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Maternal Age Differences In Cognitive Regulation: Examination Of Associations And Interactions Between Rsa And Eeg Frontoparietal Alpha Power Coherence, Jennifer D. Christensen, Martha Ann Bell, Kirby D. Deater-Deckard

Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty Publication Series

Strong cognitive regulation is advantageous for flexible, responsive parenting. Optimal cognitive regulation is reliant on associations between physiological mechanisms of central and peripheral nervous system functioning. Across middle adulthood there may be shifts in how cognitive regulation functions, reflecting changes in the associations and interactions between these physiological mechanisms. Two physiological indicators of cognitive regulation are autonomic regulation of the heart (e.g., respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and activity of the brain’s frontoparietal network (e.g., frontoparietal EEG alpha power coherence, FPc). In the current study we examined maternal age differences (N = 90, age M = 32.35 years, SD = 5.86 …

Persistence In World Export Patterns And Productive Capabilities Across Two Globalizations, Isabella M. Weber, Gregor Semieniuk,, Junshang Liang, Tom Westland

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We construct a new global commodity-level export dataset to analyze the persistence of export patterns as proxies of productive capabilities across the first and the current waves of global- ization. We find that productive capabilities are path-dependent and historical capabilities are powerful predictors of countries’ incomes today. This is robust to controlling for persistence in geography, institutions, and colonial status, and confirmed by instrumenting past capabilities with asymmetric reductions in travel times following the switch from sailing to steamboats. We also show that the “great specialization” in primary goods and manufacturing goods exporters coincided with a great polarization in global …

Capital Nationality And Economic Development, Guilherme Klein Martins

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper reviews different literature strands and performs an empirical test to evaluate how capital ownership, particularly its nationality, might affect long-run economic develop- ment. Our results indicate that low and middle-income countries with larger foreign capital stock in 1980 had lower economic growth over the next 39 years. The estimations also indi- cate that these economies developed a less specialized export basket, which became relatively more concentrated in low-tech goods. The results are inverted to high-income economies, for which the effects are positive on GDP growth and export specialization and complexi- fication. The results are in line with the …

Pregnancy And Infant Development (Pride)—A Preliminary Observational Study Of Maternal Adversity And Infant Development, Katherine Bowers, Lili Ding, Kimberly Yolton, Hong Ji, Nichole Nidey, Jerrold Meyer, Robert T. Ammerman, Judith Van Ginkel, Alonzo Folger

Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty Publication Series

Background

Children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families have a markedly elevated risk for impaired cognitive and social-emotional development. Children in poverty experience have a high risk for developmental delays. Poverty engenders disproportionate exposure to psychological adversity which may contribute to impaired offspring development; however the effect may be mitigated by social support and other aspects of resilience. Our objective was to determine the association between maternal stress, adversity and social support and early infant neurobehavior and child behavior at two and three years.

Methods

We conducted a longitudinal mother-infant cohort study nested within a regional home visiting program in Cincinnati, Ohio. …

Diversity, Globalization, And Sustainability: Introduction To Human Geography, Toby Applegate

Sustainability Education Resources

Diversity, Globalization, and Sustainability is a wide-ranging introduction to the ways people shape the world they live in. We will study the themes and concepts of human geography through the current issues and large questions that guide them. Lectures and reading will focus on the geographic aspects of cultural diversity, population issues, states vs. nations, the global economy, development, urbanization and the human transformation of the earth. We will cover major subdivisions of human geography including cultural geography, population geography, economic geography, social geography, political geography and environmental geography.

Imperfect Information And Learning: Evidence From Cotton Cultivation In Pakistan, Amal Ahmad

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Information problems are pervasive in developing economies and can hinder productivity growth. This paper studies how much rural producers in developing countries can learn from their own experience to redress important information gaps. It builds a model of learning from experience and applies it using a rich dataset on cotton farmers in Pakistan. I test whether farmers learn from cultivation experience about the pest resistance of their seeds and use this information to improve selection and productivity. I find no such learning effect and this conclusion is robust to several parameters that could signal learning. The findings document the difficulty …

Implementation Of An Evidence-Based Screening Tool For Children For Detection Of Developmental, Behavioral And Family Issues, Lyndsay Goss

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Background: Children are a vulnerable population who are at risk for a variety of developmental, behavioral and family concerns. Early intervention leads to improved outcomes. By implementing the comprehensive evidence-based screening tool the Survey of Well-being for Young Children (SWYC), within a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), outcomes for these children may be improved through early intervention.

