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Approaches that bring families and educators together as partners can promote positive outcomes for children, families, and schools. Family-school partnerships may be most effective when aligned and integrated within existing school frameworks, such as multitiered systems of support, including positive behavioral interventions and supports. National and international policy supports embedding a social justice paradigm in services for children and families to improve equity and reduce disproportionate practices. Embedding a social justice paradigm in family-school partnership systems and practices promotes cultural responsiveness and equitable systems. The purpose of the chapter is to describe embedded social justice approaches within family-school partnership interventions as aligned and integrated within positive behavioral interventions and supports. Systems and practices at Tiers 1, 2, and 3 are described, with corresponding practical guidelines. Cultural responsiveness, from a social justice paradigm, is included as a core feature of each approach reviewed. International examples of tiered family-school partnership approaches are included to illustrate key points.
Little is known about the determinants of community integration (i.e. recovery) for individuals with a history of homelessness, yet such information is essential to develop targeted interventions.
Methods
We recruited homeless Veterans with a history of psychotic disorders and evaluated four domains of correlates of community integration: perception, non-social cognition, social cognition, and motivation. Baseline assessments occurred after participants were engaged in supported housing services but before they received housing, and again after 12 months. Ninety-five homeless Veterans with a history of psychosis were assessed at baseline and 53 returned after 12 months. We examined both cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships with 12-month community integration.
Results
The strongest longitudinal association was between a baseline motivational measure and social integration at 12 months. We also observed cross-sectional associations at baseline between motivational measures and community integration, including social, work, and independent living. Cross-lagged panel analyses did not suggest causal associations for the motivational measures. Correlations with perception and non-social cognition were weak. One social cognition measure showed a significant longitudinal correlation with independent living at 12 months that was significant for cross-lagged analysis, consistent with a causal relationship and potential treatment target.
Conclusions
The relatively selective associations for motivational measures differ from what is typically seen in psychosis, in which all domains are associated with community integration. These findings are presented along with a partner paper (Study 2) to compare findings from this study to an independent sample without a history of psychotic disorders to evaluate the consistency in findings regarding community integration across projects.
In an initial study (Study 1), we found that motivation predicted community integration (i.e. functional recovery) 12 months after receiving housing in formerly homeless Veterans with a psychotic disorder. The current study examined whether the same pattern would be found in a broader, more clinically diverse, homeless Veteran sample without psychosis.
Methods
We examined four categories of variables as potential predictors of community integration in non-psychotic Veterans: perception, non-social cognition, social cognition, and motivation at baseline (after participants were engaged in a permanent supported housing program but before receiving housing) and a 12-month follow-up. A total of 82 Veterans had a baseline assessment and 41 returned for testing after 12 months.
Results
The strongest longitudinal association was between an interview-based measure of motivation (the motivation and pleasure subscale from the Clinical Assessment Interview for Negative Symptoms) at baseline and measures of social integration at 12 months. In addition, cross-lagged panel analyses were consistent with a causal influence of general psychiatric symptoms at baseline driving social integration at 12 months, and reduced expressiveness at baseline driving independent living at 12 months, but there were no significant causal associations with measures of motivation.
Conclusions
The findings from this study complement and reinforce those in Veterans with psychosis. Across these two studies, our findings suggest that motivational factors are associated at baseline and at 12 months and are particularly important for understanding and improving community integration in recently-housed Veterans across psychiatric diagnoses.
All canine hookworms are known to be zoonotic, causing infections ranging from transient skin irritations to prolonged ‘creeping eruptions’, eosinophilic enteritis and even patent intestinal infections. There is little information on canine hookworm species and their public health significance in sub-Saharan Africa. This study determined the prevalence and species of hookworms in dogs from different climatic zones of Kenya. Dog faecal samples were collected from the environment, and hookworm eggs were isolated by zinc chloride flotation and subjected to DNA extraction. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1 and 2, 5.8S and 28S ribosomal RNA of Ancylostoma spp. and Uncinaria stenocephala were performed, and hookworm species were identified by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) or DNA sequencing. Hookworm eggs were detected by microscopy in 490/1621 (30.23%, 95% CI 28.01–32.54) faecal samples. Estimates of faecal prevalence were high in counties receiving higher rainfall (Narok 46.80%, Meru 44.88%) and low in those with a more arid climate (Isiolo 19.73%, Turkana 11.83%). In a subset of 70 faecal samples, Ancylostoma caninum (n = 59) was the most common species, followed by A. braziliense (n = 10) and A. cf. duodenale (n = 1). This study reports for the first time the detection of A. cf. duodenale in dog faeces and zoonotic hookworm species in Kenyan dogs. These findings emphasize the need for control measures such as enforcing laws for restraining stray dogs, regular deworming of dogs, and public health awareness programmes aimed at informing communities on outdoor use of footwear.
Missing outcome data plague many randomized experiments. Common solutions rely on ignorability assumptions that may not be credible in all applications. We propose a method for confronting missing outcome data that makes fairly weak assumptions but can still yield informative bounds on the average treatment effect. Our approach is based on a combination of the double sampling design and nonparametric worst-case bounds. We derive a worst-case bounds estimator under double sampling and provide analytic expressions for variance estimators and confidence intervals. We also propose a method for covariate adjustment using poststratification and a sensitivity analysis for nonignorable missingness. Finally, we illustrate the utility of our approach using Monte Carlo simulations and a placebo-controlled randomized field experiment on the effects of persuasion on social attitudes with survey-based outcome measures.
