From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts : A science-based approach to building a more promising future for young children and families

Half a century of program evaluation research has demonstrated repeatedly that effective early childhood services can improve life outcomes for children facing adversity, produce important benefits for society, and generate positive returns on investments. Policymakers and practitioners often invoke this evidence base to build support for existing programs, but the average magnitude of intervention effects has not increased substantially in 50 years, while the challenges most current programs were originally designed to address have become even more complex. During this same period, scientific understanding of the early origins of lifelong health and development has been advancing rapidly. These discoveries offer a compelling opportunity to generate creative, new approaches to problems that are not being resolved by existing services. The time has now come to raise the bar and leverage the frontiers of 21st-century science to pursue a bolder vision. While proposed solutions to these social and economic challenges fuel hotly contested partisan debates, knowledge about the foundations of healthy development is politically neutral and clear—whatever the source of the adversity, experiencing too much of it early in life without adequate support from adult caregivers (both inside and outside the home) is detrimental to child well-being. Although the full consequences of family structure, labor market transformations, K-16 education reform, and the cumulative toll of stress caused by discrimination and other social disadvantages all require serious attention, a deeper analysis of these issues is beyond the scope of this report. Instead, the document presents a research and development (R&D) approach that transcends partisan disagreement because it is built on a rigorously peer-reviewed, sciencebased understanding of how the foundations of learning, behavior, and health are built or weakened over time. Advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and epigenetics offer an unprecedented opportunity to stimulate new responses to these complex social, economic, and political challenges by explaining why young children facing adversity are more likely to have disrupted developmental trajectories. Neuroscience is also producing extensive evidence suggesting that the later we wait to support families with children who are at greatest risk, the more difficult (and likely more costly) it will be to achieve positive outcomes, particularly for those who experience the biological disruptions of toxic stress during the earliest years. More specifically, at a time when the discourse around early childhood investments is dominated by debates over preschool for 4-yearolds, the biological sciences cry out for attending to a missing niche in the field—new strategies in the prenatal-to-three period for families facing adversity

Does Public Scientific Research Complement Industry R&D Investment? The Case of NIH Supported Basic and Clinical Research and Pharmaceutical Industry R&D

This research investigates the hypothesis that publicly funded scientific research complements private R&D investment in the pharmaceutical industry. New microlevel data on public research investment by the U.S. National Institutes of Health allow measures of basic and clinical research in seven medical areas to be included in a distributed lag model explaining pharmaceutical R&D investment. Using a panel of therapeutic classes observed over eighteen years, the analysis finds strong evidence that public basic and clinical research are complementary to pharmaceutical R&D and, thereby, stimulate private industry investment. However, differences in the relevance and degree of scientific and market uncertainty between basic and clinical public research lead to differences in the magnitude and timing of the pharmaceutical investment response. The results indicate that a dollar increase in public basic research stimulates an additional 8.38 in pharmaceutical investment after eight years. The industry R&D response to public clinical research is smaller in magnitude and shorter in duration with a dollar increase in public clinical research stimulating an additional 2.35 in pharmaceutical investment over a three year period. --R&D,pharmaceuticals,NIH,distributed lag models

Does Public Scientific Research Complement Industry R&D Investment? : The Case of NIH Supported Basic and Clinical Research and Pharmaceutical Industry R&D

This research investigates the hypothesis that publicly funded scientific research complements private R&D investment in the pharmaceutical industry. New microlevel data on public research investment by the U.S. National Institutes of Health allow measures of basic and clinical research in seven medical areas to be included in a distributed lag model explaining pharmaceutical R&D investment. Using a panel of therapeutic classes observed over eighteen years, the analysis finds strong evidence that public basic and clinical research are complementary to pharmaceutical R&D and, thereby, stimulate private industry investment. However, differences in the relevance and degree of scientific and market uncertainty between basic and clinical public research lead to differences in the magnitude and timing of the pharmaceutical investment response. The results indicate that a dollar increase in public basic research stimulates an additional 8.38 in pharmaceutical investment after eight years. The industry R&D response to public clinical research is smaller in magnitude and shorter in duration with a dollar increase in public clinical research stimulating an additional 2.35 in pharmaceutical investment over a three year period

Behaviour of Humans and Behaviour of Models in Dynamic Space

This paper addresses new trends in quantitative geography research. Modern social science research – including economic and social geography – has in the past decades shown an increasing interest in micro-oriented behaviour of actors. This is inter alia clearly reflected in spatial interaction models (SIMs), where discrete choice approaches have assumed a powerful position. This paper aims to provide in particular a concise review of micro-based research, with the aim to review the potential – but also the caveats – of micro-models to map out human behaviour. In particular, attention will be devoted to interactive learning principles that shape individual decisions. Lessons from cognitive sciences will be put forward and illustrated, amongst others on the basis of computational neural networks or spatial econometric approaches. The methodology of deductive reasoning under conditions of large data bases in studying human mobility will be questioned as well. In this context more extensive attention is given to ceteris paribus conditions and evolutionary thinkin

