Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries

This paper investigates the sensitivity of the intergenerational transmission of health to exogenous changes in income, education and public health, changes that are often delivered by economic growth. It uses individual survey data on 2.24 million children born to 600000 mothers during 1970-2000 in 38 developing countries. These data are merged with macroeconomic data by country and birth cohort to create an unprecedentedly large sample of comparable data that exhibit massive variation in maternal and child health as well as in aggregate economic conditions. The country-level panel is exploited to control for aggregate shocks and trends in unobservables within countries, while a panel of children within mother is exploited to control for family-specific endowments and neighbourhood characteristics. Child health is indicated by infant survival and maternal health by (relative) height. We find that improvements in maternal education, income and public health provision that occur in the year of birth and the year before birth limit the degree to which child health is tied to family circumstance. The interaction (gradient) effects are, in general, most marked for shorter women suggesting that children are more likely to bear the penalty exerted by poor maternal health if they are conceived or born in adverse socio-economic conditions.intergenerational transmission, early life conditions, health, infant mortality, height, growth, income, education, public health, gene, environment, in utero

Intergenerational Persistence in Health in Developing Countries: The Penalty of Gender Inequality?

This paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes. This paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health. It uses comparable micro-data on as many as 2.24 million children born of about 0.6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period, 1970-2000. Mother’s health is indicated by her height, BMI and anemia status. Child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure. We find a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non-linearities in these relationships. The results suggest that both contemporary and childhood health of the mother matter and that the benefits to the next generation are likely to be persistent. Averaging across the sample, persistence shows a considerable decline over time. Disaggregation shows that the decline is only significant in Latin America. Persistence has remained largely constant in Asia and has risen in Africa. The paper provides the first cross-country estimates of the intergenerational persistence in health and the first estimates of trends.intergenerational persistence, mobility, health, developing countries, cohort trends, inequality

Riders on the Storm: Wales, the Union, and Territorial Constitutional Crisis

The United Kingdom continues to undergo a rapid process of constitutional change, with an ongoing redistribution of law-making and governmental powers to different parts of the Union under an expanded rubric of ‘devolution'. This article illuminates a pervasive sense of territorial constitutional crisis and opportunity in the most recent period, familiarly associated with, but not confined to, Scotland. Constructive and flexible federal-type responses inside a famously uncodified constitution are championed. Wales, commonly treated as a junior partner in the United Kingdom, presents special challenges for constitutional and legal analysis and distinctive perspectives on the Union which have not received the attention they deserve. In tackling this deficiency, the article elaborates a ‘new Union’ concept of a looser and less hierarchical set of constitutional arrangements in which several systems of parliamentary government are grounded in popular sovereignty and cooperate for mutual benefit

Glass Transition Phenomena Semiannual Status Report

Multiple glass transitions, heat capacities, and equation of state properties of polymer system

The 3-D clustering of radio galaxies in the TONS survey

We present a clustering analysis of the Texas-Oxford NVSS Structure (TONS) radio galaxy redshift survey. This complete flux-limited survey consists of 268 radio galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in three separate regions of the sky covering a total of 165 deg^2. By going to faint radio flux densities (s_1.4>3 mJy) but imposing relatively bright optical limits (E R 19.5), the TONS sample is optimised for looking at the clustering properties of low luminosity radio galaxies in a region of moderate (0 < z < 0.5) redshifts. We use the two point correlation function to determine the clustering strength of the combined TONS08 and TONS12 sub-samples and find a clustering strength of r_0(z)=8.7+/-1.6 Mpc (h=0.7). If we assume growth of structure by linear theory and that the median redshift is 0.3, this corresponds to r_0(0)=11.0+/-2.0 Mpc which is consistent with the clustering strength of the underlying host galaxies (~ 2.5 Lstar ellipticals) of the TONS radio galaxy population.Comment: 18 pages, MNRAS accepted. Full paper including all spectra can be found at http://www.noao.edu/noao/staff/brand/brand_corr_fn.ps.g

The preferentially magnified active nucleus in IRAS F10214+4724 - II. Spatially resolved cold molecular gas

