The role of the subtropical jet in deficient winter precipitation across the mid-Holocene Indus basin

The mid-Holocene (7-5 ka) was a period with an increased seasonal insolation cycle, resulting from decreased insolation during northern hemisphere winter. Here, a set of six CMIP5 models is used to show that the decreased insolation reduced the upper-tropospheric meridional temperature gradient, producing a weaker subtropical jet with less horizontal shear. These effects work to reduce the baroclinic and barotropic instability available for perturbations to grow, and in consequence, storm-tracking results show that there are fewer winter storms over India and Pakistan (known as western disturbances). These western disturbances are weaker, resulting in a reduction in winter precipitation of around 15% in the north Indus Basin. Combined with previous work showing greater northwestward extent of the Indian monsoon during the mid-Holocene, our GCM-derived results are consistent with the Indus Basin changing from a summer-growing season in the mid-Holocene to a winter-growing season in the present day

Families' social backgrounds matter : socio-economic factors, home learning and young children's language, literacy and social outcomes

Parental support with children's learning is considered to be one pathway through which socio-economic factors influence child competencies. Utilising a national longitudinal sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, this study examined the relationship between home learning and parents' socio-economic status and their impact on young children's language/literacy and socio-emotional competence. The findings consistently showed that, irrespective of socio-economic status, parents engaged with various learning activities (except reading) roughly equally. The socio-economic factors examined in this study, i.e., family income and maternal educational qualifications, were found to have a stronger effect on children's language/literacy than on social-emotional competence. Socio-economic disadvantage, lack of maternal educational qualifications in particular, remained powerful in influencing competencies in children aged three and at the start of primary school. For children in the first decade of this century in England, these findings have equity implications, especially as the socio-economic gap in our society widens

Measuring and forecasting progress in education: what about early childhood?

A recent Nature article modelled within-country inequalities in primary, secondary, and tertiary education and forecast progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets related to education (SDG 4). However, their paper entirely overlooks inequalities in achieving Target 4.2, which aims to achieve universal access to quality early childhood development, care and preschool education by 2030. This is an important omission because of the substantial brain, cognitive and socioemotional developments that occur in early life and because of increasing evidence of early-life learning's large impacts on subsequent education and lifetime wellbeing. We provide an overview of this evidence and use new analyses to illustrate medium- and long-term implications of early learning, first by presenting associations between pre-primary programme participation and adolescent mathematics and science test scores in 73 countries and secondly, by estimating the costs of inaction (not making pre-primary programmes universal) in terms of forgone lifetime earnings in 134 countries. We find considerable losses, comparable to or greater than current governmental expenditures on all education (as percentages of GDP), particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. In addition to improving primary, secondary and tertiary schooling, we conclude that to attain SDG 4 and reduce inequalities in a post-COVID era, it is essential to prioritize quality early childhood care and education, including adopting policies that support families to promote early learning and their children's education

Wait Up!: Attachment and Sovereign Power.

Sociologists and feminist scholars have, over many decades, characterised attachment as a social construction that functions to support political and gender conservatism. We accept that attachment theory has seen use to these ends and consider recent deployments of attachment theory as justification for a minimal State within conservative political discourse in the UK since 2009. However, we contest that attachment is reducible to its discursive construction. We consider Judith Butler's depiction of the infant attached to an abusive caregiver as a foundation and parallel to the position of the adult citizen subjected to punitive cultural norms and political institutions. We develop and qualify Butler's account, drawing on the insights offered by the work of Lauren Berlant. We also return to Foucault's Psychiatric Power lectures, in which familial relations are situated as an island of sovereign power within the sea of modern disciplinary institutions. These reflections help advance analysis of three important issues: the social and political implications of attachment research; the relationship between disciplinary and sovereign power in the affective dynamic of subjection; and the political and ethical status of professional activity within the psy disciplines.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10767-014-9192-

Cognitive and environmental predictors of early literacy skills

Not all young children benefit from book exposure in preschool age. It is claimed that the ability to hold information in mind (short-term memory), to ignore distraction (inhibition), and to focus attention and stay focused (sustained attention) may have a moderating effect on children’s reactions to the home literacy environment. In a group of 228 junior kindergarten children with a native Dutch background, with a mean age of 54.29 months (SD = 2.12 months), we explored therefore the relationship between book exposure, cognitive control and early literacy skills. Parents filled in a HLE questionnaire (book sharing frequency and an author recognition checklist as indicator of parental leisure reading habits), and children completed several tests in individual sessions with the researcher (a book-cover recognition test, PPVT, letter knowledge test, the subtests categories and patterns of the SON, and cognitive control measures namely digit span of the KABC, a peg tapping task and sustained attention of the ANT). Main findings were: (1) Children’s storybook knowledge mediated the relationship between home literacy environment and literacy skills. (2) Both vocabulary and letter knowledge were predicted by book exposure. (3) Short-term memory predicted vocabulary over and above book exposure. (4) None of the cognitive control mechanisms moderated the beneficial effects of book exposure

Environmental and genetic influences on early attachment

Attachment theory predicts and subsequent empirical research has amply demonstrated that individual variations in patterns of early attachment behaviour are primarily influenced by differences in sensitive responsiveness of caregivers. However, meta-analyses have shown that parenting behaviour accounts for about one third of the variance in attachment security or disorganisation. The exclusively environmental explanation has been challenged by results demonstrating some, albeit inconclusive, evidence of the effect of infant temperament. In this paper, after reviewing briefly the well-demonstrated familial and wider environmental influences, the evidence is reviewed for genetic and gene-environment interaction effects on developing early attachment relationships. Studies investigating the interaction of genes of monoamine neurotransmission with parenting environment in the course of early relationship development suggest that children's differential susceptibility to the rearing environment depends partly on genetic differences. In addition to the overview of environmental and genetic contributions to infant attachment, and especially to disorganised attachment relevant to mental health issues, the few existing studies of gene-attachment interaction effects on development of childhood behavioural problems are also reviewed. A short account of the most important methodological problems to be overcome in molecular genetic studies of psychological and psychiatric phenotypes is also given. Finally, animal research focusing on brain-structural aspects related to early care and the new, conceptually important direction of studying environmental programming of early development through epigenetic modification of gene functioning is examined in brief

Stability in center day care: Relations with children's well-being and problem behavior in day care

Mothers and primary professional caregivers of 186 children, aged 6-30 months, participated in this study in which a new measure for daily stability in center day care was developed, describing staffing, grouping, and program features. Relative contributions of infants' daily experiences of care stability, quality of care, and mother's daily stress to the child's adjustment to day care were analyzed with hierarchical regressions. The child's adjustment was assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1997) and with the Leiden Inventory for the Child's Well-being in Day Care. Children enrolled in fewer care arrangements showed less internalizing behavior and more well-being in the day care setting. Children had higher well-being scores when trusted caregivers were more available. Mother's family management stress was related to more internalizing problem behavior. Interactions between mother's daily stress and stability in care were found to affect the child's adjustment to day care