Search

Agricultural and prescribed burning activities emit large amounts of trace gases and aerosols on regional to global scales. We present a compilation of emission factors (EFs) and emission ratios from the eastern portion of the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX‐AQ) campaign in 2019 in the United States, which sampled burning of crop residues and other prescribed fire fuels. FIREX‐AQ provided comprehensive chemical characterization of 53 crop residue and 22 prescribed fires. Crop residues burned at different modified combustion efficiencies (MCE), with corn residue burning at higher MCE than other fuel types. Prescribed fires burned at lower MCE (<0.90) which is typical, while grasslands burned at lower MCE (0.90) than normally observed due to moist, green, growing season fuels. Most non‐methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) were significantly anticorrelated with MCE except for ethanol and NMVOCs that were measured with less certainty. We identified 23 species where crop residue fires differed by more than 50% from prescribed fires at the same MCE. Crop residue EFs were greater for species related to agricultural chemical use and fuel composition as well as oxygenated NMVOCs possibly due to the presence of metals such as potassium. Prescribed EFs were greater for monoterpenes (5×). FIREX‐AQ crop residue average EFs generally agreed with the previous agricultural fire study in the US but had large disagreements with global compilations. FIREX‐AQ observations show the importance of regionally‐specific and fuel‐specific EFs as first steps to reduce uncertainty in modeling the air quality impacts of fire emissions. Plain Language Summary: Crop residue and prescribed fires emit pollution that impacts air quality. FIREX‐AQ provided observations of these emissions to better characterize their variability with a detailed set of chemical observations. These observations showed significant differences in the emissions from burning different crops (corn, rice, soybean, wheat) compared to other prescribed fires or grasslands that may be due to differences in the fuel composition, the use of agricultural chemicals, and moisture levels. Overall, FIREX‐AQ observations for crop residue fires compared better with previous results in the region than with globally averaged information. The campaign observed even greater variability across EFs than previous studies, suggesting that new methods must be developed to take this into account to improve predictions of the air quality impacts of burning these fuels. Key Points: Corn residue burned at higher modified combustion efficiency than rice or soybean residueImpacts of fire emissions >6 hr downwind on OH reactivity will be more influenced by species that are less important at the sourceEmission factors from crop residue fires agreed better with previous results from the same region than with global compilations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Megan Thee Stallion is revolutionizing the representation of Black women in Hip-Hop by occupying polarizing positions in Hip-Hop culture. Megan represents the multiplicity of the Black girl/women's identities by navigating the confines of ratchet respectability, sexuality, and education. Her movements #HotGirlSummer and #HotNerdFall demonstrate the margins the everyday Black girl/woman must navigate: the expectation to be sexy, outgoing, and ratchet while simultaneously being educated/intellectual. Using Hip Hop feminist discourses of ratchet respectability and Black ratchet imagination, we argue that Megan's representation of a sexually liberated, ratchet-demic informs the construction of Black girl/womanhood. Utilizing Megan the Stallion's music, social media posts, and interviews, we will explore how Megan's representation of a sexually liberated, ratchet-demic informs the socio-educational identities of Black girl/womanhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 2019 Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) study, the NASA DC-8 carried out in situ chemical measurements in smoke plumes emitted from wildfires and agricultural fires in the contiguous United States. The DC-8 payload included a modified proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-ToF-MS) for the fast measurement of gaseous ammonia (NH3) and a high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) for the fast measurement of submicron particulate ammonium (NH4+). We herein report data collected in smoke plumes emitted from 6 wildfires in the Western United States, 2 prescribed grassland fires in the Central United States, 1 prescribed forest fire in the Southern United States, and 66 small agricultural fires in the Southeastern United States. Smoke plumes contained double to triple digit ppb levels of NH3. In the wildfire plumes, a significant fraction of NH3 had already been converted to NH4+ at the time of sampling (≥2 h after emission). Substantial amounts of NH4+ were also detected in freshly emitted smoke from corn and rice field fires. We herein present a comprehensive set of emission factors of NH3 and NHx , with NHx=NH3+NH4+. Average NH3 and NHx emission factors for wildfires in the Western United States were 1.86±0.75 g kg -1 and 2.47±0.80 g kg -1 of fuel burned, respectively. Average NH3 and NHx emission factors for agricultural fires in the Southeastern United States were 0.89±0.58 and 1.74±0.92 g kg -1 , respectively. Our data show no clear inverse correlation between modified combustion efficiency (MCE) and NH3 emissions. The observed NH3 emissions were significantly