Financing Housing Supports for Youth Transitioning Out of Foster Care

This strategy brief, written by The Finance Project with support from the Foster Care Work Group (FCWG), one of three work groups of the Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG), explores strategies for financing supports and services that help foster youth make successful transitions to adulthood. Foundation leaders participating in the YTFG are committed to achieving a common visio -- ensuring that vulnerable youth are connected by age 25 to institutions and support systems that will enable them to succeed throughout adulthood. The FCWG brings together foundation leaders with a shared interest in preparing youth in foster care for their transition out of the child welfare system and providing them pathways to lifelong economic well-being

Ecological host fitting of Trypanosoma cruzi TcI in Bolivia: mosaic population structure, hybridization and a role for humans in Andean parasite dispersal.

An improved understanding of how a parasite species exploits its genetic repertoire to colonize novel hosts and environmental niches is crucial to establish the epidemiological risk associated with emergent pathogenic genotypes. Trypanosoma cruzi, a genetically heterogeneous, multi-host zoonosis, provides an ideal system to examine the sylvatic diversification of parasitic protozoa. In Bolivia, T. cruzi I, the oldest and most widespread genetic lineage, is pervasive across a range of ecological clines. High-resolution nuclear (26 loci) and mitochondrial (10 loci) genotyping of 199 contemporaneous sylvatic TcI clones was undertaken to provide insights into the biogeographical basis of T. cruzi evolution. Three distinct sylvatic parasite transmission cycles were identified: one highland population among terrestrial rodent and triatomine species, composed of genetically homogenous strains (Ar = 2.95; PA/L = 0.61; DAS = 0.151), and two highly diverse, parasite assemblages circulating among predominantly arboreal mammals and vectors in the lowlands (Ar = 3.40 and 3.93; PA/L = 1.12 and 0.60; DAS = 0.425 and 0.311, respectively). Very limited gene flow between neighbouring terrestrial highland and arboreal lowland areas (distance ~220 km; FST = 0.42 and 0.35) but strong connectivity between ecologically similar but geographically disparate terrestrial highland ecotopes (distance >465 km; FST = 0.016-0.084) strongly supports ecological host fitting as the predominant mechanism of parasite diversification. Dissimilar heterozygosity estimates (excess in highlands, deficit in lowlands) and mitochondrial introgression among lowland strains may indicate fundamental differences in mating strategies between populations. Finally, accelerated parasite dissemination between densely populated, highland areas, compared to uninhabited lowland foci, likely reflects passive, long-range anthroponotic dispersal. The impact of humans on the risk of epizootic Chagas disease transmission in Bolivia is discussed

Reset control for DC-DC converters: an experimental application

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Power converters in grid connected systems are required to have fast response to ensure the stability of the system. The standard PI controllers used in most power converters are capable of fast response but with significant overshoot. In this paper a hybrid control technique for power converter using a reset PI + CI controller is proposed. The PI + CI controller can overcome the limitation of its linear counterpart (PI) and ensure a fast flat response for power converter. The design, stability and cost of feedback analysis for a DC-DC boost converter employing a PI + CI controller is explored in this work. The simulation and experimental results which confirm the fast, flat response will be presented and discussed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version