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Documents the Dubai royal family's considerable efforts to win the current year's Kentucky Derby, noting how they have already spent upwards of $75 million and are challenging the way American horsemen have been training for decades.

Negative symptoms are a key feature of several psychiatric disorders. Difficulty identifying common neurobiological mechanisms that cut across diagnostic boundaries might result from equifinality (i.e., multiple mechanistic pathways to the same clinical profile), both within and across disorders. This study used a data-driven approach to identify unique subgroups of participants with distinct reward processing profiles to determine which profiles predicted negative symptoms. Participants were a transdiagnostic sample of youth from a multisite study of psychosis risk, including 110 individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR; meeting psychosis-risk syndrome criteria), 88 help-seeking participants who failed to meet CHR criteria and/or who presented with other psychiatric diagnoses, and a reference group of 66 healthy controls. Participants completed clinical interviews and behavioral tasks assessing four reward processing constructs indexed by the RDoC Positive Valence Systems: hedonic reactivity, reinforcement learning, value representation, and effort-cost computation. -means cluster analysis of clinical participants identified three subgroups with distinct reward processing profiles, primarily characterized by: a value representation deficit (54%), a generalized reward processing deficit (17%), and a hedonic reactivity deficit (29%). Clusters did not differ in rates of clinical group membership or psychiatric diagnoses. Elevated negative symptoms were only present in the generalized deficit cluster, which also displayed greater functional impairment and higher psychosis conversion probability scores. Contrary to the equifinality hypothesis, results suggested one global reward processing deficit pathway to negative symptoms independent of diagnostic classification. Assessment of reward processing profiles may have utility for individualized clinical prediction and treatment.

Altered visual perception has been observed across all phases of psychotic illness, suggesting that perceptual measures might be useful in identifying people at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR). In a preliminary study, we found that CHR participants reported perceiving more faces in binarized human portraits on the Mooney Faces Test (MFT). Here, we aimed to replicate these findings and extend understanding of underlying processes and clinical correlates of MFT performance in the Computerized Assessment of Psychosis Risk (CAPR) cohort: CHR (n = 159), help-seeking psychiatric controls (n = 130), and healthy controls (n = 86). The MFT was adapted to include three image conditions (upright, inverted, and scrambled), and included follow-up questions regarding the physical characteristics of the faces that participants reported perceiving, to verify accuracy of perception and assess response bias. The CHR group reported more faces than both control groups in the inverted and scrambled conditions. In addition, the CHR group was as accurate at judging the age and gender of faces as the other groups. Among CHR participants, increased reporting of faces in the inverted condition was significantly correlated with more severe positive symptoms and poorer role functioning. We discuss the findings in terms of multiple perspectives, including changes in perceptual sensitivity, predictive coding, and perceptual organization.

On the constitutional level, the Court's Stern trilogy has dragged into the fore the uncertain and contested nature of bankruptcy judge authority to exercise the judicial power of the United States under Article III.2 And on the statutory level, indirectly invoking concerns of adjudicative legitimacy, the Court has offered similar comments on the scope of a bankruptcy judge's inherent equitable authority in the Law v. Siegel case.3 There is an inescapable subtext to these cases (although perhaps walked back a bit in Wellness Int'l 7Jetwor\\, Ltd. v. Sharif): bankruptcy judges are not fully \"real\" judges, and so they have to be watched with suspicion lest they unravel our constitutional principles as we know them.4 This has some wondering whether the march toward greater respectability and acceptance has marched right off a cliff, triggering a backlash on these judicial upstarts, with the Supreme Court opinions leading the way.5 It is of course too early to tell whether we are in a new era of bankruptcy judge (dis)respectability. [...]the Article discusses pertinent collateral policy concerns that we deem to have played a significant role in the evolution of criminal contempt powers in the bankruptcy courts. A semi- nal case denying such a power is the Fifth Circuit's opinion in In re Hipp.11 Although it used the constitutional avoidance doctrine to interpret 18 U.S.C. §401 and 11 U.S.C. § 105, the court's analysis was unquestionably driven by Article III of the Constitution: \"The principal constitutional concern here arises from the fact that bankruptcy...