higher than measured in previous laboratory experiments in the FIREX FireLab 2016 study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) requires behavioral changes such as physical distancing (e.g., staying a 6-foot distance from others, avoiding mass gatherings, reducing houseguests), wearing masks, reducing trips to nonessential business establishments, and increasing hand washing. Like other health behaviors, COVID-19 related behaviors may be related to risk representations. Risk representations are the cognitive responses a person holds about illness risk such as, identity (i.e., label/characteristics of risk), cause (i.e., factors causing condition), timeline (i.e., onset/duration of risk), consequences (i.e., intrapersonal/interpersonal outcomes), behavioral efficacy (i.e., if and how the condition can be controlled/treated), and illness risk coherence (i.e., extent to which representations, behaviors, and beliefs are congruent). The current study applies the Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM-SR) to evaluate how risk representations may relate to COVID-19 protective and risk behaviors. Methods: Participants include 400 workers from Amazon's Mechanical Turk aged ≥ 18 years and US residents. Participants completed an online survey measuring risk representations (B-IPQ) and COVID-19 related behaviors, specifically, physical distancing, hand washing, and shopping frequency. Results: Risk coherence, consequences, timeline, emotional representation, and behavioral efficacy were related to risk and protective behaviors. Conclusions: Risk representations vary in their relationship to COVID-19 risk and protective behaviors. Implications include the importance of coherent, targeted, consistent health communication, and effective health policy in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe herein the clinical, endoscopic, computed tomography (CT), pathologic, and microbiologic features of an infection caused by an under-recognized fungal pathogen, Flavodon flavus, in a 25-y-old Australian Quarter Horse. The horse had a unilateral obstructive nasal mass, resulting in stertor and dyspnea. On endoscopy, the mass was tan, multinodular, and completely obstructed the nasal passage. CT analysis revealed a large, soft tissue–attenuating and partially mineralized mass in the right nasal passage and dorsal-conchofrontal sinus, expanding into adjacent paranasal sinuses with associated bone lysis and rhinosinusitis. Histopathology of the mass on 2 occasions revealed suppurative inflammation initially, and pyogranulomatous inflammation subsequently. The inflammatory reaction surrounded numerous spherical fungal structures (~60–80 µm diameter) that stained positively on periodic acid–Schiff and Grocott methenamine silver stains. PCR for the fungal internal transcribed spacer 1 and 2 regions followed by Sanger sequencing on a cultured isolate identified the agent as F. flavus, which has only been reported previously as pathogenic in one horse in the United States, to our knowledge. Previous reports described this fungus as a nonpathogenic, environmental commensal fungus associated with insects and plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the exhibitionStates of Incarceration: A National Dialogue of Local Historiestravels the nation, visitors will explore the roots of mass incarceration in our communities. While mass incarceration has garnered increased media and scholarly attention in recent years, mainstream analyses overlook the role of gender, even as women are the fastest-growing segment of the incarcerated population in the United States. This article argues that women’s incarceration and the gendered aspects of the carceral state need to become more prominent in the national narrative, and that museums and public history institutions, in partnership with local communities, have the potential to lead this effort. Archival research and oral history interviews with community activists on the ground shed light on the gendered aspects of incarceration in the United States while, at the same time, amplifying the voices of community members and activists. Doing so provides a model for how museums and public history professionals can become active participants in promoting social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on 2,535 children included in the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, we investigate how the legal status of immigrant parents shapes their children’s behavioral functioning. Variation in internalizing and externalizing problems among Mexican youth with undocumented mothers, documented or naturalized citizen mothers, and U.S.-born mothers is analyzed using a comparative framework that contrasts their experience with that of other ethnoracial groups. Our findings reinforce the importance of differentiating children of immigrants by parental legal status in studying health and well-being. Children of undocumented Mexican migrants have significantly higher risks of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems than their counterparts with documented or naturalized citizen mothers. Regression results are inconsistent with simple explanations that emphasize group differences in socioeconomic status, maternal mental health, or family routines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: We use micro-data to investigate the relationship between unemployment and mortality in the United States using Logistic regression on a sample of over 16,000 individuals. We consider baselines from 1984 to 1993 and investigate mortality up to ten