Beyond Basic Needs: Social Support and Structure for Successful Offender Reentry

Barriers to successful reentry have long been identified as impeding an offender’s ability to successfully reenter society upon release from incarceration. As a result, research has long examined what shared obstacles the majority of offenders often face upon reentering society. Much of the research identifies factors such as poor education, obtaining/maintaining employment, stable housing, and transportation as common barriers to successful reentry. By using in-depth interviews with ex-offenders deemed as successful that were conducted by two respective non-profit agencies, the present study explores what significant requirements, if any, successful offenders perceive to need and/or have experienced as lacking while attempting to successfully reenter society. Findings from this study highlight that many of the research- identified needs are not major barriers because they are often provided for by various non-profit agencies. Furthermore, successful ex-offenders overwhelmingly identify poor social support as a major barrier that oftentimes remains neglected in government and non-profit organizational programming

Levinson's theorem for Schroedinger operators with point interaction: a topological approach

In this note Levinson theorems for Schroedinger operators in R^n with one point interaction at 0 are derived using the concept of winding numbers. These results are based on new expressions for the associated wave operators.Comment: 7 page

Time delay for an abstract quantum scattering process

In this short review paper, we discuss the concept of time delay for an abstract quantum scattering system. Its definition in terms of sojourn times is explained as well as its identity with the so-called Eisenbud-Wigner time delay. Necessary and natural conditions for such a construction are introduced and thoroughly discussed. Assumptions and statements are precisely formulated but proofs are contained in two companion papers written in collaboration with R. Tiedra de Aldecoa.Comment: 11 page

SO(10) heterotic M-theory vacua

This talk adapts the available formalism to study a class of heterotic M-theory vacua with SO(10) grand unification group. Compactification to four dimensions with N = 1 supersymmetry is achieved on a torus fibered Calabi-Yau 3-fold Z = X / tau_{X} with first homotopy group pi_{1}(Z) = Z_{2}. Here X is an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau 3-fold which admits two global sections and \tau_{X} is a freely acting involution on X. The vacua in this class have net number of three generations of chiral fermions in the observable sector and may contain M5-branes in the bulk space which wrap holomorphic curves in Z. Vacua with nonvanishing and vanishing instanton charges in the observable sector are considered. The latter case corresponds to potentially viable matter Yukawa couplings. Since pi_{1}(Z) = Z_{2}, the grand unification group can be broken with Z_{2} Wilson lines. The motivation is to use the above formalism to extend realistic free-fermionic models to the nonperturbative regime. The correspondence between these models and Z_{2} x Z_{2} orbifold compactification of the weakly coupled 10-dimensional heterotic string identifies associated Calabi-Yau 3-folds which possess the structure of the above Z and X. A nonperturbative extension of the top quark Yukawa coupling is discussed.Comment: 9 pages. Invited talk presented at the String Phenomenology 2003 Workshop, IPPP, Durham UK, 29 July - 4 August 200

The prisoners' dilemma: A game theoretic approach to vehicle safety

This paper assessed the policy implications of the changing demand for passenger vehicles in Australia and debunked the myth that bigger vehicles are safer. In particular, we examined the increasing demand for small cars and four-wheel drive using the classic prisoners' dilemma framework in game theory. We found that the current emphasis on occupant protection may result in a pareto inferior outcome whereas a shift in the emphasis towards non-aggressiveness of a vehicle would result in a pareto superior outcome. Among the pure strategy equilibria, the one with only small cars provides the lowest overall level of road trauma. Furthermore, we found no mixed strategy equilibrium that would produce a lower level of trauma than the pure strategy equilibria, implying that mixing vehicle type would definitely increase road trauma. In a mixed fleet, however, medium cars produced the least trauma and thus were the safest type of passenger vehicle

Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?

For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not all these factors are unique to climate science, but the heavy influence of politics has served to amplify the role of the other factors. Such factors as the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs, the inordinate growth of administration in universities and the consequent increase in importance of grant overhead, and the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations are cosidered. This paper will deal with the origin of the cultural changes and with specific examples of the operation and interaction of these factors. In particular, we will show how political bodies act to control scientific institutions, how scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of.Comment: 36 pages, no figures. v2: footnotes 16, 19, 20 added, footnote 17 changed, typos corrected. v3: description of John Holdren corrected, expanded discussion of I=PAT formula, typos corrected. v4: The reference to Deming (2005) added in v3 stated that a 1995 email in question was from Jonathan Overpeck. In fact, Deming had left the sender of the email unnamed. The revision v4 now omits the identification of Overpeck. However, the revision v4 now includes a more recent and verifiable reference to a 2005 emai

Phrynosoma mcallii

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science