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Police social workers are crucial components of police departments when individuals or communities experience crises. They perform essential tasks, including well-being checks, crisis intervention, de-escalation, mediation, safety planning, referrals to community services, and other preventative measures to stabilize clients in crisis. The chapter will define police social work and give the reader insight into the stabilization approaches used by police social workers to prepare clients for their next level of care. The chapter begins with a brief history of the evolution of police social workers within the context of public policy and their most recent call to action to address mental health crises. The authors utilize a multi-tier approach to highlight stabilization approaches used by police social workers with a focus on empowering individuals, families, and communities to collaborate on solutions. The chapter uses case scenarios drawn from the experiences of police social workers and interns to demonstrate stabilization approaches. A racial equity, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed lens informs the approach to stabilizing client systems in law enforcement settings. © 2023, IGI Global. All rights reserved.

Background In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control found that more than 1.5 million people develop sepsis each year and about 250,000 Americans die from it. Early identification and treatment of sepsis can decrease mortality and morbidity, yet studies have shown student nurses are not prepared to rescue deteriorating patients. Method The purpose of this pilot study was to create and test a response to rescue simulation for use with undergraduate nursing students. The simulation depicted a patient deteriorating from sepsis. The Martinez Sepsis Competency Evaluation Tool (MSCET) developed to rate student behaviors during the simulation. Promoting Excellence and Reflective Learning in Simulation (PEARLS) debriefing model was used post simulation. Results The overall content validity of the MSCET was 0.88. Each item that scored a I-CVI of 0.78 or less were revised. The total percentage of behaviors met was 68 %. The inter-rater reliability of the MSCET conciseness was 0.47 (X = 67.508, df = 48, p ≤ .05). Conclusion The results indicate the simulation based experience was effective in preparing students to care for patients with early signs of sepsis. Students were complimentary about the experience, and preliminary data on the MSCET psychometrics were positive. Limitations of the study and recommendations for further revision of the simulation were made.

There is still an urgent need of finding a mathematical model which can provide an accurate relationship between the software project effort/cost and the cost drivers. A powerful algorithm which can optimize such a relationship via developing a mathematical relationship between model variables is urgently needed. In this paper, we explore the use of GP to develop a software cost estimation model utilizing the effect of both the developed line of code and the used methodology during the development. An application of estimating the effort for some NASA software projects is introduced. The performance of the developed Genetic Programming (GP) based model was tested and compared to known models in the literature. The developed GP model was able to provide good estimation capabilities compared to other models.

Greater informational masking is observed when the target and masker speech are more perceptually similar. Fundamental frequency (f0) contour, or the dynamic movement of f0, is thought to provide cues for segregating target speech presented in a speech masker. Most of the data demonstrating this effect have been collected using digitally modified stimuli. Less work has been done exploring the role of f0 contour for speech-in-speech recognition when all of the stimuli have been produced naturally. The goal of this project was to explore the importance of target and masker f0 contour similarity by manipulating the speaking style of talkers producing the target and masker speech streams. Sentence recognition thresholds were evaluated for target and masker speech that was produced with either flat, normal, or exaggerated speaking styles; performance was also measured in speech spectrum shaped noise and for conditions in which the stimuli were processed through an ideal-binary mask. Results confirmed that similarities in f0 contour depth elevated speech-in-speech recognition thresholds; however, when the target and masker had similar contour depths, targets with normal f0 contours were more resistant to masking than targets with flat or exaggerated contours. Differences in energetic masking across stimuli cannot account for these results.

Older adults with hearing loss have greater difficulty recognizing target speech in multi-talker environments than young adults with normal hearing, especially when target and masker speech streams are perceptually similar. A difference in fundamental frequency (f0) contour depth is an effective stream segregation cue for young adults with normal hearing. This study examined whether older adults with varying degrees of sensorineural hearing loss are able to utilize differences in target/masker f0 contour depth to improve speech recognition in multi-talker listening. Speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) were measured for speech mixtures composed of target/masker streams with flat, normal, and exaggerated speaking styles, in which f0 contour depth systematically varied. Computational modeling estimated differences in energetic masking across listening conditions. Young adults had lower SRTs than older adults; a result that was partially explained by differences in audibility predicted by the model. However, audibility differences did not explain why young adults experienced a benefit from mismatched target/masker f0 contour depth, while in most conditions, older adults did not. Reduced ability to use segregation cues (differences in target/masker f0 contour depth), and deficits grouping speech with variable f0 contours likely contribute to difficulties experienced by older adults in challenging acoustic environments.

Speech-in-speech recognition can be challenging, and listeners vary considerably in their ability to accomplish this complex auditory-cognitive task. Variability in performance can be related to intrinsic listener factors as well as stimulus factors associated with energetic and informational masking. The current experiments characterized the effects of short-term audibility of the target, differences in target and masker talker sex, and intrinsic listener variables on sentence recognition in two-talker speech and speech-shaped noise. Participants were young adults with normal hearing. Each condition included the adaptive measurement of speech reception thresholds, followed by testing at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Short-term audibility for each keyword was quantified using a computational glimpsing model for target+masker mixtures. Scores on a psychophysical task of auditory stream segregation predicted speech recognition, with stronger effects for speech-in-speech than speech-in-noise. Both speech-in-speech and speech-in-noise recognition depended on the proportion of audible glimpses available in the target+masker mixture, even across stimuli presented at the same global SNR. Short-term audibility requirements varied systematically across stimuli, providing an estimate of the greater informational masking for speech-in-speech than speech-in-noise recognition and quantifying informational masking for matched and mismatched talker sex.

Articles in this issue examine (1) the primary sources of variability in reading and language achievement among Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in the United States, (2) the extent to which poor performance at the end of grade 2 is identifiable in developmental trajectories beginning in kindergarten, (3) the relations among core reading constructs of phonological awareness and decoding in both English and Spanish and the factors that affect their relationship, (4) the performance of different approaches to identification and the factors that influence how well they work, as well as (5) the growing literature focused on intervention for reading problems in this population. This article examines the literature on language minority students and disability identification and analyzes a large-scale longitudinal dataset (>4,000 ELs; >15,000 observations) to systematically characterize and describe the oral language and reading development of Spanish-speaking children designated as ELs from kindergarten to second grade, considering a range of factors that may potentially contribute to that characterization and its relation to academic performance. This systematic characterization should facilitate the development of an empirical basis for a theoretically grounded framework of typical development in ELs in order to more precisely identify those children with language and learning disabilities.

This study investigated early indicators of Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) at risk for reading difficulties at the end of Grade 2 by examining their early bilingual oral language development, taking into account language of academic instruction. Standardized measures of reading and narrative samples were collected in English and Spanish from kindergarten to Grade 2 from 1,243 ELs primarily instructed in English or Spanish. Conditional growth curve models yielded four primary findings of reading and oral language development. First, ELs with low reading achievement at the end of Grade 2 demonstrated early reading difficulties during kindergarten. Second, although ELs demonstrated overall higher reading achievement in their instructed language, this difference decreased over time. Third, ELs with low reading achievement at the end of Grade 2 demonstrated lower oral language skills in each language over time. Fourth, ELs demonstrated overall higher oral language skills in their instructed language, yet these differences varied over time. The study provided a detailed description of the longitudinal relations among the bilingual reading and oral language skills of Spanish-speaking ELs during the early school years. These findings help to inform the processes of early identification and intervention for Spanish-speaking ELs who are likely to demonstrate reading achievement difficulties.