Methods: The SWYC survey was provided to parents and guardians of children ages zero to five years at one pilot site at a FQHC in New England during well child visits (WCV) over a 6-week period. Implementation success was measured through review …

‘Disarticulation’ As A Constraint To ‘Wage-Led Growth’ In Dual- Economies, Adam Aboobaker

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Much of the recent interest in the relationship between growth and distribution has focused on advanced economies and neglected issues of development and structural transformation. The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to this gap by arguing that, even in the short-run, some of the conclusions from neo-Kaleckian models may not be robust to developing country contexts with extreme income inequality and correspondingly polarized patterns of consumption. This argument is supported by a review of, amongst other, Kalecki’s writing on development and a two-sector model building on Razmi et al (2012). The paper can be interpreted as …

Aggregate Demand Policy In Mature And Dual Economies, Peter Skott

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Aggregate demand is important, both in the short and the long run, but a basic distinction must be made between dual and mature economies. Mature economies may suffer from a structural aggregate problem ('secular stagnation'): full-employment growth may be impossible in the absence of sustained fiscal stimulus. Dual economies with high levels of open or hidden unemployment, by contrast, do not face long-run structural aggregate demand problems. They require public investment in key areas, including education and infrastructure, but the key problems concern the composition of demand and the need to expand the modern sector. These economies face structural transformation …

Kuznets, Kaya, And Shapley: The Economic And Energetic Determinants Of Carbon Emissions And The Implications For Development And Environmental Policy, Heidi Garrett-Peltier

PERI Working Papers

With global climate change becoming an increasingly pressing concern, the relationship between economic growth and environmental outcomes is as important as ever to understand, particularly in designing policies for low- and middle-income countries that incorporate both environmental and development objectives. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) shows the relationship between income and environmental outcomes. In this paper we examine the existence and shape of the EKC for 132 countries for the period 2000-2010. We add to the EKC literature by using the technique of Shapley Decomposition to assess Kaya identity factors for these 132 countries, grouped into income quartiles. The Kaya …

Spreading The Washington Consensus Into Food And Agriculture Sectors: The Case Of The International Monetary Fund, Adel Daoud, Bernhard Reinsberg, Alexander E. Kentikelenis, Thomas H. Stubbs, Lawrence P. King

PERI Working Papers

The mandate and competence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) do not cover food and agriculture policies. Yet, signs indicate that IMF enages in these policies. Scholars lack a systematic empirical foundation to monitor the extent and impact of IMF’s operations on these sectors. Based on a combination of machine and human coding, we present a comprehensive database on IMF’s policy interventions in food and agriculture. Using new data on IMF conditionality between 1980 and 2014, we assess to what extent the IMF targets these sectors through its ‘conditionalities’—policies that governments need to implement to access IMF credit. The analysis …

After Post-Development: On Capitalism, Difference, And Representation, Kiran Asher, Joel Wainwright

Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Faculty Publication Series

The post‐development school associated with the thought of Arturo Escobar treats development as a discursive invention of the West, best countered by ethnographic attention to local knowledge of people marginalised by colonial modernity. This approach promises paths to more equitable and sustainable alternatives to development. Post‐development has been criticised vigorously in the past. But despite its conceptual and political shortcomings, it remains the most popular critical approach to development and is reemerging in decolonial and pluriversal guises. This paper contends that the post‐development critique of mainstream development has run its course and deserves a fresh round of criticism. We argue …

Genetic Diversity And Economic Development: Assessing The Key Findings In Ashraf And Galor (2013), Raymond Caraher, Michael Ash

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We replicate Ashraf and Galor (2013) and find that its conclusions concerning the association between human genetic diversity and economic development depend substantially on coding errors and sample selection. We correct the coding errors and add or update data on genetic diversity and population density from high-quality sources. We find little support for the hypothesis that variation in genetic diversity among subpopulations has a systematic relationship with economic development.

The Real Exchange Rate Policy Trilemma In Developing Economies, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

This paper discusses some of the inter-temporal issues that arise in the pursuit of real undervaluation to achieve rapid development. Policy makers face a trade-off between achieving a capital stock target in a given amount of time on the one hand and boosting real wages and output in the short run, on the other. This generates a trilemma whereby development-focused policy makers can choose to pursue two out of three desirables: (1) use the real exchange rate as an instrument of development policy, (2) meet the development target within a politically relevant time frame, and (3) maintain political stability. The …

The Natural And Capital Infrastructure Of Potential Post-Electrification Wealth Creation In Kenya, Diego Ponce De Leon Barido, Simone Fobi Nsutezo, Jay Taneja

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Background

It is widely accepted that electricity is an important element for improving levels of human development and wealth creation in rural areas. Yet, little research has explored the conditions under which electrification could lead to wealth creation post-electrification. Using Kenya as a case study, this paper uses natural capital (NC) and infrastructural capital (IC) data to compare the enabling environments under which electrification could lead to wealth creation (and persistent demand for electricity) post-electrification.