We present JVLA observations of the cold (CO (1-0)) molecular gas in IRAS F10214+4724, a lensed ULIRG at z=2.3 with an obscured active nucleus. The galaxy is spatially and spectrally well-resolved in the CO (1-0) emission line. A CO (1-0) counter-image is detected at the 3-sigma level. Five of the 42 km/s channels (with >5-sigma detections) are mapped back into the source plane and their total magnification posterior PDFs sampled. This reveals a roughly linear arrangement, tentatively a rotating disk. We derive a molecular gas mass of M_gas = 1.2 +- 0.2 x 10^10 M_sun, assuming a ULIRG L_{CO}-to-M_{gas} conversion ratio of \alpha = 0.8 M_sun / (K km/s pc^2) that agrees well with the derived range of \alpha = 0.3 - 1.3 for separate dynamical mass estimates at assumed inclinations of i = 90 - 30 degrees. Based on the AGN and CO (1-0) peak emission positions and the lens model, we predict a distortion of the CO Spectral Line Energy Distribution (SLED) where higher order J lines that may be partially excited by AGN heating will be preferentially lensed owing to their smaller solid angles and closer proximity to the AGN and therefore the cusp of the caustic. Comparison with other lensing inversion results shows that the narrow line region and AGN radio core in IRAS F10214+4724 are preferentially lensed by a factor >~ 3 and 11 respectively, relative to the molecular gas emission. This distorts the global continuum emission Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) and suggests caution in unsophisticated uses of IRAS F10214+4724 as an archetype high-redshift ULIRG. We explore two Large Velocity Gradient (LVG) models, incorporating spatial CO (1-0) and (3-2) information and present tentative evidence for an extended, low excitation cold gas component that implies that the total molecular gas mass in IRAS F10214+4724 is a factor >~2 greater than that calculated using spatially unresolved CO observations.Comment: Dedicated to Steve Rawlings. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 16 pages, 11 figure

SKA HI end2end simulation

The current status of the HI simulation efforts is presented, in which a self consistent simulation path is described and basic equations to calculate array sensitivities are given. There is a summary of the SKA Design Study (SKADS) sky simulation and a method for implementing it into the array simulator is presented. A short overview of HI sensitivity requirements is discussed and expected results for a simulated HI survey are presented.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figues, need skads2009.cls file to late

The Effect of Middle School Music Ensemble Participation on the Relationship between Perceived School Connectedness, Self-Reported Bullying Behaviors, and Peer Victimization.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school connectedness and youth aggression with middle school students enrolled and not enrolled in a school-based music ensemble. Research questions were designed to generate data regarding the frequencies of bullying behaviors and perceptions of school connectedness. Data were secured from a large-scale, two-year randomized trial funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (# CE3240). Participants (N = 470) selected for this study attended two middle schools located in central Illinois and voluntarily responded to the questionnaire by self-reporting demographic information, including their enrollment in a music course, and their behaviors relating to bullying, victimization, and Internet Harassment. Results indicated that, on average, relatively few instances of bullying perpetration and peer victimization were reported to have occurred in the 30 days prior to data collection. A statistically significant difference was found between music ensemble and non-ensemble participants according to their mean Bullying Scale scores, which revealed that non-ensemble students in this sample perpetrate aggressive behaviors, on average, more frequently than do music ensemble students. Although all participants reported relatively few instances of bullying perpetration, instances of peer victimization were reported more frequently than were experiences perpetrating these behaviors. While participant self-reports of bullying behaviors were relatively low, their perceptions of school connectedness were relatively high. Multiple-group Structural Equation Modeling analyses demonstrated that the level of associations between school connectedness and Internet Harassment perpetration were significantly associated with adolescents enrolled in a music ensemble course during middle school. The results also displayed a stronger negative association between perceptions of school connectedness and Internet harassment perpetration for music ensemble students than for adolescents not enrolled in a school-based music ensemble. Mediation analyses demonstrated that adolescent perceptions of school connectedness did not mediate the relationship between a participant’s ensemble enrollment status and their self-reported frequencies of bullying, peer victimization, cyberbullying, and cyber victimization. Included are implications for the better support of preservice and in-service music teachers with regard to bullying in schools, alongside recommendations for music teacher education and suggestions for future research.PhDMusic: Music EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113304/1/jrrawlin_1.pd

Walking Thoughts

I\u27ve borrowed my title from a poem by Marvin Bell, a member of our Writers\u27 Workshop, because I cannot think of state parks without thinking of my love for their hiking trails and the expansion of spirit they have brought me. State parks are more than nature preserves, more than recreational areas, though these functions are very important. They are also cultural and even spiritual resources, centers of emotional and psychic renewal