Foster Parents’ Nutritional Strategies and Children’s Well-Being

Among their many responsibilities, foster parents are tasked with providing healthy food and proper nutrition to children with a variety of physical, psychological, and emotional needs. Using the lens of symbolic interactionism, this exploratory mixed methods study examined how foster parents attend to the nutritional needs of abused and neglected children. Methods used included both quantitative surveys and qualitative follow-up interviews. Surveys were completed by 23 foster parents in a large, Midwest metropolitan area. Parents reported they provided their children balanced meals, although one-third of households reported instances of food insecurity. During qualitative interviews, foster parents (N = 9) described how children arrived at their home with a variety of unhealthy eating habits, some severe in nature. Parents discussed strategies used to modify and improve eating patterns, including offering healthy food choices, having children plan meals, and gathering as a family for daily dinners. In general, parents understood the link between unhealthy eating and past childhood trauma, but also reported being unprepared for more serious eating problems like hoarding. Findings indicate that foster parents need food assistance to increase food security as well as training in assessing and responding a variety of unhealthy child eating behaviors.     

Treatment of Uncertainty in Performance Assessments for Complex Systems

When viewed at a high level, performance assessments (PAs) for complex systems involve two types of uncertainty: stochastic uncertainty, which arises because the system under study can behave in many different ways, and subjective uncertainty, which arises from a lack of knowledge about quantities required within the computational implementation of the PA. Stochastic uncertainty is typically incorporated into a PA with an experimental design based on importance sampling and leads to the final results of the PA being expressed as a complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF). Subjective uncertainty is usually treated with Monte Carlo techniques and leads to a distribution of CCDFs. This presentation discusses the use of the Kaplan/Garrick ordered triple representation for risk in maintaining a distinction between stochastic and subjective uncertainty in PAs for complex systems. The topics discussed include (1) the definition of scenarios and the calculation of scenario probabilities and consequences, (2) the separation of subjective and stochastic uncertainties, (3) the construction of CCDFs required in comparisons with regulatory standards (e.g., 40 CFR Part 191, Subpart B for the disposal of radioactive waste), and (4) the performance of uncertainty and sensitivity studies. Results obtained in a preliminary PA for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of the MACCS reactor accident consequence analysis model, and the NUREG-1150 probabilistic risk assessments are used for illustration.     

On a tobit–Birnbaum–Saunders model with an application to medical data

The tobit model allows a censored response variable to be described by covariates. Its applications cover different areas such as economics, engineering, environment and medicine. A strong assumption of the standard tobit model is that its errors follow a normal distribution. However, not all applications are well modeled by this distribution. Some efforts have relaxed the normality assumption by considering more flexible distributions. Nevertheless, the presence of asymmetry could not be well described by these flexible distributions. A real-world data application of measles vaccine in Haiti is explored, which confirms this asymmetry. We propose a tobit model with errors following a Birnbaum–Saunders (BS) distribution, which is asymmetrical and has shown to be a good alternative for describing medical data. Inference based on the maximum likelihood method and a type of residual are derived for the tobit–BS model. We perform global and local influence diagnostics to assess the sensitivity of the maximum likelihood estimators to atypical cases. A Monte Carlo simulation study is carried out to empirically evaluate the performance of these estimators. We conduct a data analysis for the mentioned application of measles vaccine based on the proposed model with the help of the R software. The results show the good performance of the tobit–BS model.     

Appalachian Women: A Study of Resiliency Assets and Cultural Values

ABSTRACT

There is scant literature addressing Appalachian women, their resiliency, and their cultural values. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore what constitutes resiliency for Appalachian women. The following research questions were explored: (a) Are Appalachian values reflected in Appalachian women's perceived resiliency during their school-age years, ages 5–18; and (b) if so, which Appalachian values emerged in these women's external and internal developmental assets? Ten Appalachian women were interviewed and asked to reflect on developmental assets during their school-age years. The study results indicated a relationship between developmental resiliency assets during youth as they corresponded with nine Appalachian values. The results indicate that Appalachian women's cultural values foster their strengths and resilience. This study supports the significance of practitioners acknowledging the importance of cultural values in counseling strategy. Implications and suggestions for future research are suggested     

Physical and mental health changes in aging foster parents: Do child behavioural problems hasten declines?

This study examined foster parent physical and mental health over time. It was hypothesized that increased severity and frequency of child behavioural problems, whether externalizing or internalizing, would be associated with poorer health over time, especially for foster parents ≥60 years of age. Data from the baseline and Wave 2 interview of the 2010 National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well‐Being were used. The final analytic sample included kin and nonkin foster parents who had custody of a foster child for both waves of data collection (n = 962). Ordinary Least Squares regression models with lagged dependent variables showed that foster parents ≥60 had deteriorating physical health over time, but caregiver age alone had no association with worsening mental health. However, parents ≥60 caring for children with externalizing behavioural problems had significantly improved physical health. Mental health of parents ≥60 significantly diminished if child externalizing or internalizing problems worsened. Findings indicate that for aging foster parents, externalizing child behaviours may stimulate physical activity and improved physical health, yet any type of child behavioural problem can deteriorate mental health functioning.     

