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Childhood and Intergenerational Poverty: The Long-Term Consequences of Growing Up Poor
Children growing up in low-income families face many challenges that children from more advantaged families do not. These children are more likely to experience multiple family transitions, move frequently, and change schools. The schools they attend are less well funded, and the neighborhoods they live in are more disadvantaged. The parents of these children have fewer resources to invest in them and, as a consequence, their homes have fewer cognitively-stimulating materials, and their parents invest less in their education. The stress of living in poverty and struggling to meet daily needs can also impair parenting. Social and economic deprivation during childhood and adolescence can have a lasting effect on individuals, making it difficult for children who grow up in low-income families to escape poverty when they become adults. Because the negative effects of deprivation on human development tend to cumulate, individuals with greater exposure to poverty during childhood are likely to have more difficulty escaping poverty as adults. In this research brief, we examine patterns of exposure to poverty during childhood and the association between these patterns and poverty in early and middle adulthood. Data for this study come from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), which collects information on the social and economic status of PSID families and their offspring every year. We find that individuals who grow up in poor families are much more likely to be poor in early adulthood. Moreover, the chances of being poor in early adulthood increase sharply as the time spent living in poverty during childhood increases. At all levels of poverty during childhood, African-Americans are more likely than whites to be poor in early and middle adulthood
Academic Law Library Director Status Since the Great Recession: Strengthened, Maintained, or Degraded?
The status of the academic law library director is central to the educational mission of the law library. We collected data from 2006 to 2016 showing a 25 percent decrease in tenure-track directorships. We also found one in four changes in directorships since 2013 resulted in the new director having a degraded status compared to her predecessor
“It’s Just Art”: Experiences of K-12 Visual Arts Teachers in the Era of Neoliberalism, Assessment, and Accountability
The U.S. educational system is largely shaped by neoliberal ideologies and practices that influence the experiences
and outcomes of students, teachers, schools, and districts. In this article, we demonstrate how in the current educational
climate, certain subjects – and by extension, teachers – may be prioritized over others. Using qualitative data from a
survey of K-12 art teachers, we aim to reveal the lived experiences of teaching a subject that is rarely acknowledged
in the discourse around standardized testing and accountability. In doing so, we highlight four themes: (1) the
perceived devaluing of art education; (2) marginalization and instrumentality in the curriculum; (3) evaluation as a
source of frustration; and (4) effects on job satisfaction. Overall, respondents expressed a dissonance between their
love for the subject matter and the realities of their day-to-day experiences on the job, both of which have short- and
long-term implications for continued inequities in American schools
Galaxy Zoo 1 : Data Release of Morphological Classifications for nearly 900,000 galaxies
Morphology is a powerful indicator of a galaxy's dynamical and merger
history. It is strongly correlated with many physical parameters, including
mass, star formation history and the distribution of mass. The Galaxy Zoo
project collected simple morphological classifications of nearly 900,000
galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, contributed by hundreds of
thousands of volunteers. This large number of classifications allows us to
exclude classifier error, and measure the influence of subtle biases inherent
in morphological classification. This paper presents the data collected by the
project, alongside measures of classification accuracy and bias. The data are
now publicly available and full catalogues can be downloaded in electronic
format from http://data.galaxyzoo.org.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS, 14 pages. Updated to match final version; problem
with table 7 header fixed. Full tables available at http://data.galaxyzoo.or
A robust preference for cheap-and-easy strategies over reliable strategies when verifying personal memories
