South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice report card for 2009

The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice annually publishes a report card that provides an overview of the juvenile justice system and statistics on caseloads, facility population, and agency programs.

South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice report card for 2010

The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice annually publishes a report card that provides an overview of the juvenile justice system and statistics on caseloads, facility population, and agency programs.

Evaluating Methods of Calculating the Fixed Fee on Professional Service Contracts

The South Carolina Department of Transportation routinely retains Professional Consulting Engineering firms to provide engineering design and related professional services for the preparation of construction plans or design-build Request for Proposal bid packages for a wide variety of Federal-aid Highway Program roadway and bridge construction projects throughout South Carolina.The purpose of this project is to examine the current process of determining a "Fair and Reasonable" fixed fee for professional service contracts and to evaluate possible alternative methods including practices in other states that may improve the process, particularly in light of the considerable variation in audited overhead rates among consulting firms. In reviewing such alternative methods particular attention will be given to evaluating the potential impact of the method as an incentive to consulting firms to effectively manage their overhead costs.

South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice report card for 2011

The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice annually publishes a report card that provides an overview of the juvenile justice system and statistics on caseloads, facility population, and agency programs.

South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice report card for 2012

The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice annually publishes a report card that provides an overview of the juvenile justice system and statistics on caseloads, facility population, and agency programs.

South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice report card for 2013

The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice annually publishes a report card that provides an overview of the juvenile justice system and statistics on caseloads, facility population, and agency programs.

