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The family drug & alcohol court (FDAC) evaluation project
This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the first pilot Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in Britain. FDAC is a new approach to care proceedings, in cases where parental substance misuse is a key element in the local authority decision to bring proceedings. It is being piloted at the Inner London Family Proceedings Court in Wells Street. Initially the pilot was to run for three years, to the end of December 2010, but is now to continue until March 2012. The work is co-funded by the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families), the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the three pilot authorities (Camden, Islington and Westminster). The evaluation was conducted by a research team at Brunel University, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and the Home Office. FDAC is a specialist court for a problem that is anything but special. Its potential to help break the inter-generational cycle of harm associated with parental substance misuse goes straight to the heart of public policy and professional practice. Parental substance misuse is a formidable social problem and a key factor in around a third of long-term cases in children’s services in some areas. It is a major risk factor for child maltreatment, family separation and offending in adults, and for poor educational performance and substance misuse by children and young people. The parents’ many difficulties create serious problems for their children and place major demands on health, welfare and criminal justice services. For these reasons, parental substance misuse is a cross-cutting government agenda. FDAC is distinctive because it is a court-based family intervention which aims to improve children’s outcomes by addressing the entrenched difficulties of their parents. It has been adapted to English law and practice from a model of family treatment drug courts that is used widely in the USA and is showing promising results with a higher number of cases where parents and children were able to remain together safely, and with swifter alternative placement decisions for children if parents were unable to address their substance misuse successfully. The catalysts for the FDAC pilot were the encouraging evidence from the USA and concerns about the response to parental substance misuse through ordinary care proceedings in England: poor coordination of adult and children’s services; late interventions to protect children; delays in reaching decisions in court; and soaring costs of proceedings, linked to the cost of expert evidence.The work is co-funded by the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families), the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the three pilot authorities (Camden, Islington and Westminster).1 The evaluation was conducted by a research team at Brunel University, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and the Home Office
New Perspective on Galaxy Clustering as a Cosmological Probe: General Relativistic Effects
We present a general relativistic description of galaxy clustering in a FLRW
universe. The observed redshift and position of galaxies are affected by the
matter fluctuations and the gravity waves between the source galaxies and the
observer, and the volume element constructed by using the observables differs
from the physical volume occupied by the observed galaxies. Therefore, the
observed galaxy fluctuation field contains additional contributions arising
from the distortion in observable quantities and these include tensor
contributions as well as numerous scalar contributions. We generalize the
linear bias approximation to relate the observed galaxy fluctuation field to
the underlying matter distribution in a gauge-invariant way. Our full formalism
is essential for the consistency of theoretical predictions. As our first
application, we compute the angular auto correlation of large-scale structure
and its cross correlation with CMB temperature anisotropies. We comment on the
possibility of detecting primordial gravity waves using galaxy clustering and
discuss further applications of our formalism.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review
Bayesian stochastic blockmodeling
This chapter provides a self-contained introduction to the use of Bayesian
inference to extract large-scale modular structures from network data, based on
the stochastic blockmodel (SBM), as well as its degree-corrected and
overlapping generalizations. We focus on nonparametric formulations that allow
their inference in a manner that prevents overfitting, and enables model
selection. We discuss aspects of the choice of priors, in particular how to
avoid underfitting via increased Bayesian hierarchies, and we contrast the task
of sampling network partitions from the posterior distribution with finding the
single point estimate that maximizes it, while describing efficient algorithms
to perform either one. We also show how inferring the SBM can be used to
predict missing and spurious links, and shed light on the fundamental
limitations of the detectability of modular structures in networks.Comment: 44 pages, 16 figures. Code is freely available as part of graph-tool
at https://graph-tool.skewed.de . See also the HOWTO at
https://graph-tool.skewed.de/static/doc/demos/inference/inference.htm
Feasibility of diffusion and probabilistic white matter analysis in patients implanted with a deep brain stimulator.
