Families on the Front Lines: How Immigration Advocates Can Build a Bridge Between the Immigration and Child Welfare Systems

Whether acknowledged or not, the family unit must also stand front and center in any examination of the human impact of current immigration enforcement initiatives. Mixed-legal status families are extremely common in the United States. It is conservatively estimated that approximately 5.5 million children, most of whom are U.S. Citizens, are living with at least one undocumented parent who is at risk of apprehension by Immigration & Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security.As immigration enforcement continues to intensify -- with over 400,000 immigrants estimated to be deported in fiscal year 2012 - the axiom of "family separation" plays out in its most literal sense when parents are forcibly separated both physically and legally from their U.S. Citizen children, sometimes permanently

Men with intellectual disabilities with a history of sexual offending: empathy for victims of sexual and non-sexual crimes

Background: The objectives were (a) to compare the general empathy abilities of men with intellectual disabilities (IDs) who had a history of sexual offending to men with IDs who had no known history of illegal behaviour, and (b) to determine whether men with IDs who had a history of sexual offending had different levels of specific victim empathy towards their own victim, in comparison to an unknown victim of sexual crime, and a victim of non-sexual crime, and make comparison to non-offenders. Methods: Men with mild IDs (N = 35) were asked to complete a measure of general empathy and a measure of specific victim empathy. All participants completed the victim empathy measure in relation to a hypothetical victim of a sexual offence, and a non-sexual crime, while additionally, men with a history of sexual offending were asked to complete this measure in relation to their own most recent victim. Results: Men with a history of sexual offending had significantly lower general empathy, and specific victim empathy towards an unknown sexual offence victim, than men with no known history of illegal behaviour. Men with a history of sexual offending had significantly lower victim empathy for their own victim than for an unknown sexual offence victim. Victim empathy towards an unknown victim of a non-sexual crime did not differ significantly between the two groups. Conclusions: The findings suggest that it is important include interventions within treatment programmes that attempt to improve empathy and perspective-taking

Inaccuracies in routinely collected Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) maturity data and correction using a gonadosomatic index model

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

An error recovery scheme for concurrent processes

PhD ThesisWith the more widespread use of multi- processors and distributed computing systems, programmers need a simple, reliable interface to them. This thesis describes language constructs, and mechanisms for their support, that can be used in the implementation of fault-tolerant concurrent processes. The basic language structure is the Atomic Action, supported by a modified recovery cache mechanism. This combines the collection of recovery data with the locking of resources and allows recovery blocks to be integrated with Atomic Actions. Synchronisation between actions is discussed, as well as a means of detecting and breaking deadlocks, based on the use of a "blocking graph". Reliable communication and cooperation between actions is considered, and several constructs are investigated. The limitations of Shared Atomic Actions are identified, and, further, the use of a form of reliable "secretary" is shown to lead to unnecessary recovery activity. These problems are resolved by structures based on a classification of resources by the way they are used in programs. Also contained in the thesis are descriptions of trial implementations of some of the mechanisms described, and a discussion of existing concurrent programming techniques.Science Research Council of Great Britai

Prime-Target Salience Matching as an Alternative Driver of Implicit Bias on the Weapon Identification Task

The Weapon Identification Task (WIT) was designed to measure mental associations between race and the concepts of danger or violence. Consistently, the task demonstrates that on average, after being shown the face of a Black male, participants responded faster and more accurately to gun stimuli. This experiment was designed to test whether the results of the WIT could be due to prime-target salience matches. In study 1, a WIT was designed using visually salient faces as primes. The contrast of these face primes was manipulated in order to create high or low salience. In study 2, a WIT was created to test if the illusory correlation could be used to manipulate salience conceptually. The results of study 1 and study 2 did not provide support for the salience-matching hypothesis

Australian mental health consumers' contributions to the evaluation and improvement of recovery-oriented service provision

Background: one key component of recovery-oriented mental health services, typically overlooked, involves genuine collaboration between researchers and consumers to evaluate and improve services delivered within a recovery framework. Method: Eighteen mental health consumers working with staff who had received training in the Collaborative recovery Model (CrM) took part in in-depth focus group meetings, of approximately 2.5 hours each, to generate feedback to guide improvement of the CrM and its use in mental health services. Results: Consumers identified clear avenues for improvement for the CrM both specific to the model and broadly applicable to recovery-oriented service provision. Findings suggest consumers want to be more engaged and empowered in the use of the CrM from the outset. Limitations: improved sampling procedures may have led to the identification of additional dissatisfied consumers. Conclusions: Collaboration with mental health consumers in the evaluation and improvement of recovery-oriented practice is crucial with an emphasis on rebuilding mental health services that are genuinely oriented to support recovery

Predecisional Information Distortion of Trial Evidence: Biased Processing Under Persuasion

To facilitate information distortion, previous investigations have not been in persuasive settings nor involved information that strongly favored the selection of one choice over another. A study was conducted that addresses the absence of investigation into how information is distorted during decisions in persuasive situations. The context of the courtroom was used. Participants saw numerous pieces of evidence: some of the evidence strongly favored a verdict of guilty; some favored a verdict of not guilty; and other evidence favored neither. Evidence that favored a verdict of guilty or not guilty as the first piece of evidence was manipulated. Some participants were told the evidence came from the prosecution or the defense while others were not. Results indicated that participants distorted information in the direction of the persuasive evidence presented first, regardless of whether or not they were told the source of the evidence. The strong evidence location manipulation did not affect participants’ verdict in the case—despite the finding that the manipulation affected evidence evaluation which was correlated with participants’ verdict. This study demonstrated that information is distorted when presented in a persuasive context and when the information strongly favored the selection of one option over the other