Corporal punishment as a determinant of developmental outcomes: Longitudinal and process models

There were two goals of this research: (1) to establish that normative corporal punishment has an impact on children\u27s mental health and the parent-child relationship and (2) to identify intrapersonal variables that determine the impact of this parenting behavior. The first study examined the influence of corporal punishment across infancy and early childhood with longitudinal analyses performed on data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The results suggest that corporal punishment does have a direct, unique impact on children\u27s mental health and on the mother-child relationship. For the second study, a college sample was studied to examine the intervening role of individuals\u27 subjective experiences of their parents\u27 use of corporal punishment. The results of this study indicate that both perceived stress and attitudes towards corporal punishment play an important intervening role in determining the impact of physical punishment. These findings are relevant to the current debate among social scientists regarding the potential negative effects of corporal punishment and for formulating theoretical models of the effects of corporal punishment. The policy implications of these findings are discussed

Coherent coupling between surface plasmons and excitons in semiconductor nanocrystals

We present an experimental demonstration of strong coupling between a surface plasmon propagating on a planar silver substrate, and the lowest excited state of CdSe nanocrystals. Variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements demonstrated the formation of plasmon-exciton mixed states, characterized by a Rabi splitting of $\sim$ 82 meV at room temperature. Such a coherent interaction has the potential for the development of plasmonic non-linear devices, and furthermore, this system is akin to those studied in cavity quantum electrodynamics, thus offering the possibility to study the regime of strong light-matter coupling in semiconductor nanocrystals at easily accessible experimental conditions.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Sense of Place and Water Quality: Applying Sense of Place Metrics to Better Understand Community Impacts of Changes in Water Quality

Understanding people’s values for coastal and freshwater areas is critical for identifying concerns and motivating people to protect water resources and for informing management decisions. Sense of place is a social indicator that captures the relative value that different people hold for specific places. Its use in water quality assessments remains extremely limited but based on lessons from other environmental fields, sense of place offers promise as a tool for measuring an important aspect of the social value of water quality. In this chapter, we propose a quantitative sense-of-place scale and additional qualitative questions which can be used in conjunction with biophysical water quality data and water quality perceptions data to better understand how people’s values change with improvements or degradations in water quality

Coastal Recreation in Southern New England: Results from a Regional Survey

This paper presents a summary of coastal recreation of New England residents from a survey conducted in the summer of 2018. The management of New England’s coasts benefits from understanding the value of coastal recreation and the factors influencing recreational behavior. To address this need, the survey collected the geographic location and trip details for both day and overnight visits to any type of location on the New England coast for a range of water recreation activities, providing a comprehensive view of coastal recreation in the region. This paper summarizes participation in various types of water recreation activities, including beachgoing, swimming, fishing, wildlife viewing, boating, and other coastal recreation activities. We quantify demand for coastal recreation using participation and effort models that disaggregate the dimensions of recreational behavior over space and census demographics. This provides insights on the scale and location of beneficiaries of this important human use of the natural environment. We found that 71% of people in the surveyed region participate in coastal recreation and engage in a wide range of coastal recreation activities at varied locations from open-ocean-facing coastal beaches to sheltered, estuarine ways to water. On average, people in the region take 37 trips to recreate on the coast of New England in a year, spending 167 hours per year visiting recreation sites and 66 hours traveling. This adds up to nearly 170.5 million trips from our sample region, 772.4 million hours of recreation time, and 304.6 million hours of travel time. Distance to the coast, demographics, and recreational activities affect how often people go and how much time they spend on coastal recreation

The Application and Usefulness of Economic Analyses for Water Quality Management in Coastal Areas

Economic studies are increasingly sought as tools to contribute to water quality management in estuaries and coastal communities, yet little is known about how the results from existing studies have been received and utilized by the organizations who solicited them. We interviewed managers from eight organizations who solicited economic studies over the past 15 years to understand how useful the studies were to their organizations and what economic research would be most helpful for their management needs. In terms of utility for coastal managers, there are a number of limitations in the studies. These include lack of site-specific data, the high cost of thorough studies, the appropriate application of methods, and receiving highly technical information that can be difficult to translate to the appropriate stakeholder audiences. Despite these drawbacks, we found the managers to be extremely positive about the usefulness of the economic studies, but in need of more research and localized data. Managers who embark upon economic analyses should take care to engage trained economists who can identify and implement appropriate methodologies to answer management questions, and who can help managers to interpret and communicate the findings. The coastal managers also identified specific areas of research that are most salient for their programs. These range from broad applications of economic analysis as a communication tool, to specific applications such as cost-effectiveness analyses of management actions. Overall, the interviews revealed great interest and utility in economic analyses, and also opportunities for conducting specific economic analyses to improve coastal decision making

