Resilience and protective factors in a Midwestern community : a participatory action approach

Resilience is a systemic process between a person and his/her environment (Ungar, 2005), whereby a person demonstrates a pattern of “good outcome despite serious threats to adaptation or development” (Masten, 2001, p. 28). Despite much research, the resilience research field lacks consensus on specific definitions of resilience factors (Ungar et al., 2005). Therefore, it is recommended that research prioritize specific resilience variables (Luthar & Zelazo, 2003) while attending to contextual and systemic factors (Ungar, 2005). The study took place in a community center in a low SES, predominantly African-American neighborhood in the Midwest. Neighborhood residents worked with research team members to co-construct a local definition of youth resilience through focus groups. Children meeting this definition were nominated by staff and participated in interviews about resilience factors. Children, parents, and staff also completed rating scales measuring resilient youth’s academic, behavioral, social, and emotional functioning. Qualitative examinations of data resulted in an ecosystemic model of resilient youth in the community. Resilience was found to be influenced by interactions between individual, familial, and community factors. Individual perseverance and adult involvement and awareness, as well as community cohesion were important protective factors identified by participants. Results of the study were shared with community center staff with plans to utilize them at the center to help promote positive youth functioning.Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance ServicesThesis (Ph. D.

Do hotel guests act according to their intentions as it relates to sustainability in a hotel setting?

As humans continue to use our planet’s resources at a rapid pace, we must act quickly to implement solutions and strategies that will create a positive impact on our environment. The hotel industry represents a huge opportunity for increasing sustainability practices, as these establishments tend to consume tremendous amounts of natural resources through energy and water usage; thus creating quite a bit of waste. For this customer-centric industry, change starts with consumer expectations and intentions to act. The purpose of this study was to assess hotel guests’ values and intentions for sustainable hotels, and compare how this aligns with their actual behavior during check-in. Although the overall results shed light on consumer behavior, there were no significant differences

Ironing out the details: Untangling dietary iron and genetic background in diabetes

The search for genetic risk factors in type-II diabetes has been hindered by a failure to consider dietary variables. Dietary nutrients impact metabolic disease risk and severity and are essential to maintaining metabolic health. Genetic variation between individuals confers differences in metabolism, which directly impacts response to diet. Most studies attempting to identify genetic risk factors in disease fail to incorporate dietary components, and thus are ill-equipped to capture the breadth of the genome’s impact on metabolism. Understanding how genetic background interacts with nutrients holds the key to predicting and preventing metabolic diseases through the implementation of personalized nutrition. Dysregulation of iron homeostasis is associated with type-II diabetes, but the link between dietary iron and metabolic dysfunction is poorly defined. High iron burden in adipose tissue induces insulin resistance, but the mechanisms underlying adipose iron accumulation remain unknown. Hepcidin controls dietary iron absorption and distribution in metabolic tissues, but it is unknown whether genetic variation influencing hepcidin expression modifies susceptibility to dietary iron-induced insulin resistance. This review highlights discoveries concerning the axis of iron homeostasis and adipose function and suggests that genetic variation underlying dietary iron metabolism is an understudied component of metabolic disease

Close, but No Degree: Removing Barriers to Degree-Completion and Economic Advancement in New Jersey

Examines current policies, programs, and initiatives designed to facilitate degree completion by offering the option through employment and workforce development services. Recommends increased system alignment, funding, student supports, and flexibility

Parrondo games as lattice gas automata

Parrondo games are coin flipping games with the surprising property that alternating plays of two losing games can produce a winning game. We show that this phenomenon can be modelled by probabilistic lattice gas automata. Furthermore, motivated by the recent introduction of quantum coin flipping games, we show that quantum lattice gas automata provide an interesting definition for quantum Parrondo games.Comment: 12 pages, plain TeX, 10 PostScript figures included with epsf.tex (ignore the under/overfull \vbox error messages); for related work see http://math.ucsd.edu/~dmeyer/research.htm

Reduction of dimension for nonlinear dynamical systems

We consider reduction of dimension for nonlinear dynamical systems. We demonstrate that in some cases, one can reduce a nonlinear system of equations into a single equation for one of the state variables, and this can be useful for computing the solution when using a variety of analytical approaches. In the case where this reduction is possible, we employ differential elimination to obtain the reduced system. While analytical, the approach is algorithmic, and is implemented in symbolic software such as {\sc MAPLE} or {\sc SageMath}. In other cases, the reduction cannot be performed strictly in terms of differential operators, and one obtains integro-differential operators, which may still be useful. In either case, one can use the reduced equation to both approximate solutions for the state variables and perform chaos diagnostics more efficiently than could be done for the original higher-dimensional system, as well as to construct Lyapunov functions which help in the large-time study of the state variables. A number of chaotic and hyperchaotic dynamical systems are used as examples in order to motivate the approach.Comment: 16 pages, no figure

A review of journal policies for sharing research data

*Background:* Sharing data is a tenet of science, yet commonplace in only a few subdisciplines. Recognizing that a data sharing culture is unlikely to be achieved without policy guidance, some funders and journals have begun to request and require that investigators share their primary datasets with other researchers. The purpose of this study is to understand the current state of data sharing policies within journals, the features of journals which are associated with the strength of their data sharing policies, and whether the strength of data sharing policies impact the observed prevalence of data sharing. 

*Methods:* We investigated these relationships with respect to gene expression microarray data in the journals that most often publish studies about this type of data. We measured data sharing prevalence as the proportion of papers with submission links from NCBI's Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. We conducted univariate and linear multivariate regressions to understand the relationship between the strength of data sharing policy and journal impact factor, journal subdiscipline, journal publisher (academic societies vs. commercial), and publishing model (open vs. closed access).

*Results:* Of the 70 journal policies, 18 (26%) made no mention of sharing publication-related data within their Instruction to Author statements. Of the 42 (60%) policies with a data sharing policy applicable to microarrays, we classified 18 (26% of 70) as moderately strong and 24 (34% of 70) as strong.
Existence of a data sharing policy was associated with the type of journal publisher: half of all commercial publishers had a policy compared to 82% of journals published by academic society. All four of the open-access journals had a data sharing policy. Policy strength was associated with impact factor: the journals with no data sharing policy, a weak policy, and a strong policy had respective median impact factors of 3.6, 4.5, and 6.0. Policy strength was positively associated with measured data sharing submission into the GEO database: the journals with no data sharing policy, a weak policy, and a strong policy had median data sharing prevalence of 11%, 19%, and 29% respectively.

*Conclusion:* This review and analysis begins to quantify the relationship between journal policies and data sharing outcomes and thereby contributes to assessing the incentives and initiatives designed to facilitate widespread, responsible, effective data sharing. 

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Ab initio energies of nonconducting crystals by systematic fragmentation

A systematic method for approximating the ab initio electronic energy of molecules from the energies of molecular fragments has been adapted to estimate the total electronic energy of crystal lattices. The fragmentation method can be employed with any ab initio electronic structure method and allows optimization of the crystal structure based on ab initio gradients. The method is demonstrated on SiO₂ polymorphs using the Hartree-Fock approximation, second order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory, and the quadratic configuration interaction method with single and double excitations and triple excitations added perturbatively