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) for Parkinson\u27s disease (PD) is an established advanced therapy that produces therapeutic effects through high frequency stimulation. Although this therapeutic option leads to improved clinical outcomes, the mechanisms of the underlying efficacy of this treatment are not well understood. Therefore, investigation of DBS and its postoperative effects on brain architecture is of great interest. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) is an advanced imaging technique, which has the ability to estimate the structure of white matter fibers; however, clinical application of DWI after DBS implantation is challenging due to the strong susceptibility artifacts caused by implanted devices. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of generating meaningful white matter reconstructions after DBS implantation; and to subsequently quantify the degree to which these tracts are affected by post-operative device-related artifacts. DWI was safely performed before and after implanting electrodes for DBS in 9 PD patients. Differences within each subject between pre- and post-implantation FA, MD, and RD values for 123 regions of interest (ROIs) were calculated. While differences were noted globally, they were larger in regions directly affected by the artifact. White matter tracts were generated from each ROI with probabilistic tractography, revealing significant differences in the reconstruction of several white matter structures after DBS. Tracts pertinent to PD, such as regions of the substantia nigra and nigrostriatal tracts, were largely unaffected. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility and clinical applicability of acquiring and processing DWI post-operatively in PD patients after DBS implantation. The presence of global differences provides an impetus for acquiring DWI shortly after implantation to establish a new baseline against which longitudinal changes in brain connectivity in DBS patients can be compared. Understanding that post-operative fiber tracking in patients is feasible on a clinically-relevant scale has significant implications for increasing our current understanding of the pathophysiology of movement disorders, and may provide insights into better defining the pathophysiology and therapeutic effects of DBS
Synthetic wastewaters treatment by electrocoagulation to remove silver nanoparticles produced by different routes
International audienceNanoscience is a field that has stood out in recent years. The accurate long-term health and environmental risks associated with these emerging materials are unknown. Therefore, this work investigated how to eliminate silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from synthetic effluents by electrocoagulation (EC) due to the widespread use of this type of nanoparticle (NP) in industry and its potential inhibition power over microorganisms responsible for biological treatment in effluent treatment plants. Synthesized AgNPs were studied via four different routes by chemical reduction in aqueous solutions to simulate the chemical variations of a hypothetical industrial effluent, and efficiency conditions of the EC treatment were determined. All routes used silver nitrate as the source of silver ions, and two synthesis routes were studied with sodium citrate as a stabilizer. In route I, sodium citrate functioned simultaneously as the reducing agent and stabilizing agent, whereas route II used sodium borohydride as a reducing agent. Route III used d-glucose as the reducing agent and sodium pyrophosphate as the stabilizer; route IV used sodium pyrophosphate as the stabilizing agent and sodium borohydride as the reducing agent. The efficiency of the EC process of the different synthesized solutions was studied. For route I, after 85Â min of treatment, a significant decrease in the plasmon resonance peak of the sample was observed, which reflects the efficiency in the mass reduction of AgNPs in the solution by 98.6%. In route II, after 12Â min of EC, the absorbance results reached the detection limit of the measurement instrument, which indicates a minimum reduction of 99.9% of AgNPs in the solution. During the 4Â min of treatment in route III, the absorbance intensities again reached the detection limit, which indicates a minimum reduction of 99.8%. In route IV, after 10Â min of treatment, a minimum AgNP reduction of 99.9% was observed. Based on these results, it was possible to verify that the solutions containing citrate considerably increased the necessary times required to eliminate AgNPs from the synthesized effluent, whereas solutions free of this reagent showed better results on floc formation and, therefore, are best for the treatment. The elimination of AgNPs from effluents by EC proved effective for the studied routes
The role of strain localization in magma injection into a transtensional shear zone (Variscan belt, SW Iberia).
This study deals with the interaction between deformation and magmatism in mid- to deep-crustal
domains. The relation is analysed between migmatites and shear zones and the spatial distribution of leucogranitoid
veins and dykes running through a footwall migmatite system, and reaching a transtensional
shear zone operated under amphibolite- to greenschist-facies metamorphic conditions (Boa FĂ© shear zone,
Variscan belt, SW Iberia). Statistical results show that the frequency of width and spacing of the leucogranitoid
dykes conform to power-law distributions comparable with observations in volcanic systems. The fractal
geometry of the distribution of leucogranitoid dykes highlights the development of a dense framework of
thinner weakly or non-mineralized veins and dykes formed at higher nucleation/growth ratios in the footwall
migmatite system that contrasts with the emplacement of thicker dykes associated with strongly mineralized
thinner veins within the shear zone. The volume of injected leucogranitoid dykes in the shear zone is lower
as compared with the footwall and is comparable with an expanding footwall shear zone with non-coaxial
flow and volume increase. The Boa FĂ© shear zone seems to form a physical barrier to the transport of magma to the hanging wall
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