The National Directory of New Hires

[Excerpt] The National Directory of New Hires is a database that contains personal and financial data on nearly every working American, as well as those receiving unemployment compensation. Contrary to its name, the National Directory of New Hires includes more than just information on new employees. It is a database that includes information on (1) all newly hired employees, compiled from state reports (and reports from federal employers), (2) the quarterly wage reports of existing employees (in Unemployment Compensation (UC)-covered employment), and (3) unemployment compensation claims. The National Directory of New Hires was originally established to help states locate noncustodial parents living in a different state so that child support payments could be withheld from that parent’s paycheck. Since its enactment in 1996, the National Directory of New Hires has been extended to several additional programs and agencies to verify program eligibility, prevent or end fraud, collect overpayments, or assure that program benefits are correct. Although the directory is considered very effective, concerns about data security and the privacy rights of employees remain a part of debates regarding expanded access to the National Directory of New Hires

Old Games, Same Concerns: Examining First Generation Video Games Through Popular Press Coverage from 1972-1985

This study explores early video game technology by examining video game fears in the popular press in the 1970s and 1980s. This textual analysis examines games during their formative years, assesses risks associated with new technology, and encourages critical examination of technophobia in news media. This topic is particularly relevant in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding video game regulation. Key findings include: physical ailment fears, deviant behavior fears, fears related to drug use, and violent behavior fears. These fears persist, for the most part, in contemporary mainstream coverage

Fatherhood Initiatives: Connecting Fathers to Their Children

[Excerpt] In 2013, almost 25% of families with children (under age 18) were maintained by mothers. According to some estimates, about 60% of children born during the 1990s spent a significant portion of their childhood in a home without their father. Research indicates that children raised in single-parent families are more likely than children raised in two-parent families (with both biological parents) to do poorly in school, have emotional and behavioral problems, become teenage parents, and have poverty-level incomes. In hopes of improving the long-term outlook for children in single-parent families, federal, state, and local governments, along with public and private organizations, are supporting programs and activities that promote the financial and personal responsibility of noncustodial fathers to their children and increase the participation of fathers in the lives of their children. These programs have come to be known as “responsible fatherhood” programs. Sources of federal funding for fatherhood programs include the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, TANF state Maintenance-of-Effort (MOE) funding, Child Support Enforcement (CSE) funds, and Social Services Block Grant (Title XX) funds. The federal government’s support of fatherhood initiatives raises a wide array of issues. This report briefly examines the role of the CSE agency in fatherhood programs and discusses initiatives to promote and support father-child interaction outside the parents’ relationship

Quarterly literature review of the remote sensing of natural resources

The Technology Application Center reviewed abstracted literature sources, and selected document data and data gathering techniques which were performed or obtained remotely from space, aircraft or groundbased stations. All of the documentation was related to remote sensing sensors or the remote sensing of the natural resources. Sensors were primarily those operating within the 10 to the minus 8 power to 1 meter wavelength band. Included are NASA Tech Briefs, ARAC Industrial Applications Reports, U.S. Navy Technical Reports, U.S. Patent reports, and other technical articles and reports

Literature review of the remote sensing of natural resources

Abstracts of 596 documents related to remote sensors or the remote sensing of natural resources by satellite, aircraft, or ground-based stations are presented. Topics covered include general theory, geology and hydrology, agriculture and forestry, marine sciences, urban land use, and instrumentation. Recent documents not yet cited in any of the seven information sources used for the compilation are summarized. An author/key word index is provided

