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Informal kinship care, an arrangement that is made without the involvement of a child welfare agency or a court, makes up the majority of kinship arrangements in the United States. However, the current literature on informal kinship care is very limited. In response, this study explored informal kinship caregivers’ parenting experiences, comparing those of grandparents and other relatives. Anonymous survey responses from 146 informal kinship caregivers (114 grandparents and 32 other relatives) were analyzed. This study found similarities and differences between grandparents and other relatives. Compared to other relatives, grandparents were significantly older and less likely to be married. Over 60% of the caregivers, both grandparents and other relatives, had an annual household income of USD 50,000 or less but did not receive any governmental benefits. Furthermore, other relatives accessed and utilized community resources at significantly lower rates. This study observed significant challenges of informal kinship families, including financial difficulties and child mental health/behavioral issues. At the same time, it noted their strengths and resilience, with most participants reporting a positive perception of their caregiving experience. Programs and services for informal kinship families should reflect their unique experiences, building upon their strengths and resilience.

In this study, numerical simulations for the prediction of added resistance for KVLCC2 with varying wave steepness are performed using a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method and a 3-D linear potential method, and then the non-linearities of added resistance and ship motions are investigated in regular short and long waves. Firstly, grid convergence tests in short and long waves are carried out to establish an optimal mesh system for CFD simulations. Secondly, numerical simulations are performed to predict ship added resistance and vertical motion responses in short and long waves and the results are verified using the available experimental data. Finally, the non-linearities of added resistance and ship motions with unsteady wave patterns in the time domain are investigated with the increase in wave steepness in both short and long waves. The present systematic study demonstrates that the numerical results have a reasonable agreement with the experimental data and emphasizes the non-linearity in the prediction of the added resistance and the ship motions with the increasing wave steepness in short and long waves. Keywords: Added resistance, Wave steepness, Short waves, Potential flow, CFD, KVLCC2

Chung-Yeul-Gue-Soup-Sa-Gan-Tang (CYT), a traditional Korea herbal medicine, has been widely used in Korea for the treatment of various immunological disorders, including allergic asthma. In this study, CYT was examined in vitro and tested for possible immunological effects. The results demonstrated that CYT had no mitogenic effects on unstimulated CD4+ T cells, but rather increased CD4+ T cell proliferation upon activation with anti-CD3/CD28 antibody. Under the Th0 condition, CYT also enhanced expression of interleukin (IL)-2 in purified murine CD4+ T cells assayed by real-time PCR, suggesting that CYT moderately increases the activity of helper T cells upon T cell receptor ligation under the neutral condition. However, the Th1 cells were overpopulated following CYT treatment under the Th1 condition, while Th2 cells were under-populated in the Th2 driven condition. In addition, under Th1/Th2-skewed conditions, the levels of IL-4 were considerably decreased, while the expression of T-bet and interferon-γ were increased with CYT treatment. Thus, CYT enhances Th1 lineage development from naive CD4+ T cells both by increasing Th1 specific cytokine secretion and repressing Th2 specific cytokine production. These results suggest that CYT is a desirable agent for the correction of Th2 dominant pathological disorders. Keywords:: Th1, Th2, CD4+, interleukin-4, interferon-γ

Abstract  In this article, we propose a new decentralized hardware-based DBA scheme in TDM-PON. Of particular significance in the proposed scheme is that the bandwidth of the uplink data transmission is dynamically allocated to each ONU without the intervention of the OLT. In this way, software-based DBA processing can be eliminated in the OLT and ONUs, resulting in the simple, fast, and cost-effective operation of the DBA in TDM-PON. The performance of the proposed scheme was evaluated by performing a statistical analysis and numerical analysis of the average packet end-to-end delay. We confirmed the superior performance of the proposed scheme by comparing the results obtained for this technique with those of other EPONs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  We propose a chirp cancellation method reducing nonlinear distortion in NZ-DSF based long-haul DWDM transmission systems in which SPM and XPM-induced chirps are canceling each other. The polarity and the amount of the XPM-induced chirp are controlled by varying the relative time shift between pulses on neighboring channels and the launching channel power. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method can provide an improved performance in terms of Q-factor in long-haul DWDM transmissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a propagation parameter-mapping method for an efficient simulation to evaluate the performance of in-line optical amplified transmission line is proposed. The method helps to extract the propagation parameters for simplified simulation from both a single-channel and a WDM transmission line. It has been shown in the simulation results that the simplified simulation can describe the propagation behavior of optical pulses very accurately, with less than only 3% difference in the eye-opening ratio when compared with the normal simulation method, but with a great reduction of calculation time. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 30: 364–368, 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithium difluoro(oxalato)borate (LiFOB) is investigated as an additive for enhancing the electrochemical performance of high-voltage lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2, LCO)/lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2, NMC) cathodes and high-capacity silicon/graphite (Si-C) anodes. LCO-NMC/Si-C full cells with a LiFOB additive have been found to exhibit improved high temperature electrochemical performance. To confirm the effects of LiFOB on the cathode and the anode, the surface chemistry of the anodes and cathodes cycled in electrolytes with and without the LiFOB additive are examined using ex-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The LiFOB additive produces a LiF-based solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) on the Si-C anode and a carboxylate-based SEI on the LCO-NMC cathode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]