Identifying state-sensitive measures of perceptual and cognitive processes implicated in psychosis may allow for objective, earlier, and better monitoring of changes in mental status that are predictive of an impending psychotic episode, relative to traditional self-report-based clinical measures. To determine whether a measure of visual perception that has demonstrated sensitivity to the clinical state of schizophrenia in multiple prior studies is sensitive to features of the at-risk mental state, we examined differences between young people identified as being at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR; n = 37) and non-psychiatric matched controls (n = 29) on the Mooney Faces Test (MFT). On each trial of the MFT, participants report whether they perceive a face in a degraded face image. The CHR group reported perceiving a greater number of faces in both upright and inverted MFT stimuli. Consistent with prior work, males reported more faces on the MFT than females in both conditions. However, the finding of greater reported face perception among CHR subjects was robustly observed in the female CHR group relative to the female control group. Among male CHR participants, greater reported face perception was related to increased perceptual abnormalities. These preliminary results are consistent with a small but growing literature suggesting that heightened perceptual sensitivity may characterize individuals at increased clinical risk for psychosis. Further studies are needed to determine the contributions of specific perceptual, cognitive, and motivational mechanisms to the findings.

Agricultural CH4 and N2O emissions represent around 11% of total anthropogenic GHGs. Here agriculture mitigation potentials are quantified, in the context of the 1.5 °C target, and decomposed by emission source, region and mitigation mechanism.

As the Texas legislature continues to increase state accountability, most recently with the A-F system (House Bill 22, 2017), many schools have opted to implement afterschool programs to “address the social and emotional needs of their students” (Texas Education Code (TEC) §28.002(a)(2)(C)). Research in the field of social and emotional learning (SEL) has proliferated over the past decade as an umbrella term to include “non-cognitive development, character education, 21st-century skills, and trauma-informed learning, among others” (Jones et al., 2017, p. 4). Grit, growth mindset, and social skills are all skills under the SEL umbrella, but researchers, educators, and policymakers all struggle to agree on what skills to target and to find an intervention that addresses and addresses all of these skills. Purpose: One program that seeks to develop students’ success and resilience is the United Future Leaders (UFL) program. Research on SEL and curricular programs are plentiful, but little research is being done on the implementation of these programs across different sites. Program evaluation allows teachers, parents, and school administrators the ability to choose programs that address the social and emotional learning elements they value, implement programs with fidelity, and ensure the program is reaching its intended outcomes. Given this lack of attention to program evaluation, and more specifically to process evaluation, the purpose of this study was to examine program outcomes from three different elementary schools in the South Plains region of the West Texas area which implemented the UFL program as an after-school enrichment. This study also sought to investigate whether there were differences in site outcomes for the UFL after-school program focused on building resiliency. Therefore, the following research questions will be explored: 1. How do study participants (program administrators and staff) describe program characteristics and implementation across individual campuses? 2. How do study participants (program administrators and staff) describe program outcomes across individual campuses? Methods: In order to lay out a deep understanding of what transpires during an UFL course, this study used a comparative case study design employing semi-structured interviews that were conducted with the director of the UFL, assistant director of the UFL, and the UFL program coordinator, as well as the two undergraduate research facilitators and the three principals of the elementary sites included in this study. Also, data from the 2017-2018 UFL Annual Report, which summarizes the survey findings for fifth and sixth grade UFL participants during the academic year 2017-2018, informed this study. Additional data sources, such as program documents and reports were analyzed. This approach allowed for case study descriptions of each of the three elementary sites to be developed, taking into account unique contexts of each location as well as cross-cutting themes across the three sites. Following the semi-structured interviews, transcripts and notes were coded to identify themes among the three different UFL elementary sites. Interview transcripts were reviewed numerous times as the researcher “move[d] from reading to describing, classifying, and interpreting” (Creswell, 2013, p. 184). Additionally, as a form of member checking, the researcher shared transcripts and findings with study participants to confirm results. Data obtained from the interviews and the 2017-2018 UFL Programming Research Report enabled the researcher to triangulate data results to ensure rigor (Creswell & Miller, 2000). Results: The study results are based on how participants described the program characteristics and implementation differences at individual campuses and how those participants described the outcome differences among the different campuses. As expected, the differences identified in the UFL Annual Report are not based on a single phenomenon, but a combination of training protocols for college-age student volunteers, fidelity in curriculum implementation, adequate resources, and campus administrative support. Conclusion: The findings revealed that in order to grow the UFL program with fidelity, student volunteers must be trained on a regular and more consistent basis. Also, student volunteers must not stray from the prescribed curriculum. In addition, campuses (and districts) with administrative support for the UFL Program were more successful. Finally, additional funding sources and human resources must be obtained before the program can expand while realizing its vision of establishing environments where successful leaders can thrive.

