Agricultural Employment Patterns of Immigrant Workers in the United States

Despite of the important role international migration fills in the United States’ labor-intensive agricultural sector, few studies have addressed the individual characteristics and circumstances surrounding entry and exit by farm laborers. With increasing public attention on international migrant labor, policymakers have a need to understand the labor market patterns of these workers if they are to formulate appropriate immigration reforms, including temporary worker programs geared towards agriculture. In this analysis, we model the likelihood of entering agricultural employment by migrants to the United States. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project we find that migrants with higher levels of education and a greater command of English are less likely to work as agricultural laborers. Those that do enter agricultural occupation stay in the United States for shorter periods of time per trip than those who enter non-agricultural occupation. In future analysis we will attempt to model the demand for agricultural farm work as a determinant of the decision by migrants to enter the U.S. market for hired farm labor.Agricultural Employment, Mexican Migration, Occupational Choice, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, International Relations/Trade, Labor and Human Capital, Production Economics,

Investigating the effectiveness of education in relation to alcohol: A systematic investigation of critical elements for optimum effectiveness of promising approaches and delivery methods in school and family linked alcohol education

Background: This review examined evidence for school and family linked alcohol education programmes to reduce or prevent the misuse of alcohol by young people. The review aimed to identify critical programme or contextual elements positively associated with evidence of effectiveness. The review paid particular attention to, but was not confined to programmes that included social norms education and/or life skills training and/or the Good Behaviour Game and/or peer-to-peer delivery components. The review was conducted by the Institute for Social Marketing, a joint initiative of the University of Stirling and the Open University. It was commissioned by the Alcohol Education and Research Council (AERC) on behalf of the Drinkaware Trust (DAT) who provided the funding. The original stated purpose of the study was 'to collate evidence that would help to inform how best DAT could approach and be involved in school-based alcohol education across the UK'. Methods: Systematic literature search methods were used, along with a combined quality appraisal and evidence weighting assessment to identify 'promising' interventions. Promising interventions were defined as any intervention where study design was assessed as sound. Weight of evidence for aggregated evaluation results for each intervention was classified as equivocal or convincing. Any intervention reporting adverse effects on substance misuse was excluded. After all relevance and quality screening was completed, the review identified 39 studies collectively reporting on 25 interventions. The results were analysed thematically and with reference to pre-specified research questions. Findings: - The most effective social norms interventions targeted peer alcohol use. Social norm change objectives in both school-based and family components were common and associated with effectiveness. Most of the evidence of effectiveness was derived from mass marketed (not personalised) social norms and did not appear to be informed by dedicated formative research. - Life Skills Training (LST) was also a popular approach, often combined with approaches intended to strengthen protective family factors. Most of the evidence derived from the USA, so cultural transferability remains unclear and requires further piloting. - There was evidence that peer-to-peer delivery is more effective when combined with peer driven planning and other techniques aimed at deeper engagement with target audiences and genuine participatory change. - Reducing environmental availability of alcohol to young people as well as community tolerance of young people's consumption of alcohol appears to enhance the effectiveness of school and family linked alcohol education programmes. - The evidence indicates that a range of education approaches and delivery methods can make a small positive contribution to harm reduction, but there are many examples of interventions which are ineffective or harmful. - Neither knowledge and attitude change, nor acceptability of an intervention is predictive of positive behaviour change. - Involving external specialists can enhance acceptability and effectiveness, but is not critical to effectiveness. - Interventions perceived by target audiences as personally relevant achieve higher retention rates and are more effective than interventions that do not resonate with day to day concerns and circumstances of target audiences. - There is evidence that programme effects, can be sustained up to six years after intervention completion. However, for most interventions positive effects decline fairly rapidly over time and therefore some type(s) of reinforcement intervention are required to maintain positive effects. - Short duration, low-involvement interventions can achieve similar short-term effects to more intensive and longer term interventions. - Most combined family and school‐based interventions appear to lack a holistic perspective or any explanation for how the two components integrated and/or complemented one another within the overall programme design and its aims. Strategic Implications and Recommendations: Combined school and family based alcohol education interventions will be most effective when integrated with broader based environmental interventions. Integration with community interventions can also help to build community ownership and improve intervention acceptability. Explicit linkage of educational interventions with environmental intervention is therefore recommended. Clear conceptual rationale for both the individual content and the integration of school and family components may strengthen efficacy and cost effectiveness. Research in the future on which elements are best delivered via school and which via family programme components would be helpful to future programme design and planning. An overarching strategy grounded in a theoretical model with clear goals and rationale will help guide consistency of messages, priorities and credibility of intervention agents and harm reduction/prevention objectives. This may be especially critical if multiple programmes and target audiences are supported by an intervention organisation. Bottom up/participatory planning and delivery of current practice could be strengthened significantly and the use of specialists in participatory research, development and evaluation are recommended. Consistent, systematic and pre-planned evaluation of future interventions would make a valuable contribution to the scientific evidence base and development of better practice and is therefore recommended. Restricting funding of all future intervention proposals to those which provide a detailed (including dedicated budget) evaluation plan would help to generate reliable and credible practice based evidence. Research into the cost-effectiveness and efficacy of a planned series of short duration, age appropriate interventions would be a useful contribution to the evidence base and development of better practice. Behaviour change must be the definitive measure of effectiveness. It is recommended that scaling up investment should be restricted to approaches and methods that have previously demonstrated measurable (albeit probably small) reductions in alcohol use/misuse, and report comprehensive implementation details

