Fair Start Research Articles

An evaluation of in utero polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon exposure on the neonatal meconium microbiome

IntroductionIn utero exposure to environmental polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is associated with neurodevelopmental impairments[1–8], prematurity[9–12] and low birthweight[9,13–15]. The gut microbiome serves as an intermediary between self and external environment; therefore, exploring the impact of PAH on microbiota may elucidate their role in disease. Here, we evaluated the effect of in utero PAH exposure on meconium microbiome. MethodsWe evaluated 49 mother-child dyads within Fair Start Birth Cohort with full term delivery and adequate meconium sampling. Prenatal PAH was measured using personal active samplers worn for 48 h during third trimester. Post-processing, 35 samples with adequate biomass were evaluated for association between tertile of PAH exposure (high (H) vs low/medium (L/M)) and microbiome diversity. ResultsNo significant differences were observed in alpha diversity metrics, Chao1 and Shannon index, between exposure groups for total PAH. However, alpha diversity metrics were negatively associated with log benzo[a]anthracene (BaA) and log chrysene (Chry) with high exposure, but positively associated with log benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) with low/medium exposure. After adjustment for birthweight and sex, alpha diversity metrics were negatively associated with log BaA, BaP, Chry, Indeno (Zhang et al., 2021; Perera et al., 2018)pyrene (IcdP) and total PAH with high exposure. Conversely, with low/medium exposure, alpha diversity metrics positively correlated with log BaP and benzo[b]fluoranthane (BbF). No significant difference in beta diversity was observed across groups using UniFrac, weighted UniFrac, or Bray-Curtis methods. Differential expression analysis showed differentially abundant taxa between exposure groups. ConclusionBacterial taxa were detectable in 35/49 (71%) meconium samples. Altered alpha diversity metrics and differentially abundant taxa between groups suggest in utero PAH exposure may impede early colonization. Sample size is limited, but these findings provide supporting evidence for wider scale research. Research on long-term impact of prenatal PAH exposure on childhood health outcomes is ongoing. Differential effects of specific PAHs need further evaluation.

(205) Individual Variation in Affective Cognition Driven by Postpartum Depression in the Fair Start Birth Cohort

(205) Individual Variation in Affective Cognition Driven by Postpartum Depression in the Fair Start Birth Cohort

Associations between prenatal exposure to second hand smoke and infant self-regulation in a New York city longitudinal prospective birth cohort

BackgroundPrenatal exposure to active or passive maternal smoking –also referred to as second hand smoke (SHS) exposure – are associated with externalizing behaviors, hyperactivity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, problems which derive in part from altered self-regulation. ObjectivesDetermine the influence of prenatal SHS on infant self-regulation using direct measures of infant behavior in 99 mothers from the Fair Start birth cohort followed at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health. MethodsSelf-regulation was operationalized with self-contingency, the likelihood of maintaining/changing behavior from second-to-second, measured via split-screen video recordings of mothers playing with their 4-month infants. Mother and infant facial and vocal affect, gaze-on/-off partner, and mother touch were coded on a 1 s time-base. Third trimester prenatal SHS was assessed via self-report of a smoker in the home. Weighted-lag time-series models tested conditional effects of SHS-exposure (vs. non-exposure) on infant self-contingency for eight modality-pairings (e.g., mother gaze-infant gaze). Individual-seconds time-series models and analysis of predicted values at t0 interrogated significant weighted-lag findings. Because prior findings link developmental risk factors with lowered self-contingency, we hypothesized that prenatal SHSSHS would predict lowered infant self-contingency. ResultsRelative to non-exposed infants, those who were prenatally exposed to SHS had lower self-contingency (more variable behavior) in all eight models. Follow-up analyses showed that, given infants were likely to be in the most negative facial or vocal affect, those with prenatal SHS were more likely to make larger behavioral changes, moving into less negative or more positive affect and to alternate between gaze-on and off mother. Mothers who were exposed to SHS during pregnancy (vs. non-exposed) showed a similar, albeit less prevalent, pattern of larger changes out of negative facial affect. ConclusionThese findings extend prior work linking prenatal SHS with youth dysregulated behavior, showing similar effects in infancy, a critically important period that sthe stage for future child development.

Addressing educational disadvantage in Northern Ireland 1921–2021: a history of squandered opportunities?

ABSTRACT A century after partition, this article presents a critical reflection on efforts to address educational disadvantage in Northern Ireland using a Foucauldian genealogical theoretical framework. Beset by religious, political and cultural divisions from the very formation of the state in 1921, the article charts the history of opportunities heralded and then lost, including the initially ambitious though arguably naïve vision of the first Minister of Education, Lord Londonderry; the post-war egalitarian promise of the 1947 Education Act; and the introduction of the common Northern Ireland Curriculum in 1989. It is argued that, historically, education and in particular addressing educational disadvantage has not been a key policy priority for successive governments in Northern Ireland, whose attention has instead too often focused on political power struggles. Set against such a context of political instability and intransigence, the article critically examines the latest and perhaps most promising of all opportunities presented by the publication of A Fair Start, the final report and action plan of the Expert Panel on Educational Underachievement in Northern Ireland, established under the terms of the New Decade, New Approach political settlement of January 2020 and published in June 2021.

The Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

The CBM experiment will investigate highly compressed baryonic matter created in A+A collisions at the new FAIR research center. With a beam energy range up to 11 AGeV for the heaviest nuclei at the SIS 100 accelerator, CBM will investigate the QCD phase diagram in the intermediate range, i.e. at moderate temperatures but high net-baryon densities. This intermediate range of the QCD phase diagram is of particular interest, because a first order phase transition ending in a critical point and possibly new highdensity phases of strongly interacting matter are expected. In this range of the QCD phase diagram only exploratory measurements have been performed so far. CBM, as a next generation, high-luminosity experiment, will substantially improve our knowledge of matter created in this region of the QCD phase diagram and characterize its properties by measuring rare probes such as multi-strange hyperons, dileptons or charm, but also with event-by-event fluctuations of conserved quantities, and collective flow of identified particles. The experimental preparations with special focus on hadronic observables and strangeness is presented in terms of detector development, feasibility studies and fast track reconstruction. Preparations are progressing well such that CBM will be ready with FAIR start. As quite some detectors are ready before, they will be used as upgrades or extensions of already running experiments allowing for a rich physics program prior to FAIR start.

Full-Day Kindergarten and Long-Term Health Prospects of Low-Income and Minority Children

& 2014 Publ Since its beginning 40 years ago, the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) has recognized that children don’t come in pieces and has pursued a mission to ensure all children a healthy start, a head start, a fair start, a safe start, and a moral start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. So, I am very encouraged to see the Community Guide Systematic Review Team apply the high evidentiary standard of its Community Guide systematic review process to assess the impact of fullday kindergarten. The review assessed its impact, in comparison to half-day or alternate-day full-day kinder­ garten, on educational achievement, which may help predict longer-term educational attainment and longterm education-related health outcomes. The conclusion that there is strong evidence full-day kindergarten significantly improves reading and mathe­ matics achievement, which are recognized predictors of educational attainment and education-related health outcomes, should spark action by all of us across disciplines and areas affecting children seeking to pro­ mote long-term gains for children’s health and well­ being. The likelihood that these positive impacts in health outcomes can advance health equity if targeted in lowincome and minority communities makes action even more urgent. The research review is especially timely given current national attention to the need for greater investments in a continuum of quality early childhood development and learning that begins with voluntary home visiting pro­ grams and includes Early Head Start, Head Start, child care, pre-kindergarten and full-day kindergarten at one end, and at the other end, a goal of college and career readiness that will contribute not only to individual success but to our nation’s economic success as well. Urgent, persistent action is needed now. There is much to build on.

Beyond Individual Responsibility for Lifestyle: Granting a Fresh and Fair Start to the Regretful

As lifestyle diseases put a heavy burden on health care expenditures, voices are raised and win in sound to hold people responsible for their unhealthy lifestyle. Most of the arguments in favour of responsibility are backward-looking. In this paper, we describe the distributional consequences of these backward-looking measures and show that they are very harsh on those who regret a past unhealthy lifestyle. We demonstrate that it is possible to take policy measures which respect individual responsibility but which are at the same time able to grant fresh starts to individuals who regret their past unhealthy lifestyle (which is an application of Fleurbaey (2005)). This “forgiving” policy is confronted with a moral hazard problem, however. In general the regulator does not observe whether individuals really regret their past choices or if they just pretend to have changed preferences in order to enjoy the compensatory measures for regretful people. In this paper, we argue that the health setting offers interesting opportunities to move beyond this moral hazard problem and offer a solution through the use of redistributive instruments that are conditional on lifestyle changes.

A level playing field: African American athletes and the republic of sports

As Americans, we believe there ought to be a level playing field for everyone. Even if we don't expect to finish first, we do expect a fair start. Only in sports have African Americans actually found that elusive level ground. But at the same time, black players offer an ironic perspective on the athlete-hero, for they represent a group historically held to be without social honor. In his first new collection of sports essays since Tuxedo Junction (1989), the noted cultural critic Gerald Early investigates these contradictions as they play out in the sports world and in our deeper attitudes toward the athletes we glorify. Early addresses a half-century of heated cultural issues ranging from integration to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Writing about Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood, he reconstructs pivotal moments in their lives and explains how the culture, politics, and economics of sport turned with them. Taking on the subtexts, racial and otherwise, of the controversy over remarks Rush Limbaugh made about quarterback Donovan McNabb, Early restores the political consequence to an event most commentators at the time approached with predictable bluster. The essays in this book circle around two perennial questions: What other, invisible contests unfold when we watch a sporting event? What desires and anxieties are encoded in our worship of (or disdain for) high-performance athletes? These essays are based on the Alain Locke lectures at Harvard University's Du Bois Institute.

