for many dispatch policies to be implemented that are based on this rule ranking, and helps dispatchers to manage the vehicles of the eet. It also provides results for the human resources required each single day and within the di erent periods of the day. We complement the quite promising results obtained with a discussion on future additions and improvements such as channel eet management, tra c consideration, and learning hyper-heuristics to control simple rule sequences.The thesis work was partially supported by the National ICT Australia according to the Visitor Research Agreement contract between NICTA and Martin Damyanov Aleksandro

Novel liquid crystalline organic semiconducting oligomers incorporating N-heterocyclic carbazole moieties for fluorescent OLEDs

A novel class of nematic liquid crystalline organic semiconducting oligomers incorporating N-heterocyclic carbazole moieties has been synthesised using simple and highly efficient reaction pathways. The electroluminescent colour of these novel oligomers can be varied in a controlled manner by molecular design. The values of the ionization potential and the electron affinity of these electroluminescent oligomers can also be matched by structural design to the HOMO energy level of the electron-blocking layer and the LUMO energy level of electron-transporting layer in the OLEDs to create low charge-injection barriers for electrons and holes, respectively leading to electroluminescence with an efficacy up to 4.1 cd A-1

White-light OLEDs using liquid crystal polymer networks

We have mixed nematic light-emitting liquid crystals and incorporated them as insoluble cross-linked polymer networks in a liquid crystal white-light organic light-emitting diode (LC-WOLED). The light emission is not voltage-dependent and polarized white light emission is also demonstrated. This wet-chemistry approach to WOLEDs is compatible with patterning by photolithography as well as by inkjet printing at room temperature on plastic substrates by roll-to-roll manufacturing