Evaluation of the Nurse Family Partnership in North Carolina

This is the periodic update on the evaluation of the Nurse Family Partnership program in North Carolina focused on the priority health outcomes of women and infants. During this period, we refined our methodology to more precisely estimate the effect of NFP participation on the health of women and children. In this report, we will report the estimated effect of participation on birthweight, gestational age, NICU admission, and breastfeeding initiation. We will also discuss the differential treatment effect of participation by maternal race as well as variation in estimation between statewide, county and hospital level analysis.As previously reported, this study focuses on NFP participants in North Carolina and proximal health outcomes as well as health care costs. This study is limited by its relatively small sample size used to analyze uncommon outcomes, suggesting the ability to detect programmatic effects may be limited. In other words, because of the relatively small sample, a priori we might expect to conclude there is no effect when there truly is

Health Care System Characteristics Associated with Postpartum Contraceptive Utilization, Birth Spacing and Short Interpregnancy Intervals Among Privately Insured Women in North Carolina

Objective: To determine if provider characteristics or rural geography affect the timing of postpartum contraceptive, method of postpartum contraceptive, or incidence of short interpregnancy intervals among privately insured women in North Carolina. Methods: Using administrative claims data from a large, private insurer, we used two-stage residual inclusion and logit modeling to determine when a woman began a contraceptive, the likelihood that the contraceptive she began was a long-acting reversible contraceptive, and how these behaviors affected the probability of a subsequent live birth within 27 months of delivery. Our key independent variables were whether a woman received maternity care from a provider affiliated with an obstetrics/gynecology residency program, the provider’s specialty, and whether or not a woman lived in a rural area. Results: Receiving maternity care from a provider affiliated with an OB/GYN residency program was slightly negatively associated with contraceptive initiation within 3, 6 and 12 months postpartum and had no effect on a woman’s probability of using a long-acting reversible method or having a subsequent short interpregnancy interval. Provider specialty did not have an affect on a woman’s timing of contraceptive initiation nor the probability of having a short interpregnancy interval. Living in a rural area had no effect on timing to postpartum contraceptive, type of postpartum contraceptive or probability of having a short interpregnancy interval to subsequent live birth. Conclusions: While we hypothesized OB/GYN providers and providers associated with an OB/GYN residency program would increase the probability of a woman initiating contraceptives within 12 months and use LARC more often than other providers, our findings did not support this. Among women with consistent insurance coverage during the postpartum period, short interpregnancy intervals were common. Controlling for characteristics associated with her provider, the facility where she received care, and the demographics of the area in which she lives, the strongest predictor of whether a woman would have a short birth interval is the type of contraceptive she uses in the postpartum period. Women using a long-acting method versus a short-acting method were significantly less likely to have a short interpregnancy interval to their next birth.Doctor of Philosoph

Chandra X-Ray Observatory Observations of the Globular Cluster M71

We observed the nearby, low-density globular cluster M71 (NGC 6838) with the Chandra X-ray Observatory to study its faint X-ray populations. Five X-ray sources were found inside the cluster core radius, including the known eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar (MSP) PSR J1953+1846A. The X-ray light curve of the source coincident with this MSP shows marginal evidence for periodicity at the binary period of 4.2 h. Its hard X-ray spectrum and luminosity resemble those of other eclipsing binary MSPs in 47 Tuc, suggesting a similar shock origin of the X-ray emission. A further 24 X-ray sources were found within the half-mass radius, reaching to a limiting luminosity of 1.5 10^30 erg/s (0.3-8 keV). From a radial distribution analysis, we find that 18+/-6 of these 29 sources are associated with M71, somewhat more than predicted, and that 11+/-6 are background sources, both galactic and extragalactic. M71 appears to have more X-ray sources between L_X=10^30--10^31 erg/s than expected by extrapolating from other studied clusters using either mass or collision frequency. We explore the spectra and variability of these sources, and describe the results of ground-based optical counterpart searches.Comment: 36 pages including 7 figures and 8 tables, accepted by The Astrophysical Journa

Is narcissism associated with child physical abuse risk?