The FAIR start

At the 4th of October 2010 nine countries signed the international agreement on the construction of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, FAIR. Adjacent to the existing accelerator complex of the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt/Germany, FAIR substantially expands research goals and technical possibilities. It will provide worldwide unique accelerator and experimental facilities allowing for a large variety of unprecedented fore-front research in hadron, nuclear, atomic and plasma physics as well as applied sciences which will be described in this article briefly.

First Come, First Served: Delayed Fertilization Does Not Enhance Pollen Competition in a Wind-Pollinated Tree,Fraxinus excelsiorL. (Oleaceae)

Under natural conditions pollen vectors act stochastically, and the order in which pollen arrives can influence seed paternity. In a number of wind-pollinated taxa, however, fertilization does not occur immediately. It has been proposed that delayed fertilization promotes pollen competition by providing a “fair start” for pollen tubes. To test this hypothesis we compared paternity after simultaneous and consecutive pollinations with multiple donors in Fraxinus excelsior. Additionally, we investigated pollen tube growth in naturally pollinated flowers. Under natural conditions pollen grains arrived on the stigma one by one, and their mean number reached 6 after 10 d of anthesis. A pollen tube from the first-arriving pollen grain entered the style after 24 h and reached the base on the second day following pollination. Fertilization by nuclei from the same first-arriving pollen tube occurred after stigma necrosis about 3 wk later. Paternity tests confirmed that pollen applied first in the experimental pollinations had an overwhelming advantage over pollen applied 24 h later. As delayed fertilization does not play a role in prezygotic selection in this species, flowering phenology might be more important for paternity success than pollen tube growth performance.

It's the Rationale that Counts: A Reply to Newton

In "Discrimination and Disidentification: The Fair-Start Defense of Affirmative Action," I argued that affirmative action preferences are jus tified as a means of restoring the conditions of a fair start by negating an unfair competitive disadvantage caused by institutional racism and sexism. The argument draws on the work of Claude M. Steele, who has shown that the stereotypes about intellectual ability supporting structures of institutional discrimination cause

A Fair Defense of a False Start: A Reply to Kenneth Himma

above, Kenneth Himma argues for a limited permission to prefer candidates for admission to educational opportunities and for employment on the basis of color or gender. With this argument, he steps into the middle of a controversy by now 30 years in the festering, to which at a much earlier date we have contributed. We argued that all such preferences were unjustified, and that seems to disagree with Himma’s thesis, hence the invitation to take him on. We do so with great gusto. Our first task will be to get very clear on just what Himma does say and does not say, so that we do not end up boxing with straw men in our defense. His claim, as we take it, is that the Fair Start Defense (FSD) of Affirmative Action (racial and sexual preference) Programs, as applied to hiring and admissions decisions, can be grounded in the data available for the academic (especially) accomplishments of women and AfricanAmericans. The data show no particular correlation between academic achievement and “self-esteem,” but do show a correlation between academic achievement and the importance attached to that achievement by the student. For the first reason, the defense of racial integration (and therefore of certain kinds of preferences) in education presented by the Court in Brown vs. School Board in 1954, must fail. The Court took judicial notice of the fact that “separate” is inherently unequal since the fact of segregation damages the self-esteem of the black child and therefore makes it impossible for him to compete on equal terms from that point on. That turns out to be false; there is no correlation between academic achievement and measures of selfesteem. But there is evidence that African Americans and women at least attribute less importance to academic achievement than their peers of a different racial heritage or gender configuration, as Himma points out. Therefore it can be argued that the institutionalized racism and sexism that figures so largely in our nation’s recent history has had an adverse effect on the goals and aspirations of blacks and women. From that it can be surmised that they may be expected (if no action is taken) to continue to be underrepresented in the advantageous schools and jobs. In the competition for such favored positions, they must start behind the line from which their lighter and more advantaged brothers begin, and therefore it cannot appear to be unjust to allow those preferences which amount to constructing a fair start to the race. Even as, in a footrace in which one runner starts ahead of the gun, it will seem proper to penalize that runner in calculating A Fair Defense of a False Start: A Reply to Kenneth Himma Lisa Newton

Why Some Children Succeed Despite the Odds and Fair Start for Children: Lessons Learned from Seven Demonstration Projects

Why Some Children Succeed Despite the Odds and Fair Start for Children: Lessons Learned from Seven Demonstration Projects

Book Reviews

Book Reviw in this Article:Fair Start for Children: Lessons Learned from Seven Demonstration Projects. Edited by M. Lamer, R. Halpern & O. Harkavy.Growing up with a Chronic Disease: The Impact on Children and their Families. By Christine Eiser.Black, White or Mixed Race? Race and Racism in the Lives of Young People of Mixed Parentage. By Barbara Tizard and Ann Phoenix.Pretending at Home: Early Development in a Sociocultural Context. By W. L. Haight & P. Miller.Children and Disasters. Edited by C. F. Saylor.Young Children's Close Relationships: Beyond Attachment. By J. Dunn.Adolescent Sexual Behaviour and Childbearing. By L. S. Zabin & S. C. Hayward.

