Examining the Influence of Parenting Practices on Youth\u27s Sleep Health During a Sensitive Developmental Period

Sleep problems among youth are highly prevalent and associated with mental and physical health concerns. During early adolescence, youth’s sleep health is at risk for disturbance, and problems with sleep around this developmental period have been shown to longitudinally predict escalating rates of anxiety and depression later in adolescence. Sleep-related behaviors are embedded within the family system and as such they are influenced by familial processes including parenting practices. However, the influence of parenting practice on young adolescents’ sleep health has been understudied. Moreover, there is limited evidence on the concept of nighttime parenting as it relates to youth’s sleep health. Lastly, although parenting practices have been identified as contributors to youth’s sleep health, parents’ active involvement within sleep interventions has been limited. This dissertation is comprised of three manuscripts focused on the association between nighttime and general/daytime parenting practices and youth’s sleep health. First, I provide evidence on distinct constellations of parenting practices that are differentially predictive of youth sleep problems, with findings on positive parenting practices longitudinally predicting better sleep health indices and negative parenting practices longitudinally predicting poorer sleep health indices. Then, I expand on this research by developing a measure that assesses parenting practices that occur within the nighttime hours, and thereby, provide a new framework for the impact of nighttime parenting practices on youth’s sleep health during early adolescence. Findings from the second study corroborate those from the first study as positive and negative nighttime parenting practices differentially related to youth’s sleep health above and beyond the impact of general/daytime parenting practices. Lastly, informed by the aforementioned studies, I conducted a clinical open trial of a family-based intervention for early adolescents with sleep problems, which intentionally targeted nighttime parenting practices. Findings revealed pre- to post-treatment improvements in youth sleep and mental health as well as favorable trends in parenting practices. This collection of work contributes to the conceptualization of the socioecological model of youth’s sleep health and highlights parenting practices as potential treatment targets that may be promising in addressing the pervasiveness and gravity of poor sleep health during the sensitive developmental stage of early adolescence

Population size estimate of Abronia lythrochila Smith & Álvarez del Toro, 1963 (Reptilia: Anguidae) in the Estación Biológica San José, Chiapas, Mexico

La lagartija arborícola Abronia lythrochila fue descrita hace unos 60 años; sin embargo, su historia natural sigue siendo poco investigada. El objetivo de este estudio fue estimar la densidad poblacional y la distribución espacial de A. lythrochila en el Centro para la Conservación e Investigación de la Biodiversidad de los Altos de Chiapas (CECIBACH, anteriormente conocido como Estación Biológica San José) en Chiapas, México. Con base en los datos de campo recopilados entre 2017 y 2019, la densidad de población fue de 1.7 individuos/hectárea, lo que se traduce en un tamaño poblacional estimado de 7─89 ejemplares en la totalidad de las 16 hectáreas del CECIBACH. Debido a las actividades humanas que amenazan los bosques de los Altos de Chiapas, junto con la percepción errónea de la especie como peligrosamente venenosa, esta población de A. lythrochila podría estar sufriendo un declive continuo. El presente estudio ofrece la primera línea de base para la demografía poblacional comparativa de esta especie.The arboreal lizard Abronia lythrochila was described about 60 years ago, yet its natural history remains poorly researched. The objective of this study was to estimate the population density and spatial distribution of A. lythrochila at the Centro para la Conservación e Investigación de la Biodiversidad de los Altos de Chiapas (CECIBACH, formerly known as the Estación Biológica San José) in Chiapas, Mexico. Based on field data collected from 2017─2019, the estimated population density was 1.7 individuals per hectare, representing an estimated population size between 7─89 specimens across the entire 16 hectares of CECIBACH. Due to human activities that threaten forests in the highlands of Chiapas, together with misperceptions of the species as dangerously venomous, this population of A. lythrochila could be suffering an ongoing decline. The current study offers the first-ever baseline for comparative population demography of this species

Evaluación de la relación entre las politicas públicas de innovación y las cadenas de valor en la industria en Colombia y México

La importancia de estudiar y analizar las políticas de innovación de Colombia y México radica en que en el estado actual de la economía de Latinoamérica, el establecimiento y puesta en funcionamiento de este tipo de políticas puede conllevar al crecimiento de la economía nacional a niveles más altos y competitivos con las demás economías mundiales. Estas políticas llevan consigo una verdadera inversión en las industrias en torno a sus cadenas de valor, para que éstas contribuyan al desarrollo y crecimiento económico. Las cadenas globales de valor tienen gran importancia en la producción industrial actual, siendo parte integral del desarrollo de la innovación en los Estados.The importance of studying and analyzing the innovation policies of Colombia and Mexico lies in the fact that the actual state of Latin-American economy, the establishment and functioning of these types of policies can contribute to the growth of the national economy to higher and more competitive levels with the rest of global economies. These policies undertake a real investment in industries concerning their value chains, so they can contribute to the economic growth and development. The global value chains are very important in the actual industrial production, being an integral part of innovationþs development in all States.Abogado (a)Pregrad

Operational Business Intelligence: Applying Decision Trees to Call Centers

In this paper we propose a decision tree based approach to modeling service levels in insurance call center operations. Our approach allows call center managers to determine which factors they control have the greatest impact on service levels (ex. handle time, average hold time, etc.). We also propose a sliding window to allow managers to interpret the effects changes in resource allocations have on service levels. To test our solution we analyze data collected from a large U.S. insurance company. The initial results provide good insight into factors affecting service levels

Bridging the short-term and long-term dynamics of economic structural change

In the short-term, economies shift preferentially into new activities that are related to ones they currently do. Such a tendency should have implications for the nature of an economy's long-term development as well. We explore these implications using a dynamical network model of an economy's movement into new activities. First, we theoretically derive a pair of coordinates that summarize long-term structural change. One coordinate captures overall ability across activities, the other captures an economy's composition. Second, we show empirically how these two measures intuitively summarize a variety of facts of long-term economic development. Third, we observe that our measures resemble complexity metrics, though our route to these metrics differs significantly from previous ones. In total, our framework represents a dynamical approach that bridges short- and long-term descriptions of structural change, and suggests how different branches of economic complexity analysis could potentially fit together in one framework.Comment: 11 pages + 21 pages supplementary text, 10 figure