Parental Substance Abuse and Foster Care: Evidence from Two Methamphetamine Supply Shocks

Foster care caseloads have almost doubled over the last two decades, but the cause of the growth is poorly understood. We study the role of parental methamphetamine (meth) use, which social workers have linked to recent growth in foster care admissions. To mitigate the impact of omitted variable bias, we take advantage of two significant, exogenous supply-side interventions in meth markets in 1995 and 1997, and find robust evidence that meth use has caused growth in foster care caseloads. Further, we identify the mechanisms by which increased meth use caused an increase in foster care caseloads. First, we find that treatment for meth abuse caused foster caseloads to fall in situations where a child was removed because of parental incarceration, suggesting that substance abuse treatment is a substitute for foster care services and more generally an effective demand-side intervention. Secondly, we find that parental meth use causes an increase in both child abuse and child neglect foster care cases. These results suggest that child welfare policies should be designed specifically for the children of meth-using parents.child welfare, illegal drugs, crime

Student Attitude to Audio Versus Written Feedback

First year Biology at the University of Glasgow consists of two courses, 1A and 1B, with an annual intake of 750-800 students. Both courses consist of lectures, practical lab sessions, tutorials and discussion groups. With such large numbers of students, teaching methods and delivery continually change and develop to ensure best delivery of the course content. As such, assessment and feedback systems also need to remain current and accessible to all. Timely, instructive and developmental feedback on student work is arguably the most powerful single influence on a student’s ability to learn. As part of the transition from school into university, feedback is a recognised method of maximising student potential (Hattie and Timperley, 2007). Research shows that increasing student numbers and associated rise in marking workloads, means that feedback can be slow in returning to the student and lacking quality/detail (Glover and Brown, 2006). From the markers perspective there is some evidence that students fail to engage with, misinterpret or ignore written feedback. We have carried out a pilot study to apply, and attempt to build upon, principles of good feedback practice to the assessment of coursework. To do this, an essay assignment was submitted online by Biology 1A students, marked and written feedback provided to all. A randomly selected group of students (10% of the cohort) also received audio feedback (electronic audio files were imbedded into the student work and returned to them by e-mail) on their submitted work. All students then completed an anonymous ‘Feedback’ questionnaire detailing their experiences with the feedback they received, with additional questions that were answered solely by the ‘audio group’ asking more specific questions about the effectiveness of the audio feedback. To carry out this study, new technologies were utilised and these will be demonstrated at the meeting along with the study conclusions. Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007) The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81–112 Glover, C. and Brown, E. (2006). Written Feedback for Students: too much, too detailed or too incomprehensible to be effective? Bioscience Education, 7

Faith, Belief and Fictionalism

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Finlay Malcolm and Michael Scott, ‘Faith, Belief and Fictionalism’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, December 2017, which has been published in final form at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12169. Under embargo until 5 August 2018. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Is propositional religious faith constituted by belief? Recent debate hasfocussed on whether faith may be constituted by a positive non-doxastic cognitivestate, which can stand in place of belief. This article sets out and defends thedoxastic theory. We consider and reject three arguments commonly used infavour of non-doxastic theories of faith: (1) the argument from religious doubt;(2) the use of ‘faith’ in linguistic utterances; and (3) the possibility of pragmaticfaith. We argue that belief is required to maintain a distinction between genuinefaith, pretend faith, and fictionalist faith.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Bioeconomic Modelling for Fisheries

Current fisheries advice requires an increased consideration of bioeconomics and the interactions of fishing fleets with the biological stocks. This is particularly important when evaluating proposed multi-annual management plans. To achieve this, modelling tools need to be able to consider the dynamics of individual fisheries. This becomes more challenging with mixed fisheries when multiple species are caught by multiple fleets. A suitable balance needs to be found between replicating the details of the complex fishery system and simplifying a model to the level that makes it tractable but still useful. Much of the bioeconomic fisheries modelling work performed at the JRC uses the FLR software framework. The JRC has developed a new FLR package, FLasher, for performing projections and forecasts with multiple individual fisheries and multiple species. This allows the dynamics of mixed fisheries to be more accurately modelled and allows the evaluation of the economic performance of alternative management decisions. This document presents some of the features and capabilites of FLasher using a case study based on a semi-realistic flatfish fishery: two fleets with different selectiviuty patterns, bottom trawl and gillnet, catching two species with different life histories and maximum sizes, European plaice (Pleuronectes platessa) and common sole (Solea solea). FLasher expands the current modelling capabilities of FLR, allowing the impacts of proposed management plans to be evaluated in greater detail by (1) explicitly modelling the dynamics of each individual fleets, which could be affected in different ways by management, (2) forecasting in parallel the full species and fleet assemblage found in mixed fisheries, and (3) employing the latest iteration of the C++ language and a new library for automatic differentation.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Evaluation and design of fisheries management plans: detecting the impact of management measures on fisheries dynamics using distance correlation.