Parent\u2019s perception of children\u2019s fear: from FSSC-IT to FSSC-PP

Studies involving parents' reports about children's fears and multiple informant comparisons are less extended than investigations on children's self-reporting fear schedules. Starting with the Italian version of FSSC-R, the FSSC-IT, the main aims of this study were to adapt a schedule for parents' perception of their children's fear: the FSSC-Parent Perception. Its psychometric properties were examined in a large sample of parents (N = 2970) of children aged 8-10 years. Exploratory and confirmatory factorial structures were examined and compared with the Italian children's ones. Mother vs. father, children's gender and school age group effects were analyzed. The confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a four correlated factors solution model (Fear of Danger and Death; Fear of Injury and Animals; Fear of Failure and Criticism; Fear of the unknown and Phobic aspects). Some effects related to child gender, age group, mother vs. father, were found. The FSSC-PP properties supported its use by parents to assess their children's fears. A qualitative analysis of the top 10 fears most endorsed by parents will be presented and compared with children's fears. Clinical implications about the quality of parent-child relationships where discussed, comparing mothers and fathers, and parents' perception about daughters' and sons' most endorsed fears

Hopes, Fears, and Other Grammatical Scarecrows

The standard view of "believes" and other propositional attitude verbs is that such verbs express relations between agents and propositions. A sentence of the form “S believes that p” is true just in case S stands in the belief-relation to the proposition that p; this proposition is the referent of the complement clause "that p." On this view, we would expect the clausal complements of propositional attitude verbs to be freely intersubstitutable with their corresponding proposition descriptions—e.g., "the proposition that p"—as they are in the case of "believes." In many cases, however, intersubstitution of that-clauses and proposition descriptions fails to preserve truth value or even grammaticality. These substitution failures lead some philosophers to reject the standard view of propositional attitude reports. Others conclude that propositional attitude verbs are systematically ambiguous. I reject both these views. On my view, the that-clause complements of propositional attitude verbs denote propositions, but proposition descriptions do not

Fears and realisations of employment insecurity

We investigate the validity of subjective data expectations of job loss and on the probability of re-employment consequent on job loss, by examining associations between expectations and realisations. We find that subjective expectations data reveal private information about subsequent job loss, the expectations data perform better with numerical descriptors than with ordinal verbal descriptors. On average, employees overestimate the chance of losing their job; while they underestimate the difficulty of finding another job as good as the currently-held one. We recommend that survey items on employment insecurity should be explicit about each risk investigation, and utilise a cardinal probability scale with discrete numerical descriptors

Fearing Compassion Impacts Psychological Well-being but has no Effect on Physiological Indicators.

Fearing Compassion Impacts Psychological Well-being but has no Effect on Physiological Indicators. Objective: Fears of compassion are feelings of threat towards receiving and giving kindness. This study examined the fears towards compassion on physiological responses during compassionate exercises. It has been argued that such fears are a barrier to a relaxation system normally reducing physiological activity but there has been no empirical evidence to support this. Exercises have been developed to increase compassion by activating a physiological soothing system, however if fears to compassion block the effectiveness of compassion then new methods may need to be developed to increase self-compassion. Participants and Methods: A non-clinical sample of sixty participants took part in two compassionate exercises. Heart rate and skin conductance were recorded during these exercises to indicate physiological activity. Social safeness, self-criticism and symptoms of depression were also assessed via the Fears of Compassion Scale, the Forms of Self-Criticism/Self-Reassuring Scale, the Social Safeness Scale and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS). Results: Multivariate analysis indicated there was no effect between high and low fears of compassion on both heart rate and skin conductance. However, social safeness and symptoms of mental illness were significantly affected by fears of compassion from psychological indicators of well-being, (F(3,56)= 5.721, p<.01, Wilks Lambda = .765, partial n2=.235). Independent analysis found differences in social safeness (F(1,58)= 14.46, p<.01, partial n2=.20) and DASS (F(1,58)= 6.53, p<.05, partial n2= .101). Social safeness was higher in the low fears of compassion group, 46.87 (SD= 6.06), whilst DASS was greater in the high fears group, 23.34 (SD=12.91). Conclusions: The findings did not support that fears are a barrier towards building compassion suggesting that compassionate exercises can be effective for both higher and lower fears of compassion. These results support a dynamic relationship between social safeness and fears towards compassion. The implications are that fears do not prevent activation of the self-soothing system but have an effect on social safeness and abnormal behaviour development