Use of IT in ISO 9001 Systems for Better Process Management

This book chapter focuses on process management as one of the key requirements of ISO 9001. This research highlights an issue of raising the effectiveness and efficiency of process management in implemented ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems (QMS) by its integration with information technology (IT) support. Performed research reveals this to be an area of further scientific work. This is just a preliminary study to prepare the background for practical implications and further empirical research. The latter research includes literature review, ISO 9001 requirement analysis and a case study on practiced process management in South-East Europe countries as identified from external audit reports. The new standard ISO 9001:2015 is less formal regarding the documentation than the previous ones, while being more focused on effective running and improvement of the company processes. Actually, ISO 9001 requires basic elements and activities of Business Process Management (BPM). However, there are no obstacles to provide the required evidence of the defined, running and improved processes through the business IT support. Indeed, IT support to the ISO 9001 process management is not generally practiced nor encouraged enough

Modeling Terrorist Radicalization

Recent high-profile terrorism arrests and litigation in New York, Colorado, and Detroit have brought public attention to the question of how the government should respond to the possibility of domestic-origin terrorism linked to al Qaeda. This symposium essay identifies and discussing one emerging approach in the United States and Europe which attends to the process of terrorist “radicalization.” States on both sides of the Atlantic are investing increasingly in developing an epistemology of terrorist violence. The results have implications for how policing resources are allocated, whether privacy rights are respected, and how religious liberty may be exercised. This essay traces the development of state discourses on “radicalization” in the United States and the United Kingdom. It argues that understanding this new “radicalization” discourse entails attention to interactions between nations and between the federal government and states as well as to the political economy of counter-terrorism

Sources of Productivity Growth in Wheat: A Review of Recent Performance and Medium- to Long-Term Prospects

Sources of yield growth in wheat are investigated based on a stylized framework of technical change. Evidence suggests that the relative contribution of input intensification to yield growth has diminished in recent years and is likely to continue to decline in the future. One potential source of yield growth in wheat during the medium to long term is improved efficiency of input use, rather than input intensification, through sustainable wheat production practices rather than pure input increases. Other large gains could be made with continuous adoption of newer and better modern varieties based on advances in wheat breeding. Wide crossing and biotechnology could improve the stability of wheat yields in the intermediate term; their long-term impact on yield under optimal conditions is less certain. World wheat demand is likely to grow more slowly over the next 30 years than it did in the past 30 years. At the same time, a wider variety of technological options will need to be tapped over the next three decades to achieve the necessary gains in wheat yields. Research costs per unit of increased wheat production are likely to be somewhat higher. Nonetheless, continued investment in wheat research is necessary to achieve production levels consistent with constant or slowly declining real world wheat prices.Crop Production/Industries,

Undergraduate Research Journal, Volume 4

Table of contents: The Effect of Religiosity and Music on Sexual Anxiety in College Students / by Ana Lucia Hurtado (p.1-7) -- Simulation of Fluid Flow Around Rigid Bodies / by Charith C. Tangirala (p.8-19) -- BCL11A and its Role in Human Leukemias and Lymphomas / by Jason Wall (p.20-25) -- Army Nurse Corps: Embracing an Evolving Gender Role / by Jennifer Head (p.26-33) -- Overbank Flooding and Sedimentation Patterns in a Floodplain Environment, Lower Guadalupe River, Texas / by Kimberly M. Meitzen (p.34-47) -- Identification of the AP-1 Element in the 5' Flanking Region of the NMDA Receptor Gene / by Maggie Ehimika (p.48-54) -- Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Gender, and Sustainable Development / by Suzanne Russo (p.55-61)Senate of College Council

A Roadmap for Transforming Research to Invent the Batteries of the Future Designed within the European Large Scale Research Initiative BATTERY 2030+

This roadmap presents the transformational research ideas proposed by “BATTERY 2030+,” the European large-scale research initiative for future battery chemistries. A “chemistry-neutral” roadmap to advance battery research, particularly at low technology readiness levels, is outlined, with a time horizon of more than ten years. The roadmap is centered around six themes: 1) accelerated materials discovery platform, 2) battery interface genome, with the integration of smart functionalities such as 3) sensing and 4) self-healing processes. Beyond chemistry related aspects also include crosscutting research regarding 5) manufacturability and 6) recyclability. This roadmap should be seen as an enabling complement to the global battery roadmaps which focus on expected ultrahigh battery performance, especially for the future of transport. Batteries are used in many applications and are considered to be one technology necessary to reach the climate goals. Currently the market is dominated by lithium-ion batteries, which perform well, but despite new generations coming in the near future, they will soon approach their performance limits. Without major breakthroughs, battery performance and production requirements will not be sufficient to enable the building of a climate-neutral society. Through this “chemistry neutral” approach a generic toolbox transforming the way batteries are developed, designed and manufactured, will be created