Applications and Implementation of Nucleosomal Supergroove Binders for Biochemical Study

Nucleosomes are molecular spools composed of an octameric core of histones that binds and wraps ~147 base pairs (bp) of DNA into a tight superhelical coil. They are the fundamental structural unit of all eukaryotic chromosomes, and consequently, many nuclear proteins possess binding motifs specific for nucleosomal recognition. Notable nucleosome-specific binding sites include the acidic patch on the nucleosomal surface, as well as histone tail residues for post-translational modification (PTM). The winding of DNA around the histone octamer also produces another recognition motif called a &lsquo;supergroove&rsquo;. This motif aligns major and minor grooves that are ~80 bp apart on linear DNA into quasi-continuous supergrooves spanning two gyres of the DNA superhelix. Recently, it has been shown that some transcription factors (TFs) may prefer binding nucleosomal DNA in a transgyre fashion, signifying that the nucleosomal supergroove could potentially serve as an important molecular recognition platform. Each supergroove is composed of 10-12 bp of solvent-accessible DNA compared to 5-6 consecutive bp of a single gyre. Therefore, the alignment of DNA sequences from adjacent gyres essentially magnifies the degree of specificity with which a supergroove-binding ligand can complex with a nucleosome. Since such a ligand would effectively cross-brace both DNA gyres, this immediately suggests a nucleosome-stabilizing function for supergroove binders. This study focuses on the implementation of pyrrole-imidazole polyamides (PIPs) as supergroove binders as well as the viability of an alternative, zinc-finger-based solution. The results provide novel insight for the development of reagents that can serve as sequence-specific chaperones for structural/mechanistic studies of nucleosomal systems.</p

Valuing Coastal Beaches and Closures Using Benefit Transfer: An Application to Barnstable, Massachusetts

Each year, millions of Americans visit beaches for recreation, resulting in significant social welfare benefits and economic activity. Considering the high use of coastal beaches for recreation, closures due to bacterial contamination have the potential to greatly impact coastal visitors and communities. We used readily-available information to develop two transferable models that, together, provide estimates for the value of a beach day as well as the lost value due to a beach closure. We modeled visitation for beaches in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod through panel regressions to predict visitation by type of day, for the season, and for lost visits when a closure was posted. We used a meta-analysis of existing studies conducted throughout the United States to estimate a consumer surplus value of a beach visit of around $22 for our study area, accounting for water quality at beaches by using past closure history. We applied this value through a benefit transfer to estimate the value of a beach day, and combined it with lost town revenue from parking to estimate losses in the event of a closure. The results indicate a high value for beaches as a public resource and show significant losses to the town when beaches are closed due to an exceedance in bacterial concentrations

Titanium dioxide-based 64 degrees YX LiNbO3 surface acoustic wave hydrogen gas sensors

Amorphous titanium dioxide (TiO2) and gold (Au) doped TiO2-based surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors have been investigated as hydrogen gas detectors. The nanocrystal-doped TiO2 films were synthesized through a sol-gel route, mixing a Ti-butoxide-based solution with diluted colloidal gold nanoparticles. The films were deposited via spin coating onto 64° YX LiNbO3 SAW transducers in a helium atmosphere. The SAW gas sensors were operated at various temperatures between 150 and 310°C. It was found that gold doping on TiO2 increased the device sensitivity and reduced the optimum operating temperature

Titanium dioxide based 64° YX LiNbO3 surface acoustic wave hydrogen gas sensors

Amorphous titanium dioxide (TiO2) and gold (Au) doped TiO2-based surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors have been investigated as hydrogen gas detectors. The nanocrystal-doped TiO2 films were synthesized through a sol-gel route,mixing a Ti-butoxide-based solution with diluted colloidal gold nanoparticles. The films were deposited via spin coating onto 64\ub0 YX LiNbO3 SAWtransducers in a helium atmosphere. The SAW gas sensors were operated at various temperatures between 150 and 310 \ub0C. It was found that gold doping on TiO2 increased the device sensitivity and reduced the optimum operating temperature