Non-finite loss and challenges to communication between parents and professionals

Elizabeth Bruce PhD, a psychologist in private practice, and Cynthia Schultz PhD, honorary associate at LaTrobe University, both live and work in Australia. Their work on supporting parents who have children with special needs, however, has been published around the world. In this article Bruce and Schultz explore the notion of 'non-finite loss', defined as the ongoing sense of grief experienced by parents caring for children with severe disabilities. The authors discuss the issues that professionals need to consider when working with parents in these circumstances. The article closes with a set of recommendations for promoting more effective partnerships between parents and professionals.     

Analysis of Statistical Question Classification for Fact-Based Questions

Question classification systems play an important role in question answering systems and can be used in a wide range of other domains. The goal of question classification is to accurately assign labels to questions based on expected answer type. Most approaches in the past have relied on matching questions against hand-crafted rules. However, rules require laborious effort to create and often suffer from being too specific. Statistical question classification methods overcome these issues by employing machine learning techniques. We empirically show that a statistical approach is robust and achieves good performance on three diverse data sets with little or no hand tuning. Furthermore, we examine the role different syntactic and semantic features have on performance. We find that semantic features tend to increase performance more than purely syntactic features. Finally, we analyze common causes of misclassification error and provide insight into ways they may be overcome.     

Explaining Media Choice: The Role of Issue-Specific Engagement in Predicting Interest-Based and Partisan Selectivity

This study analyzes the predictors of 2 types of media selectivity: interest-based (i.e., choice of entertainment over politics) and partisan (i.e., choice of pro-attitudinal over counter-attitudinal or balanced news). Relying on a large survey-based experiment, we find that issue-specific engagement variables, including perceived issue understanding, issue importance, and issue attitude strength, predict interest-based and partisan selectivity above and beyond the influence of general political knowledge, news interest, and strength of political leanings. These results show that the drivers of selectivity are more complex than general political attributes; rather, they are contextual and reflect people’s engagement with particular issues.     

The relationship between shoulder alignment and elbow joint angle in cricket fast-medium bowlers

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between shoulder alignment and elbow angle during the delivery action of fast-medium bowlers. The elbow and upper trunk alignment were recorded for 13 high-performance bowlers (mean age 20 years) using a 12-camera Vicon motion analysis system operating at 250 Hz. The three highest velocity trials for "good" and "short" length deliveries were analysed. Results showed that bowlers with a more front-on shoulder alignment at back-foot impact and when the upper arm was horizontal to the ground experienced a significantly greater elbow flexion--extension range when compared with those who had a more side-on orientation at the same point in the delivery action. Bowlers with greater shoulder counter-rotation also recorded higher elbow flexion and subsequently extension during the period from upper arm horizontal to ball release. Shoulder alignment and elbow angles were similar for "short" and "good" length deliveries. It was concluded that bowlers with a more front-on shoulder orientation at back-foot impact demonstrated a higher elbow extension from upper arm horizontal to ball release and are therefore more likely to infringe International Cricket Council elbow tolerance levels, compared with those who adopt a more side-on shoulder orientation at back-foot impact.