Energy conservation in the one-phase supercooled Stefan problem

© . This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/A one-phase reduction of the one-dimensional two-phase supercooled Stefan problem is developed. The standard reduction, employed by countless authors, does not conserve energy and a recent energy conserving form is valid in the limit of small ratio of solid to liquid conductivity. The present model assumes this ratio to be large and conserves energy for physically realistic parameter values. Results for three one-phase formulations are compared to the two-phase model for parameter values appropriate to supercooled salol (similar values apply to copper and gold) and water. The present model shows excellent agreement with the full two-phase model.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

How Long Do States Let Children in Foster Care Wait for Permanent Families? Timely Permanency Report Cards

Children need safe and permanent families for healthy development. Therefore, states are tasked with moving children in foster care to permanency through reunification with the family of origin, adoption, guardianship, or other custodial arrangements with relatives. Federal laws that guide states emphasize timely permanency, but states exercise substantial discretion in implementation.This report summarizes a new analysis of states' performance on four permanency measures—overall, by the child's age at entry, and by race or ethnicity. Performance across measures is summarized by an overall ranking, from 1 to 51. Complete project results are available at www.aei.org/foster-care-report-card. The analysis demonstrates that children's chances of permanency, especially through adoption, depend largely on where they live

Parental sleep and employment: evidence from a British cohort study

We show that sleep deprivation exerts a strong negative effect on labour market performance. We exploit variations in child sleep quality to instrument for parental sleep quality. A one-hour reduction in sleep duration significantly decreases labour force participation, the number of hour’s worked and household income. In addition, we find that low-skilled mothers are more likely to opt out of the labour market and work less hours than high-skilled mothers when exposed to sleep deprivation. We argue that sleep is a major determinant of employment outcomes that needs more attention in designing economic models of time allocation and employment policies

Child sleep and mother labour market outcomes

We show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers’ labour market performance. To isolate variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel dataset that follows mother-child pairs through time. We find that sleeping one hour less per night on average significantly decreases maternal labour force participation, the number of hours worked and household income. We identify one mechanism driving the effects, namely the influence of maternal sleep on selection into full-time versus part-time work. Increased schedule flexibility for mothers with sufficient tenure mitigates the negative effects of sleep deprivation

Timely Permanency for Children in Foster Care: Revisiting Core Assumptions about Children’s Options and Outcomes

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA, 1997) represented an emerging consensus that foster care should not be a long-term solution for children. Foster care is intended to provide a temporary living arrangement until permanency can be achieved, but, at the time ASFA was passed, some children were spending large proportions of their childhoods in temporary homes. In many cases, these children had a permanency plan of reunification that had little chance of being realized. Thus, the overarching goals of ASFA were to reduce the amount of time children spent “in limbo” and to promote permanency, while maintaining explicit preferences for family preservation and reunification

Sleep deprivation, even when moderate, hurts employment

The effect is felt more strongly by low-skilled mothers of children with disruptive sleep patterns, write Joan Costa-i-Font and Sarah Flèch

Is daylight saving time good for us?

Daylight saving time is observed in over seventy countries with the goal of reducing energy use. However, there’s no consensus on the desirability of changing the clock twice a year. In March 2019, the European Parliament voted to repeal daylight saving time. Studies show that, by reducing the number of hours we sleep, time shifts decrease our life satisfaction. Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche, and Ricardo Pagan write that the night-time shift at the end of March reduces individual happiness by the equivalent of 393 euros a year

Juvenile offending among maltreated youth:Assessing type-specificity and offense specialization in the cycle of violence

This study assesses how different forms of abuse and neglect are associated with juvenile offending, with specific emphasis on whether youth commit offenses analogous to the illicit parental behaviors to which they were exposed. Using statewide child welfare system data linked with juvenile offending records, we assess rates and types of offending among a cohort of youth exposed to child maltreatment, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect (N = 7,787). Findings suggest that the maltreatment-delinquency link is better characterized as a general rather than a specific cycle of violence, though sex abuse victims tend to specialize in sex offending. Youth exposed to physical abuse, moral neglect, and parent incarceration offend at high rates overall and should be prioritized for prevention and treatment services

A Little Blue Bird Told Me: Sentiment Change on Orphanage Tourism

This study examined Twitter conversations to understand the changes in the sentiments related to orphanage tourism between 2009 and 2019. Past research on orphanage tourism mostly took a qualitative approach, which provided profound knowledge but was limited to a single time and those directly involved. This study fills the gap by analyzing the tweets posted by different parties, including the individuals that have participated or are willing to participate in orphanage tourism, institutions that have campaigned against the phenomenon, and organizations that have promoted orphanage volunteering. Analysis of 109,723 tweets using lexicons and supervised learning—Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Naive Bayes, and Logistic regression—revealed that the year 2014 marked a turning point for orphanage tourism conversations as the number of posts dropped significantly, and the messages against orphanage tourism received attention. However, the positive sentiment still prevailed throughout the decade when all tweets were considered

What Does Child Protective Services Investigate as Neglect? A Population-Based Study

Most child protective services (CPS) investigations involve allegations of neglect. Broad and vague definitions have led to concerns that CPS-investigated neglect is driven by poverty-based material hardship. In a representative sample of 295 neglect investigations in California in 2017, structured data and narrative text fields were used to characterize the types of neglect and concurrent parental risk factors investigated by CPS and to assess the rate and nature of investigated physical neglect, defined as inadequate food, housing, or hygiene. The most common types of neglect were inadequate supervision (44%) and failure to protect (29%), followed by physical neglect (14%). Common risk factors identified in neglect investigations were parental substance use (41%), domestic violence (21%), mental illness (18%), and co-reported physical or sexual abuse (29%). Nearly all investigations of physical neglect (99%) included concerns related to substance use, domestic violence, mental illness, co-reported abuse or an additional neglect allegation (i.e., abandonment). Given concerns identified in neglect investigations, economic supports are likely insufficient without an array of behavioral-health supports