The impact of presbyopic spectacles and contact lenses on driving performance

Presbyopia affects individuals from the age of 45 years onwards, resulting in difficulty in accurately focusing on near objects. There are many optical corrections available including spectacles or contact lenses that are designed to enable presbyopes to see clearly at both far and near distances. However, presbyopic vision corrections also disturb aspects of visual function under certain circumstances. The impact of these changes on activities of daily living such as driving are, however, poorly understood. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine which aspects of driving performance might be affected by wearing different types of presbyopic vision corrections. In order to achieve this aim, three experiments were undertaken. The first experiment involved administration of a questionnaire to compare the subjective driving difficulties experienced when wearing a range of common presbyopic contact lens and spectacle corrections. The questionnaire was developed and piloted, and included a series of items regarding difficulties experienced while driving under day and night-time conditions. Two hundred and fifty five presbyopic patients responded to the questionnaire and were categorised into five groups, including those wearing no vision correction for driving (n = 50), bifocal spectacles (BIF, n = 54), progressive addition lenses spectacles (PAL, n = 50), monovision (MV, n = 53) and multifocal contact lenses (MTF CL, n = 48). Overall, ratings of satisfaction during daytime driving were relatively high for all correction types. However, MV and MTF CL wearers were significantly less satisfied with aspects of their vision during night-time than daytime driving, particularly with regard to disturbances from glare and haloes. Progressive addition lens wearers noticed more distortion of peripheral vision, while BIF wearers reported more difficulties with tasks requiring changes in focus and those who wore no vision correction for driving reported problems with intermediate and near tasks. Overall, the mean level of satisfaction for daytime driving was quite high for all of the groups (over 80%), with the BIF wearers being the least satisfied with their vision for driving. Conversely, at night, MTF CL wearers expressed the least satisfaction. Research into eye and head movements has become increasingly of interest in driving research as it provides a means of understanding how the driver responds to visual stimuli in traffic. Previous studies have found that wearing PAL can affect eye and head movement performance resulting in slower eye movement velocities and longer times to stabilize the gaze for fixation. These changes in eye and head movement patterns may have implications for driving safety, given that the visual tasks for driving include a range of dynamic search tasks. Therefore, the second study was designed to investigate the influence of different presbyopic corrections on driving-related eye and head movements under standardized laboratory-based conditions. Twenty presbyopes (mean age: 56.1 ± 5.7 years) who had no experience of wearing presbyopic vision corrections, apart from single vision reading spectacles, were recruited. Each participant wore five different types of vision correction: single vision distance lenses (SV), PAL, BIF, MV and MTF CL. For each visual condition, participants were required to view videotape recordings of traffic scenes, track a reference vehicle and identify a series of peripherally presented targets while their eye and head movements were recorded using the faceLAB® eye and head tracking system. Digital numerical display panels were also included as near visual stimuli (simulating the visual displays of a vehicle speedometer and radio). The results demonstrated that the path length of eye movements while viewing and responding to driving-related traffic scenes was significantly longer when wearing BIF and PAL than MV and MTF CL. The path length of head movements was greater with SV, BIF and PAL than MV and MTF CL. Target recognition was less accurate when the near stimulus was located at eccentricities inferiorly and to the left, rather than directly below the primary position of gaze, regardless of vision correction type. The third experiment aimed to investigate the real world driving performance of presbyopes while wearing different vision corrections measured on a closed-road circuit at night-time. Eye movements were recorded using the ASL Mobile Eye, eye tracking system (as the faceLAB® system proved to be impractical for use outside of the laboratory). Eleven participants (mean age: 57.25 ± 5.78 years) were fitted with four types of prescribed vision corrections (SV, PAL, MV and MTF CL). The measures of driving performance on the closed-road circuit included distance to sign recognition, near target recognition, peripheral light-emitting-diode (LED) recognition, low contrast road hazards recognition and avoidance, recognition of all the road signs, time to complete the course, and driving behaviours such as braking, accelerating, and cornering. The results demonstrated that driving performance at night was most affected by MTF CL compared to PAL, resulting in shorter distances to read signs, slower driving speeds, and longer times spent fixating road signs. Monovision resulted in worse performance in the task of distance to read a signs compared to SV and PAL. The SV condition resulted in significantly more errors made in interpreting information from in-vehicle devices, despite spending longer time fixating on these devices. Progressive addition lenses were ranked as the most preferred vision correction, while MTF CL were the least preferred vision correction for night-time driving. This thesis addressed the research question of how presbyopic vision corrections affect driving performance and the results of the three experiments demonstrated that the different types of presbyopic vision corrections (e.g. BIF, PAL, MV and MTF CL) can affect driving performance in different ways. Distance-related driving tasks showed reduced performance with MV and MTF CL, while tasks which involved viewing in-vehicle devices were significantly hampered by wearing SV corrections. Wearing spectacles such as SV, BIF and PAL induced greater eye and head movements in the simulated driving condition, however this did not directly translate to impaired performance on the closed- road circuit tasks. These findings are important for understanding the influence of presbyopic vision corrections on vision under real world driving conditions. They will also assist the eye care practitioner to understand and convey to patients the potential driving difficulties associated with wearing certain types of presbyopic vision corrections and accordingly to support them in the process of matching patients to optical corrections which meet their visual needs.

Analysing Seasonal Health Data

Seasonal patterns have been found in a remarkable range of health conditions, including birth defects, respiratory infections and cardiovascular disease. Accurately estimating the size and timing of seasonal peaks in disease incidence is an aid to understanding the causes and possibly to developing interventions. With global warming increasing the intensity of seasonal weather patterns around the world, a review of the methods for estimating seasonal effects on health is timely. This is the first book on statistical methods for seasonal data written for a health audience. It describes methods for a range of outcomes (including continuous, count and binomial data) and demonstrates appropriate techniques for summarising and modelling these data. It has a practical focus and uses interesting examples to motivate and illustrate the methods. The statistical procedures and example data sets are available in an R package called ‘season’. Adrian Barnett is a senior research fellow at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Annette Dobson is a Professor of Biostatistics at The University of Queensland, Australia. Both are experienced medical statisticians with a commitment to statistical education and have previously collaborated in research in the methodological developments and applications of biostatistics, especially to time series data. Among other projects, they worked together on revising the well-known textbook "An Introduction to Generalized Linear Models," third edition, Chapman Hall/CRC, 2008. In their new book they share their knowledge of statistical methods for examining seasonal patterns in health.

