Escape from Death Row: A Study of “Tripping” as an Individual Adjustment Strategy Among Death Row Prisoners

[Excerpt] “The literature on stress and coping in American prisons tends to focus on the social dimensions of prison life. This literature describes a prison culture that shapes prison adjustment; such a culture entails norms, roles, and groups (including gangs) that dictate norms of adjustment. The literature also suggests that prisoners have to find a way to get along in the more public areas of the prison (such as the prison yard or mess hall) or retreat to smaller worlds within the prison while carving out “niches” that allow them to adjust in ways they find more familiar—in their jobs, educational or vocational classes, or even in a regular regimen of television in the cell. While there is much of value in this literature, recent trends in correctional management have produced more sharply subscribed prison environments that greatly reduce social activity among prisoners and presumably reduce the salience of cultural forces in the prison world.

How Children Used to Work

Discusses the changing role of children in the United States from 1800-1970, focusing on the increasing conflict between child rearing and other activities of parents, the curtailment of child labor, and the decreasing importance of children as a source of old-age financial support for their parents

Performance of Hollow Load Process Challenge Devices (HLPCDs) for the determination of air removal and steam penetration in porous load steam sterilization processes: Part 1 – The evolution of HLPCDs in standards and a review of the current supporting published evidence

Steam sterilization Process Challenge Devices (PCDs) are devices which present a defined challenge to a sterilization process. In part one of a two part series the authors review the published literature covering studies evaluating the removal of air and penetration of steam into hollow tubular devices and then discuss the relevance of the material in support of the current custom and practice of utilising simple tubular PCDs (Hollow Load Process Challenge Devices HLPCDs) as a means of monitoring production loads for adequacy of air removal and steam penetration. This review places such data in the context of the evolution of HLPCDs in the standards for small and large porous load steam sterilizers. With regard to the apparent acceptance of the HLPCD in EN 867-5 into custom and practice for batch monitoring the literature suggests this may be misleading. The literature review concludes that there is an urgent need for an International Standard which describes how a HLPCD can be developed and tested against real medical devices in a range of sterilization processes representing current state of the art in full load conditions

Supporting Parent Engagement in Linguistically Diverse Families to Promote Young Children’s Life Success

This paper examines research that can inform policies aimed at building the capacity of early care and education programs to promote parent engagement in linguistically diverse families. The key questions addressed include:1 )What factors affect linguistically diverse families’ access to early care and education programs?; 2)What do we know about linguistically diverse families and how parents in these families support their young children’s learning and development?; 3) What features of early care and education programs appear to contribute to high levels of parent engagement in linguistically diverse families?; and 4) What policies can help increase the capacity of early care and education programs to support parent engagement in linguistically diverse families

Design reuse research : a computational perspective

This paper gives an overview of some computer based systems that focus on supporting engineering design reuse. Design reuse is considered here to reflect the utilisation of any knowledge gained from a design activity and not just past designs of artefacts. A design reuse process model, containing three main processes and six knowledge components, is used as a basis to identify the main areas of contribution from the systems. From this it can be concluded that while reuse libraries and design by reuse has received most attention, design for reuse, domain exploration and five of the other knowledge components lack research effort

The Effects of Lunch Eligibility and School Size on the Literacy Achievement of African American Males Communication

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of lunch eligibility and school size on the literacy achievement of African American males. While researching the effects of lunch eligibility and school size on the literacy achievement of African American males, this scholar observed that a correlation between historical viewpoints and the academic performance of African American males were intertwined in the findings and research of some experts. Therefore, this researcher was compelled to intimately explore the literature as it related to the literacy achievement of African American males and how it evolved throughout history. During the development of historical and cultural analysis, the researcher correlated the observations of scholars who asserted their findings concerning the influence of the past on the present literacy performance of African American males, while simultaneously searching for a reference to their socioeconomic status or the size of the schools they attended. Some literature included the impact of poverty on the literacy achievement of students in general, and explicitly, on the literacy achievement of African American males. However, the literature failed to specifically address the literacy performance of African American males who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch in comparison to those who do not. Although the findings on poverty were significant, the findings on school size were inconclusive. Researchers, Ready and Lee (2006) studied the impact of class size on the literacy achievement of elementary level students, and Schneider (2016) scrutinized the small school movement that took place in New York City; however, no study directly addressed the effects of school size as it relates to the literacy achievement of African American males. This lack of research concerning the effects of lunch eligibility and school size as it relates to the literacy achievement of African American males makes this research unique and valuable. The findings of which can be used to positively impact educational procedures related to the literacy achievements of all students. The results of this study indicated the existence of a substantial gap in literacy achievement between African American males in Grades 4, 6, and 8 who were eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches and African American males who were not eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches. Non-eligible students scored significantly higher than did eligible students. These findings aligned with Fantuzzo (2009) who asserted that the third grade African American males of Philadelphia from homes of low socioeconomic status were at risk for academic struggles. In addition, there was a general indication that the size of the schools they attended was not a significant factor in the literacy achievement of African American males in Grades 6 and 8. However, the data did reflect a significant interaction between the size of schools and lunch eligibility among Grade 4 African American males. Thus, indicating that the size of the school was a significant factor when coupled with school lunch eligibility

Silver Dreams Fund Learning and Evaluation Contract: Final report June 2014

This is a summary of the Final Report which presents the findings of the evaluation of the Big Lottery Fund's Silver Dreams Fund conducted by Ecorys.The Silver Dreams Fund was a £10 million programme which sought to address the gaps in provision by challenging organisations to come up with an innovative idea for a project that would "pioneer ways to help vulnerable older people deal more effectively with life-changing events".Our approach involved both formative and summative elements and was based upon a robust and evidence-based outcome evaluation framework. In addition, we have also undertaken an evaluation of the new programme management processes employed by the Big Lottery Fund which has been reported separately.In summary, the evaluation involved:- development of an evaluation framework and common indicators to measure outcomes;- provision of a package of self-evaluation support to projects;- programme level work to provide independent primary qualitative research and to validate findings from self-evaluations;- a range of learning activities; and- analysis and reporting