Exploring the experiences and outcomes of advantaged and disadvantaged families

This report provides further evidence of the interrelationship between age, young motherhood, family type and a range of measures of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage. Maternal age and family type were found to be closely interrelated and both strongly associated with socio-economic disadvantage, with concentrated disadvantage evident in mothers under 25 and lone parents who do not live with other adults. These measures were also closely associated with health-related behaviours including likelihood of breastfeeding, attending ante-natal classes and smoking amongst mothers. Even amongst more disadvantaged groups, positive health-related behaviours were connected to relative social and economic advantage with level of maternal education featuring prominently

Caught in the Middle? Occupancy in Multiple Roles and Help to Parents in a National Probability Sample of Canadian Adults

This paper considers for a Canadian national probability sample of middle-aged women and men the question of how typical is the experience of being "caught in the middle" between being the adult child of elderly parents and other roles. Three roles are examined: adult child, employed worker, and parent (and a refinement of the parent role, being a parent of a co-resident child). Occupancy in multiple roles is examined, followed by an investigation of the extent to which adults in various role combinations actually assist older parents and whether those who provide frequent help are also those "sandwiched" by competing ommitments. The majority of middle-aged children do not provide frequent help to parents. Notably, the highest proportion of daughters who assist elderly parents are those in their fifties whose children are no longer co-resident. For both sons and daughters, being "caught in the middle" is far from a typical experience in this cross-sectional analysis.multiple roles

Molecular Gas and Star Formation in the Cartwheel

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 12CO(J=1-0) observations are used to study the cold molecular ISM of the Cartwheel ring galaxy and its relation to HI and massive star formation (SF). CO moment maps find $(2.69\pm0.05)\times10^{9}$ M$_{\odot}$ of H$_2$ associated with the inner ring (72%) and nucleus (28%) for a Galactic I(CO)-to-N(H2) conversion factor ($\alpha_{\rm CO}$). The spokes and disk are not detected. Analysis of the inner ring's CO kinematics show it to be expanding ($V_{\rm exp}=68.9\pm4.9$ km s$^{-1}$) implying an $\approx70$ Myr age. Stack averaging reveals CO emission in the starburst outer ring for the first time, but only where HI surface density ($\Sigma_{\rm HI}$) is high, representing $M_{\rm H_2}=(7.5\pm0.8)\times10^{8}$ M$_{\odot}$ for a metallicity appropriate $\alpha_{\rm CO}$, giving small $\Sigma_{\rm H_2}$ ($3.7$ M$_{\odot}$ pc$^{-2}$), molecular fraction ($f_{\rm mol}=0.10$), and H$_2$ depletion timescales ($\tau_{\rm mol} \approx50-600$ Myr). Elsewhere in the outer ring $\Sigma_{\rm H_2}\lesssim 2$ M$_{\odot}$ pc$^{-2}$, $f_{\rm mol}\lesssim 0.1$ and $\tau_{\rm mol}\lesssim 140-540$ Myr (all $3\sigma$). The inner ring and nucleus are H$_2$-dominated and are consistent with local spiral SF laws. $\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ in the outer ring appears independent of $\Sigma_{\rm H_2}$, $\Sigma_{\rm HI}$ or $\Sigma_{\rm HI+H_2}$. The ISM's long confinement in the robustly star forming rings of the Cartwheel and AM0644-741 may result in either a large diffuse H$_2$ component or an abundance of CO-faint low column density molecular clouds. The H$_2$ content of evolved starburst rings may therefore be substantially larger. Due to its lower $\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ and age the Cartwheel's inner ring has yet to reach this state. Alternately, the outer ring may trigger efficient SF in an HI-dominated ISM.Comment: 10-pages text; 5-figure

Age-Gapped and Age-Condensed Lineages: Patterns of Intergenerational Age Structure among Canadian Families

This paper examines intergenerational connections within Canadian families. Its focus is on intergenerational age structure, the interval or 'gap' in years that separates one generation from the next. Intergenerational age structure is measured in terms of the age of a mother at the birth of her first child. Using data from the 1995 General Social Survey of Canada, the study examines the socio-demographic characteristics of women (n=404) in three- and four-generation families (lineages) that are age-condensed (small age distances between generations that are the result of early fertility) and those that are age- gapped (with large age distances between generations that are the result of late fertility patterns). Across two generations of women, there is a striking similarity in the distributions of age at first birth with just under one-third of the sample having early fertility, just over one-half falling into a normative or "on-time" category, and one-seventh having delayed fertility. However, when matched pairs of mothers and daughters are compared across generations, age-condensed and age-gapped lineage patterns show considerable variability. Although just under one-half of mother-daughter dyads show lineage consistency in family age structure across three generations (most typically in age-condensed/age-condensed or normative/normative age structures), low percentages of women whose family of origin was age-gapped repeat that age structure pattern in their own families of procreation. Socio-demographic factors such as mother's and daughter's age, family size, age at first marriage, and level of education are associated with lineage continuity and discontinuity in family age structure.intergenerational age structure; GSS

A CHAT-based Case Study of Informal Adult Learning and Technology: BarCamp, the Unconference

This paper presents and discusses findings from a pilot case study about Bar Camps. BarCamps are an open technology movement collective learning event. They are gaining momentum as sites of resistance to the idea of ‘owning’ technology knowledge and known for cutting across boundaries to invite learners to learn through shared activities. The findings are organized and discussed based upon constructs of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, CHAT

Instructional Alignment of Workplace Readiness Skills in Marketing Education

This study examined high school marketing education teachers’ knowledge of workplace readiness skills and whether that knowledge had an impact on student workplace readiness skill achievement. Further, this study examined the usage of Virginia’s 13 Workplace Readiness Skills curriculum and identified the teaching methods and instructional strategies used to disseminate the skills to students. Three sets of data were used for this study: teacher workplace readiness skills data, teacher survey data, and student workplace readiness skills post-test data. Pearson’s correlation was used to determine whether teacher knowledge of workplace readiness skills had an impact on student attainment of the same. The results showed that while overall teacher scores did not show a statistical significance on overall student scores, there were four individual skill areas in which there was a relationship between teacher and student scores

Introduction to Tapestries Volume 7: Breaking the Shackles of Silence: Knowledge Production as Activism and Resistance

Introduction to volume 7 of Macalester College\u27s journal Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

The ribosomal protein RACK1 is required for microRNA function in both C. elegans and humans

Despite the importance of microRNAs (miRNAs) in gene regulation, it is unclear how the miRNA-Argonaute complex-or miRNA-induced silencing complex (miRISC)-can regulate the translation of their targets in such diverse ways. We demonstrate here a direct interaction between the miRISC and the ribosome by showing that a constituent of the eukaryotic 40S subunit, receptor for activated C-kinase (RACK1), is important for miRNA-mediated gene regulation in animals. In vivo studies demonstrate that RACK1 interacts with components of the miRISC in nematodes and mammals. In both systems, the alteration of RACK1 expression alters miRNA function and impairs the association of the miRNA complex with the translating ribosomes. Our data indicate that RACK1 can contribute to the recruitment of miRISC to the site of translation, and support a post-initiation mode of miRNA-mediated gene repression. © 2011 European Molecular Biology Organization