Influences of Preschool on Social-Emotional Development for Children with Disruptive Behavior Disorders

Childcare research has examined effects of center-based childcare on the cognitive, behavioral, and social development for young children, often finding mixed results and short-term benefits. Many studies focus on at-risk populations, specifically children from low-income backgrounds who are often enrolled in programs, such as Head Start that have a specific focus on fostering all areas of child development. However, there is minimal research showing the impact of childcare attendance for children with disabilities such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, are at-risk for delayed school readiness due to deficits in social-emotional development. Using multiple regression, data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study- Birth Cohort was be analyzed to examine whether childcare programs differed significantly in quality and have a significant impact on the social-emotional development of children diagnosed with a disruptive behavior disorder. Results indicated significant differences across childcare types in regards to childcare quality such that public prekindergarten programs in general possessed more indicators of quality. In relation to the type of childcare program and predicting social-emotional development in kindergarten, results of the current study indicated that children enrolled in preschool programs predicted higher prosocial skills, children enrolled in private programs predicted lower problematic behaviors and school readiness skills. However, the study was unable to examine the relationship between disruptive behavior disorders and quality childcare programs due to the constraints on the data. The importance of these findings, as well as limitations are discussed in the current study, as well as directions for future research

Interspecific wood trait variation predicts decreased carbon residence time in changing forests

1. Increasing disturbance will result in a significant flux in aboveground carbon (C) from live trees to deadwood, concurrent with compositional shifts. While interspecific decay variation is widely reported, the implications of forest compositional change on ecosystem-level deadwood decay and consequently, the future of a globally significant C pool have not been previously explored. 2. Leveraging a 25-year treefall record for two eastern hardwood forests in central Illinois, USA, we used a chronosequence approach to estimate downed deadwood decay rates for eight common tree taxa. We hypothesized the increasing dominance of Acer spp. in eastern forests, due to disturbance regime changes, is driving a decrease in the mean species-weighted deadwood decay rate, decreasing the total C storage capacity of regional forests. 3. We observed significantly greater interspecific variation in deadwood decay rates than short- term studies, with a thirteen-fold difference in half-lives between Aesculus glabra (T1/2 = 6.4 years) and Quercus spp. (T1/2 = 77.8) logs. The canopy-dominant Acer saccharum (T1/2 = 17.8) decayed significantly faster than other historically dominant eastern taxa, Quercus spp. and Fraxinus spp. (T1/2 = 47.4). At multi-decadal timescales, wood traits, notably taxon initial wood C:N ratio and Mn concentration, outweighed environmental factors in explaining variation in decay rates. A significant interaction between soil pH and wood Mn, which co-regulate microbial lignin degradation, suggests a similar importance of Mn in modulating woody debris decay rates as has been previously described for litter decay. 4. Synthesis. Our decay estimates highlight the importance of long-term studies for accurately assessing decay of recalcitrant species (high C:N ratio), as short-term decay studies are prone to underestimating their decay rates. Our results suggest that current and future forest compositional changes will have direct consequences on the residence time of the deadwood C pool due to interspecific wood trait variation

The Green Sea Turtle

Artist Statement The Green Sea Turtle is a piece I produced as a part of my final portfolio for the Scientific Illustration course I participated in during the summer semester of 2022. The Green Sea Turtle is a watercolor and gauche painting on Bristol paper that was created as part of a collection representing each of the five sea turtle species native to the Florida coasts. Green sea turtles (Chelonia Mydas) are the largest species of hard-shelled turtle in the world, they are also unique because of their specialized diet which consists primarily of sea grass and algae. Green sea turtles, like all sea turtle species, are endangered due to human impacts. Green sea turtle populations have been devastated as a result of hunting, pollution, and habitat loss and it is estimated that fewer than 100,000 nesting females remain in the world today. I was inspired to paint this piece after spending a year as an intern at the Marine Science Center (MSC) in Ponce Inlet, Florida. During my time at MSC, I worked up close with sick and injured sea turtles, including many green sea turtles. The most frequent cause of injury to these animals was discarded plastics which they either ingested or became entangled in. It was deeply upsetting to see so many of these beautiful animals dead or injured because of human carelessness. I want to help raise awareness for how serious the problem of plastic pollution truly is. I hope by creating art like this piece I can help people to feel a deeper connection with these majestic creatures, even if they never get the chance to interact with them personally. In some small way, I hope I can do my part to motivate people to be more conscious of their choices when it comes to the products they buy and the people they vote for. I am a junior at the University of North Florida where I am majoring in biology, with a concentration in coastal and marine biology, and minoring in environmental studies. As a science major, I felt I had to give up most of my more creative, artistic interests but participating in the Scientific Illustration course helped open my mind to new possibilities of how I can combine art and science to help reach people about issues in our environment. I am extremely passionate about educating people and communities about endangered species, pollution, and climate change. I feel we are at a critical turning point regarding our environment, and it is vital that we take steps towards protecting our planet before it is too late. After graduation, I plan to continue working with marine animals and I hope I will be able to inspire more people to care for the planet through my art

Shape of nanosize superconducting grains: Does it influence pairing characteristics?

