Getting Time Off: Access to Leave Among Working Parents

"Mommy, I don't feel good." "Honey, it's time to go to the hospital." When working parents, or parents-to-be, hear these phrases, their anxiety levels often increase. Not only because their children are sick or their partners are in labor, but also because they will have to find a way to keep their jobs while tending to their families' needs. Maternity and paternity leave, along with vacation, sick leave, and personal leave, help workers balance their responsibilities at home and at the office. This brief uses new data from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) to portray which working parents have access to paid and maternity/paternity leave.Although federal law guarantees job-protected, unpaid family leave to many workers, only three in five American workers are eligible to take this leave (Cantor et al. 2001). Moreover, no state or federal legislation requires employers to provide paid leave of any kind. Because access to leave is not universal, some caregivers do not fully realize the benefits of job-protected leave, namely job security and some flexibility to care for children.This analysis examines whether access to leave differs by socioeconomic characteristics. The data suggest that the majority of working parents can take maternity or paternity leave from their jobs. Although access to maternity/paternity leave varies with measures of economic well-being, it is much more equal than access to paid leave. Most poor workers, working welfare recipients, and working recent welfare leavers cannot take paid leave from their jobs. And those who can take paid leave typically have fewer days of paid leave than nonpoor workers or workers with no recent welfare experience. The relatively even distribution of access to maternity and paternity leave, compared with the uneven access to paid leave, could be an effect of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA)

Mutual-Excitation of Cryptocurrency Market Returns and Social Media Topics

Cryptocurrencies have recently experienced a new wave of price volatility and interest; activity within social media communities relating to cryptocurrencies has increased significantly. There is currently limited documented knowledge of factors which could indicate future price movements. This paper aims to decipher relationships between cryptocurrency price changes and topic discussion on social media to provide, among other things, an understanding of which topics are indicative of future price movements. To achieve this a well-known dynamic topic modelling approach is applied to social media communication to retrieve information about the temporal occurrence of various topics. A Hawkes model is then applied to find interactions between topics and cryptocurrency prices. The results show particular topics tend to precede certain types of price movements, for example the discussion of 'risk and investment vs trading' being indicative of price falls, the discussion of 'substantial price movements' being indicative of volatility, and the discussion of 'fundamental cryptocurrency value' by technical communities being indicative of price rises. The knowledge of topic relationships gained here could be built into a real-time system, providing trading or alerting signals.Comment: 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Applications (ICKEA 2018) - Moscow, Russia (June 25-27 2018

Orthotic management of cerebral palsy : recommendations from a consensus conference

An international multidisciplinary group of healthcare professionals and researchers participated in a consensus conference on the management of cerebral palsy, convened by the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics. Participants reviewed the evidence and considered contemporary thinking on a range of treatment options including physical and occupational therapy, and medical, surgical and orthotic interventions. The quality of many of the reviewed papers was compromised by inadequate reporting and lack of transparency, in particular regarding the types of patients and the design of the interventions being evaluated. Substantial evidence suggests that ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs) that control the foot and ankle in stance and swing phases can improve gait efficiency in ambulant children (GMFCS levels I-III). By contrast, little high quality evidence exists to support the use of orthoses for the hip, spine or upper limb. Where the evidence for orthosis use was not compelling consensus was reached on recommendations for orthotic intervention. Subsequent group discussions identified recommendations for future research. The evidence to support using orthoses is generally limited by the brevity of follow-up periods in research studies; hence the extent to which orthoses may prevent deformities developing over time remains unclear. The full report of the conference can be accessed free of charge at www.ispoint.org

Thermal decomposition of inorganic solids

A brief outline has been given of the present knowledge of the kinetics of the thermal decomposition of inorganic solids. The iso¬ thermal decomposition of potassium metaperiodate crystals, which were 300 u and 40 u in linear dimensions, has ueen studied, together with the effects on the subsequent decomposition, of storage and preirradiation with ultraviolet light

Extremely short duration sprint interval training improves vascular health in older adults

