In this paper we examine the claim that private industry can provide the flexibility and cost efficiency needed to meet current demands for prison space and improved prison conditions. We show ...reasons to suspect predictions of increased efficiency and flexibility, and warn of the difficulties in regulating a private industry. We conclude by evaluating the consequences of privatization for future criminal justice policy.
The PBIS Framework has demonstrated effectiveness in supporting schools in improving various prosocial outcomes including improved social, emotional, and behavioral skills; increased academic ...outcomes and attendance; decreased exclusionary discipline (e.g., office referrals, suspensions); and reduced reports of bullying and substance abuse. In addition, a number of statewide support systems have effectively trained schools to fidelity using a cohort training model. However, there are fewer demonstrations of statewide systems of support that prioritize implementation and capacity building for schools in high needs communities. This evaluation brief describes the Massachusetts PBIS Academy model--a state-supported training approach for high-needs schools and districts. The brief also shares evaluation data to document implementation fidelity and outcomes for participating schools, relative to matched comparison schools.
We present multi-wavelength spectral and temporal variability analysis of PKS 0027-426 using optical griz observations from DES (Dark Energy Survey) between 2013-2018 and VOILETTE (VEILS Optical ...Light curves of Extragalactic TransienT Events) between 2018-2019 and near infrared (NIR) JKs observations from VEILS (VISTAExtragalactic Infrared Legacy Survey) between 2017-2019. Multiple methods of cross-correlation of each combination of light curve provides measurements of possible lags between optical-optical, optical-NIR, and NIR-NIR emission, for each observation season and for the entire observational period. Inter-band time lag measurements consistently suggest either simultaneous emission or delays between emission regions on timescales smaller than the cadences of observations. The colour-magnitude relation between each combination of filters was also studied to determine the spectral behaviour of PKS 0027-426. Our results demonstrate complex colour behaviour that changes between bluer when brighter (BWB), stable when brighter (SWB) and redder when brighter (RWB) trends over different timescales and using different combinations of optical filters. Additional analysis of the optical spectra is performed to provide further understanding of this complex spectral behaviour.
Your good president has asked me to speak to you on the subject “An Engineer Looks at Mathematics Teaching.” I was given this honor as I had been privileged to be with Professor Rankin at his ...Institute at Duke University for Teachers of Mathematics, where we have had such good times together. Through the contributions of Professor Rankin and his associates and through the contributions of your own National Council the work being done in mathematics throughout our land is enriched and a true concept of the proper place of mathematics in our educational program is obtained by all who have a responsibility in this field—teacher, principal, professor, and dean, together with all those who need and use mathematics in their daily living and work. This is everybody.
All proposals of amendments to the Constitution of the United States under Article V have been made only by Congress and, with the exception of the Twentyfirst Amendment, the mode of ratification has ...been “by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states.” The Twenty-first Amendment alone was ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the states. The enrolled joint resolution proposing the Twenty-first Amendment was delivered on February 20, 1933, to Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson. On February 21, he sent identic letters to the governors of the forty-eight states, enclosing with each letter a certified copy of the joint resolution, and requesting that the resolution be submitted to a state convention and that a certified copy of the action taken be communicated to the secretary of state.
Strongly lensed quadruply imaged quasars (quads) are extraordinary objects. They are very rare in the sky -- only a few tens are known to date -- and yet they provide unique information about a wide ...range of topics, including the expansion history and the composition of the Universe, the distribution of stars and dark matter in galaxies, the host galaxies of quasars, and the stellar initial mass function. Finding them in astronomical images is a classic "needle in a haystack" problem, as they are outnumbered by other (contaminant) sources by many orders of magnitude. To solve this problem, we develop state-of-the-art deep learning methods and train them on realistic simulated quads based on real images of galaxies taken from the Dark Energy Survey, with realistic source and deflector models, including the chromatic effects of microlensing. The performance of the best methods on a mixture of simulated and real objects is excellent, yielding area under the receiver operating curve in the range 0.86 to 0.89. Recall is close to 100% down to total magnitude i~21 indicating high completeness, while precision declines from 85% to 70% in the range i~17-21. The methods are extremely fast: training on 2 million samples takes 20 hours on a GPU machine, and 10^8 multi-band cutouts can be evaluated per GPU-hour. The speed and performance of the method pave the way to apply it to large samples of astronomical sources, bypassing the need for photometric pre-selection that is likely to be a major cause of incompleteness in current samples of known quads.
Reverberation mapping is a robust method to measure the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) outside of the local Universe. Measurements of the radius -- luminosity (\(R-L\)) relation using the ...Mg II emission line are critical for determining these masses near the peak of quasar activity at \(z \approx 1 - 2\), and for calibrating secondary mass estimators based on Mg II that can be applied to large samples with only single-epoch spectroscopy. We present the first nine Mg II lags from our five-year Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) reverberation mapping program, which substantially improves the number and quality of Mg II lag measurements. As the Mg II feature is somewhat blended with iron emission, we model and subtract both the continuum and iron contamination from the multi-epoch spectra before analyzing the Mg II line. We also develop a new method of quantifying correlated spectroscopic calibration errors based on our numerous, contemporaneous observations of F-stars. The lag measurements for seven of our nine sources are consistent with both the H\(\beta\) and Mg II \(R-L\) relations reported by previous studies. Our simulations verify the lag reliability of our nine measurements, and we estimate that the median false positive rate of the lag measurements is \(4\%\).