years from the baseline. We show that poor local labor market conditions are associated with higher mortality risk for working-aged men and, specifically, that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate increases their probability of dying within one year of baseline by 6%. There is little to no such relationship for people with weaker labor force attachments such as women or the elderly. Our results contribute to a growing body of work that suggests that poor economic conditions pose health risks and illustrate an important contrast with studies based on aggregate data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the context of shrinking service dollars and an increased demand for rehabilitation services, state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies have had to develop new strategies for ensuring priority service delivery to individuals with the most significant disabilities (MSD), should they not have sufficient resources to serve all eligible individuals. Given the limited knowledge base on how agencies are accomplishing this mandate, the purpose of this paper is to present VR agency strategies focused on managing outreach, service access, and caseflow to prioritize services to individuals with MSD. We used a modified Delphi process to select among nominated practices related to serving individuals with MSD. Seven VR agencies were identified through this process as having promising management strategies that were then investigated through case studies. Strategies include tools to manage priority categories, fiscal and human resources, performance, wait lists, and stakeholder communication. Implications for policy, agency practice, and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child health is fundamental to well-being and achievement throughout the life course. Prior research has demonstrated strong associations between familial socioeconomic resources and children's health outcomes, with especially poor health outcomes among disadvantaged youth who experience a concentration of risks, yet little is known about the influence of maternal health as a dimension of risk for children. This research used nationally representative U.S. data from the National Health Interview Surveys in 2007 and 2008 (N = 7,361) to evaluate the joint implications of maternal health and socioeconomic disadvantage for youth. Analyses revealed that maternal health problems were present in a substantial minority of families, clustered meaningfully with other risk factors, and had serious implications for children's health. These findings support the development of health policies and interventions aimed at families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies of religion's role in society, especially those focused on individuals and analyzing survey data, conceptualize and measure religiosity as ranging from low to high on a single measure or a summary index of multiple measures. Other concepts, such as 'lived religion,' 'believing without belonging,' or 'fuzzy fidelity' emphasize what scholars have noted for decades: humans are rarely consistently low, medium, or high across dimensions of religiosity including institutional involvement, private practice, salience, or belief. A method with great promise for identifying population patterns in how individuals combine types and levels of belief, practice, and personal religious salience is latent class analysis. In this article, we use data from the first wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion's telephone survey to discuss how to select indicators of religiosity in an informed manner, as well as the implications of the number and types of indicators used for model fit. We identify five latent classes of religiosity among adolescents in the United States and their sociodemographic correlates. Our findings highlight the value of a person-centered approach to understanding how religion is lived by American adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses data drawn from nine months of fieldwork and student, teacher, and administrator interviews at a southern high school to analyze school racial conflict and the construction of racism. We find that institutional inequalities that stratify students by race and class are routinely ignored by school actors who, we argue, use the presence of so-called redneck students to plausibly deny racism while furthering the standard definition of racism as blatant prejudice and an individual trait. The historical prominence of rednecks as a southern cultural identity augments these claims, leading to an implicit division of school actors into friendly/nonracist and unfriendly/racist and allowing school actors to set boundaries on the meaning of racism. Yet these rhetorical practices and the institutional structures they mask contributed to racial tensions, culminating in a race riot during our time at the school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his valedictory lecture, concluding twenty-five years teaching at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Fred Halliday examines three aspects of the changing reality and intellectual context of International Relations. Placing a broad interpretation on the concept of the ‘post-hegemonic’ he looks at the changing nature of American power, the growing diversity of, and challenges to, the discipline of International Relations, and the mixed record of different conceptions of internationalism. This lecture is a reassertion of the necessity and vitality of academic reflection on International Relations, a challenge