Poverty, Maternal Depression, Family Status and Children's Cognitive and Behavioural Development in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Study

Improving children's lives is high on the UK policy agenda. In this study for a recent birth cohort of UK children we examine how three aspects of parental resources - income, mother's mental well-being and family status - in early childhood enhance or compromise their children's cognitive and behavioural development. As well as examining how these three aspects of parental resources separately and jointly affect children's well-being, we also enquire whether persistent poverty or persistent maternal depression are more deleterious for children's current well-being than periodic episodes of poverty and depression. We find strong associations between poverty and young children's intellectual and behavioural development, and persistent poverty was found to be particularly important in relation to children's cognitive development. Maternal depression (net of other factors) was more weakly related to cognitive development but strongly related to whether children were exhibiting behaviour problems, and persistent depression amplified the situation. Family status, net of other factors (most noticeably poverty), was only weakly associated with children's development

The Current State of Physical Therapy Pain Curricula in the United States: A Faculty Survey

Insufficient pain education is problematic across the health care spectrum. Recent educational advancements have been made to combat the deficits in pain education to ensure that health care professionals are proficient in assessing and managing pain. The purpose of this survey was to determine the extent of pain education in current Doctorate of Physical Therapy schools in the United States, including how pain is incorporated into the curriculum, the amount of time spent teaching about pain, and the resources used to teach about pain. The survey consisted of 10 questions in the following subject areas: basic science mechanisms and concepts about pain, pain assessment, pain management, and adequacy of pain curriculum. The overall response was 77% (167/216) for the first series of responses of the survey (Question 1), whereas 62% completed the entire survey (Questions 2–10). The average contact hours teaching about pain was 31 ± 1.8 (mean ± standard error of the mean) with a range of 5 to 115 hours. The majority of schools that responded covered the science of pain, assessment, and management. Less than 50% of respondents were aware of the Institute of Medicine report on pain or the International Association for the Study of Pain guidelines for physical therapy pain education. Only 61% of respondents believed that their students received adequate education in pain management. Thus, this survey demonstrated how pain education is incorporated into physical therapy schools and highlighted areas for improvement such as awareness of recent educational advancements. Perspective This article demonstrates how pain education is incorporated into physical therapy curricula within accredited programs. Understanding the current structure of pain education in health professional curriculum can serve as a basis to determine if recent publications of guidelines and competencies impact education

Co-Localization of p-CREB and p-NR1 in Spinothalamic Neurons in a Chronic Muscle Pain Model

Activation of the cAMP pathway is an important mediator of chronic muscle pain. This study examined phosphorylation of the transcription factor cAMP-response-element-binding protein (p-CREB) and the NR1 subunit of the NMDA receptor (p-NR1) in the spinal cord. Bilateral mechanical hyperalgesia of the paw was induced by administering two injections of acidic saline, 5 days apart, into the gastrocnemius muscle of male Sprague–Dawley rats. The proportion of spinothalamic neurons that expressed p-NR1 or p-CREB did not change in the dorsal horn 24 h after the second intramuscular acid injection compared with animals that received pH 7.2 injections. This lack of change in spinothalamic neurons in the dorsal horn may be due to increases in individual spinothalamic neurons or increases in non-spinothalamic neurons. There was an increase in the proportion of spinothalamic neurons expressing p-NR1 in lamina X. These findings suggest that there are region-specific changes in spinothalamic neurons that express p-NR1 and lamina X may play an important role in the modulation of chronic muscle pain

Weathering product-harm crises.

Product-harm crises can seriously imperil a brand's performance. Consumers tend to weigh negative publicity heavily in product judgments, customer preferences may shift towards competing products during the recall period, and competitors often increase their advertising spending in the wake of a brand's misfortune. To counter these negative effects, brands hope to capitalize on their equity, and often use advertising as a communication device to regain customers' lost trust. We develop a multiple-event hazard model to study how consumer characteristics and advertising influence consumers' first-purchase decisions for two affected brands of peanut butter following a severe Australian product-harm crisis. Buying a recently affected brand is perceived as highly risky, making the trial purchase a first hurdle to be taken in the brand's recovery. Both pre-crisis loyalty and familiarity are found to form an important buffer against the product-harm crisis, supporting the idea that a brand's equity prior to the crisis offers resilience in the face of misfortune. Also heavy users tend to purchase the affected brands sooner, unless their usage rate decreased significantly during the crisis. Brand advertising was found to be effective for the stronger brand, but not for the weaker brand, while competitive advertising delayed the first-purchase decision for both brands affected by the crisis.(pro-environmental) attitudes; Behavior; Claim; Cognitive; Consumption; Control; Control theory; Decision; Decisions; Demand; Ecological consumer behaviour; Effects; Ego depletion; Implications; Marketing; Model; Performance; Research; Self-control; Self-perception theory; Social marketing; Studies; Theory; Product; Judgments; Preference; Recall; Advertising; Brands; Communication; Trust; Characteristics; Loyalty;

