The mediating effects of adulthood socioeconomic status and social support on adulthood impacts of childhood poverty in Japan

Previous studies have provided evidence of the lasting impact of low socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood on adulthood health. However, the mediating pathway that links them is still under debate. In this study, we examine how educational attainment, household income, and social support mediate the impact of low SES in childhood on self-rated health and health-risk behaviors in adulthood on the basis of micro data collected from a survey in municipalities in and around the Tokyo metropolitan area in Japan (N = 3,265). As a comprehensive measure for childhood SES, we utilized a binary variable of childhood poverty constructed from the retrospective assessment of the living standard at the age of 15. We estimated recursive bivariate probit models that consisted of (1) the main equation to predict adulthood health outcome by childhood poverty and other variables and (2) the auxiliary equation to predict childhood poverty by parental SES. This method allowed us both to capture a wide dimension of childhood SES and to mitigate the potential recall bias to the retrospective assessment of the past living standard. We observed that educational attainment, household income, and social support, when combined, mediated 35-55 percent of the impact of childhood poverty on adulthood SRH and health-risk behaviors, confirming the substantial magnitude of mediation. However, a large proportion of the impact was unexplained by these mediating effects, underscoring the importance of social policies aimed at reducing risks of childhood poverty.Childhood poverty, Self-rated health, health-risk behaviors, bivariate probit models, mediating effects

Effect of chemical admixture on property of fresh mortar using sludge water

Addition of sludge water as a part of mixing water had little influence on strength and durability of hardened concrete, but caused a slump decrease of fresh concrete. The decrease of slump was improved by addition of a certain set retarder such as gluconate into sludge water due to control of cement hydration. Some of polymers were also effective in improvement of slump. However hydration of cement was observed in those cases of polymers. Therefore it is presumed such the polymers improve slump not by hydration control effect but by another one

Non-linear Evolution of Matter Power Spectrum in Modified Theory of Gravity

We present a formalism to calculate the non-linear matter power spectrum in modified gravity models that explain the late-time acceleration of the Universe without dark energy. Any successful modified gravity models should contain a mechanism to recover General Relativity (GR) on small scales in order to avoid the stringent constrains on deviations from GR at solar system scales. Based on our formalism, the quasi non-linear power spectrum in the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porratti (DGP) braneworld models and $f(R)$ gravity models are derived by taking into account the mechanism to recover GR properly. We also extrapolate our predictions to fully non-linear scales using the Parametrized Post Friedmann (PPF) framework. In $f(R)$ gravity models, the predicted non-linear power spectrum is shown to reproduce N-body results. We find that the mechanism to recover GR suppresses the difference between the modified gravity models and dark energy models with the same expansion history, but the difference remains large at weakly non-linear regime in these models. Our formalism is applicable to a wide variety of modified gravity models and it is ready to use once consistent models for modified gravity are developed.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures, comparison to N-body simulations in DGP added, published in PR

Deposition of Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Carbon Films Using Vacuum Ultraviolet Light

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbon films are deposited using disilane and acetylene with vacuum ultraviolet light (147nm) emitted from a microwave-excited Xe resonance lamp. The film shows a high photoconductivity of 1.2 × 10⁻⁵S/cm at an optical bandgap of 2.0eV which is one order larger than that of device-quality films deposited by a glow discharge (GD) method. Because of high photoconductivity in this film, over-hydrogenation of carbon atom is avoided, and tetrahedral bondings seem to form rigid random networks. For an application to the window layer of amorphous silicon-alloy solar cells, p-type doping properties are examined. In this case, a photoconductivity of 3.9 × 10⁻⁶S/cm at an optical bandgap of 2.0eV is obtained, which is comparable to that of device-quality films deposited by a GD method