Navigating the Child Support System: Lessons from the Fathers at Work Initiative

Research shows that nearly half of all children born in the US today will be eligible for child support before they reach the age of 18. Many low-income, noncustodial fathers -- who often struggle to make these payments -- will seek services from workforce development organizations. Yet, understanding the child support enforcement system can be challenging -- not only for noncustodial fathers but also for the workforce organizations that want to assist them.Navigating the Child Support System aims to help meet this challenge by providing information, resources and tools to use at the intersection of workforce development and child support enforcement. The guide is based on lessons from the Fathers at Work initiative, a three-year, six-site demonstration funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which was designed to help young, noncustodial fathers achieve increased employment and earnings, involvement in their children's lives, and more consistent financial support of their children.The guide describes child support enforcement regulations, policies and actions that can affect fathers' willingness to seek formal employment and participate in the system, and provides examples of four services that organizations might offer to benefit fathers and their families. Navigating the Child Support System offers concrete suggestions for incorporating child support services into workforce organizations' assistance to low-income, male participants, including developing partnerships with local child support enforcement agencies. It includes seven tools for learning about child support and setting goals for enhancing services to noncustodial fathers

Improved technology for women in Africa

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1992.Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-90).by Mary Pat McVay.M.C.P

Climate, wildfire, and erosion ensemble foretells more sediment in western USA watersheds

The area burned annually by wildfires is expected to increase worldwide due to climate change. Burned areas increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, which can increase sedimentation in downstream rivers and reservoirs. However, which watersheds will be impacted by future wildfires is largely unknown. Using an ensemble of climate, fire, and erosion models, we show that postfire sedimentation is projected to increase for nearly nine tenths of watersheds by \u3e10% and for more than one third of watersheds by \u3e100% by the 2041 to 2050 decade in the western USA. The projected increases are statistically significant for more than eight tenths of the watersheds. In the western USA, many human communities rely on water from rivers and reservoirs that originates in watersheds where sedimentation is projected to increase. Increased sedimentation could negatively impact water supply and quality for some communities, in addition to affecting stream channel stability and aquatic ecosystems

Cold War Sport, Film and Propaganda : A Comparative Analysis of the Superpowers

This document is the author's original submitted manuscript (pre-print) version. An updated version has been published by MIT Press in Journal of Cold War Studies, available online at doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/JCWS_a_00721.Films and sports played central roles in Cold War popular culture. Each helped set ideological agendas domestically and internationally while serving as powerful substitutes for direct superpower conflict. This article brings film and sport together by offering the first comparative analysis of how U.S. and Soviet cinema used sport as an instrument of propaganda during the Cold War. The article explores the different propaganda styles that U.S. and Soviet sports films adopted and pinpoints the political functions they performed. It considers what Cold War sports cinema can tell us about political culture in the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945 and about the complex battle for hearts and minds that was so important to the East-West conflict.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

A randomized clinical trial comparing the efficacy of two active conditions of a brief intervention for heavy college drinkers

Brief interventions for college heavy drinkers have shown promise in reducing drinking and alcohol-related negative consequences. However, intervention duration, content, method of delivery, and follow-up length vary across studies. It therefore remains unclear whether intervention length significantly influences the interventions\u27 efficacy. The present study is a randomized clinical trial systematically evaluating the efficacy of two brief interventions aimed at reducing alcohol use and alcohol-related negative consequences among college student drinkers. Treatment mediators were also evaluated. Participants (N=278) were, on average, 20.1 years old (SD=2.4), mostly Caucasian (87%) and female (71%). They were randomly assigned to a 10-minute brief intervention, a 50-minute brief intervention, or an attention-control group. Both active interventions were provided by clinical graduate students trained in Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS). As hypothesized, participants in both active conditions significantly reduced their alcohol consumption, as compared to the control group participants F(2,264)=9.84, p=.00, η(2)=.07. There were no significant differences in alcohol-related negative consequences F(2,264)=3.08, p=.06, η(2)=.02. The hypothesized mediators, alcohol drinking norms and coping behavioral strategies, explained significant variance in intervention efficacy, but neither self-efficacy nor alcohol expectancies were significant mediators. Given the preliminary nature of our investigation, more research is warranted to determine parameters of the critical mechanisms of change within brief alcohol interventions with college student drinkers

