Early Childhood Education as a Crime Prevention Tool

Since the mid 1990s, the general revenue funds appropriated for the Department of Corrections has more than tripled, from about $217 million (1994) to about$670 million in 2009. The ripple effects of crime are far reaching: loss of productivity for crime victims and their families, court fees, jail and prison expenses, personal and property damages, and the challenges faced by the children of the incarcerated. All of these carry a hefty monetary and societal price

Strengthening Missouri's Economic Performance: The Far-Reaching Impact of Investments in Early Childhood Programs

The current economic climate is challenging for the state of Missouri and its many industries and businesses. Everyone is seeking investments that will yield significant returns. One important, but frequently overlooked, economic sector is early childhood (EC) programs. Frequently referred to as “child care,” this sector includes early childhood services provided to young children (birth - kindergarten entry). EC programs employ more than 34,000 Missourians in a variety of EC settings

Designing Medical Technology for the Developing World

Our goal is to develop healthcare solutions that can be implemented in developing countries to reduce their dependence on donated medical equipment. We have focused on several devices: a monitor for premature babies, a bacterial sensor for infection diagnoses and water testing, and an infant automated breathing bag device to maintain breathing in newborns. Our designs minimize the use of consumables and provide better detection and/or treatment than currently available in-country. The baby monitor detects skin temperature and controls an electric warming blanket. The bacterial sensor quickly detects the bacteria in a sample without the need for lengthy culture times. The infant breathing device provides regular breathing support to newborns, relieving family from having to manually support breathing. All of our projects seek to answer critical medical needs in developing regions through reductions in costs, time, or both. Our group is partnering with local governments in Tanzania and Mexico to collaborate on our projects and work to accomplish the specific needs of these communities. These projects are partially supported by the Creative Inquiry program

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research