Update Regarding Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Progress of Iowa Communities, December 1, 2015

The Iowa State Court Administrator’s Office (SCA) created the CASP Advisory Committee in October 2013 to develop a state plan addressing disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system. The planning was assisted with a discretionary grant awarded from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

Mothers' experience of their contact with their stillborn infant: an interpretative phenomenological analysis.

BACKGROUND: Guidelines surrounding maternal contact with the stillborn infant have been contradictory over the past thirty years. Most studies have reported that seeing and holding the stillborn baby is associated with fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms among mothers of stillborn babies than not doing so. In contrast, others studies suggest that contact with the stillborn infant can lead to poorer maternal mental health outcomes. There is a lack of research focusing on the maternal experience of this contact. The present study aimed to investigate how mothers describe their experience of spending time with their stillborn baby and how they felt retrospectively about the decision they made to see and hold their baby or not. METHOD: In depth interviews were conducted with twenty-one mothers three months after stillbirth. All mothers had decided to see and the majority to hold their baby. Qualitative analysis of the interview data was performed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. RESULTS: Six superordinate themes were identified: Characteristics of Contact, Physicality; Emotional Experience; Surreal Experience; Finality; and Decision. Having contact with their stillborn infant provided mothers with time to process what had happened, to build memories, and to 'say goodbye', often sharing the experience with partners and other family members. The majority of mothers felt satisfied with their decision to spend time with their stillborn baby. Several mothers talked about their fear of seeing a damaged or dead body. Some mothers experienced strong disbelief and dissociation during the contact. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate that preparation before contact with the baby, professional support during the contact, and professional follow-up are crucial in order to prevent the development of maternal mental health problems. Fears of seeing a damaged or dead body should be sensitively explored and ways of coping discussed. Even in cases where mothers experienced intense distress during the contact with their stillborn baby, they still described that having had this contact was important and that they had taken the right decision. This indicates a need for giving parents an informed choice by engaging in discussions about the possible benefits and risks of seeing their stillborn baby.

Contact force transitions in regrasp tasks of planar objects

This paper presents a simple and fast solution to the problem of finding the time variations of the forces that keep the object equilibrium when a finger is removed from a three contact point grasp or a finger is added to a two contact point grasp, assuming the existence of an external perturbation force (that can be the object weight itself). The procedure returns force set points for the control system of a manipulator device in a regrasping action. The approach was implemented and a numerical example is included in the paper to illustrate how it works.

Unifying Time to Contact Estimation and Collision Avoidance across Species

The -function and the -function are phenomenological models that are widely used in the context of timing interceptive actions and collision avoidance, respectively. Both models were previously considered to be unrelated to each other: is a decreasing function that provides an estimation of time-to-contact (ttc) in the early phase of an object approach; in contrast, has a maximum before ttc. Furthermore, it is not clear how both functions could be implemented at the neuronal level in a biophysically plausible fashion. Here we propose a new framework the corrected modified Tau function capable of predicting both -type ("") and -type ("") responses. The outstanding property of our new framework is its resilience to noise. We show that can be derived from a firing rate equation, and, as , serves to describe the response curves of collision sensitive neurons. Furthermore, we show that predicts the psychophysical performance of subjects determining ttc. Our new framework is thus validated successfully against published and novel experimental data. Within the framework, links between -type and -type neurons are established. Therefore, it could possibly serve as a model for explaining the co-occurrence of such neurons in the brain.

Contact Center Functionality - Collecting and Prioritizing Features of Modern Contact Center.