PERSISTENT POVERTY ACROSS THE RURAL-URBAN CONTINUUM

Persistent poverty is overwhelmingly rural and is very geographically concentrated. We have redefined the USDA ERS persistent poverty classification to include metropolitan counties meeting the 20 percent or higher poor criterion and we extend the time period through the 2000 Census. With this updated definition, there are 382 counties that have had poverty rates of 20 percent or more in each decennial census between 1960 and 2000. These persistent poverty counties are overwhelmingly rural (95 percent) and disproportionately rural (16 percent of nonmetro counties versus 2 percent of metro). The local economic environment in persistent poverty counties is much less favorable than in the nation as a whole. Per capita income is lower and unemployment rates higher in persistent poverty counties. Employment is more concentrated in services, extractive, construction/maintenance, and production/transportation occupations. Residents of persistent poverty counties tend to have lower education levels, and persistent poverty counties generally have larger shares of minority populations. The number of persistent poverty counties reduced considerably during the 1990s, but the "leavers" were disproportionately metropolitan, making persistent poverty increasingly a rural problem. Persistent poverty is overwhelmingly rural and it is very concentrated geographically. In this paper, we examine these striking regularities in U.S. economic geography, seeking to understand the causes and dynamics of poverty across the rural urban continuum. We also consider how alternative characterizations of "persistent poverty" and "rural and urban" might deepen our understanding of poverty and place. The paper has four sections. In the first, we examine how poverty and persistent poverty vary across the Rural Urban Continuum Codes and Urban Influence Codes developed by the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS). We start with the very useful "persistent poverty" classification developed by ERS that defines nonmetropolitan counties as persistent poverty counties if the poverty rate is 20 percent or higher in each decennial census between 1960 and 1990.We redefine persistent poverty to include metropolitan counties meeting the 20 percent or more poor criterion and we extend the time period through the 2000 Census. We also examine where poverty is concentrated in the United States and how persistent poverty varies across the new Core Based Statistical Area definitions for counties, developed recently by the Office of Management and Budget. In the second section, we examine how the demographic characteristics of the population vary across the rural-urban spectrum, comparing persistent poverty county demographics with those of all counties. The third section examines the dynamics of poverty and place. We examine the location, rurality and demographics of counties that escaped persistent poverty statues between 1990 and 2000, and how those characteristics compare to counties that remained in persistent poverty. We then identify the new entrants into high poverty since 1960. In the fourth section, we consider implications of reconceptualizing both "persistent poverty" and "rural and urban diversity". First, we explore the "persistent poverty" county classification, and how alternative definitions of persistent poverty counties might alter the conclusions one reaches about the geography of persistent poverty. We do this by exploring how defining persistent poverty with a different base year such as 1970 or 1980 affects the number of "persistent poverty" counties. We then explore what happens to "persistent poverty" if we raise the poverty threshold to 30 and 40 percent in defining persistent poverty counties. We then examine how conclusions about rural and urban persistent poverty change if one looks at poverty persistence in individual households rather than counties. Using PSID data, this analysis examines rates of persistent household poverty by looking at how the percent of households who remain in poverty for all 5 years during the 1993-98 period varies across central metro county to remote rural county continuum (an aggregation of Beale codes). Finally, we briefly explore how conclusions about the geography of poverty change if one divides metropolitan areas into "central city" and "suburb", and nonmetropolitan areas into "adjacent" and "nonadjacent."Food Security and Poverty,

Spoken content retrieval: A survey of techniques and technologies

Speech media, that is, digital audio and video containing spoken content, has blossomed in recent years. Large collections are accruing on the Internet as well as in private and enterprise settings. This growth has motivated extensive research on techniques and technologies that facilitate reliable indexing and retrieval. Spoken content retrieval (SCR) requires the combination of audio and speech processing technologies with methods from information retrieval (IR). SCR research initially investigated planned speech structured in document-like units, but has subsequently shifted focus to more informal spoken content produced spontaneously, outside of the studio and in conversational settings. This survey provides an overview of the field of SCR encompassing component technologies, the relationship of SCR to text IR and automatic speech recognition and user interaction issues. It is aimed at researchers with backgrounds in speech technology or IR who are seeking deeper insight on how these fields are integrated to support research and development, thus addressing the core challenges of SCR

Actions speak louder than words: designing transdisciplinary approaches to enact solutions

Sustainability science uses a transdisciplinary research process in which academic and non-academic partners collaborate to identify a common problem and co-produce knowledge to develop more sustainable solutions. Sustainability scientists have advanced the theory and practice of facilitating collaborative efforts such that the knowledge created is usable. There has been less emphasis, however, on the last step of the transdisciplinary process: enacting solutions. We analyzed a case study of a transdisciplinary research effort in which co-produced policy simulation information shaped the creation of a new policy mechanism. More specifically, by studying the development of a mechanism for conserving vernal pool ecosystems, we found that four factors helped overcome common challenges to acting upon new information: creating a culture of learning, co-producing policy simulations that acted as boundary objects, integrating research into solution development, and employing an adaptive management approach. With an increased focus on these four factors that enable action, we can better develop the same level of nuanced theoretical concepts currently characterizing the earlier phases of transdisciplinary research, and the practical advice for deliberately designing these efforts

Moving Ahead Amid Fiscal Challenges: A Look at Medicaid Spending, Coverage and Policy Trends

Examines fiscal year 2011 trends in state efforts to control Medicaid spending, reform payment and delivery systems, and prepare for healthcare reform implementation, as well as projections in spending and enrollment growth for fiscal year 2012

Mental Health Problems and Barriers to Service Use in Dutch Young Adults

Only up to one-third of young adults with a mental disorder seek professional help. The reasons for this low help-seeking rate are largely unclear. The first aim of this thesis is to explain why young adults are unlikely to seek professional help when facing mental health problems. The second aim is to provide insight into problem behaviours that typically first emerge in young adulthood: i.e., psychotic symptoms and problems related to alcohol use