to much conventional thinking on issues of globalization, and a reassertion of the need for, and complexity of, a commitment to global values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we investigated the impact of health on domestic migration within the USA. We find that, for men below 60 years of age, a move from the middle to the bottom of the health distribution reduces mobility by 32-40 per cent. Non-random attrition from the panel implies that these are lower bounds. By contrast, we find evidence that, among older men, there is higher mobility at the top and bottom of the health distribution than there is in the middle. For women, we find no evidence of a relationship between their own health and mobility, although spouse's health does affect the mobility of married women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since at least 2001, the Supreme Court of the United States has signaled that the jurisprudence of the writ of habeas corpus, and its possible suspension, should be informed by an understanding of the writ and of the Habeas Suspension Clause in the U.S. Constitution "as it existed in 1789." This Article recovers the historical basis of the Suspension Clause. It begins by exploring, in the English context, previously unexamined court archives and other manuscript sources. It then traces the path of the writ across the British Empire in the years before 1789. Finally, it analyzes early American uses of the writ, including its treatment in the Judiciary Act of 1789 and Chief Justice John Marshall's decision in Ex parte Bollman. The Article concludes that the writ's peculiar force was the product of judicial rather than statutory innovation; that judicial authority was premised on the idea that judges enacted powers peculiar to the king-his prerogative-when they used the writ; that this meant that judges focused more on the behavior of jailers rather than the rights of prisoners; that this focus gave the writ its surprisingly wide coverage as to persons and places; and that the implications of this history for current cases involving the claims of Guantanamo Bay detainees are significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on treatment costs for youths receiving multisystemic therapy or hospitalization after a psychiatric crisis. Association of multisystemic therapy with average net savings of $1,617 per youth treated compared with usual services; Similarity of costs during 12-month follow-up period between treatments; Better short-term cost-effectiveness of multisystemic therapy than usual inpatient care and community aftercare; Equivalent long-term cost-effectiveness of the two treatments.

The article discusses about the offshoring or outsourcing of jobs from the U.S. Customer service center jobs from companies like American Express Financial Advisors are being offshored to countries such as India. Even major software companies are outsourcing their jobs to India. Proponents of offshoring see it as a way of saving costs and boosting innovation and productivity in corporate America. The restrictions on visa causes offshoring of job, therefore, the rules and regulations related to visa should be repealed. Opponents of offshoring debate the implementation and use of the nonimmigrant visa, H-1B visa, that allows highly skilled foreigners into the country to fill gaps in the U.S. workforce.

This study examined relations between two types of control (primary and secondary) and the psychological and community adjustment of adolescent offenders. Prior to release from confinement, 279 male adolescent offenders were interviewed about their control beliefs and a number of adjustment variables, including emotional/behavior problems, feelings of despair, expectations to avoid recontact with the law, and recognition of costs for reoffending. In addition, probation officers were interviewed regarding the participants' adjustment to the community 8 weeks following their release and official records were searched for a 6-month period to determine the nature and timing of any reincarcerations. Secondary control was significantly associated with maladjustment for all psychological and behavioral outcomes. When predicting reincarceration, this relationship was qualified by a significant interaction with primary control, such that those who recidivated the soonest had high levels of both primary and secondary control. These data suggest that secondary control beliefs may be maladaptive among adolescent offenders, particularly when perceived primary control is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Increasing threats to wildlife have made assessing their populations, health, and adaptation to stressors ever more important. The use of environmental DNA to make these assessments is relatively new and offers many advantages, such as non-lethal sampling. How novel technologies such as these are framed in the news media is critically important because the general public gathers much of its information about scientific developments from the media, and public perceptions can impact use of technology, responses to data derived from its use, and ethical concerns. To date, media constructions of eDNA and perceptions among the general public have not been examined. The current paper begins to address this gap by undertaking an examination of media coverage of eDNA in Canada and the United States for the past approximately twenty years—likely a critical period in shaping understandings of and responses to eDNA. The findings indicate that eDNA is framed as a powerful tool, yet the social concerns