People depend on various sources of information when trying to verify their autobiographical memories. Yet recent research shows that people prefer to use cheap-and-easy verification strategies, even when these strategies are not reliable. We examined the robustness of this cheap strategy bias, with scenarios designed to encourage greater emphasis on source reliability. In three experiments, subjects described real (Experiments 1 and 2) or hypothetical (Experiment 3) autobiographical events, and proposed strategies they might use to verify their memories of those events. Subjects also rated the reliability, cost, and the likelihood that they would use each strategy. In line with previous work, we found that the preference for cheap information held when people described how they would verify childhood or recent memories (Experiment 1); personally-important or trivial memories (Experiment 2), and even when the consequences of relying on incorrect information could be significant (Experiment 3). Taken together, our findings fit with an account of source monitoring in which the tendency to trust one’s own autobiographical memories can discourage people from systematically testing or accepting strong disconfirmatory evidence
Galaxy Zoo: Dust in Spirals
We investigate the effect of dust on spiral galaxies by measuring the
inclination-dependence of optical colours for 24,276 well-resolved SDSS
galaxies visually classified in Galaxy Zoo. We find clear trends of reddening
with inclination which imply a total extinction from face-on to edge-on of 0.7,
0.6, 0.5 and 0.4 magnitudes for the ugri passbands. We split the sample into
"bulgy" (early-type) and "disky" (late-type) spirals using the SDSS fracdeV (or
f_DeV) parameter and show that the average face-on colour of "bulgy" spirals is
redder than the average edge-on colour of "disky" spirals. This shows that the
observed optical colour of a spiral galaxy is determined almost equally by the
spiral type (via the bulge-disk ratio and stellar populations), and reddening
due to dust. We find that both luminosity and spiral type affect the total
amount of extinction, with "disky" spirals at M_r ~ -21.5 mags having the most
reddening. This decrease of reddening for the most luminous spirals has not
been observed before and may be related to their lower levels of recent star
formation. We compare our results with the latest dust attenuation models of
Tuffs et al. We find that the model reproduces the observed trends reasonably
well but overpredicts the amount of u-band attenuation in edge-on galaxies. We
end by discussing the effects of dust on large galaxy surveys and emphasize
that these effects will become important as we push to higher precision
measurements of galaxy properties and their clustering.Comment: MNRAS in press. 25 pages, 22 figures (including an abstract comparing
GZ classifications with common automated methods for selecting disk/early
type galaxies in SDSS data). v2 corrects typos found in proof
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog V. Seventh Data Release
We present the fifth edition of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Quasar
Catalog, which is based upon the SDSS Seventh Data Release. The catalog, which
contains 105,783 spectroscopically confirmed quasars, represents the conclusion
of the SDSS-I and SDSS-II quasar survey. The catalog consists of the SDSS
objects that have luminosities larger than M_i = -22.0 (in a cosmology with H_0
= 70 km/s/Mpc Omega_M = 0.3, and Omega_Lambda = 0.7) have at least one emission
line with FWHM larger than 1000 km/s or have interesting/complex absorption
features, are fainter than i > 15.0 and have highly reliable redshifts. The
catalog covers an area of 9380 deg^2. The quasar redshifts range from 0.065 to
5.46, with a median value of 1.49; the catalog includes 1248 quasars at
redshifts greater than four, of which 56 are at redshifts greater than five.
The catalog contains 9210 quasars with i < 18; slightly over half of the
entries have i< 19. For each object the catalog presents positions accurate to
better than 0.1" rms per coordinate, five-band (ugriz) CCD-based photometry
with typical accuracy of 0.03 mag, and information on the morphology and
selection method. The catalog also contains radio, near-infrared, and X-ray
emission properties of the quasars, when available, from other large-area
surveys. The calibrated digital spectra cover the wavelength region 3800-9200
Ang. at a spectral resolution R = 2000 the spectra can be retrieved from the
SDSS public database using the information provided in the catalog. Over 96% of
the objects in the catalog were discovered by the SDSS. We also include a
supplemental list of an additional 207 quasars with SDSS spectra whose archive
photometric information is incomplete.Comment: Accepted, to appear in AJ, 7 figures, electronic version of Table 2
is available, see
http://www.sdss.org/dr7/products/value_added/qsocat_dr7.htm
Shining Light on Merging Galaxies I: The Ongoing Merger of a Quasar with a `Green Valley' Galaxy
Serendipitous observations of a pair z = 0.37 interacting galaxies (one
hosting a quasar) show a massive gaseous bridge of material connecting the two
objects. This bridge is photoionized by the quasar (QSO) revealing gas along
the entire projected 38 kpc sightline connecting the two galaxies. The emission