Sonic loom (Volume 1)

Sonic Loom is a purpose built classroom tool for teachers and students of drama that will enable them to explore the use of music in live performance in theory and practice. It’s intended as a resource for drama classrooms, to encourage communication and exchange about the way music works on us so we can find new ways we can make it work for us. Working to consciously attend to music and how it’s used, particularly in cinema (as a popular way in to styles of western theatre and live performance) will allow students and teachers to use music in more subtle and complex ways an aid to narrative in performance. Sonic Loom encourages active listening, (aided but not encumbered by traditional musicology) so students (and teachers) can develop a ‘critical ear’ in the transformation and adaptation of music for their own artistic purposes, whether it’s soundtracking existing scene work, or acting as a pre-text for scenes which have yet to be created.

Developing the eclectic paradigm of internationalization on the issue of multinational contractors bidding for Australian infrastructure

Against a background of already thin markets in some sectors of major public sector infrastructure in Australia and the desire of the Australian federal government to leverage private finance, concerns about ensuring sufficient levels of competition are prompting federal government to seek new sources of in-bound foreign direct income - as part of attracting more foreign contractors and consortia to bid for Australian public sector major infrastructure. As a first step towards attracting greater overseas interest in the Australian public sector market infrastructure market, an improved understanding of the determinants of multinational contractors’ willingness to bid in this market is offered by Dunning’s eclectic paradigm and which have has been a dominant approach in international business for over 20 years and yet has been little used in the context of international contracting. This paper aims to develop Dunning’s eclectic framework and also gives a brief outline of a research plan to collect secondary data and primary data from international contractors around the globe in pursuance of testing the eclectic framework.

Offending Youth : Crime, Sex and Justice

Rates of female delinquency, especially for violent crimes, are increasing in most common law countries. At the same time the growth in cyber-bullying, especially among girls, appears to be a related global phenomenon. While the gender gap in delinquency is narrowing in Australia, United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, boys continue to dominate the youth who commit crime and have a virtual monopoly over sexually violent crimes. Indigenous youth continue to be vastly over-represented in the juvenile justice system in every Australian jurisdiction. The Indigenisation of delinquency is a persistent problem in other countries such as Canada and New Zealand. Young people who gather in public places are susceptible to being perceived as somehow threatening or riotous, attracting more than their share of public order policing. Professional football has been marred by repeated scandals involving sexual assault, violence and drunkenness. Given the cultural significance of footballers as role models to thousands, if not millions, of young men around the world, it is vitally important to address this problem. Offending Youth explores these key contemporary patterns of delinquency, the response to these by the juvenile justice agencies and moreover what can be done to address these problems. The book also analyses the major policy and legislative changes from the nineteenth to twenty first centuries, chiefly the shift the penal welfarism to diversion and restorative justice. Using original cases studied by Carrington twenty years ago, Offending Youth illustrates how penal welfarism criminalised young people from socially marginal backgrounds, especially Aboriginal children, children from single parent families, family-less children, state wards and young people living in poverty or in housing commission estates. A number of inquiries in Australia and the United Kingdom have since established that children committed to these institutions, supposedly for their own good, experienced systemic physical, sexual and psychological abuse during their institutionalisation. The book is dedicated to the survivors of these institutions who only now are receiving official recognition of the injustices they suffered. The underlying philosophy of juvenile justice has fundamentally shifted away from penal welfarism to embrace positive policy responses to juvenile crime, such as youth conferencing, cautions, warnings, restorative justice, circle sentencing and diversion examined in the concluding chapter. Offending Youth is aimed at a broad readership including policy makers, juvenile justice professionals, youth workers, families, teachers, politicians as well as students and academics in criminology, policing, gender studies, masculinity studies, Indigenous studies, justice studies, youth studies and the sociology of youth and deviance more generally.-- [from publisher website]

