Making their Way: Helping Kentucky's Immigrant Youth Successfully Transition into Adulthood

All youth in Kentucky need high quality educational experiences to become successful adults. Children must have access to educational opportunities at every stage of development, from early child care and preschool to post-secondary education or vocational training.Education improves each young person's ability to get a good job and become self-sustaining community members. Education also creates a strong workforce, which contributes to the overall growth and productivity of Kentucky's economy.In Kentucky, as across the nation, children in immigrant families represent a small but growing part of the population and future workforce. Currently, children in immigrant families make up 5 percent of the total child population in Kentucky. In a highly globalized world, educated bilingual and multicultural youth in immigrant families will be an enormous future asset to businesses, service providers and government agencies.1Many immigrant families in Kentucky possess positive child well-being influences, including high rates of parent educational attainment, strong rates of home ownership and low rates of poverty.2On the other hand, there are also some immigrant families living in low-income households and parents who do not have a high school degree. Kentucky's older immigrant youth sometimes face additional challenges to completing high school and pursuing higher education, including English language acquisition, cultural skills and social adaptation.3English proficiency, for example, is the greatest predictor of the success of older immigrant youth. The lack of adequate English language and education programs for older immigrant youth prevents Kentucky from taking advantage of a great resource for our future workforce.This brief presents a snapshot of older immigrant youth ages 16 to19 and will examine how well they are being prepared to successfully transition into higher education and the workforce.4To better understand how this population is faring, data on school drop out rates and on disconnected youth who are not in school and do not have a job is presented. The data compares Kentucky's immigrant youth born outside the U.S. to all youth born in the U.S. (which includes U.S.-born youth with immigrant parents).

Health and Safety Communication in the Workplace: A Case Study of California Farmers

This case study presents selected findings related to communication for agricultural health and safety of a convenience sample of California farmers. The overall purpose of the study was to document, analyze, and assess how agricultural operators conduct safety programs, seek and use safety-related information, and how they organize their operations to ensure a safe workplace. The study was carried out in the Fall, 1996, with the 662 safety award winners which comprise 5% of the 13,000 insured farmers throughout California. Responses from 137 respondents (20% response rate) indicate that while operators use a variety of information sources, they question the sources’ effectiveness and utility. A number of directions to follow in developing effective communication and education approaches that can impact the health and safety practices of California farmers are indicated. Results also indicate that new challenges for extension communicators and educators in the area of agricultural health and safety exist

The effects of gestational folic acid supplement of sows on offspring immune organ and muscle development and postnatal immune and growth response

Primiparous sows (113 +/- 27 kg BW) were penned individually and fed daily 1.9 kg of a basal, low folic acid diet (.28 mg/kg) supplemented with 0 or 8 mg folic acid from coitus to parturition. All sows were fed the basal diets for 112 days prior to mating to minimize body folic acid (FA) stores. Sows were synchronized and artificially inseminated within sow litter pair to the same boar. Post coitus sows from 19 pairs of littermates were randomly allotted, within litter, to one of the two levels of FA supplementation. At 5 +/- 2 d post-insemination, ovulation rate was determined via laparotomy. At birth, two pigs in each litter were sacrificed. Litters were standardized to 10 +/- 2 pigs and sows were self-fed a nutritionally adequate diet. Sow serum FA concentration, an indicator of body FA stores, declined from 69 to 51 ng/mL during the 112 d depletion period. During pregnancy, serum FA concentration further declined thru mid pregnancy (d 70). Gestational FA supplementation elevated (P \u3c .01) sow serum FA concentration. Gestational FA supplementation did not affect pigs born/litter (8.10 vs. 8.15), litter birth weight (10.49 vs. 11.52 kg), nor pig tissue weight (except visceral organ weight), or DNA and protein content at birth, but did increase (P \u3c .10) litter whole body DNA (30.45 vs 37.85 mg) and protein (1.04 vs 1.28 kg) content at birth. Gestational FA supplementation resulted in a greater percentage of CD2 positive lymphocytes in offspring peripheral blood on d 0 but not d 21 postweaning, resulting in a FA supplementation by day interaction. Gestational FA supplementation also altered (P \u3c .05) lymphocyte blastogenesis rate upon stimulation with PHA in pigs postweaning. Folic acid supplementation of the dam resulted in greater (P \u3c .05) serum agglutination titers in pigs following a secondary SRBC challenge. Folic, acid supplementation did not affect offspring daily BW gain, feed intake, and gain:feed except during the secondary SRBC challenge period. Based on these data, FA supplementation of the gravid dam influenced postnatal immune response of the offspring but not muscle growth in pigs pre- and postnatally

Ensuring a Healthy Start: Prenatal Care and Outcomes among Newborn Kentuckians

All children need a healthy start in life. A child's health at birth can impact educational outcomes, and compromised health can have far-reaching effects into adulthood. Kentucky can offer all children a strong start by ensuring every mother have access to appropriate and frequent health care both before conception and during pregnancy. Kentucky babies, regardless of their parents' circumstances, need appropriate care in utero to set the foundation for a healthy and productive life. The Commonwealth as a whole benefits from improved health across communities. Kentucky's economic viability also depends on healthy children, starting at birth, because they represent our future workforce.The brief includes data on access to prenatal care, low-weight births and preterm births, as well as solutions to improve access to care and birth outcomes. For the purposes of this report, comparisons will be made between Kentucky births to U.S.-born mothers and Kentucky births to mothers born outside the U.S. across six geographic regions of the Commonwealth and by race and Hispanic ethnicity.

Was kostet das Bio-Ei?

In der ökologischen Legehennenhaltung sind sowohl stationäre als auch mobile Haltungssysteme beliebt. Für Neueinsteiger in diesem Bereich bietet KTBL in seiner Online-Anwendung "Wirtschaftlichkeitsrechner Tier" Planungsdaten zu den Kosten pro Ei für verschiedene Systeme an. Leider sind nicht alle Daten dort aktuell oder es fehlen sogar einige neue Stallsysteme komplett in dieser Datenbank. Ziel dieses Workshops ist es, den Informationsbedarf von Neueinsteigern in der Legehennenhaltung zu ermitteln und einen Überblick über das Thema auf einen Blick zu geben und die Bedeutung der wirtschaftlichen Perspektiven zu diesem Thema hervorzuheben. Darauf aufbauend können Datenlücken identifiziert und der konkrete Forschungsbedarf diskutiert und formuliert werden

Supporting the Critical Administrative Leadership Role of County Directors

With a foot in both the university and local communities, Cooperative Extension county directors have unique opportunities to network, scan opportunities, identify assets, design and market programs, build public support, and solve problems. A survey of the administrative workload, satisfactions, and frustrations of California county directors finds these leadership roles are insufficiently supported. The data suggest the need to 1) alter merit review policies to reward community connections and networking, 2) reinvent university support bureaucracies to treat county directors as valued customers, and 3) reassert a robust vision of county-based Extension at the highest levels of the organization

Invisible Divide: Farm Workers and Telephone Accessibility

Telephones are almost universally available throughout the United States. However, farm workers and their families lack ready access to this technology. A small sample of California farm workers, vendors of telephone technology, and farm camp managers were interviewed to help understand farm worker access to and use of telephones. Results revealed a pattern of low access to and availability of telephones and major problems in the use of pre-paid phone cards. The authors argue that such communities are largely forgotten and seemingly invisible in discussions of the digital divide. Similar situations likely exist in most farm worker communities throughout the country