Close To You? How Parent-Adult Child Contact Is Influenced by Family Patterns.

Objectives: Intergenerational contacts occur in the context of other family relationships. We examine how in-person contacts among parents and all adult children affect each other, focusing on proximity and other predictors to assess whether and how visiting is correlated across adult children.

Methods: We use a modeling approach derived from an adaptation of multilevel models to provide a convenient mechanism by which to write child-specific equations, each with its own set of predictors, and wherein one child's attribute values can be attached to other children's records.

Changes in persistent organic pollutant levels from adolescence to young adulthood.

Elimination rates and their corresponding half-lives are conceptually important and intuitively accessible pharmacokinetic measures of toxicant elimination, but regression-based estimates are biased proportional to the degree of continuing (background) exposure. We propose an alternative estimator, the censored normal regression model, which uses all observations, but treats individuals whose initial level failed to exceed their follow-up level as censored observations to weight the regression estimates from those that declined between blood draws. In this manner, we derive the intrinsic elimination rate, the elimination rate free from ongoing exposure, as a parameter in a regression with an unobserved, latent dependent variable.

Life-course changes and parent-adult child contact.

Despite increased interest in parent-adult child relations, there has been little attention to how these are influenced by changes in their lives, reflecting transitions and linked lives within a life-course perspective. Hybrid multilevel models are used to analyze the change in parent-adult child contact over two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Changes in parent-child proximity, parent and child marital status, and child parental status are associated with change in contact; continued coresidence with another adult child is related to contact with non-coresidential children; but change in parent health does not affect contact.

The role of immigrant enclaves for Latino residential inequalities.

We investigate the difference that immigrant enclaves make for the residential contexts of Latino families in the U.S. We argue that enclaves may no longer function simply as temporary way stations, the classic depiction of them, because of the compromised legal status of many Latinos.

Relationships of polychlorinated biphenyls and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p'-DDE) with testosterone levels in adolescent males.

Background: Concern persists over endocrine-disrupting effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) on human growth and sexual maturation. Potential effects of toxicant exposures on testosterone levels during puberty are not well characterized.

Objectives: In this study we evaluated the relationship between toxicants [polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p´-DDE), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), and lead] and testosterone levels among 127 Akwesasne Mohawk males 10 to < 17 years of age with documented toxicant exposures.

Land Transitions in the American Plains: Multilevel Modeling of Drivers of Grassland Conversion (1950 to 2000).

This paper examines drivers of land-cover change in the U.S. Great Plains in the last half of the twentieth century.

CROSS-SIBLING EFFECTS IN PARENT-ADULT CHILD EXCHANGES OF SOCIOEMOTIONAL SUPPORT.

We use National Survey of Families and Households first wave data and innovative modeling to examine how one parent-adult child pair may affect other pairs. Three conceptual models guide our analyses of parents' giving and receiving of socioemotional support, representing enhancement, compensation, and independence. Giving support to one child is related to more giving to others (enhancement), but receiving support from one child is related to less receipt from others (compensation).

Land Use and Family Formation in the Settlement of the U.S. Great Plains.

In agricultural settings, environment shapes patterns of settlement and land use. Using the Great Plains of the United States during the period of its initial Euro-American settlement (1880-1940) as an analytical lens, this article explores whether the same environmental factors that determine settlement timing and land use-those that indicate suitability for crop-based agriculture-also shape initial family formation, resulting in fewer and smaller families in areas that are more conducive to livestock raising than to cropping. The connection between family size and agricultural land availability is now well known, but the role of the environment has not previously been explicitly tested.

Household and farm transitions in environmental context.

Recent debate in the literature on population, environment, and land use questions the applicability of theory that patterns of farm extensification and intensification correspond to the life course of farmers and to the life cycle of farm families. This paper extends the debate to the agricultural development of the United States Great Plains region, using unique data from 1875 to 1930 that link families to farms over time in 25 environmentally diverse Kansas townships. Results of multilevel statistical modeling indicate that farmer's age, household size, and household structure are simultaneously related to both the extent of farm operations and the intensity of land use, taking into account local environmental conditions and time trends as Kansas was settled and developed.

The consequence of encouraging girls to be active for weight loss.

The purpose of the study, conducted in Pennsylvania, USA, was to assess the prospective effect of parental encouragement of physical activity (PA) for weight loss on adolescent girls' concern about weight, Body Mass Index (BMI) and objectively-measured PA. Non-Hispanic White girls (N = 177) and their parents were assessed when girls were 9, 11, 13 and 15 years old. At each age, girls' concern about their weight, pubertal development, BMI, and dietary intake were measured along with mothers' and fathers' encouragement of PA for weight loss, modeling of PA, and logistic support for PA.

Analysis of PCB congeners related to cognitive functioning in adolescents.

To investigate the characteristics of PCBs that are linked to cognitive functioning, those congeners that were concurrently found in 271 Mohawk adolescents were grouped according to structure (dioxin-like or non-dioxin-like) and persistence (persistent or low-persistent). After the effects of the congener groups were orthogonalized, regression analyses (controlling for a number of variables found to be related to the cognitive outcomes) examined the relationship of each congener group to scores on three cognitive tests (the non-verbal Ravens Progressive Matrices, the Test of Memory and Learning, and the Woodcock Johnson-Revised). Five subtests from these cognitive tests were found to be associated with one or more PCB congener groups, most often at a moderate level.

Do theories of crime or violence explain race differences in delinquency?

We examine race differences in delinquency using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We use a new method that permits an examination of offense specialization. We argue that an examination of offense patterns provides an opportunity for testing theoretical explanations of race effects.

The Global Distribution of Infant Mortality: A subnational spatial view.

We describe the compilation of a spatially explicit dataset detailing infant mortality rates in over 10,000 national and subnational units worldwide, benchmarked to the year 2000. Although their resolution is highly variable, subnational data are available for countries representing over 90% of non-OECD population. Concentration of global infant deaths is higher than implied by national data alone.

Overview of pain management in older persons.

The purpose of this article is to situate the social and demographic context of pain management in older adults. It summarizes representative literature on the age and sex composition of pain among older adults and considers sources of assessment bias that likely lead to the conflicting descriptions of prevalence. It also describes treatment options that are both available and acceptable to older adults.

A longitudinal assessment of the links between physical activity and self-esteem in early adolescent non-Hispanic females.

Purpose: For decades, researchers have proclaimed the positive psychosocial benefits of participation in physical activity. However, recent meta-analyses of the literature have found infrequent and inconclusive empirical support for the link between physical activity and psychosocial well-being. In this study, we use data from a longitudinal study to explore the links between participation in physical activity and global self-esteem among girls from childhood into early adolescence and the direction of this relationship.

Relationship of lead, mercury, mirex, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene, hexachlorobenzene, and polychlorinated biphenyls to timing of menarche among Akwesasne Mohawk girls.

Background: Children are commonly exposed at background levels to several ubiquitous environmental pollutants, such as lead and persistent organic pollutants, that have been linked to neurologic and endocrine effects. These effects have prompted concern about alterations in human reproductive development. Few studies have examined the effects of these toxicants on human sexual maturation at levels commonly found in the general population, and none has been able to examine multiple toxicant exposures.