Effects of Family Adversity and TV Consumption on Turkish Immigrant Children’s Executive Functions (EFs)

Immigrant and ethnic minority children are often exposed to high levels of familyadversity and television time. Family adversity and extended TV consumption may beassociated with decreased executive functions (EFs). To determine if immigrant children’s exposure to family adversity and TVconsumption predicts EFs skills 12 months later. Data was collected as part of a large longitudinal cohort study on Turkish immigrant children (N=451, aged 5-15 years, 47% male, Table 1) in Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. At T1, Turkish immigrant mothers reported on family adversity (daily hassles, depression screening, parents’ relationship quality) and children’s average hours spent watching TV per day. At T2, 12 months later, children were administered the computerized Hearts and Flowers task to assess three EF components, updating, shifting, and inhibition (efficiency scores, calculated as mean accuracy divided by median reaction time for correct items). Child age, gender, maternal education, and country of data collection were considered as additional predictors.Structural equation modeling showed that there were no significant effects of family adversity on TV consumption, TV consumption on EFs, or family adversity on EFs. However, age and gender predicted EFs. Model fit was good (χ2 [chi-squared] = 23.663, df [degrees of freedom] = 14, p = .050, CFI = .992, RMSEA = .039, 95% CI [.000, .066], PCLOSE = .720: variance explained in EF: R2 [R squared] = .75). Despite failing to reject the null hypothesis, these results are important as this is the first known study of its kind. This study alone is not sufficient evidence. Others should try to replicate the findings so that avenues for possible interventions and parent education among immigrant children and their families are not overlooke

Groundwater chemistry of the Lenjanat District, Esfahan Province, Iran

Groundwater / Surface water / Water quality / Wells / River Basins / Iran / Esfahan Province / Lenjanat District / Zayandeh Rud Basin / Chadegan Dam / Zagros Mountains

Ideal and Practice in a State Constitution: The Case of Minnesota

Minnesota badly needs a revised constitution that generally and broadly defines and distributes powers, responsibilities and rights, and sets up a general frame of government. While this might be accomplished through the amendment process, it has been painfully slow and up to now inadequate to meet \u27the needs for modern, flexible and responsive state government. A constitutional convention may still be the best and most practical way of achieving needed revisions

The Effects of Intensity Level and Expertise on Attentional Focus During Exercise

An important goal of exercise psychology is to identify factors that influence exercise adherence. More than half of Americans do not get the physical activity that doctors recommend for maintaining or improving a healthy lifestyle. Attentional focus during exercise has been identified as one casual factor with regard to exercise adherence. Attentional focus has traditionally oeen defined as associative or dissociative (Morgan & Pollock, 1977). Association implies that an exerciser\u27s attention is focused on how his or her body is reacting to the exercise (such as sweating, muscle soreness, and breathing) or on things such as pace and split-times. Dissociation implies that one\u27s focus is placed on things that are unrelated to the exercise, such as daydreaming, listening to music, or focusing on the environment. The purpose of the current study was to determine how both the Stages of Change model and the intensity level of the exercise bout affect attentional focus. A new six-category measure of attentional focus was used. A total of 145 undergraduate psychology students were divided into differing levels of expertise based on the Stages of Change model and assigned to run at a moderate and very hard intensity on two separate days; attentional focus was measured following each bout. All but one stage of change focused on bodily sensations significantly more at the very hard intensity; the pre-contemplation/contemplation stage focused on bodily sensations less at the very hard intensity. Regardless of level of expertise, focus on bodily sensations, selftalk, and task-relevant external cues significantly increased and focus on task-irrelevant thoughts and external distractions significantly decreased from the moderate to very hard intensity. Participants reported significantly greater perceived exertion, greater pain, and less enjoyment at the very hard compared to the moderate intensity. Implications for these findings are discussed

Reference crop evapotranspiration derived from geo-stationary satellite imagery: a case study for the Fogera flood plain, NW-Ethiopia and the Jordan Valley, Jordan

First results are shown of a project aiming to estimate daily values of reference crop evapotranspiration ET0 from geo-stationary satellite imagery. In particular, for Woreta, a site in the Ethiopian highland at an elevation of about 1800 m, we tested a radiation-temperature based approximate formula proposed by Makkink (MAK), adopting ET0 evaluated with the version of the Penman-Monteith equation described in the FAO Irrigation and Drainage paper 56 as the most accurate estimate. More precisely we used the latter with measured daily solar radiation as input (denoted by PMFAO-Rs). Our data set for Woreta concerns a period where the surface was fully covered with short green non-stressed vegetation. Our project was carried out in the context of the Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LANDSAF) facility. Among others, the scope of LANDSAF is to increase benefit from the EUMETSAT Satellite Meteosat Second Generation (MSG). In this study we applied daily values of downward solar radiation at the surface obtained from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) radiometer. In addition, air temperature at 2m was obtained from 3-hourly forecasts provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Both MAK and PMFAO-Rs contain the psychrometric "constant", which is proportional to air pressure, which, in turn, decreases with elevation. In order to test elevation effects we tested MAK and its LANDSAF input data for 2 sites in the Jordan Valley located about 250 m b.s.l. Except for a small underestimation of air temperature at the Ethiopian site at 1800 m, the first results of our LANDSAF-ET0 project are promising. If our approach to derive ET0 proves successfully, then the LANDSAF will be able to initiate nearly real time free distribution of ET0 for the full MSG disk