Life Skills Improvement in a Cultural Arts, After-School Program for Youth

Low family socioeconomic status (SES) has been noted to impact children and youths’ development, specifically in cognitive skills and risky behaviors (Brieant et al., 2021). Low SES often increases stressors for parents, may hinder monitoring of youth if parents must work multiple jobs, and may impact child-parent quality time and bonding (Conger & Conger, 2002). It also presents barriers to cognitively stimulating resources and social activities. Children from lower SES families are less likely to visit the zoo, go to museums, or attend cultural arts performances, which are important for positive, healthy development (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). Youth from low-income families and communities often have low quality resources for mental health, fewer organized activities for youth and families, and decreased social support in comparison to moderate- to high-income families (Andrews et al., 2015). In addition, impoverished communities struggling with high unemployment rates, high rates of property, and violent crimes pose risks for children/youths, such as lower academic achievement, psychological problems (anxiety, fear, anger), and increased likelihood for maladaptive behaviors (Bowen & Bowen, 1999; CDC, 2021). Studies have found that youth from low-SES families and communities are more likely to engage in risky behaviors, especially during early adolescence, like smoking, drug use, delinquency, and fighting (Cambron et al., 2018; Piotrowska et al., 2015)

Brines from industrial water recycling: New ways to resource recovery

Stricter environmental regulation policies and freshwater as an increasingly valuable resource have led to global growth of zero liquid discharge (ZLD) processes in recent years. During this development, in addition to water, the recovery of recyclable materials, e.g. salts, from industrial wastewater and brines is considered more frequently. Within the framework of the HighCon research project, the subject of this study, a new ZLD process with the goal of pure single-salt recovery from industrial wastewater has been developed and investigated in a demonstrational setup at an industrial site. With regard to pure salts recovery, separating organic components is of great importance during the treatment of the concentrate arising from used water recycling. The removal of COD and of ions responsible for scaling worked very well using nanofiltration. The nanofiltration permeate containing the monovalent ions was pre-concentrated using electrodialysis and membrane distillation before selective crystallization for single-salt recovery was performed. An example economic case study for the newly developed ZLD process - based on demonstration results and considering optimization measures for a full-scale design - indicates that the costs are equal to those of a conventional ZLD process, which, however, does not provide inter alia the aforementioned benefit of single-salt recovery

On the background in the γp→ω(π0γ)p\gamma p \to \omega(\pi^0\gamma) p reaction and mixed event simulation

In this paper we evaluate sources of background for the $\gamma p \to \omega p$, with the $\omega$ detected through its $\pi^0 \gamma$ decay channel, to compare with the experiment carried out at ELSA. We find background from $\gamma p \to \pi^0 \pi^0 p$ followed by decay of a $\pi^0$ into two $\gamma$, recombining one $\pi^0$ and one $\gamma$, and from the $\gamma p \to \pi^0 \eta p$ reaction with subsequent decay of the $\eta$ into two photons. This background accounts for the data at $\pi^0 \gamma$ invariant masses beyond 700 MeV, but strength is missing at lower invariant masses which was attributed to photon misidentification events, which we simulate to get a good reproduction of the experimental background. Once this is done, we perform an event mixing simulation to reproduce the calculated background and we find that the method provides a good description of the background at low $\pi^0 \gamma$ invariant masses but fakes the background at high invariant masses, making background events at low invariant masses, which are due to $\gamma$ misidentification events, responsible for the background at high invariant masses which is due to the $\gamma p \to \pi^0 \pi^0 p$ and $\gamma p \to \pi^0 \eta p$ reactions.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Distinguishing Speed From Accuracy In Scalar Implicatures

Scalar implicatures are inferences that arise when a weak expression is used instead of a stronger alternative. For example, when a speaker says, “Some of the children are in the classroom,” she often implies that not all of them are. Recent processing studies of scalar implicatures have argued that generating an implicature carries a cost. In this study we investigated this cost using a sentence verification task similar to that of Bott and Noveck (2004) combined with a response deadline procedure to estimate speed and accuracy independently. Experiment 1 compared implicit upper-bound interpretations (some [but not all]) with lower-bound interpretations (some [and possibly all]). Experiment 2 compared an implicit upper-bound meaning of some with the explicit upper-bound meaning of only some. Experiment 3 compared an implicit lower-bound meaning of some with the explicit lower-bound meaning of at least some. Sentences with implicatures required additional processing time that could not be attributed to retrieval probabilities or factors relating to semantic complexity. Our results provide evidence against several different types of processing models, including verification and nonverification default implicature models and cost-free contextual models. More generally, our data are the first to provide evidence of the costs associated with deriving implicatures per se

Approximating the limit: the interaction between 'almost' and some temporal connectives in Italian