The Richardson exact solution for the reduced BCS Hamiltonian is applied to examine how sensitive are the pairing characteristics (condensation energy, spectroscopic gap, parity gap) to a specific configuration of single-electron energy levels in nanosize metallic grains. Using single-electron energy spectra in parallelepiped-shaped potential boxes with various volumes and aspect ratios as a model of energy levels in grains, we show that this sensitivity is extremely high. Just due to such an extreme sensitivity, the detailed shape of grains cannot be detected through the pairing characteristics, averaged over an ensemble of grains, even in the case of relatively small size dispersion within this ensemble. We analyse the effect of the pairing interaction on the excited-level spacings in superconducting grains and comment on the influence of shape-dependent fluctuations in single-electron energy spectra on the possibility to reveal this effect through tunnelling measurements.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Solid State Communications, E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

A review of potential physical impacts on harbours in the Mediterranean Sea under climate change

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10113-016-0972-9The potential impact of climate change on port operations and infrastructures has received much less attention than the corresponding impact for beach systems. However, ports have always been vulnerable to weather extremes and climate change could enhance such occurrences at timescales comparable to the design lifetime of harbour engineering structures. The analysis in this paper starts with the main climatic variables affecting harbour engineering and exploitation. It continues with a review of the available projections for such variables first at global scale and then at a regional scale (Catalan coast in the western Mediterranean) as a study case for similar environments in the planet. The detailed assessment of impacts starts from downscaled projections for mean sea level and wave storms (wind not considered in the paper). This is followed by an analysis of the port operations and infrastructure performance that are relevant from a climate perspective. The key climatic factors here considered are relative sea level, wave storm features (height, period, direction and duration) and their combined effect, which is expected to produce the highest impacts. The paper ends with a discussion and some examples of analyses aiming at port adaptation to future climate change.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The role of passive surveillance and citizen science in plant health

The early detection of plant pests and diseases is vital to the success of any eradication or control programme, but the resources for surveillance are often limited. Plant health authorities can however make use of observations from individuals and stakeholder groups who are monitoring for signs of ill health. Volunteered data is most often discussed in relation to citizen science groups, however these groups are only part of a wider network of professional agents, land-users and owners who can all contribute to significantly increase surveillance efforts through “passive surveillance”. These ad-hoc reports represent chance observations by individuals who may not necessarily be looking for signs of pests and diseases when they are discovered. Passive surveillance contributes vital observations in support of national and international surveillance programs, detecting potentially unknown issues in the wider landscape, beyond points of entry and the plant trade. This review sets out to describe various forms of passive surveillance, identify analytical methods that can be applied to these “messy” unstructured data, and indicate how new programs can be established and maintained. Case studies discuss two tree health projects from Great Britain (TreeAlert and Observatree) to illustrate the challenges and successes of existing passive surveillance programmes. When analysing passive surveillance reports it is important to understand the observers’ probability to detect and report each plant health issue, which will vary depending on how distinctive the symptoms are and the experience of the observer. It is also vital to assess how representative the reports are and whether they occur more frequently in certain locations. Methods are increasingly available to predict species distributions from large datasets, but more work is needed to understand how these apply to rare events such as new introductions. One solution for general surveillance is to develop and maintain a network of tree health volunteers, but this requires a large investment in training, feedback and engagement to maintain motivation. There are already many working examples of passive surveillance programmes and the suite of options to interpret the resulting datasets is growing rapidly

Recognition without identification, erroneous familiarity, and déjà vu

Déjà vu is characterized by the recognition of a situation concurrent with the awareness that this recognition is inappropriate. Although forms of déjà vu resolve in favor of the inappropriate recognition and therefore have behavioral consequences, typical déjà vu experiences resolve in favor of the awareness that the sensation of recognition is inappropriate. The resultant lack of behavioral modification associated with typical déjà vu means that clinicians and experimenters rely heavily on self-report when observing the experience. In this review, we focus on recent déjà vu research. We consider issues facing neuropsychological, neuroscientific, and cognitive experimental frameworks attempting to explore and experimentally generate the experience. In doing this, we suggest the need for more experimentation and amore cautious interpretation of research findings, particularly as many techniques being used to explore déjà vu are in the early stages of development.PostprintPeer reviewe

Constellation Modelling, Performance Prediction and Operations Management for the Spire Constellation

The operational complexity of managing the Spire constellation continually increases with the routine introduction of additional satellites and new capabilities. The heterogeneous nature of the satellites, payloads, and ground station configurations compounds the difficulty of strategic planning and operational scheduling. In order to efficiently operate this diverse network of assets, Spire developed a suite of bespoke constellation modeling and management tools that are designed to support existing demand and to scale for future needs. The modeling tools enable Spire to accurately simulate and optimize the performance of various constellation configurations prior to deployment. The operational tools required to harness the full potential of the constellation incorporate complex techniques in order to schedule payload operations, maximize data collection, and monitor performance. These tools are developed in a modular and scalable fashion to ensure that new capabilities, such as the introduction of inter-satellite links, can be readily integrated into the planning system. In addition to these internal tools, Spire also offers a suite of standardized APIs and user services through which both internal and external customers can seamlessly integrate payloads and software with the Spire constellation, enabling secure access to development and simulation environments, scheduling, and data pipeline tools. The constellation modeling, performance prediction, and operational management tools developed at Spire are essential to ensure efficient and optimized production in an increasingly complex system