Regression discontinuity (RD) designs enable researchers to estimate causal effects using observational data. These causal effects are identified at the point of discontinuity that distinguishes those observations that do or do not receive the treatment. One challenge in applying RD in practice is that data may be sparse in the immediate vicinity of the discontinuity. Expanding the analysis to observations outside this immediate vicinity may improve the statistical precision with which treatment effects are estimated, but including more distant observations also increases the risk of bias. Model specification is another source of uncertainty; as the bandwidth around the cutoff point expands, linear approximations may break down, requiring more flexible functional forms. Using data from a large randomized experiment conducted by Gerber, Green, and Larimer (2008), this study attempts to recover an experimental benchmark using RD and assesses the uncertainty introduced by various aspects of model and bandwidth selection. More generally, we demonstrate how experimental benchmarks can be used to gauge and improve the reliability of RD analyses.
The zoonotic cestode Echinococcus ortleppi (Lopez-Neyra and Soler Planas, 1943) is mainly transmitted between dogs and cattle. It occurs worldwide but is only found sporadically in most regions, with the notable exception of parts of southern Africa and South America. Its epidemiology is little understood and the extent of intraspecific variability is unknown. We have analysed in the present study the genetic diversity among 178 E. ortleppi isolates from sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and South America using the complete mitochondrial cox1 (1608 bp) and nad1 (894 bp) DNA sequences. Genetic polymorphism within the loci revealed 15 cox1 and six nad1 haplotypes, respectively, and 20 haplotypes of the concatenated genes. Presence of most haplotypes was correlated to geographical regions, and only one haplotype had a wider spread in both eastern and southern Africa. Intraspecific microvariance was low in comparison with Echinococcus granulosus sensu stricto, despite the wide geographic range of examined isolates. In addition, the various sub-populations showed only subtle deviation from neutrality and were mostly genetically differentiated. This is the first insight into the population genetics of the enigmatic cattle adapted Echinococcus ortleppi. It, therefore, provides baseline data for biogeographical comparison among E. ortleppi endemic regions and for tracing its translocation paths.
Randomized experiments commonly compare subjects receiving a treatment to subjects receiving a placebo. An alternative design, frequently used in field experimentation, compares subjects assigned to an untreated baseline group to subjects assigned to a treatment group, adjusting statistically for the fact that some members of the treatment group may fail to receive the treatment. This article shows the potential advantages of a three-group design (baseline, placebo, and treatment). We present a maximum likelihood estimator of the treatment effect for this three-group design and illustrate its use with a field experiment that gauges the effect of prerecorded phone calls on voter turnout. The three-group design offers efficiency advantages over two-group designs while at the same time guarding against unanticipated placebo effects (which would undermine the placebo-treatment comparison) and unexpectedly low rates of compliance with the treatment assignment (which would undermine the baseline-treatment comparison).
Instruments for nuclear astrophysics collect photons using geometric optics, quantum
optics or wave optics. Despite their disparate aperture systems, hard
X- and soft gamma-ray telescopes have in common the way photons are
detected, i.e. the non-dispersive spectroscopy performed in their
detectors – gaz-filled counters, scintillators, and semiconductor
detectors. The objective of the present short review is to focus on
the status of these detectors in space-based gamma-ray instruments.
Very high energy gamma-ray astronomy is now bringing an invaluable contribution
to the understanding of violent phenomena in the Universe, as well as the search
for exotic physics such as indirect detection of dark matter or a test of
Lorentz invariance violation. The current Imaging Arrays of Cherenkov Telescopes
(IACT) show that this technique is mature. In Europe, the community is gathering
around the Cherenkov Telescope Array consortium, to design and build the next generation
ground-based array. It should reach an order of magnitude in sensitivity in a
wide energy band, ranging from 10 GeV to more than 100 TeV. This goal can be
achieved with an array of 50–100 telescopes of various sizes at various
spacings. With about 2000 channels per camera, a specific effort has to be made
to design front-end electronics with a lower cost and better performances.
A gain in cost and performances can be obtained by maximising the integration of the
front-end electronics in an ASIC. The amplifiers, analogue memories,
digitization and first level buffering can be embedded in the same component.
We present here the NECTAr project aiming at building a demonstrator element of
a generic camera built around this component.
The fast development of nitrides has given the opportunity to investigate AlGaN as a material for ultraviolet detection. A camera based on such a material presents an extremely low dark current at room temperature. It can compete with technologies based on photocathodes, MCP intensifiers, back thinned CCD or hybrid CMOS focal plane arrays for low flux measurements. First, we will present results on focal plane array of 320 × 256 pixels with a pitch of 30 μm. The peak responsivity is tuned from 260 nm to 360 nm in different cameras. All these results are obtained in a standard SWIR supply chaine and with AlGaN Schottky diodes grown on sapphire. We will present here the first attempts to transfer the standard design Schottky photodiodes on from sapphire to silicon substrates. We will show the capability to remove the silicon substrate, to etch the window layer in order to extend the band width to lower wavelength and to maintain the AlGaN membrane integrity.
This paper concentrates on a first demonstrator, a 23 NbSi superconducting thermometer array, developed in the DCMB collaboration. Firstly, the NbSi thin film alloy is described then the 23 TES array topology is presented. After that, DC and noise cryogenic measurement is reported. The cryogenic readout chain is also presented and finally, the multiplexing scheme developed for the readout of the 23 pixels array is described.
X-ray microcalorimeter arrays are well suited to address key problems in high-energy astrophysics; this microcalorimeter uses thermometers based on technology IDT (Implanted Diffused Thermometer) implemented in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers. This work presents our results on the test (measurements) of the thermometer prototype.