Morphological classification of bovine ovarian follicles

Follicle classification is an important aid to the understanding of follicular development and atresia. Some bovine primordial follicles have the classical primordial shape, but ellipsoidal shaped follicles with some cuboidal granulosa cells at the poles are far more common. Preantral follicles have one of two basal lamina phenotypes, either a single aligned layer or one with additional layers. In antral follicles <5 mm diameter, half of the healthy follicles have columnar shaped basal granulosa cells and additional layers of basal lamina, which appear as loops in cross section (‘loopy’). The remainder have aligned single-layered follicular basal laminas with rounded basal cells, and contain better quality oocytes than the loopy/columnar follicles. In sizes >5 mm, only aligned/rounded phenotypes are present. Dominant and subordinate follicles can be identified by ultrasound and/or histological examination of pairs of ovaries. Atretic follicles <5 mm are either basal atretic or antral atretic, named on the basis of the location in the membrana granulosa where cells die first. Basal atretic follicles have considerable biological differences to antral atretic follicles. In follicles >5 mm, only antral atresia is observed. The concentrations of follicular fluid steroid hormones can be used to classify atresia and distinguish some of the different types of atresia; however, this method is unlikely to identify follicles early in atresia, and hence misclassify them as healthy. Other biochemical and histological methods can be used, but since cell death is a part of normal homoeostatis, deciding when a follicle has entered atresia remains somewhat subjective.

Acoustic, mechanical and near-infrared profiling of osteoarthritic progression in bovine joints

Early-stage treatments for osteoarthritis are attracting considerable interest as a means to delay, or avoid altogether, the pain and lack of mobility associated with late-stage disease, and the considerable burden that it places on the community. With the development of these treatments comes a need to assess the tissue to which they are applied, both in trialling of new treatments and as an aid to clinical decision making. Here, we measure a range of mechanical indentation, ultrasound and near-infrared spectroscopy parameters in normal and osteoarthritic bovine joints in vitro to describe the role of different physical phenomena in disease progression, using this as a basis to investigate the potential value of the techniques as clinical tools. Based on 72 samples we found that mechanical and ultrasound parameters showed differences between fibrillated tissue, macroscopically normal tissue in osteoarthritic joints, and normal tissue, yet did were unable to differentiate degradation beyond that which was visible to the naked eye. Near-infrared spectroscopy showed a clear progression of degradation across the visibly normal osteoarthritic joint surface and as such, was the only technique considered useful for clinical application.

Australian Tax Analysis [8th Edition]

Now in its eighth edition, Australian Tax Analysis: Cases, Commentary, Commercial Applications and Questions has a proven track record as a high level work for students of taxation law written by a team of authors with many years of experience. Taking into account the fact that the volume of material needed to be processed by today’s taxation student can be overwhelming, the well-chosen extracts and thought-provoking commentary in Australian Tax Analysis, 8th edition, provide readers with the depth of knowledge, and reasoning and analytical skills that will be required of them as practitioners. As well as the carefully selected case extracts and the helpful commentary, each chapter is supplemented by engaging practice questions, involving problem-solving, commercial decision-making, legal analysis and quantitative application. All these elements combined make Australian Tax Analysis an invaluable aid to the understanding of a subject that can be both technical and complex.

Gender and Leader Effects in the 2010 Australian Election

The impact of voters’ gender on leader evaluations in parliamentary systems has been largely unexplored, while the impact of female leaders on voter attitudes and preferences remains to be fully established. This paper uses Julia Gillard’s historic candidacy in the 2010 Australian federal election to explore how voters evaluated Australia’s first female prime minister, and to test the impact of their assessments on vote choice. The authors also examine whether Gillard’s high-profile candidacy affected women’s levels of political interest, awareness and engagement in what had been largely a ‘man’s game’. Their findings confirm that Gillard enjoyed a gender-affinity effect in 2010 in terms of both leader evaluations and vote choice, and women’s political engagement was significantly affected by the Gillard candidacy.