These results suggest that instituting a consistent nightly bedtime routine, in and of itself, is beneficial in improving multiple aspects of infant and toddler sleep, especially wakefulness after sleep onset and sleep continuity, as well as maternal mood.

Forecasts of future dangerousness are often used to inform the sentencing decisions of convicted offenders. For individuals who are sentenced to probation or paroled to community supervision, such forecasts affect the conditions under which they are to be supervised. The statistical criterion for these forecasts is commonly called recidivism, which is defined as a charge or conviction for any new offence, no matter how minor. Only rarely do such forecasts make distinctions on the basis of the seriousness of offences. Yet seriousness may be central to public concerns, and judges are increasingly required by law and sentencing guidelines to make assessments of seriousness. At the very least, information about seriousness is essential for allocating scarce resources for community supervision of convicted offenders. The paper focuses only on murderous conduct by individuals on probation or parole. Using data on a population of over 60000 cases from Philadelphia's Adult Probation and Parole Department, we forecast whether each offender will be charged with a homicide or attempted homicide within 2 years of beginning community supervision. We use a statistical learning approach that makes no assumptions about how predictors are related to the outcome. We also build in the costs of false negative and false positive charges and use half of the data to build the forecasting model, and the other half of the data to evaluate the quality of the forecasts. Forecasts that are based on this approach offer the possibility of concentrating rehabilitation, treatment and surveillance resources on a small subset of convicted offenders who may be in greatest need, and who pose the greatest risk to society. Copyright (c) 2009 Royal Statistical Society.

A low percentage of patients experienced flare-ups during NSRCT procedures. The presence of a periapical lesion was the single most important predictor of flare-ups during NSRCT.

In this paper, we compare the results from a randomized clinical trial to the results from a regression discontinuity quasi-experiment when both designs are implemented in the same setting. We find the that results from the two approaches are effectively identical. We * Geoffrey Barnes' work on this project was funded in part by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation to the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. For this support we are grateful. Thanks also go to Larry Sherman for suggestions that helped to shape the randomized experiment. 1 attribute the comparability in part to recent statistical developments that make the model required for the analysis of data from a regression discontinuity design easier to determine. These developments make an already strong quasi-experimental design even stronger.

The Philadelphia Low-Intensity Community Supervision Experiment provides evidence on the effects of lowering the intensity of community supervision with low-risk offenders in an urban, US county community corrections agency. Using a random forests forecasting model for serious crime based on Berk et al. low-risk offenders were identified and randomly assigned to either standard or reduced frequency of mandatory office visits. Treatment as assigned was substantially delivered at 4.5 probation visits per year versus 2.4, for as long as offenders remained on active probation or parole. In a one-year followup for all cases, outcomes examined were the prevalence, frequency, seriousness and time-to-failure of arrests for new crimes committed after random assignment was implemented. No significant differences (p=.05) in outcomes were found between standard and low-intensity groups. Non-significant differences for offense seriousness favored the low-intensity group. We conclude that lower-intensity supervision at the tested level of dosage can allow fewer officers to supervise lowrisk offenders in the community without evidence of increased volume or seriousness of crime.