Cumulative Childhood Adversity,Educational Attainment,and Active Life Expectancy Among U.S. Adults

Studies of the early-life origins of adult physical functioning and mortality have found that childhood health and socioeconomic context are important predictors, often irrespective of adult experiences. However, these studies have generally assessed functioning and mortality as distinct processes and used cross-sectional prevalence estimates that neglect the interplay of disability incidence, recovery, and mortality. Here, we examine whether early-life disadvantages both shorten lives and increase the number and fraction of years lived with functional impairment. We also examine the degree to which educational attainment mediates and moderates the health consequences of early-life disadvantages. Using the 1998–2008 Health and Retirement Study, we examine these questions for non-Hispanic whites and blacks aged 50–100 years using multistate life tables. Within levels of educational attainment, adults from disadvantaged childhoods lived fewer total and active years, and spent a greater portion of life impaired compared with adults from advantaged childhoods. Higher levels of education did not ameliorate the health consequences of disadvantaged childhoods. However, because education had a larger impact on health than did childhood socioeconomic context, adults from disadvantaged childhoods who achieved high education levels often had total and active life expectancies that were similar to or better than those of adults from advantaged childhoods who achieved low education levels.     

Amnestic Heterosexism and Bystander Responses to Anti-Gay Bullying

Amnestic heterosexism (AH) reflects the belief that, in contemporary society, people who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) no longer experience discrimination related to sexual orientation. We investigated potential associations between individuals’ AH beliefs and their responses to anti-gay bullying. Heterosexual undergraduates (N = 238) completed a measure of AH before responding to a scenario in which a man accuses another man of being a “fag.” As expected, those with greater AH beliefs perceived the situation as less severe/dangerous, felt less personally responsible to intervene, and were more blaming toward the target of bullying. In multivariate analyses, AH was indirectly associated with intent to confront the perpetrator via a path of reduced personal responsibility. Our results indicate that beliefs denying the existence of discrimination based on sexual orientation reduce feelings of personal responsibility to address anti-gay bullying. In turn, low personal responsibility inhibits confrontation of those who perpetrate bullying behaviors.     

结构紧凑操作简便的倒置式荧光显微镜的应用

介绍了来自于首批LumaScoe倒置式荧光显微镜使用者在美国不同研究实验室、教学实验室、病人检查室及家庭客厅等处采集到的不同样品的新近图像。     

Building resilience to environmental problems in Kenya: lessons for aid organizations from three successful community-based processes

Vulnerable communities are disproportionately affected by environmental changes and problems. Developing interventions that aim to foster resilience by utilizing existing local strengths can support these communities. This study explored experiences of community resilience to environmental problems in Kenya. This article offers 3 successful processes of mutual support: culturally appropriate charity, community-based micro financing, and community-based fundraising. Lessons learned are offered, which can be supported by aid organizations to increase impact and reach.     

The Role of Dyadic Coordination in Organizing Visual Attention in 5‐Month‐Old Infants

In human infants, the ability to share attention with others is facilitated by increases in attentional selectivity and focus. Differences in early attention have been associated with socio‐cognitive outcomes including language, yet the social mechanisms of attention organization in early infancy have only recently been considered. Here, we examined how social coordination between 5‐month‐old infants and caregivers relate to differences in infant attention, including looking preferences, span, and reactivity to caregivers’ social cues. Using a naturalistic play paradigm, we found that 5‐month‐olds who received a high ratio of sensitive (jointly focused) contingent responses showed strong preferences for objects with which their caregivers were manually engaged. In contrast, infants whose caregivers exhibited high ratios of redirection (attempts to shift focus) showed no preferences for caregivers’ held objects. Such differences have implications for recent models of cognitive development, which rely on early looking preferences for adults’ manually engaged objects as a pathway toward joint attention and word learning. Further, sensitivity and redirectiveness predicted infant attention even in reaction to caregiver responses that were non‐referential (neither sensitive nor redirective). In response to non‐referentials, infants of highly sensitive caregivers oriented less frequently than infants of highly redirective caregivers, who showed increased distractibility. Our results suggest that specific dyadic exchanges predict infant attention differences toward broader social cues, which may have consequences for social‐cognitive outcomes.     

Neighborhood affluence protects against antenatal smoking: Evidence from a spatial multiple membership model

ABSTRACT

A spatial multiple membership model formalizes the effect of neighborhood affluence on antenatal smoking. The data are geocoded New Jersey birth certificate records linked to United States census tract-level data from 1999 to 2007. Neighborhood affluence shows significant spatial autocorrelation and local clustering. Better model fit is observed when incorporating the spatial clustering of neighborhood affluence into multivariate analyses. Relative to the spatial multiple membership model, the multilevel model that ignores spatial clustering produced downwardly biased standard errors; the effective sample size of the key parameter of interest (neighborhood affluence) is also lower. Residents of communities located in high-high affluence clusters likely have better access to health-promoting institutions that regulate antenatal smoking behaviors.     

Urban noise and grey-headed flying-fox vocalisations: evidence of the silentium effect

Urban Ecosystems - We investigated whether urban noise affected communication behavior of grey-headed flying-foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus), a highly vocal, communally roosting megabat species that...