The present study was designed to clarify the associations between covert narcissism, overt narcissism, negative affect, and child physical abuse (CPA) risk. It was hypothesized that covert (but not overt narcissism) would be significantly associated with parental CPA risk and that negative affect would partially mediate this association. General population parents (N = 178; 33 % male) with varying degrees of CPA risk completed self-report measures of covert narcissism, overt narcissism, and negative affect. Results revealed that at the bivariate level, covert narcissism and two subscales of the overt narcissism measure (exploitativeness and entitlement) were significantly correlated with CPA risk. However, when covert narcissism and overt narcissism were considered simultaneously in a regression analysis, only covert narcissism emerged as a significant predictor of CPA risk. Results of a path analysis supported the prediction that negative affect partially mediated the association between covert narcissism and CPA risk. Findings from the present study illustrate the value of assessing both overt and covert narcissistic features in research investigating the role of narcissism in interpersonal violence. Moreover, the results revealed that covert narcissism was associated with CPA risk, even after accounting for their mutual associations with negative affect. Additional research is needed to explicate the other cognitive/affective mechanisms through which covert narcissism increases risk of aggressive parenting behavior.</p

Is narcissism associated with child physical abuse risk?

The present study was designed to clarify the associations between covert narcissism, overt narcissism, negative affect, and child physical abuse (CPA) risk. It was hypothesized that covert (but not overt narcissism) would be significantly associated with parental CPA risk and that negative affect would partially mediate this association. General population parents (N = 178; 33 % male) with varying degrees of CPA risk completed self-report measures of covert narcissism, overt narcissism, and negative affect. Results revealed that at the bivariate level, covert narcissism and two subscales of the overt narcissism measure (exploitativeness and entitlement) were significantly correlated with CPA risk. However, when covert narcissism and overt narcissism were considered simultaneously in a regression analysis, only covert narcissism emerged as a significant predictor of CPA risk. Results of a path analysis supported the prediction that negative affect partially mediated the association between covert narcissism and CPA risk. Findings from the present study illustrate the value of assessing both overt and covert narcissistic features in research investigating the role of narcissism in interpersonal violence. Moreover, the results revealed that covert narcissism was associated with CPA risk, even after accounting for their mutual associations with negative affect. Additional research is needed to explicate the other cognitive/affective mechanisms through which covert narcissism increases risk of aggressive parenting behavior.</p

Cloud and rain processes in a biosphere-atmosphere interaction context in the Amazon Region

This paper presents an overview of the results from the first major mesoscale atmospheric campaign of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) Program. The campaign, collocated with a Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite validation campaigns, was conducted in southwest Rondonia in January and February 1999 during the wet season. Highlights on the interaction between clouds, rain, and the underlying landscape through biospheric processes are presented and discussed.Pages: art. no. 807

Landscape analyses using eDNA metabarcoding and Earth observation predict community biodiversity in California

Ecosystems globally are under threat from ongoing anthropogenic environmental change. Effective conservation management requires more thorough biodiversity surveys that can reveal system-level patterns and that can be applied rapidly across space and time. Using modern ecological models and community science, we integrate environmental DNA and Earth observations to produce a time snapshot of regional biodiversity patterns and provide multi-scalar community-level characterization. We collected 278 samples in spring 2017 from coastal, shrub, and lowland forest sites in California, a complex ecosystem and biodiversity hotspot. We recovered 16,118 taxonomic entries from eDNA analyses and compiled associated traditional observations and environmental data to assess how well they predicted alpha, beta, and zeta diversity. We found that local habitat classification was diagnostic of community composition and distinct communities and organisms in different kingdoms are predicted by different environmental variables. Nonetheless, gradient forest models of 915 families recovered by eDNA analysis and using BIOCLIM variables, Sentinel-2 satellite data, human impact, and topographical features as predictors, explained 35% of the variance in community turnover. Elevation, sand percentage, and photosynthetic activities (NDVI32) were the top predictors. In addition to this signal of environmental filtering, we found a positive relationship between environmentally predicted families and their numbers of biotic interactions, suggesting environmental change could have a disproportionate effect on community networks. Together, these analyses show that coupling eDNA with environmental predictors including remote sensing data has capacity to test proposed Essential Biodiversity Variables and create new landscape biodiversity baselines that span the tree of life