Uncalibrated visual servoing (VS) can improve robot performance without needing camera and robot parameters. Multiple cameras improve uncalibrated VS precision, but no works exist simultaneously using more than two cameras. The first data for uncalibrated VS simultaneously using more than two cameras are presented. VS performance is also compared for two different camera models: a high-cost camera and a low-cost camera, the difference being image noise magnitude and focal length. A Kalman filter based control law for uncalibrated VS is introduced and shown to be stable under the assumptions that robot joint level servo control can reach commanded joint offsets and that the servoing path goes through at least one full column rank robot configuration. Adaptive filtering by a covariance matching technique is applied to achieve automatic camera weighting, prioritizing the best available data. A decentralized sensor fusion architecture is utilized to assure continuous servoing with camera occlusion. The decentralized adaptive Kalman filter (DAKF) control law is compared to a classical method, Gauss-Newton, via simulation and experimentation. Numerical results show that DAKF can improve average tracking error for moving targets and convergence time to static targets. DAKF reduces system sensitivity to noise and poor camera placement, yielding smaller outliers than Gauss-Newton. The DAKF system improves visual servoing performance, simplicity, and reliability.

This paper focuses on exploring how housing discrimination and the war on drugs affect the way communities are shaped and viewed. The area of focus is Harlem, but the paper explores these tensions in a general way as well. The paper draws on popular academic theories about racialization.

De nos jours, les exigences de productivité et de maîtrise des coûts ont incité les industriels à développer de nouvelles machines, et avec elles, de nouveaux enjeux sont apparus : souplesse de la structure, vibration, effets dynamiques non-négligeables, etc. Pourtant, leur mise en œuvre est toujours issue de méthodes employées pour les machines conventionnelles. Ces travaux s’intéressent donc à la définition de stratégies globales englobant la prise en compte de la structure utilisée et de la tâche à réaliser, appliquée à deux contextes d’illustration. Dans le contexte de l’usinage, nous proposons un réglage des machines basé sur le modèle comportemental de la structure qui ne nécessite que peu de modifications manuelles et permettant un gain de temps pour la mise en œuvre. Une nouvelle loi de commande en couple calculé est également proposé, elle permet de réduire les phénomènes vibratoires lors de phases dynamiquement exigeantes. Dans le contexte des essais mécaniques, l’objectif est de montrer la faisabilité de l’utilisation de machines parallèles à 6 degrés de liberté dans le cadre d’essais dont la gestion des conditions aux limites est critique. Nous proposons une instrumentation et un schéma de commande qui permettent de respecter les consignes avec une erreur maximale de l’ordre de 0.40μm, même dans le cas d’éprouvettes très rigide (en béton par exemple). / Nowadays, the requirements in productivity and costs mastering have forced the industrial manufacturers to develop new kind of mechanisms. Thus, the complexity of the machine-tools structures and machining processes has increased and new challenges have emerged : flexible structure, vibration, non-negligible dynamic effects, etc ... However, their implementation still comes from methods used for conventional machines. These works are thus about defining overall strategies including consideration of the kind of structure used and the task to realise. Two illustrative contexts are used. In the context of machining, we propose a generic tuning method based on kinematic and dynamic model of machine-tools structure that requires only a few manual modifications, in order to save time for implementation. A new computed torque control law is proposed, it reduces vibration phenomena in dynamical demanding phases. In the context of the mechanical tests, the objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of using parallel machines with 6 degrees of freedom in the context of mechanical tests, whereas the boundary conditions are perfectly controlled. We propose an instrumentation and control scheme that is able to perform mechanical tests with a maximum error of about 0.40 mu m, even in the case of very rigid specimen (concrete for example).

Exposure to multiple forms of victimization has been shown to have increasingly negative outcomes, but their unique trajectory-setting effects have been largely unexplored. Using a life course approach, this paper examines the trajectory-setting effects of childhood polyvictimization into early adulthood. I use a nationwide sample including 3,652 respondents after cleaning and preparation. Seemingly unrelated regressions were used to predict depression and criminal behavior in childhood and adulthood. Results suggest childhood polyvictimization sets children on a negative trajectory which grows increasingly worse through the life course. Researchers and interventions should take these trajectory-setting effects into account when attempting to aid polyvictims.

Emergency department nurses are at high risk for violence in the workplace (Keely, 2002; Fernandez et al., 1998; Nachreiner et al., 2005; Mayer et al., 1999). It is estimated that between 52% and 82% of emergency nurses will experience physical violence and 100% of emergency department nurses will experience non-physical violence in their careers. Despite this fact, there are limited studies examining workplace violence among this vulnerable group (Fernandez et al., 1998; Levin et al., 1998). Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to examine the experiences of emergency department nurses with workplace violence. Levin et al.’s (2003) Ecological Occupational Model (EOHM) was used to guide this study. Four focus groups were conducted with 27 nurses who represented different types of emergency departments (rural community facility to large urban Level 1 trauma center). Results of the study suggested that the majority of participants (96%) experienced some form of work-related violence and 75% had attended at least one violence education class. The major themes of frustration and powerlessness emerged from the data. Sub themes included professional conflict while caring for violent patients, personal detachment as an emotional survival mechanisms, and feelings of victimization. Additional factors contributing to workplace violence included: personal attributes of the nurse, the workplace, and the community where the emergency department was located. These study results have potential to guide intervention development aimed at reducing workplace violence in the emergency department setting.

