Going to Work with a Criminal Record: Lessons from the Fathers at Work Initiative

Many of the 650,000 adults released from American prisons each year find their way to One-Stops or community-based, faith-based and other organizations that provide employment services. Yet relatively few of these organizations specifically target former prisoners. Workforce development practitioners have experience with a wide range of job seekers, but a great number of them are looking for additional guidance about the complexities of connecting formerly incarcerated people to the labor market and helping them stay on the job.Going to Work with a Criminal Record was developed to help meet this need. It is based on lessons from the Fathers at Work initiative, a three-year, six-site demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to help young, noncustodial fathers achieve increased employment and earnings, involvement in their childrens lives, and more consistent financial support of their children. The report describes seven fundamental lessons workforce organizations should consider as they help formerly incarcerated people move toward stable employment, along with a more detailed discussion of how program staff can put these lessons into practice. It outlines how to avoid mistakes and how to develop important relationships, including with employers, parole officers and the local child support enforcement agency

Navigating the Child Support System: Lessons from the Fathers at Work Initiative

Research shows that nearly half of all children born in the US today will be eligible for child support before they reach the age of 18. Many low-income, noncustodial fathers -- who often struggle to make these payments -- will seek services from workforce development organizations. Yet, understanding the child support enforcement system can be challenging -- not only for noncustodial fathers but also for the workforce organizations that want to assist them.Navigating the Child Support System aims to help meet this challenge by providing information, resources and tools to use at the intersection of workforce development and child support enforcement. The guide is based on lessons from the Fathers at Work initiative, a three-year, six-site demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which was designed to help young, noncustodial fathers achieve increased employment and earnings, involvement in their children's lives, and more consistent financial support of their children.The guide describes child support enforcement regulations, policies and actions that can affect fathers' willingness to seek formal employment and participate in the system, and provides examples of four services that organizations might offer to benefit fathers and their families. Navigating the Child Support System offers concrete suggestions for incorporating child support services into workforce organizations' assistance to low-income, male participants, including developing partnerships with local child support enforcement agencies. It includes seven tools for learning about child support and setting goals for enhancing services to noncustodial fathers

Working Dads: Final Report on the Fathers at Work Initiative

Noncustodial fathers have an essential role to play -- both financially and emotionally -- in the lives of their children. However, of the 11 million noncustodial fathers in the US, two thirds do not pay any formal child support. Many of these fathers are poor themselves and face multiple barriers, including low education levels, limited work experience, and criminal records, which impede their success in the labor market as well as their ability to provide for their children.Working Dads: Final Report on the Fathers at Work Initiative presents findings from P/PV's evaluation of Fathers at Work, a national demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, designed to help low-income noncustodial fathers increase their employment and earnings, become more involved in their children's lives, and provide them with more consistent financial support. The Fathers at Work programs offered a unique combination of job training and placement, child support and fatherhood services at six well-established community-based organizations in Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Richmond, CA; and Roanoke, VA. Our findings suggest that the programs produced important benefits for participants, including increased earnings and child support payment. The report details the specific strategies Fathers at Work programs used and explores the policy implications of this research

Tropical Cyclone Frequency: Turning Paleoclimate Into Projections

Future changes to tropical cyclone (TC) climate have the potential to dramatically impact the social and economic landscape of coastal communities. Paleoclimate modeling and paleohurricane proxy development offer exciting opportunities to understand how TC properties (like frequency) change in response to climate variability on long time scales. However, sampling biases in proxies make it difficult to ascertain whether signals in paleohurricane records are related to climate variability or just stochasticity. Short observations and simulation biases prevent TC models from capturing the full range of climate variability and TC characteristics. Integration of these two data types can help address these uncertainties. Robust data model comparison in paleotempestology will require (a) simulating TCs using new paleoclimate data assimilation products and climate model ensembles, (b) building a central repository of open access paleohurricane proxies, (c) compiling paleohurricane records, and (d) filling key gaps in the existing paleohurricane networks. Incorporating the combined information from both paleohurricane proxies and paleo TC simulations into risk assessments for coastal communities could help improve adaptation strategies

