Community Violence, Ethnicity, Psychological Distress, And Externalizing Behaviors In Emerging Adulthood: The Moderating Effects Of Social Support

Using hierarchical multiple regression, overall social support was found to moderate the relationship between exposure to community violence and psychological distress for European American and African-American at-risk emerging adults. For both ethnic groups, neither ISEL total nor SNI helping social support moderated the relation between community violence and the outcomes of substance abuse and conduct disorder/deviant behaviors. Ethnicity moderated the relationship between exposure to community violence and substance abuse behaviors within an SNI helping support regression, such that European Americans who reported greater violence exposure reported more substance abuse symptoms. SNI helping support moderated the relationship between exposure to community violence and conduct disorder behaviors, such that individuals who reported greater SNI support and increased violence exposure reported greater conduct disorder behaviors. These findings support the theory that among at-risk emerging adults, social support buffers between community violence and psychological distress, but is not protective against the adverse effects of violence on the development of externalizing behaviors, and, further, may be harmful

The economic impact of climate change in Namibia. How climate change will affect the contribution of Namibia’s natural resources to its economy

The IPCC recognises Africa as a whole to be “one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple stresses and low adaptive capacity. Climate change is likely to exacerbate the dry conditions already experienced in southern Africa. And when rainfall does come, it is likely to be more intense, leading to erosion and flood damage. This will affect the poor most, with resulting constraints on employment opportunities and declining wages. But at present these predictions gain little policy traction in southern African countries. The multilateral climate change process is complicated and slow, and policymakers often see serious action on climate change as a domestic ‘vote loser’. One way to raise climate change concerns further up the policymakers’ agenda is to try to put an economic value on the environmental impacts of climate change. Figures that provide a clear message about the expected impact of climate change will be powerful motivators for policymakers in developing countries to start considering climate change as a part of their national development policies. This study is a first attempt to provide some economic indicators of how climate change will affect Namibia – one of the most vulnerable countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on natural resources, the study aims to assess the likely economic values of some of the most important environmental and socio-economic impacts of climate change in Namibia, and also to capture how some of the most important impacts might affect the overall structure of the economy.Climate change, Economics, Namibia, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Measuring short-term coastline changes from an active volcano (Ambae, Vanuatu) : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Earth Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Ambae is a small island in Vanuatu which in recent times has seen high levels of volcanic activity. Between August 2017 and December 2018, several volcanic eruptions occurred, some larger than others, but all with varying effects. A major eruption occurred in July 2018, causing sediment build-up at different locations along the western coastline of the island. The sediment build-up appeared to increase over months, and receded over continuing months. Analyses were completed to assess and evaluate satellite platforms and their ability to aid in gaining an understanding of coastal change over the time period between August 2017 and December 2018. Imagery from each platform was combined with the use of various water indices which aided in measuring the magnitude of coastal change over the time period. Sentinel-2, Landsat 8 and Planet satellite platforms were analysed for their effectiveness when used in conjunction with water indices, including the Normalised Difference Water Index (NDWI), Modified Normalised Difference Water Index (MNDWI), and Automated Water Index (AWEI). The Sentinel-2 platform with the NDWI water index was found to be the most effective for analysing the coastal change. The combination of this satellite platform with this index enabled a quantitative measurement of land change over a specific period of time (August 2017 to December 2018)

Reproductive performance of resident and migrant males, females and pairs in a partially migratory bird

We thank everyone from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) who contributed to data collection, and Scottish Natural Heritage for access to the Isle of May National Nature Reserve. We thank the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club (SOC) for their support, and all volunteer observers, particularly Raymond Duncan, Moray Souter and Bob Swann. HG was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) CASE studentship supported by CEH and SOC, FD, SW, MPH, MN and SB were funded by NERC and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, and JMR was part-funded by the Royal Society. Finally, we thank the Associate Editor and two reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript. The data are available from the Dryad Digital Repository https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.532j0 (Grist et al., 2017)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Finiteness of Associated Primes of Local Cohomology Modules.

In this thesis we investigate when the set of primes of a local cohomology module is finite. We show that there are only finitely many primes associated to the local cohomology of any finitely generated module over a three-dimensional ring whose prime cyclic modules have S2 -fications with respect to an ideal whose height is at least two on that module. We show that a polynomial ring, R, over either an unramified regular local ring of mixed characteristic, or a two or three dimensional ring with a resolution of singularities Y0, formed by blowing up an ideal of depth at least two where the sheaf cohomology of OY0 has finite length over the base ring, has AssRHiI(R) finite for any ideal I⊂R. We also define a new class of extensions R→S, called calm, where the associated primes of S⊗RM over S are controlled by the associated primes of M over R for any R-module M. We show that calm extensions have many good properties including that compositions of calm maps are calm, calmness can be checked locally on open covers of Spec(R), and calmness persists after localization. We give various classes of rings whose extensions are all calm as well as some examples of extensions which are not calm.Ph.D.MathematicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60862/1/robbinsh_1.pd

Analysis of U.S. Federal Funding Agency Data Sharing Policies

Federal funding agencies in the United States (U.S.) continue to work towards implementing their plans to increase public access to funded research and comply with the 2013 Office of Science and Technology memo Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research. In this article we report on an analysis of research data sharing policy documents from 17 U.S. federal funding agencies as of February 2021. Our analysis is guided by two questions: 1.) What do the findings suggest about the current state of and trends in U.S. federal funding agency data sharing requirements? 2.) In what ways are universities, institutions, associations, and researchers affected by and responding to these policies? Over the past five years, policy updates were common among these agencies and several themes have been thoroughly developed in that time; however, uncertainty remains around how funded researchers are expected to satisfy these policy requirements

Solar wind density turbulence and solar flare electron transport from the Sun to the Earth

Solar flare accelerated electron beams propagating away from the Sun can interact with the turbulent interplanetary media, producing plasma waves and type III radio emission. These electron beams are detected near the Earth with a double power-law energy spectrum. We simulate electron beam propagation from the Sun to the Earth in the weak turbulent regime taking into account the self-consistent generation of plasma waves and subsequent wave interaction with density fluctuations from low frequency MHD turbulence. The rate at which plasma waves are induced by an unstable electron beam is reduced by background density fluctuations, most acutely when fluctuations have large amplitudes or small wavelengths. This suppression of plasma waves alters the wave distribution which changes the electron beam transport. Assuming a 5/3 Kolmogorov-type power density spectrum of fluctuations often observed near the Earth, we investigate the corresponding energy spectrum of the electron beam after it has propagated 1 AU. We find a direct correlation between the spectrum of the double power-law below the break energy and the turbulent intensity of the background plasma. For an initial spectral index of 3.5, we find a range of spectra below the break energy between 1.6-2.1, with higher levels of turbulence corresponding to higher spectral indices.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Ap