lines that result give an unprecedented opportunity to study the merger process
at this redshift. We determine the kinematics, ionization parameter (log U ~
-2.5 +- 0.03), column density (N_H ~ 10^{21} cm^{-2}), metallicity ([M/H] ~
-0.20 +- 0.15), and mass (~ 10^8 Msun) of the gaseous bridge. We simultaneously
constrain properties of the QSO-host (M_DM>8.8x 10^{11} Msun) and its companion
galaxy (M_DM>2.1 x 10^{11} Msun; M_star ~ 2 x 10^{10} Msun; stellar burst
age=300-800 Myr; SFR~6 Msun/yr; and metallicity 12+log (O/H)= 8.64 +- 0.2). The
general properties of this system match the standard paradigm of a
galaxy-galaxy merger caught between first and second passage while one of the
galaxies hosts an active quasar. The companion galaxy lies in the so-called
`green valley', with a stellar population consistent with a recent starburst
triggered during the first passage of the merger and has no detectable AGN
activity. In addition to providing case-studies of quasars associated with
galaxy mergers, quasar/galaxy pairs with QSO-photoionized tidal bridges such as
this one offer unique insights into the galaxy properties while also
distinguishing an important and inadequately understood phase of galaxy
evolution.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, 5 tables, Submitted to ApJ, revised to address
referee's comment
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey: Search Algorithm and Follow-up Observations
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey has identified a large
number of new transient sources in a 300 sq. deg. region along the celestial
equator during its first two seasons of a three-season campaign. Multi-band
(ugriz) light curves were measured for most of the sources, which include solar
system objects, Galactic variable stars, active galactic nuclei, supernovae
(SNe), and other astronomical transients. The imaging survey is augmented by an
extensive spectroscopic follow-up program to identify SNe, measure their
redshifts, and study the physical conditions of the explosions and their
environment through spectroscopic diagnostics. During the survey, light curves
are rapidly evaluated to provide an initial photometric type of the SNe, and a
selected sample of sources are targeted for spectroscopic observations. In the
first two seasons, 476 sources were selected for spectroscopic observations, of
which 403 were identified as SNe. For the Type Ia SNe, the main driver for the
Survey, our photometric typing and targeting efficiency is 90%. Only 6% of the
photometric SN Ia candidates were spectroscopically classified as non-SN Ia
instead, and the remaining 4% resulted in low signal-to-noise, unclassified
spectra. This paper describes the search algorithm and the software, and the
real-time processing of the SDSS imaging data. We also present the details of
the supernova candidate selection procedures and strategies for follow-up
spectroscopic and imaging observations of the discovered sources.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal (66 pages, 13
figures); typos correcte
The GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey. I. Gas Fraction Scaling Relations of Massive Galaxies and First Data Release
We introduce the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), an on-going large program
that is gathering high quality HI-line spectra using the Arecibo radio
telescope for an unbiased sample of ~1000 galaxies with stellar masses greater
than 10^10 Msun and redshifts 0.025<z<0.05, selected from the SDSS
spectroscopic and GALEX imaging surveys. The galaxies are observed until
detected or until a low gas mass fraction limit (1.5-5%) is reached. This paper
presents the first Data Release, consisting of ~20% of the final GASS sample.
We use this data set to explore the main scaling relations of HI gas fraction
with galaxy structure and NUV-r colour. A large fraction (~60%) of the galaxies
in our sample are detected in HI. We find that the atomic gas fraction
decreases strongly with stellar mass, stellar surface mass density and NUV-r
colour, but is only weakly correlated with galaxy bulge-to-disk ratio (as
measured by the concentration index of the r-band light). We also find that the
fraction of galaxies with significant (more than a few percent) HI decreases
sharply above a characteristic stellar surface mass density of 10^8.5 Msun
kpc^-2. The fraction of gas-rich galaxies decreases much more smoothly with
stellar mass. One of the key goals of GASS is to identify and quantify the
incidence of galaxies that are transitioning between the blue, star-forming
cloud and the red sequence of passively-evolving galaxies. Likely transition
candidates can be identified as outliers from the mean scaling relations
between gas fraction and other galaxy properties. [abridged]Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with
high resolution figures available at
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/GASS/pubs.ph
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