Tässä diplomityössä pohditaan call centereiden asemaa tämän päivän palveluympäristössä ja myöskin call centereiden tulevaisuutta contact centereinä. Tämä työ tutkii kuinka asiakastarpeita ja uusia toiminnallisuuksia voidaan etsiä olemassaolevaan, mutta vielä keskeneräiseen call center tuotteeseen. Tutkimus on tehty lukemalla artikkeleita ja kirjoja tulevaisuuden contact centereistä, haastattelemalla asiakkaita ja järjestämällä ideointisessio yrityksen asiantuntijoille. Näin saadut tulokset priorisoitiin tätä tarkoitusta varten kehitellyllä matriisilla. Lopullisena tuloksena on lista toiminnallisuuksista tärkeysjärjestyksessä ja tuote roadmap kaikkein tärkeimmistä toiminnallisuuksista. Tämä roadmap antaa tuotekehitykselle ehdotuksen mitä tulisi implementoida nykyiseen tuotteeseen ja mitkä ovat prioriteetit. Tässä työssä pohdiskellaan myös tuotteen modulaarista rakennetta.

Timeframe of speciation inferred from secondary contact zones in the European tree frog radiation (Hyla arborea group).

BACKGROUND: Hybridization between incipient species is expected to become progressively limited as their genetic divergence increases and reproductive isolation proceeds. Amphibian radiations and their secondary contact zones are useful models to infer the timeframes of speciation, but empirical data from natural systems remains extremely scarce. Here we follow this approach in the European radiation of tree frogs (Hyla arborea group). We investigated a natural hybrid zone between two lineages (Hyla arborea and Hyla orientalis) of Mio-Pliocene divergence (~5 My) for comparison with other hybrid systems from this group. RESULTS: We found concordant geographic distributions of nuclear and mitochondrial gene pools, and replicated narrow transitions (~30 km) across two independent transects, indicating an advanced state of reproductive isolation and potential local barriers to dispersal. This result parallels the situation between H. arborea and H. intermedia, which share the same amount of divergence with H. orientalis. In contrast, younger lineages show much stronger admixture at secondary contacts. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings corroborate the negative relationship between hybridizability and divergence time in European tree frogs, where 5 My are necessary to achieve almost complete reproductive isolation. Speciation seems to progress homogeneously in this radiation, and might thus be driven by gradual genome-wide changes rather than single speciation genes. However, the timescale differs greatly from that of other well-studied amphibians. General assumptions on the time necessary for speciation based on evidence from unrelated taxa may thus be unreliable. In contrast, comparative hybrid zone analyses within single radiations such as our case study are useful to appreciate the advance of speciation in space and time.

Fibroblast surface-associated FGF-2 promotes contact-dependent colorectal cancer cell migration and invasion through FGFR-SRC signaling and integrin αvβ5-mediated adhesion.

Carcinoma-associated fibroblasts were reported to promote colorectal cancer (CRC) invasion by secreting motility factors and extracellular matrix processing enzymes. Less is known whether fibroblasts may induce CRC cancer cell motility by contact-dependent mechanisms. To address this question we characterized the interaction between fibroblasts and SW620 and HT29 colorectal cancer cells in 2D and 3D co-culture models in vitro. Here we show that fibroblasts induce contact-dependent cancer cell elongation, motility and invasiveness independently of deposited matrix or secreted factors. These effects depend on fibroblast cell surface-associated fibroblast growth factor (FGF) -2. Inhibition of FGF-2 or FGF receptors (FGFRs) signaling abolishes these effects. FGFRs activate SRC in cancer cells and inhibition or silencing of SRC in cancer cells, but not in fibroblasts, prevents fibroblasts-mediated effects. Using an RGD-based integrin antagonist and function-blocking antibodies we demonstrate that cancer cell adhesion to fibroblasts requires integrin αvβ5. Taken together, these results demonstrate that fibroblasts induce cell-contact-dependent colorectal cancer cell migration and invasion under 2D and 3D conditions in vitro through fibroblast cell surface-associated FGF-2, FGF receptor-mediated SRC activation and αvβ5 integrin-dependent cancer cell adhesion to fibroblasts. The FGF-2-FGFRs-SRC-αvβ5 integrin loop might be explored as candidate therapeutic target to block colorectal cancer invasion.