Methods

We use multiple spatial data sets to create three different metrics for NC and IC and use them to create a micro-enterprise development index …

Breast Milk Stem Cells: Current Science And Implications For Preterm Infants, Carrie-Ellen Briere, Jacqueline M. Mcgrath, Todd Jensen, Adam Matson, Christine Finck

Elaine Marieb College of Nursing Faculty Publication Series

Background: The benefits of breast milk are well described, yet the mechanistic details related to how breast milk protects against acute and chronic diseases and optimizes neurodevelopment remain largely unknown. Recently, breast milk was found to contain stem cells that are thought to be involved in infant development.

Purpose: The purpose of this review was to synthesize all available research involving the characterization of breast milk stem cells to provide a basis of understanding for what is known and what still needs further exploration.

Methods/Search Strategy: The literature search was conducted between August and October 2015 using the CINAHL, PubMed, …

Knowledge Production In A Constructed Field: Reflections On Comparative And International Education, Bjorn Nordtveit

Center for International Education Faculty Publications

Adopting Maria Manzon’s theoretical framework, which draws on Foucault and proposes that comparative education as an academic field is socially constructed, I suggest that the field is neither stable nor well defined. To demonstrate this, I conduct a content analysis of the Comparative Education Review, using Klaus Krippendorff’s methodological framework to study comparative and international education (CIE) researchers’ understanding of the national—and of their related knowledge production in the field. Many comparativists express interests in multiple countries, and their knowledge production takes the form of individual country studies. The countries are habitually studied using a “problem approach” focusing on one …

The Limits To Wage-Led Growth In A Low-Income Economy, Arslan Razmi

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Neo-Kaleckian literature has actively debated whether growth is wage- or profit-led in capitalist economies. However, existing studies tend to ignore the non-tradable sector and heterogeneity within the tradable sector. This paper shows that incorporating these features renders wage-led growth in an open developing economy unfeasible in the traditional (Kaleckian) sense of the term. This result -- which follows even if one sets aside the competitiveness considerations generally seen as impeding such growth -- occurs due to the presence of a homogeneous goods-producing tradable sector that sets the ceiling to steady state growth. A corollary, in light of findings from the …

Through The Camera Lens Of Development: An Exploration Of Ngos' Representations Of Africa, Sebastian Lindstrom

Master's Capstone Projects

The purpose if this qualitative research is to acquire new knowledge in the African visual representational landscape, a digital space carefully filmed and edited by some of the most celebrated and acknowledged, mostly Western, NGOs in the world. The most watched Africa-related video from 50 NGOs were selected, downloaded and analyzed. After continuous re-watching of a 3.5 hour long set of visual data tree themes emerged. One segment relates around the NGOs intervention, another about the term or statement ‘help’, and the last theme is HIV/AIDS. The findings include the realization that the beneficiary was never explaining the intervention of …

The Role Of Parent Psychopathology In The Developmental Trajectories Of Preschool Children With Behavior Problems, Rosanna P. Breaux

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study investigated associations among different parental psychopathology dimensions and child functioning. Mothers and fathers of preschoolers with behavior problems (n = 132) completed psychopathology questionnaires when children were 3 years old. Children’s externalizing, internalizing, and social problems, academic achievement, and cognitive ability were assessed at annual home visits from age 3 to 6. In general, maternal psychopathology symptoms were associated with mothers’ reports of externalizing, internalizing, and social problems at age 3 and 6. Additionally, paternal psychopathology symptoms were associated with fathers’ reports of externalizing and internalizing problems at age 3 and 6. Mothers with more elevated psychopathology …

Working Memory Performance Across Development And Following Acute Exercise, Patrice L. Stering

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis investigates the developmental trajectory of visuo-spatial working memory as well as the potential influence of acute exercise on working memory performance. Individuals between the ages of 6 and 25 years were randomly assigned to a 30-minute bout of exercise on an elliptical trainer or to a no-exercise control condition. Participants then performed a computerized N-back task to assess working memory. Developmental results suggest that working memory ability continues to develop into early adulthood with the exact trajectory depending on the cognitive demand of the task being assessed. No difference in working memory performance was found between the exercise …

The Real Exchange Rate And Economic Growth: Some Observations On The Possible Channels, Martin G. Rapetti

Economics Department Working Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Transparency Without Accountability, Mwangi Wa Githinji, Frank Holmquist