Provision of a Wildfire Risk Map: Informing Residents in the Wildland Urban Interface

Wildfires in the wildland urban interface (WUI) are an increasing concern throughout the western United States and elsewhere. WUI communities continue to grow and thus increase the wildfire risk to human lives and property. Information such as a wildfire risk map can inform WUI residents of potential risks and may help to efficiently sort mitigation efforts. This study uses the survey-based contingent valuation (CV) method to examine annual household willingness to pay (WTP) for the provision of a wildfire risk map. Data were collected through a mail survey of the East Mountain WUI area in the State of New Mexico (USA). The integrated empirical approach includes a system of equations that involves joint estimation of WTP values, along with measures of a respondent's risk perception and risk mitigation behavior. The median estimated WTP is around U.S. $12 for the annual wildfire risk map, which covers at least the costs of producing and distributing available risk information. Further, providing a wildfire risk map can help address policy goals emphasizing information gathering and sharing among stakeholders to mitigate the effects of wildfires.     

Competing Failure Risk Analysis Using Evidence Theory

Safety systems are important components of high-consequence systems that are intended to prevent the unintended operation of the system and thus the potentially significant negative consequences that could result from such an operation. This presentation investigates and illustrates formal procedures for assessing the uncertainty in the probability that a safety system will fail to operate as intended in an accident environment. Probability theory and evidence theory are introduced as possible mathematical structures for the representation of the epistemic uncertainty associated with the performance of safety systems, and a representation of this type is illustrated with a hypothetical safety system involving one weak link and one strong link that is exposed to a high temperature fire environment. Topics considered include (1) the nature of diffuse uncertainty information involving a system and its environment, (2) the conversion of diffuse uncertainty information into the mathematical structures associated with probability theory and evidence theory, and (3) the propagation of these uncertainty structures through a model for a safety system to obtain representations in the context of probability theory and evidence theory of the uncertainty in the probability that the safety system will fail to operate as intended. The results suggest that evidence theory provides a potentially valuable representational tool for the display of the implications of significant epistemic uncertainty in inputs to complex analyses.     

Inflammatory effects and immune system correlates of rape

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of measuring stress hormones and immunity following rape. The long-term goal is to evaluate the predictive value of stress-immune-inflammatory responses to later health outcomes. Fifteen women reporting rape were compared with 16 control participants. Serum stress hormones, proinflammatory cytokines, acute phase proteins, functional assays, and lymphocyte subsets were measured in blood samples. Women reporting rape had higher cytotoxic cells, lower B lymphocyte counts, higher proinflammatory biomarkers, and decreased lymphocyte proliferation compared to the control group. This finding suggests that rape produces activation of the innate immunity and suppression of some aspects of adaptive immunity. If these immune changes persist, they may contribute to the pathophysiology of long-term health sequelae by provoking chronic inflammation and decreased cellular immunocompetence.     

Illustration of Sampling-Based Methods for Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis

A sequence of linear, monotonic, and nonmonotonic test problems is used to illustrate sampling-based uncertainty and sensitivity analysis procedures. Uncertainty results obtained with replicated random and Latin hypercube samples are compared, with the Latin hypercube samples tending to produce more stable results than the random samples. Sensitivity results obtained with the following procedures and/or measures are illustrated and compared: correlation coefficients (CCs), rank correlation coefficients (RCCs), common means (CMNs), common locations (CLs), common medians (CMDs), statistical independence (SI), standardized regression coefficients (SRCs), partial correlation coefficients (PCCs), standardized rank regression coefficients (SRRCs), partial rank correlation coefficients (PRCCs), stepwise regression analysis with raw and rank-transformed data, and examination of scatter plots. The effectiveness of a given procedure and/or measure depends on the characteristics of the individual test problems, with (1) linear measures (i.e., CCs, PCCs, SRCs) performing well on the linear test problems, (2) measures based on rank transforms (i.e., RCCs, PRCCs, SRRCs) performing well on the monotonic test problems, and (3) measures predicated on searches for nonrandom patterns (i.e., CMNs, CLs, CMDs, SI) performing well on the nonmonotonic test problems.     

A Monte Carlo Procedure for the Construction of Complementary Cumulative Distribution Functions for Comparison with the EPA Release Limits for Radioactive Waste Disposal

A Monte Carlo procedure for the construction of complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDFs) for comparison with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) release limits for radioactive waste disposal (40 CFR 191, Subpart B) is described and illustrated with results from a recent performance assessment (PA) for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The Monte Carlo procedure produces CCDF estimates similar to those obtained with importance sampling in several recent PAs for the WIPP. The advantages of the Monte Carlo procedure over importance sampling include increased resolution in the calculation of probabilities for complex scenarios involving drilling intrusions and better use of the necessarily limited number of mechanistic calculations that underlie CCDF construction.