Documented Orphaned Oil and Gas Wells Across the United States

Orphaned oil and gas wells are unplugged nonproducing wells with no solvent owner of record to plug and mitigate them, such that the responsibility often falls on government agencies and the general public. Unplugged wells pose risks to the environment, climate, and human health. To develop a national framework to quantify the environmental benefits of plugging and optimize mitigation, we analyze oil and gas well data from state agencies across the United States to estimate the number of documented orphaned wells over time and evaluate their attributes. We find at least 81,857 documented orphaned wells as of September 2021 and 123,318 as of April 2022, representing 2% and 3%, respectively, of all estimated abandoned wells in the United States. We identify at least 20,286 potentially documented orphaned wells as of September 2021 (0.5% of all estimated abandoned wells in the country), of which 8% became documented orphaned wells as of April 2022. We estimate annual methane emissions to average 0.016 ± 0.001 MMt of CH4 for the 123,318 documented orphaned wells as of April 2022, corresponding to 5–6% of the total methane emissions estimated by the U.S. EPA for all abandoned wells. Although well type (i.e., oil vs gas) is generally available (83% of the 81,857 documented orphaned wells as of September 2021), only 49% and 16% of the wells have information on depth and last production date, respectively. Overall, documented orphaned wells and their attributes, including location, well type, depth, and last production date, require additional characterization and studies to constrain the uncertainties. Nevertheless, our identification and analysis of documented orphaned wells represent the first steps toward characterizing the full set of wells eligible to be plugged and remediated with the federal funding available in the U.S. via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Our results can also be useful for the management of the hundreds of thousands, potentially a million, undocumented orphaned wells likely to exist across the nation

Considerations for Achieving Cross-Platform Point Cloud Data Fusion across Different Dryland Ecosystem Structural States

Remotely sensing recent growth, herbivory, or disturbance of herbaceous and woody vegetation in dryland ecosystems requires high spatial resolution and multi-temporal depth. Three dimensional (3D) remote sensing technologies like lidar, and techniques like structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, each have strengths and weaknesses at detecting vegetation volume and extent, given the instrument's ground sample distance and ease of acquisition. Yet, a combination of platforms and techniques might provide solutions that overcome the weakness of a single platform. To explore the potential for combining platforms, we compared detection bias amongst two 3D remote sensing techniques (lidar and SfM) using three different platforms [ground-based, small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), and manned aircraft]. We found aerial lidar to be more accurate for characterizing the bare earth (ground) in dense herbaceous vegetation than either terrestrial lidar or aerial SfM photogrammetry. Conversely, the manned aerial lidar did not detect grass and fine woody vegetation while the terrestrial lidar and high resolution near-distance (ground and sUAS) SfM photogrammetry detected these and were accurate. UAS SfM photogrammetry at lower spatial resolution under-estimated maximum heights in grass and shrubs. UAS and handheld SfM photogrammetry in near-distance high resolution collections had similar accuracy to terrestrial lidar for vegetation, but difficulty at measuring bare earth elevation beneath dense herbaceous cover. Combining point cloud data and derivatives (i.e., meshes and rasters) from two or more platforms allowed for more accurate measurement of herbaceous and woody vegetation (height and canopy cover) than any single technique alone. Availability and costs of manned aircraft lidar collection preclude high frequency repeatability but this is less limiting for terrestrial lidar, sUAS and handheld SfM. The post-processing of SfM photogrammetry data became the limiting factor at larger spatial scale and temporal repetition. Despite the utility of sUAS and handheld SfM for monitoring vegetation phenology and structure, their spatial extents are small relative to manned aircraft.U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service [58-2022-5-13]; National Science Foundation [DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, ACI-144506]Open access journal.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]