that receive the most attention are those where there are financial interests at play, and these interests have to date eclipsed attending to relevant ethical considerations. Environmental DNA (eDNA) is an emerging technology used for understanding ecosystems, environmental change, and stressors. Cellular and extracellular DNA are collected from environmental samples instead of individual wildlife animals, and as such eDNA comes with associated logistical and ethical benefits. It is increasingly being used, yet to date public knowledge and perceptions of eDNA have not been explored. Given that most of the public gathers scientific information from news media sources, this is a logical first place to start. This paper reports on a framing and agenda-setting analysis of news media coverage of eDNA in Canada and the United States from 2000 to 2020. The findings indicate that eDNA is being framed as an emerging and powerful tool, although questions regarding its validity and reliability are raised vis-à-vis identifying the presence of invasive species. Less than half of the news articles analyzed address broader social or ethical issues in relation to eDNA, and the majority focus on the potential financial impacts of eDNA findings on development projects and business interests. The potential ethical advantages of non-lethal sampling methods used via eDNA sampling are not addressed, nor are the potential ethical issues raised by its potential use in bioprospecting, indicating that the current state of agenda setting regarding eDNA in these newspapers is focused on economic impacts, to the exclusion of potential ethical issues. This unfolding news coverage will likely be key to understanding public perceptions of this novel technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs data from the United States Census to raise questions about the historical demography of the legal profession in the United States between 1850 and 1980. I describe in turn (1) national lawyer population trends, (2) regional shifts in the number and ratio of lawyers to population, and (3) changes in the gender composition of the profession. The paper then considers issues concerned with demand theories of lawyer population dynamics, monopoly and supply theories, and theories of gender segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reviews findings for the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) for school mental health (SMH) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Since its development in the late 2000s, the ISF has been supported by federally funded centers for SMH and PBIS, and, guided by a national workgroup, is being implemented in >50 communities in the United States. This experimental evaluation of the ISF involved an RCT implemented in 24 schools in two southeastern states, with the ISF implemented in eight schools, PBIS alone implemented in eight schools, and typically co-located PBIS+SMH implemented in eight schools. Related to very poor implementation, documented by two sources of fidelity data, two ISF schools were dropped from major analyses; hence, the study used a treatment on the treated (ToT; Rubin, 1974) as compared to a more traditional Intent-to-Treat approach (ITT; Lachin, 2000). This is the first paper from this large study, with emphasis here on proximal variables and school discipline. Within schools' multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), ISF schools delivered more Tier 2 (early intervention) and Tier 3 (treatment) interventions to a greater proportion of students than the other two conditions by the second year of the intervention. There was also a dramatic difference in the provision of interventions by community mental health clinicians in ISF schools (almost half of interventions delivered) as compared to PBIS+SMH schools (around 3% of interventions delivered), underscoring the critical role of the ISF in integrating clinicians into MTSS teams and core school functions in SMH. As compared to the other two conditions, ISF schools also had reduced office discipline referrals (ODRs) and in-school suspensions, as well as reduced ODRs and out-of-school suspensions for African American students. Findings are discussed in relation to future directions of education-mental health system partnerships in improving the delivery and impact of SMH programs and services, demonstrated in the ISF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This preliminary investigation explored associations between African American students' perceptions of racial fairness, dimensions of school engagement (behavioral, emotional, cognitive) and school discipline (office discipline referrals, out-of-school suspensions), and the role of gender as an important social context for these associations. In this cross-sectional investigation, participants were 151 (78 girls; 73 boys) high school students from the southeastern United States who reported on their perceptions of the school's racial fairness and their engagement. Discipline outcomes were retrieved from school record data. For girls, results revealed a significant indirect relationship (small to medium effect) between perceived racial fairness and office discipline referrals through emotional engagement. For boys, a significant indirect association of perceived racial fairness on office discipline referrals (medium effect) and out-of-school suspensions (large effect) through behavioral engagement was found. Implications for our findings are discussed for the work of school psychologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]