International audienceThis paper focuses on the interpretation of the Italian approximative adverb 'almost' by primarily looking at cases in which it modifies temporal connectives, a domain which, to our knowledge, has been largely unexplored thus far. Consideration of this domain supports the need for a scalar account of the semantics of (close in spirit to Hitzeman's semantic analysis of , in: Canakis et al. (eds) Papers from the 28th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1992). When paired with suitable analyses of temporal connectives, such an account can provide a simple explanation of the patterns of implication that are observed when modifies locational (e.g. 'when'), directional (e.g. 'until' and 'since'), and event-sequencing temporal connectives (e.g. 'before' and 'after'). A challenging empirical phenomenon that is observed is a contrast between the modification of and by , on the one hand, and the modification of and by the same adverb, on the other. While and behave symmetrically, a puzzling asymmetry is observed between and . To explain the asymmetry, we propose an analysis of and on which the former has the meaning of the temporal comparative 'earlier', while the latter is seen as an atomic predicate denoting temporal succession between events (Del Prete, Nat Lang Semantics 16:157-203, 2008). We show that the same pattern of implication observed for is attested when modifies overt comparatives, and propose a pragmatic analysis of this pattern that uniformly applies to both cases, thus providing new evidence for the claim that is underlyingly a comparative. A major point of this paper is a discussion of the notion of scale which is relevant for the semantics of ; in particular, we show that the notion of Horn (entailment-based) scale is not well-suited for handling modification of temporal connectives, and that a more general notion of scale is required in order to provide a uniform analysis of as a cross-categorial modifier

Disoriented Chiral Condensate: Theory and Experiment

It is thought that a region of pseudo-vacuum, where the chiral order parameter is misaligned from its vacuum orientation in isospin space, might occasionally form in high energy hadronic or nuclear collisions. The possible detection of such disoriented chiral condensate (DCC) would provide useful information about the chiral structure of the QCD vacuum and/or the chiral phase transition of strong interactions at high temperature. We review the theoretical developments concerning the possible DCC formation in high-energy collisions as well as the various experimental searches that have been performed so far. We discuss future prospects for upcoming DCC searches, e.g. in high-energy heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and LHC.Comment: 120 pages, 52 figures. Uses elsart.cls. To appear in Physics Reports. Minor corrections, references adde

A Comparison of Interventions for Children with Cerebral Palsy to Improve Sitting Postural Control: A Clinical Trial

Background The ability to sit independently is fundamental for function but delayed in infants with cerebral palsy (CP). Studies of interventions directed specifically toward sitting in infants with CP have not been reported. Objective The purpose of this study was to compare 2 interventions for improving sitting postural control in infants with CP. Design For this randomized longitudinal study, infants under 2 years of age and at risk for CP were recruited for intervention directed toward sitting independence. Setting The intervention was conducted at home or at an outpatient facility. Patients and Intervention Fifteen infants with typical development (mean age at entry=5 months, SD=0.5) were followed longitudinally as a comparison for postural variables. Thirty-five infants with delays in achieving sitting were recruited. Infants with delays were randomly assigned to receive a home program (1 time per week for 8 weeks; mean age=15.5 months, SD=7) or a perceptual-motor intervention (2 times per week for 8 weeks; mean age=14.3 months, SD=3). Measurements The primary outcome measure was center-of-pressure (COP) data, from which linear and nonlinear variables were extracted. The Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) sitting subsection was the clinical outcome measure. Results There was a main effect of time for the GMFM sitting subscale and for 2 of the COP variables. Interaction of group × time factors indicated significant differences between intervention groups on 2 COP measures, in favor of the group with perceptual-motor intervention. Limitations The small number of infants limits the ability to generalize the findings. Conclusions Although both groups made progress on the GMFM, the COP measures indicated an advantage for the group with perceptual-motor intervention. The COP measures appear sensitive for assessment of infant posture control and quantifying intervention response

Transport-theoretical Description of Nuclear Reactions

In this review we first outline the basics of transport theory and its recent generalization to off-shell transport. We then present in some detail the main ingredients of any transport method using in particular the Giessen Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (GiBUU) implementation of this theory as an example. We discuss the potentials used, the ground state initialization and the collision term, including the in-medium modifications of the latter. The central part of this review covers applications of GiBUU to a wide class of reactions, starting from pion-induced reactions over proton and antiproton reactions on nuclei to heavy-ion collisions (up to about 30 AGeV). A major part concerns also the description of photon-, electron- and neutrino-induced reactions (in the energy range from a few 100 MeV to a few 100 GeV). For this wide class of reactions GiBUU gives an excellent description with the same physics input and the same code being used. We argue that GiBUU is an indispensable tool for any investigation of nuclear reactions in which final-state interactions play a role. Studies of pion-nucleus interactions, nuclear fragmentation, heavy ion reactions, hyper nucleus formation, hadronization, color transparency, electron-nucleus collisions and neutrino-nucleus interactions are all possible applications of GiBUU and are discussed in this article.Comment: 173 pages, review article. v2: Text-rearrangements in sects. 2 and 3 (as accepted for publication in Physics Reports

Regulating E-Cigarettes: Why Policies Diverge

This paper, part of a festschrift in honor of Professor Malcolm Feeley, explores the landscape of e-cigarette policy globally by looking at three jurisdictions that have taken starkly different approaches to regulating e-cigarettes—the US, Japan, and China. Each of those countries has a robust tobacco industry, government agencies entrusted with protecting public health, an active and sophisticated scientific and medical community, and a regulatory structure for managing new pharmaceutical, tobacco, and consumer products. All three are signatories of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, all are signatories of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, and all are members of the World Trade Organization. Which legal, economic, social and political differences between the three countries explain their diverse approaches to regulating e-cigarettes? Why have they embraced such dramatically different postures toward e-cigarettes? In seeking to answer those questions, the paper builds on Feeley\u27s legacy of comparative scholarship, policy analysis, and focus on law in action