Atomic spectrometry update : a review of advances in environmental analysis

This is the 31st annual review of the application of atomic spectrometry to the chemical analysis of environmental samples. This update refers to papers published approximately between August 2014 and July 2015 and continues the series of Atomic Spectrometry Updates (ASUs) in Environmental Analysis that should be read in conjunction with other related ASUs in the series, namely: clinical and biological materials, foods and beverages; advances in atomic spectrometry and related techniques; elemental speciation; X-ray spectrometry; and metals, chemicals and functional materials. In the field of air analysis, highlights within this review period included: the development of a new laser fluorescence instrument for the ultratrace determination of mercury vapour; single particle ICP-MS studies and the coupling of elemental analysers to mass spectrometers for the improved characterisation of carbonaceous aerosols. In the arena of water analysis, methods continue to be developed: for the extraction and preconcentration of elements, As, Cr, Hg and Sb species and determination of elemental constituents in colloidal and NP fractions. Emerging elements of interest include Gd derived from MRI agents discharged at low level from medical facilities in water courses. Instrumental developments reported included the use of MC-ICP-MS for isotopic tracer studies and a review of TXRF techniques and associated preconcentration procedures for trace element analysis. In the period covered by this update several articles have explored the analysis of soil extracts for geochemical prospecting. There has been widening interest in the use of CS-AAS and in the application of techniques capable of direct sample analysis such as slurry sampling ETAAS and ETV-ICP-AES. Portable XRF instrumentation is now being used in many disciplines to quantify trace elements in soils – bringing a need for better transfer of analytical knowledge to non-specialist users – and the growing use of portable XRF in proximal sensing is also noteworthy. Recent research indicates that geological applications still drive many of the instrumental and methodological advances in LA-ICP-MS. Fundamental studies continued to shed light on the processes involved and hence ways of improving the analysis of laser-produced aerosols and to minimise matrix and fractionation effects. A new technique LA-DOF-MS (distance of flight) was described. The utility of LIBS and portable XRF for in situ survey work continues to show promise but issues such as appropriate calibration regimes and data processing protocols will still need to be addressed

Using rank data to estimate health state utility models

In this paper we report the estimation of conditional logistic regression models for the Health Utilities Index Mark 2 and the SF-6D, using ordinal preference data. The results are compared to the conventional regression models estimated from standard gamble data, and to the observed mean standard gamble health state valuations. For both the HUI2 and the SF-6D, the models estimated using ordinal data are broadly comparable to the models estimated on standard gamble data and the predictive performance of these models is close to that of the standard gamble models. Our research indicates that ordinal data have the potential to provide useful insights into community health state preferences. However, important questions remain

Widespread Tau Seeding Activity at Early Braak Stages

Transcellular propagation of tau aggregates may underlie the progression of pathology in Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) and other tauopathies. Braak staging (B1, B2, B3) is based on phospho-tau accumulation within connected brain regions: entorhinal cortex (B1); hippocampus/limbic system (B2); and frontal and parietal lobes (B3). We previously developed a specific and sensitive assay that uses flow cytometry to quantify tissue seeding activity based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) in cells that stably express tau reporter proteins. In a tauopathy mouse model, we have detected seeding activity far in advance of histopathological changes. It remains unknown whether individuals with AD also develop seeding activity prior to accumulation of phospho-tau. We measured tau seeding activity across four brain regions (hippocampus, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and cerebellum) in 104 fresh-frozen human AD brain samples from all Braak stages. We observed widespread seeding activity, notably in regions predicted to be free of phospho-tau deposition, and in detergent-insoluble fractions that lacked tau detectable by ELISA. Seeding activity correlated positively with Braak stage and negatively with MMSE. Our results are consistent with early transcellular propagation of tau seeds that triggers subsequent development of neuropathology. The FRET-based seeding assay may also complement standard neuropathological classification of tauopathies