Economics Department Working Paper Series

Kenya has been going through a period of political reform from 1991 when section 2A of the constitution that had made Kenya a de jure one party state was repealed. The reform followed a prolonged struggle by citizens both within and without the country. Their call for democracy was one that, post the fall of the Berlin wall, was embraced by western countries. Via diplomatic pressure and conditionality on aid, western donors played an important role in the repeal of section 2a, the return of multi-party elections and in the creation and reform of a number of political institutions and …

An Assessment Of Regional Partnerships For Economic Development Through The National Heritage Area Collaborative Model, Kimberley Mckee

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The National Heritage Area program administered by the National Park Service represents a collaborative partnership approach to managing large-scale natural and living landscapes. Heritage area management objectives integrate goals across disciplines including resource conservation, historic preservation, community revitalization and economic development. With the growing number of National Heritage Area designations over the past decade, increasing focus has turned towards efforts to measure program effectiveness and resulting economic impacts as a return on federal investment. Previous studies established a working program evaluation model that places emphasis on the importance of the partnership system in heritage area implementation and outcomes. The purpose …

Gloucester Marine Station: Future Development Feasibility Study, Jack F. Ahern, Ben Eli Webb

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

The study commenced in July 2009 with historical research about the site and its context, site analysis, including the existing conditions and development regulations. This analysis included: topography, soils, vegetation, structures, utilities, easements, property deed, and city, state, and federal regulations. From this analysis an assessment of future development potentials was made based on the existing data/documents from UMass files, public records, Mass GIS data, site visits, and interviews with Gloucester, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and other officials and stakeholders. From the assessment we identified potential future uses, building locations, and feasible alternative layouts of the site. These alternatives were summarily …

Transformative Temporary Use, Zenia Kotval, P. Machemer, John R. Mullin

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Faculty Publication Series

Communities employ land use planning as a way to standardize how a community looks and to ensure that land uses are distributed in an efficient and ethical manner. A temporary, seasonal, or interim use is in effect for a defined purpose and a set period of time, after which it expires. Finding productive, temporary uses for underutilized (e.g., park, sidewalk) or vacant land and buildings can reverse disinvestment, foster a sense of community, curb crime, save on maintenance costs, spur economic activity for surrounding businesses, create market demand, and raise property values. Temporary uses can be an effective community and …

Is There A Case For Formal Inflation Targeting In Sub-Saharan Africa?, James Heintz, Léonce Ndikumana

PERI Working Papers

This paper examines the question of whether inflation targeting monetary policy is an appropriate framework for sub-Saharan African countries. The paper presents an overview of inflation targeting, reviews the justification for the regime, and summarizes some major critiques. Monetary policy responses to inflation depend on the source of inflationary pressures. Therefore, the determinants of inflation in African countries are investigated, using dynamic panel data, and the implications for inflation targeting are discussed. These issues are examined in greater detail for the two African countries which have formally adopted inflation targeting, South Africa and Ghana. The analysis is placed in the …

The Contributions Of Evolutionary Divergence And Phenotypic Plasticity To Geographic Variation In The Western Fence Lizard, Sceloporus Occidentalis, Christine R. Buckley, Duncan J. Irschick, Stephen C. Adolph

Biology Department Faculty Publication Series

Local genetic adaptation and phenotypic plasticity are two mechanisms that can have marked effects on the morphology, performance, and behaviour of animals, producing geographic variation among populations. However, few studies have examined how these mechanisms interact during ontogeny to shape organismal phenotypes. We incubated eggs of the western fence lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis, from four populations (representing two latitudes and altitudes) in either a warm or cool environment in the laboratory. We then raised the hatchlings under common laboratory conditions, measured morphological and performance traits until 5 weeks of age, and compared juvenile morphology with that of field-caught adults from …

Evaluating Language Variation: Distinguishing Development And Dialect From Disorder. Special Issue, Harry N. Seymour, Barbara Zurer Pearson

Publication of the DELV tests and beyond

CONTENTS

1 Preface Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ed.D.

SECTION I: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

3 The Challenge of Language Assessment for African American English-Speaking Children: A Historical Perspective Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D.

13 Theoretical and Empirical Bases for Dialect-Neutral Language Assessment: Contributions from Theoretical and Applied Linguistics to Communication Disorders Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.

27 Steps in Designing and Implementing an Innovative Assessment Instrument Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D., and Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.

33 Dialect Identification versus Evaluation of Risk in Language Screening Lois Ciolli, M.A., C.C.C.-S.L.P., and Harry N. Seymour, Ph.D.

SECTION II: KEY CONCEPTS AND EXAMPLES FOR THE DOMAINS OF …

Supporting The Language Agenda In Teacher Development: Preparing Teachers/Or Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Students At The New Teacher Professional Development Institute, Andrew Habana Hafner

Master's Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.