Juvenile misuse of prescription drugs in the United States has continuously increased over the last few decades, especially within rural regions of the country. Despite continuous increase in rates of misuse, limited research exists on elements of socialization that may function to prevent drug use. The current study utilized the Monitoring the Future Survey data to explore prescription drug misuse between different populations of juveniles. While using Hirschi’s (1969) theory of social bonds as a theoretical framework, different elements of socialization were explored to determine whether they work to contribute or prevent prescription drug misuse among rural and urban juveniles. Results indicated that parental attachment served as the most substantial protective factor among both populations of juveniles. Additionally, socialization differed in relation to prescription drug use among rural and urban youth. These findings could be implicated in future anti-drug programs that specifically target different regions of the country.

This study explored changes in affect regulation and coping strategies with family functioning and attachment behaviors among a sample of incarcerated male adolescents (N = 115) and their maternal caregivers (N = 71). The sample participated in the Multiple Family Group Intervention (MFGI; Keiley, 2007) which is an 8-session program conducted in a juvenile correctional institution with adolescents adjudicated of a sexual offense, and their families. In 90-minute sessions, group facilitators use a six-step therapeutic method for altering interactional patterns from an affect regulation and attachment perspective. Using enactments and discussion, the intervention targets affect regulation and communication skills. Results indicate that changes in affect regulation and coping skills from pre- to post-intervention were related to changes in family functioning and attachment behaviors. Findings add to growing empirical support for the utility of systemic interventions within juvenile justice systems to strengthen affect regulation, coping skills, family functioning, and attachment behaviors.

When juveniles are defined by society as delinquent they are frequently institutionalized. These institutions are referred to as reform schools, correctional institutions or schools, residential care facilities, treatment centers, or variations of the above. They are state sponsored or privately sponsored. Whatever name is on the sign by the front door, each institution is in the business of "people changing." The excellence of an inanimate product can be measured, weighed, checked, and reproduced; but an altered person is more difficult to measure. If one is in the business of people-changing, it seems important to see if one is in fact changing people. This study of post institutional adjustment in one privately sponsored girl's residential care facility is an attempt to look at change in a group of released girls measured in the scale devised by the study group).

The Child Abuse Committee at the University of Oregon Medical School has assumed a coordinating role as an attempt to provide more effective service to abused children and their families. This research report is a follow up to a 1970 study by Matusak which evaluated the effectiveness of the Committee. The Matusak study seemed to indicate that, because of Committee action resulting in appropriate intervention and services, definite improvement in the situation of the children in the study was seen. This study follows the children from the 1970 study one year later and makes further comparisons of child abuse cases seen at the hospital in 1971. The results of this study fail to support the Matusak findings. A decreased percentage of children in the 1970 study group have maintained their level of improvement one year later and an even lower percentage of the 1971 study group are improved. More children have been left in their own homes than in 1970 but there is little to indicate that the family functions any more adequately than at the time of abuse. The findings seem to reflect a need for reevaluation of management and treatment practices in child abuse cases. It appears that responsibility and authority for coordination should be placed with a single agency and that more specialized services be provided by experienced staff.

While men do indeed construct self-validating and often peculiar interpretations of the realities of their world the simple fact that these views become consensually shared doctrines of experience does not protect them from the revisionism of historical scrutiny. These perceptions of the world become retrospectively altered as developing bodies of knowledge reject them as being clearly deceptive or anachronistic. The concept of psychopathology, distinguished historically under many rubrics, has not been immune to these same processes of modification, nor has it ever been free of the diverse irrationalities which men of all ages have constructed to explain the etiology and treatment of deviant behavior. Historically, consideration of atypical behavior all reflect attempts to explain dysfunction utilizing existing systems of belief and knowledge. For example, primitive and ancient societies advanced quasi-theoretical frameworks that stressed either external causation (e.g., spirit intervention, sorcery, demonic possession, lunacy, bewitchment) or personal causation (e.g., loss of soul, breach of taboo, object intrusion, brain disease). Of course, retrospective evaluation of these explanatory devices have found them to be woefully impoverished. With the advent of science these archaic beliefs were found to be incompatible with a rational view of the world where all events had logical and determinable causes. Moreover, with the development of the medical model of disease, aberrant behavior, of a functional nature, could be explained and treated in the same systematic manner as that which had an organic basis. While the "new view" still distinguished between external and internal causation of psychopathology, it radically redefined explanatory concepts and apparently located dynamics of the disease process within the individual. The classic psychiatric/psychological approach has (and continues to) stressed the description and classification of pathological signs and symptoms and when etiology was considered, illness was accounted for more often than not by such intra-psychic factors as anxiety, stress, breakdown of defense mechanisms and ego strength. Current theories of psychopathology have not been quite as oblivious to the effects of the individual's environment in the production and maintenance of both functional and organic illness. Nor can they be, for the last two decades have witnessed a growing awareness of the purely sociological aspects of pathological processes--processes which had hitherto been assigned only to individual defects. Research in the social epidemology of mental illness has established the importance of numerous sociological variables including ecological and socioeconomic status factors,personal and social characteristics, and culture-specificfactors. It is now commonly recognized that the environment of the individual plays a crucial role in determining the characteristics and course of pathological processes.