Community Participation for Community Benefits From Natural Capital Projects : A Review for the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland Programme

Despite the growing volume and scale of natural capital investments, it remains unclear if, and how, these projects to maintain and restore the ecosystem will empower and enrich communities. This report is a core output from the project, Community Benefits Standard for the UK Nature Investment Market, developed in Scotland, which is funded by the Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS). The FIRNS programme is delivered by NatureScot, in collaboration with the Scottish Government and in partnership with the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It provides a review of academic and practitioner literature to explore best practice approaches for facilitating community inclusion and participation in order to generate lasting community benefit from nature-based projects. Such approaches can build and sustain two-way relationships between developers and community groups; helping developers to both understand and act upon the needs or issues that communities experience in relation to natural capital investments and to align with community priorities. These approaches can also contribute towards broader community wealth building and justice objectives. However, such co-benefits are not guaranteed. We offer a number of lessons, grounded in robust academic evidence, about how best to approach participation for community benefit creation

Atomic spectrometry update: a review of advances in environmental analysis

This is the 33th annual review of the application of atomic spectrometry to the chemical analysis of environmental samples. This update refers to papers published approximately between August 2016 and June 2017 and continues the series of Atomic Spectrometry Updates (ASUs) in environmental analysis that should be read in conjunction with other related ASUs in the series, namely: clinical and biological materials, foods and beverages; advances in atomic spectrometry and related techniques; elemental speciation; X-ray spectrometry; and metals, chemicals and functional materials. In the field of air analysis, highlights within this review period included the fabrication of new air samplers using 3D printer technology, development of a portable aerosol concentrator unit based upon electrostatic precipitation and instrumental developments such as a prototype portable spark emission spectrometer to quantify metal particles in workplace air. The advent of ICP-MS/MS systems has enabled analysts to develop improved methods for the determination of PGEs and radioactive elements present in airborne particles. With such instruments, the capacity to eliminate or minimise many isobaric interferences now enables analysts to forego the use of many onerous sample clean-up procedures. Improvements in the capabilities of aerosol mass spectrometers were noted as were developments in other complimentary measurement techniques such as Raman. In the arena of water analysis there are growing concerns regarding engineered NPs e.g. Ag NPs, entering water courses resulting in the development and optimisation of new methods based upon FFF and sp-ICP-MS techniques to measure such inputs. Similar concerns exist for MRI contrasting agents e.g. Gd-based compounds and here improved methodologies that involve the use of sample preconcentration using chelating columns and ICP-MS analysis have been proposed. In the field of plant and soil analysis, similar to developments in the water sector, there has been increased interest in the measurement of NPs. Many comparisons of sample digestion or extraction methods have been reported but a key issue rarely addressed is transferability, i.e. whether methods preferred by one group of researchers using particular apparatus are also optimal in a different laboratory using different apparatus. New sample preconcentration methods continued to appear although – as in previous years – the CRMs selected for method validation often failed to reflect the nature of the intended sample(s). A noteworthy advance is the use of HR-CS-ETMAS for elemental analysis. Developments in LIBS included greater use of TEA CO2 lasers in place of Nd:YAG lasers and increased use of stand-off measurement. The past year has also seen a rise in proximal sensing using LIBS and pXRFS. In the field of geological analysis, the quest continues for well-characterised matrix-matched materials suitable for the calibration of elemental and, particularly, isotopic measurements by microanalytical techniques. Increasing interest in stable isotope analysis by SIMS is reflected by the number of matrix-matched RMs developed specifically for this technique. Much work continues on ways of improving isotope ratio measurements by ICP-MS and TIMS for a wide range of different isotope systems relevant to geochemical studies. High spatial resolution analysis by LIBS, LA-ICP-MS and SIMS to obtain data on chemical and isotopic variations in minerals and biogenic materials in two and three dimensions are the foundation for many new insights in geoscientific research. In XRFS and LIBS, the advantages and limitations of portable instrumentation continue to be major focus of activity