There is very little evidence regarding the specifics of how teacher candidates in preservice teacher education programs employing a cohort system interact and support one another. Similarly, there have been calls for more evidence of the specifics of the socialization process of teacher candidates, especially as it relates to the relationship between program design and peer interaction and support within a cohort. Utilizing a situated learning perspective and ethnographic tools (Green, Dixon & Zaharlick, 2002), observations and interviews were conducted of teacher candidates and their instructors and supervisors, both at the university and in the partner schools, over the course of a full academic year. Using the full year of field experience as a lens for the analysis, a recursive relationship between teacher education program design, peer interaction and support and the socialization process was found. The willingness and ability of the teacher candidates to support and learn from one another was facilitated by certain elements of program design. First, the number and variety of cross-disciplinary, mini-cohorts the program placed them in over the course of the year put them in close proximity to a large number of their peers, exposing them to a wide range of expertise. Second, the safe spaces created for them by clinical faculty at the partner schools and by program administration and faculty at the university enabled them to discuss, reflect, and problem-solve openly. Finally, the program design gave teacher candidates multiple support options throughout the year, rather than just one cooperating teacher, and the evidence showed that the teacher candidates explored those multiple options. The findings point to the cohort system as a design that can facilitate peer interaction and support. For programs that do not employ a cohort system, the findings indicate that peer interaction and support is likely to result from encouraging collaboration and communication across disciplines. The need for teacher candidates to be socialized into school cultures by mentors familiar with the particulars of the school and placed in mini-cohorts to share their experiences is also a finding that cuts across all teacher education programs.

Control systems are used in a variety of applications where tracking and regulation are required, although there exist numerous problems which can cause detrimental effects for standard controllers. The field of adaptive control has been researched and applied to solve some of these difficulties, usually through the use of complete adaptive control strategies. This research proposes adaptive controllers which may be added to fixed nonadaptive controllers to form a single unified scheme. This allows the traditional control designer some intuition in the development while reaping the benefits of a controller which can compensate for unknown or changing dynamics. There are three specific problems tackled in this research: flexible modes, disturbances, and time delays. Since each of these may be uncertain or may change over time, the addition of an adaptive controller may allow the system to meet performance requirements or retain stability. This research will contribute the design and analytical proof of adaptive mode suppression schemes to deal with unknown flexible modes. These modes may be uncertain for a variety of reasons, such as variation between production units, changes in the surrounding environment, degradation over lifetime, or wear from use. The adaptive mode suppression schemes include an adaptive notch filter which is able to track and suppress a varying flexible mode. However, disturbances can also reduce the performance of a control system, specifically one where precise tracking is paramount. For this, we contribute an adaptive neural modeled disturbance rejector which can be added to a stable control system to enhance tracking performance. Lastly, many systems in the field of process controls contain dominant time delays which can change with time, thus affecting the stability and robustness of the closed loop system. To solve this problem, we propose an adaptive Smith predictor which is able to estimate and compensate for the uncertain time delay. To show the benefit of the adaptive controllers, several applications are presented, such as a hard disk drive (HDD) where unknown high frequency flexible modes inhibit the achievable bandwidth and dynamic disturbances degrade the tracking quality. Experimental results of the adaptive mode suppression scheme and disturbance rejection scheme are included. Also simulations of an integrated scheme with the adaptive mode suppression scheme and neural modeled disturbance rejector are done to show an improvement in performance. Simulations are also conducted on a nonlinear hypersonic aircraft model which experiences changing elastic modes, where an adaptive mode suppression scheme is shown to retain stability.