State CCDBG Plans to Promote Opportunities for Babies & Toddlers in Child Care

Reviews states' 2008-09 plans for using Child Care and Development Block Grant funds to help low-income families access child care. Cites examples aligned with CLASP's recommendations for ensuring environments that support healthy growth and development

Charting Progress for Babies in Child Care: Expand Monitoring and Technical Assistance

Highlights findings about the need for regular monitoring, unannounced inspections, and technical assistance for childcare providers of infants and toddlers to ensure that licensing regulations and health and safety measures are implemented correctly

Life cycle assessment of geopolymer concrete: A Malaysian context

An electrochemical fuel cell contains first and second monolithic electrically conducting flow field-bipolar plate assemblies arranged essentially parallel to each other such that an inside surface of the first bipolar separator plate is facing an inside surface of the second bipolar separator plate, wherein the bipolar separator plates are electrically and mechanically connected by intervening layers that are directly bonded to each other. The fuel cells can be stacked between endplates and supplied with hydrogen and oxygen to generate electric power. An air cooled condenser for use with a fuel cell stack is composed of a porous foam condensing element and a porous foam cooling element. The condenser can be placed by a fuel cell stack for cooling purposes.U

Frontal, Sensorimotor, and Posterior Parietal Regions Are Involved in Dual-Task Walking After Stroke

Background: Walking within the community requires the ability to walk while simultaneously completing other tasks. After a stroke, completing an additional task while walking is significantly impaired, and it is unclear how the functional activity of the brain may impact this. Methods: Twenty individual in the chronic stage post-stroke participated in this study. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure prefrontal, pre-motor, sensorimotor, and posterior parietal cortices during walking and walking while completing secondary verbal tasks of varying difficulty. Changes in brain activity during these tasks were measured and relationships were accessed between brain activation changes and cognitive or motor abilities. Results: Significantly larger activations were found for prefrontal, pre-motor, and posterior parietal cortices during dual-task walking. Increasing dual-task walking challenge did not result in an increase in brain activation in these regions. Higher general cognition related to lower increases in activation during the easier dual-task. With the harder dual-task, a trend was also found for higher activation and less motor impairment. Conclusions: This is the first study to show that executive function, motor preparation/planning, and sensorimotor integration areas are all important for dual-task walking post-stroke. A lack of further brain activation increase with increasing challenge suggests a point at which a trade-off between brain activation and performance occurs. Further research is needed to determine if training would result in further increases in brain activity or improved performance

Phase-dependent Brain Activation of the Frontal and Parietal Regions During Walking After Stroke - An fNIRS Study

Background: Recovery of walking post-stroke is highly variable. Accurately measuring and documenting functional brain activation characteristics during walking can help guide rehabilitation. Previous work in this area has been limited to investigations of frontal brain regions and have not utilized recent technological and analytical advances for more accurate measurements. There were three aims for this study: to characterize the hemodynamic profile during walking post-stroke, to investigate regional changes in brain activation during different phases of walking, and to related brain changes to clinical measures. Methods: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) along the pre-frontal, premotor, sensorimotor, and posterior parietal cortices was used on twenty individuals greater than six months post-stroke. Individual fNIRS optodes were digitized and used to estimate channel locations on each participant and short separation channels were used to control for extracerebral hemodynamic changes. Participants walked at their comfortable pace several times along a hallway while brain activation was recorded. Exploratory cluster analysis was conducted to determine if there was a link between brain activation and clinical measures. Results: Sustained activation was observed in the pre-frontal cortex with the ipsilesional hemisphere showing greater activation compared to the contralesional side. Sensorimotor cortex was active during the early, acceleration stage of walking only. Posterior parietal cortex showed changes in activation during the later, steady-state stage of walking. Faster gait speeds also related to increased activation in contralesional sensorimotor and posterior parietal cortices. Exploratory analysis clustered participants into two distinct groups based on their brain activation profiles and generally showed that individuals with greater activation tended to have better physical outcomes. Conclusions: These findings can guide future research for obtaining adequate power and determining factors that can be used as effect modifiers to reduce inter-subject variability. Overall, this is the first study to report specific oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin changes in frontal to parietal regions during walking in the stroke population. Our results shed light on the importance of measuring brain activation across the cortex and show the importance of pre-frontal, sensorimotor, and posterior parietal cortices in walking after a stroke

Tunable Open Circuit Voltage by Engineering Inorganic Cesium Lead Bromide/Iodide Perovskite Solar Cells

Perovskite solar cells based on series of inorganic cesium lead bromide and iodide mixture, CsPbBr3-xI x , where x varies between 0, 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 molar ratio were synthesized by two step-sequential deposition at ambient condition to design the variations of wide band gap light absorbers. A device with high overall photoconversion efficiency of 3.98 % was obtained when small amount of iodide (CsPbBr2.9I0.1) was used as the perovskite and spiro-OMeTAD as the hole transport material (HTM). We investigated the origin of variation in open circuit voltage, Voc which was shown to be mainly dependent on two factors, which are the band gap of the perovskite and the work function of the HTM. An increment in Voc was observed for the device with larger perovskite band gap, while keeping the electron and hole extraction contacts the same. Besides, the usage of bilayer P3HT/MoO3 with deeper HOMO level as HTM instead of spiro-OMeTAD, thus increased the Voc from 1.16 V to 1.3 V for CsPbBr3 solar cell, although the photocurrent is lowered due to charge extraction issues. The stability studies confirmed that the addition of small amount of iodide into the CsPbBr3 is necessarily to stabilize the cell performance over time

Exploring the Stimulus Organism Response (SOR) Framework that Shapes Impulse Buying in the Epoch of E-Wallets in the Philippines

 In the progressing digital financial landscape of the Philippines, the surge in e-wallet applications has vastly captured the interest of Filipino users. As e-wallets restructure how consumers manage their finances, a crucial question emerges: Can they influence impulsive buying tendencies? Using the (S-O-R) framework, the study reconnoitered the factors that incite impulse buying, expanding prior models by integrating both intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli. A total of 828 active e-wallet users were gathered using homogenous purposive sampling. After employing a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis, the results elucidated five significant stimuli (i.e., perceived risk, visual appeal, subjective norms, convenience, and monetary savings) in shaping user satisfaction and perceived enjoyment. Conversely, information quality demonstrated statistical significance only in association with satisfaction. Moreover, the study highlighted those three factors (i.e., perceived enjoyment, subjective norms, and monetary savings) that directly impact impulse buying. Ultimately, it accentuates the full mediating role of perceived enjoyment in linking visual appeal with impulsive buying whilst showcasing a partial mediation effect in the relationship between cost savings and impulsive buying. Edifice on these findings, e-wallet providers have a strategic outlook to further invest in the following: (a) user-centric design strategies, (b) process enhancement for seamless user experience, and (c) optimization of user education.&nbsp