Exercise improves health and physical function in older people, but very few older people participate although the trend is for increasing participation. This study sought to determine whether short duration sprint interval training (SIT) improves health and physical function in older people. Seventeen (9 M and 8 F) older adults (age 66 ± 3 years) were recruited. Participants had blood pressure, physical function and blood lipid profile measured and were then allocated to a control group (CON n = 7) or a SIT group (n = 10). The control group maintained daily activities; the SIT group performed 10 weeks of twice-weekly training sessions of 6-s sprints. By week 10, training sessions lasted 11.6 ± 0.6-min. Ten weeks of SIT resulted in significant changes in pulse pressure (CONpre 59 ± 18 mmHg; CONpost 60 ± 9 mmHg; SITpre 56 ± 14 mmHg; SITpost 49 ± 7 mmHg; p = 0.007), mean blood pressure (CONpre 100 ± 10 mmHg; CONpost 97 ± 11 mmHg; SITpre 102 ± 7 mmHg; SITpost 93 ± 8 mmHg; p = 0.003), timed get up and go (CONpre 6.9 ± 1.1 s; CONpost 6.9 ± 1.0 s; SITpre 7.4 ± 1.2 s; SITpost 6.6 ± 1.0 s; p = 0.005), loaded 50 m walk (CONpre 6.9 ± 1.1 s; CONpost 6.9 ± 1.0 s; SITpre 7.4 ± 1.2 s; SITpost 6.6 ± 1.0 s; p = 0.005),and total cholesterol: HDL cholesterol ratio (CONpre 4.2 ± 0.7; CONpost 4.0 ± 0.7; SITpre 4.4 ± 1.1; SITpost 3.2 ± 0.7; p = 0.01). SIT is an effective way to maintain blood pressure, lipid profile, and physical function during aging and is an effective tool for promoting optimal aging

Connectivity and runoff dynamics in heterogeneous drainage basins

A drainage basin’s runoff response can be determined by the connectivity of generated runoff to the stream network and the connectivity of the downstream stream network. The connectivity of a drainage basin modulates its ability to produce streamflow and respond to precipitation events and is a function of the complex and variable storage capacities along the drainage network. An improved means to measure and account for the dynamics of hydrological connectivity at the basin scale is needed to improve prediction of basin scale streamflow. The overall goal of this thesis is to improve the understanding of hydrological connectivity at the basin scale by measuring hydrological connectivity at the Baker Creek Research Basin during 2009. To this end, the objectives are to 1) investigate the dynamics of hydrological connectivity during a typical water year, 2) define the relationship between the contributing stream network and contributing area, 3) investigate how hydrological connectivity influences streamflow, and 4) define how hydrological connectivity influences runoff response to rainfall events. At a 150 km2 subarctic Precambrian Shield catchment where the poorly-drained heterogeneous mosaic of lakes, exposed bedrock, and soil filled areas creates variable contributing areas, hydrological connectivity was measured between April and September 2009 in 10 sub-basins with a particular focus on three representative sub-basins. The three sub-basins, although of similar relative size, vary considerably in the dominant typology and topology of their constituent elements. At a 10 m spatial resolution, saturated areas were mapped using both multispectral satellite imagery and in situ measurements of storage according to land cover. To measure basin scale hydrological connectivity, the drainage network was treated as a graph network with stream reaches being the edges that connect sub-catchment nodes. The overall hydrological connectivity of the stream network was described as the ratio of actively flowing relative to potentially flowing stream reaches, and the hydrological connectivity of the stream network to the outlet was described as the ratio of actively flowing stream reaches that were connected to the outlet relative to the potentially flowing stream reaches. Hydrological connectivity was highest during the spring freshet but the stream network began to disintegrate with its passing. In some drainage basins, large gate keepers were able to maintain connectivity of the stream network downstream during dry periods. The length of the longest stream was found to be proportional to contributing area raised to a power of 0.605, similar to that noted in Hack’s Law and modified Hack’s Law relationships. The length of the contributing stream network was also found to be proportional to contributing area raised to a power of 0.851. In general, higher daily average streamflows were noted for higher states of connectivity to the outlet although preliminary investigations allude to the existence of hysteresis in these relationships. Elevated levels of hydrological connectivity were also found to yield higher basin runoff ratios but the shape of the characteristic curve for each basin was heavily influenced by key traits of its land cover heterogeneity. The implications of these findings are that accurate prediction of streamflow and runoff response in a heterogeneous drainage basin with dynamic connectivity will require both an account of the presence or absence of connections but also a differentiation of connection type and an incorporation of aspects of local function that control the flow through connections themselves. The improved understanding of causal factors for the variable streamflow response to runoff generation in this environment will serve as a first step towards developing improved streamflow prediction methods in formerly glaciated landscapes, especially in small ungauged basins