The development and implementation of fisheries management plans can be expensive and time consuming. It is therefore essential to be able to determine if a plan has been effective in achieving its objectives. When the objectives of a management plan have been achieved (for example F, has been reduced to below some threshold level) it is important to determine if it was as a direct result of elements of the plan (for example, TAC restricting fishing mortality) or because of an external factor that was not included or considered by the plan (for example, fuel price rises causing a reduction in fishing effort). In the former case, we want to be able to understand which aspects of a management plan were effective so they can be considered in the design for future plans. In the latter case, there is the possibility of falsely attributing success to aspects of a plan that had no impact, thereby needlessly including them in the design of future plans. These issues can become more complicated in mixed fisheries where multiple gear types catch multiple stocks because interactions between the different biological and economic elements are not straightforward.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair

Analysis of success of achieving fishing mortality levels for the Northwest Mediterranean Multi-annual plan.

The evaluation of multi-annual plans to manage demersal fisheries performed by STECF (2016) is revisited to calculate an additional indicator of fishing mortality that better captures the effect of using ranges. The results presented are more aligned with the recent multi-annual plans objectives of providing flexible tactics. The analysis is still not a mixed fisheries analysis, it is an alternative approach to the one used by STECF (2016) which increases the degree of comparability across the different options, in particular across single point target approaches and value-range approaches.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Review of Progress in JRC Bioeconomic Modelling

1. Much of the bioeconomic modelling work performed at the JRC has been in relation to the evaluation of proposed multi-annual management plans for fisheries. These plans increasingly require the calculation and consideration of a range of economic indicators. A key element of this work is the parameterisation of the fisheries bioeconomic models. These models require a mix of economic, fisheries and biological data. The required data may be available in different data calls making it necessary to integrate data from different data sets. This integration can be performed using the common variables between the data sets, known as transversal variables. However, the different data sets can report the data at different aggregation levels. This makes linking the data sets challenging, particularly as the evaluation of a management plan requires the economic costs and revenues to be at the same scale as the plan. Modelling approaches have been developed to overcome the different levels of aggregation 2. The methods developed at the JRC for linking the data and parameterising the models were applied to STECF evaluations of multi-annual management plans in the North Sea and the Western Mediterranean. When the data is of a suitable quality the method works well even when the fisheries are complicated and involve multiple species being fished by multiple gears, for example with the North Sea evaluation. However, when the data is poor, for example with the Western Mediterranean evaluation, it is not possible to perform this type of analysis. This problem will remain unless the data collection process is improved. 3. Even when data is not missing there is the concern that it is being recorded differently by the member states, i.e. even within the same data set the data is not consistent. For example, Member States can interpret fishing effort differently. To help ensure consistency between data sets two workshops have been held on transversal variables. One of the outcomes of these workshops is a JRC led package for R, fecR, that will allow the transparent and repeatable calculation of two different types of fishing effort. 4. This report presents the experiences from two STECF EWG where the JRC modelling approaches has been used and the new R package for effort calculation.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

Multispecies, trait and community size spectrum ecological modelling in R (mizer)

Size spectrum ecological models have emerged as a conceptually simple way to model a large community of individuals which grow and change trophic level during their lives. They are a subset of physiologically structured models where growth (and thus maturation) is food dependent, and processes are formulated in terms of individual level processes. A key feature is that of a size spectrum, where the total abundance of individuals at size scales negatively with size: there are more small things than big things. Mizer is a software package for implementing size spectrum ecological models using the R statistical programming environment. The package has been developed to model marine ecosystems that are subject to fishing.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair

Generating the CFP indicators sampling frame for FAO area 27 (Northeast Atlantic)

For the analysis of the CFP indicators it is necessary to generate the sampling frame. The sampling frame is the collection of species in EU Fisheries Managment Zones (FMZ) for which the CFP is at least partially responsible for their management. This document describes the generation of the sampling frame. Embedded R code is executed to generate the sampling frame.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

mizer: an R package for multispecies, trait-based and community size spectrum ecological modelling

1. Size spectrum ecological models are representations of a community of individuals which grow and change trophic level. A key emergent feature of these models is the size spectrum; the total abundance of all individuals that scales negatively with size. The models we focus on are designed to capture fish community dynamics useful for assessing the community impacts of fishing. 2. We present mizer, an R package for implementing dynamic size spectrum ecological models of an entire aquatic community subject to fishing. Multiple fishing gears can be defined and fishing mortality can change through time making it possible to simulate a range of exploitation strategies and management options. 3. mizer implements three versions of the size spectrum modelling framework: the community model, where individuals are only characterized by their size; the trait-based model, where individuals are further characterized by their asymptotic size; and the multispecies model where additional trait differences are resolved. 4. A range of plot, community indicator and summary methods are available to inspect the results of the simulations