Fair Start for Children: Lessons Learned from Seven Demonstration Projects

Introduction l The Fair Start Story--An Overview The Programms 2. Appalachian Communities Help Their Own: the Maternal infant Health Outreach Worker Project 3. Outreach to Migrant Farmworker Families: The Fair Start Project 4. Giving the Children of Austin, Texas a Fair Start: The Parent Support Programme 5. A Rural Clinic Reaches Out: The Rural Alabwna Pregnancy and Infant Health Project 6. A Bridge to the New World: The Haitian Perinatal Intervention Project 7. Sharing the Transition: The Adolescent Parents Project 8. A Medical Center Serves Its Neighbourhood: The Child Survival Programme 9. Issues of Program Design and Irnplementation IO.Program Operations: Time Allocation and Cost Analysis II.Realistic Expectations: Review of Evaluation Findings The Child Survival/ Fair Start initiative in Context References Index.

Fair start for children. M. Larner, R. Halpern, and O. Harkavy (Eds.), New Haven and London: Yale university press, 1992

Infant Mental Health JournalVolume 15, Issue 3 p. 316-317 Book Review Fair start for children. M. Larner, R. Halpern, and O. Harkavy (Eds.), New Haven and London: Yale university press, 1992 Sonya Bemporad, Sonya BemporadSearch for more papers by this author Sonya Bemporad, Sonya BemporadSearch for more papers by this author First published: Autumn (Fall) 1994 https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(199423)15:3<316::AID-IMHJ2280150308>3.0.CO;2-1AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume15, Issue3Autumn (Fall) 1994Pages 316-317 RelatedInformation

Fair Start for Children: Lessons Learned From Seven Demonstration Projects

I do not believe that the scores of planners currently devoting long hours to health care reform would appreciate learning that payment systems for medical care have little to do with improving health. Where children are concerned, for example, housing, parental education and employment, traffic engineering, nutrition, alcohol, drugs, and guns have more impact than the services provided in physicians' offices, hospitals, and clinics. Neither managed competition nor any other financing scheme will help with the ravages of low birth weight, fetal alcohol syndrome, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or neglect and deprivation. Even less imposing problems like chronic asthma, iron deficiency anemia, baby bottle caries, sexually transmitted diseases, and hypertension of pregnancy are unlikely to be affected by the reforms currently being discussed. What will help in the view of many of us who specialize in care of the poor are outreach services that improve coordination between medical facilities and

The twelve who survive: strengthening programmes of early childhood development in the Third World

Section One: Setting the Stage 1. Why Invest in Early Childhood Development? 2. Where We Are and How We Got There, Section Two: In Search of Conceptual Clarity 3. What Do They Mean and What Do We Know 4. Trends, Frameworks and Relationships: Collecting the Pieces 5. Programme Approaches and Guidelines, Section Three: A State of the Practice 6. Some Examples of What Can Be Done 7. Beyond Centres and Pre-Schools: Some Additional Examples of What Can Be Done, Section Four: Combining Programme Concerns 8. Integrating Programmes: An Elusive Goal 9. Relating Health and Nutrition to Social and Psychological Development 10. Relating Child Development to Schooling 11. Relating Child Care, Women's Work, and Child Development, Section Five: Involving People 12. Community Participation: Towards Patnership 13. Understanding Cultural Differences in Childrearing Practices and Patterns, Section Six: How Big and What Will It Cost 14. Going to Scale 15. Costs and Resource Mobilisation, Section Seven: Conclusions 16 Toward a Fair Start for The Twelve Who Survive.

Moving Towards a Fair Start: equal gender opportunities and the careers service

abstract Although there is now a considerable literature on gender inequality in education and employment, there is virtually no research on the Careers Service which provides a bridge between the two. Based on a national survey of all Careers Services conducted in 1987, this paper explores the significance afforded to gender discrimination and the nature and content of equal opportunities policies designed to counter it. It draws attention to the differences in meaning which the term ‘equal opportunities’ can have and to the changing context in which equal opportunities policies now operate.

A fair start for children? ‐‐ Patterns of response to pre‐school services and the identification of families at risk

A fair start for children? ‐‐ Patterns of response to pre‐school services and the identification of families at risk