Working Dads: Final Report on the Fathers at Work Initiative Executive Summary

This executive summary draws on findings from P/PV's evaluation of Fathers at Work, a national demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The demonstration was designed to help low-income noncustodial fathers increase their employment and earnings, become more involved in their children's lives, and provide them with more consistent financial support.The Fathers at Work programs offered a unique combination of job training and placement, child support and fatherhood services at six well-established community-based organizations in Chicago, IL; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Richmond, CA; and Roanoke, VA. Our findings suggest that the programs produced important benefits for participants, including increased earnings and child support payments.The summary presents an overview of the initiative's implementation activities and participant outcomes and explores implications for policy, programs and researchers

Correction: Optimising a person-centred approach to stopping medicines in older people with multimorbidity and polypharmacy using the DExTruS framework: a realist review (BMC Medicine, (2022), 20, 1, (297), 10.1186/s12916-022-02475-1)

The original article [1] contained an error in the spelling of co-author, Michelle Maden’s name which has since been corrected

Evidence for European presence in the Americas in ad 1021

Transatlantic exploration took place centuries before the crossing of Columbus. Physical evidence for early European presence in the Americas can be found in Newfoundland, Canada(1,2). However, it has thus far not been possible to determine when this activity took place(3–5). Here we provide evidence that the Vikings were present in Newfoundland in ad 1021. We overcome the imprecision of previous age estimates by making use of the cosmic-ray-induced upsurge in atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations in ad 993 (ref. (6)). Our new date lays down a marker for European cognisance of the Americas, and represents the first known point at which humans encircled the globe. It also provides a definitive tie point for future research into the initial consequences of transatlantic activity, such as the transference of knowledge, and the potential exchange of genetic information, biota and pathologies(7,8)

A global blended tropopause based on ERA data, Part II: trends and tropical broadening

A new tropopause definition involving a flow-dependent blending of the traditional thermal tropopause with one based on potential vorticity has been developed and applied to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalyses (ERA), ERA-40 and ERA-Interim. Global and regional trends in tropopause characteristics for annual and solsticial seasonal means are presented here, with emphasis on significant results for the newer ERA-Interim data for 1989-2007. The global-mean tropopause is rising at a rate of 47 m decade−1 , with pressure falling at 1.0 hPa decade−1 , and temperature falling at 0.18 K decade−1 . The Antarctic tropopause shows decreasing heights,warming,and increasing westerly winds. The Arctic tropopause also shows a warming, but with decreasing westerly winds. In the tropics the trends are small, but at the latitudes of the sub-tropical jets they are almost double the global values. It is found that these changes are mainly concentrated in the eastern hemisphere. Previous and new metrics for the rate of broadening of the tropics, based on both height and wind, give trends in the range 0.9◦ decade−1 to 2.2◦ decade−1 . For ERA-40 the global height and pressure trends for the period 1979-2001 are similar: 39 m decade−1 and -0.8 hPa decade−1. These values are smaller than those found from the thermal tropopause definition with this data set, as was used in most previous studies

The equivalent barotropic structure of waves in the tropical atmosphere in the Western Hemisphere

Tropical waves are generally considered to have a baroclinic structure. However, analysis of ERA-Interim and NOAA OLR data for the period 1979-2010 shows that in the equatorial and Northern Hemisphere near-equatorial regions in the tropical western hemisphere (WH), westward and eastward-moving transients, zonal wavenumber 2-10, period 2-30 days, have little tilt in the vertical, and can be said to be equivalent barotropic. The westward-moving transients in the equatorial region have large projection onto the westward mixed Rossby-Gravity (WMRG) wave and those in the near-equatorial region project onto the gravest Rossby wave and also the WMRG. The eastward-moving transients have large projections onto the Doppler shifted eastward-moving versions of these waves. To examine how such equivalent barotropic structures are possible in the tropics, terms in the vorticity equation are analysed. It is deduced that waves must have westward intrinsic phase speed and can exist in the WH with its large westerly vertical shear. Throughout the depth, the advection of vorticity by the zonal flow and the β-term are large and nearly cancel. In the upper troposphere the zonal advection by the strong westerly flow wins and the residual is partially balanced by vortex shrinking associated with divergence above a region of ascent. Below the region of ascent the β-term wins and is partially balanced by vortex stretching associated with the convergence. An equivalent barotropic structure is therefore maintained in a similar manner to higher latitudes. The regions of ascent are usually associated with deep convection and, consistently, WH waves directly connected to tropical convection are also found to be equivalent barotropic