Evaluating the Effects of Child Care Policies on Children\u27s Cognitive Development and Maternal Labor Supply

To explore the role of child care policies in the development of early cognitive skills, I embed a value-added cognitive achievement production function into a dynamic, discrete choice model of maternal labor supply and child care decisions. I use the model to explore how two types of child care policies, Head Start and child care price subsidies, affect child care use and quality decisions and how those decisions in turn affect cognitive achievement. To estimate the model, I use rich panel data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey - Birth cohort (ECLS-B). There are three key findings: (1) Expanding Head Start to children who are currently not eligible has beneficial effects on cognitive achievement, because even children from relatively high quality home environments spend significant amounts of time in low quality child care. An universal expansion of Head Start increases average cognitive achievement scores by 0.21 standard deviations at kindergarten entry. (2) For the typical subsidy-eligible population, child care subsidies have small positive effects on cognitive skills by inducing children from low quality home environments to enter relatively higher quality child care environments. Six months of exposure to a subsidy program increases cognitive achievement scores by .036 standard deviations on average. (3) Without Head Start the black-white achievement gap at kindergarten entry increases by 9 percent and child care subsidies decrease the black-white achievement gap at kindergarten entry by 3 percent

Height and Calories in Early Childhood

This paper estimates a height production function using data from a randomized nutrition intervention conducted in rural Guatemala from 1969 - 1977. Using the experimental intervention as an instrument, the IV estimates of the effect of calories on height are an order of magnitude larger than the OLS estimates. Information from a unique measurement error process in the calorie data, counterfactuals results from the estimated model and external evidence from migration studies suggest that the divergence between the OLS and IV estimates is driven by the LATE interpretation of IV. Attenuation bias corrected OLS estimates of the height production function imply that calories gaps in early childhood can explain at most 16% of the height gap between Guatemalan children and the US born children of Guatemalan immigrants

New aminocyclitols with quaternary stereocentres via acylnitroso cycloaddition with an<em> ipso,ortho</em>-arene dihydrodiol

AbstractMicrobial ipso,ortho-dihydroxylation of benzoic acid by the B9 mutant strain of Ralstonia eutropha permits rapid construction of aminocyclitols containing a quaternary stereocentre. Installation of the amine functionality is achieved by use of an acylnitroso dienophile for a hetero-Diels–Alder reaction. Both aminotetrols and aminohexols are accessible as single enantiomers by this route. Both NOESY spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic analyses were required to distinguish cycloadduct isomers. Notably, subsequent to the biooxidation step, all new stereocentres are installed under substrate control. Thus, all stereochemical information is ultimately of enzymatic origin

Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration: Strategies for Successful Reentry Final Report for Labyrinth Outreach Services for Women

Working with a local reentry organization, Labyrinth Outreach Services to Women, the purpose of this study was to gather information about opportunities and barriers related to two aspects of their program: employment services and establishment of a microbusiness. Information was obtained through a 22-item questionnaire given to a sample of local businesses, key informant interviews, and secondary data analysis. Thirty-nine businesses in the Bloomington-Normal area responded to the questionnaire via on-line and paper survey methods, nine face-to-face interviews were conducted, along with three case studies of similar reentry microbusiness programs and a review of current literature. Stigmas of formerly incarcerated women, such as being unmotivated, irresponsible, disobedient, and violent were found to be major barriers to hiring. Significant facilitators identified for increased consideration for employment were: having support of a job coach, professionalism, expressing passion for the job, and seeking jobs with low customer contact. Successful microbusinesses within similar reentry organizations involved realistic expectations, client control over business operations, local community involvement, practice of a holistic approach, insurance of high product quality, and a focus on multiple products. Major barriers identified were obtaining start-up capital and revenue not meeting expenses. The most appropriate structure was found to be a social enterprise, which focuses more on non-monetary benefits for the employees rather than a profit focus of a traditional microbusiness. Recommendations based on the findings were made to the client

Ten years of major equestrian injury: are we addressing functional outcomes?

YesFunding provided by the Open Access Authors Fund

Population-Level Metrics of Trophic Structure Based on Stable Isotopes and Their Application to Invasion Ecology

Biological invasions are a significant driver of human-induced global change and many ecosystems sustain sympatric invaders. Interactions occurring among these invaders have important implications for ecosystem structure and functioning, yet they are poorly understood. Here we apply newly developed metrics derived from stable isotope data to provide quantitative measures of trophic diversity within populations or species. We then use these to test the hypothesis that sympatric invaders belonging to the same functional feeding group occupy a smaller isotopic niche than their allopatric counterparts. Two introduced, globally important, benthic omnivores, Louisiana swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) and carp (Cyprinus carpio), are sympatric in Lake Naivasha, Kenya. We applied our metrics to an 8-year data set encompassing the establishment of carp in the lake. We found a strong asymmetric interaction between the two invasive populations, as indicated by inverse correlations between carp abundance and measures of crayfish trophic diversity. Lack of isotopic niche overlap between carp and crayfish in the majority of years indicated a predominantly indirect interaction. We suggest that carp-induced habitat alteration reduced the diversity of crayfish prey, resulting in a reduction in the dietary niche of crayfish. Stable isotopes provide an integrated signal of diet over space and time, offering an appropriate scale for the study of population niches, but few isotope studies have retained the often insightful information revealed by variability among individuals in isotope values. Our population metrics incorporate such variation, are robust to the vagaries of sample size and are a useful additional tool to reveal subtle dietary interactions among species. Although we have demonstrated their applicability specifically using a detailed temporal dataset of species invasion in a lake, they have a wide array of potential ecological applications

Estimating a Markovian epidemic model using household serial interval data from the early phase of an epidemic

The clinical serial interval of an infectious disease is the time between date of symptom onset in an index case and the date of symptom onset in one of its secondary cases. It is a quantity which is commonly collected during a pandemic and is of fundamental importance to public health policy and mathematical modelling. In this paper we present a novel method for calculating the serial interval distribution for a Markovian model of household transmission dynamics. This allows the use of Bayesian MCMC methods, with explicit evaluation of the likelihood, to fit to serial interval data and infer parameters of the underlying model. We use simulated and real data to verify the accuracy of our methodology and illustrate the importance of accounting for household size. The output of our approach can be used to produce posterior distributions of population level epidemic characteristics.Andrew J. Black, Joshua V. Ros