Surveillance data indicate that food security rates increased among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021) compared with pre-pandemic (2019), but this could have been due to increased participation from better resourced households. Our objective was to examine if demographic differences between SNAP-participating households in each year were responsible for the increased prevalence of food secure households. We calculated the observed 30-d food security prevalence among SNAP-participating households for each year. We used indirect standardisation to produce expected 2020 and 2021 prevalences with 2019 as the standard population using household size, income, age, sex, race, Hispanic ethnicity, presence of children, single parent household, metropolitan status and census region. We calculated standardised prevalence ratios (SPRs) to understand if the observed prevalence was higher than expected given any changes in the demographic profile compared to 2019. The Current Population Survey data were collected by the United States Census Bureau and Department of Agriculture. Our sample included 5,245 SNAP-participating households. The observed prevalence of food secure households increased by 3⋅6 percentage points comparing 2019 to 2020 (SPR = 1⋅06, 95 % confidence interval = 1⋅00, 1⋅11) and by 8⋅6 percentage comparing 2019 to 2021 (SPR = 1⋅13, 95 % confidence interval = 1⋅07, 1⋅18). The greater prevalence of food secure SNAP households during the pandemic did not appear to be attributable to socio-demographic differences compared to pre-pandemic. Despite hesitance among policymakers to expand or enhance social safety net programmes, permanently incorporating COVID-19-related policy interventions could lessen food insecurity in years to come.

Attachment theory has played an important role in attempts to understand the “cycle of violence,” where maltreated children are at increased risk for perpetrating violence later in life. However, little is known empirically about whether adult attachment insecurity in close relationships may partly explain the link between childhood maltreatment and violent behavior. This study aimed to address this gap using data from a prospective longitudinal study of documented childhood abuse and neglect cases and demographically matched controls (ages 0–11 years), who were followed into adulthood and interviewed (N = 892). Participants completed the Relationship Scales Questionnaire assessing adult attachment styles at mean age 39.54. Criminal arrest data were used to determine arrests for violence after the assessment of attachment through mean age 50.54. There were significant direct paths from childhood maltreatment and adult attachment insecurity to violent arrests after attachment measurement. Attachment insecurity partly explained the higher levels of violence in individuals with maltreatment histories. Analyses of maltreatment subtypes and attachment styles revealed that attachment anxiety appeared to mediate paths between neglect and physical abuse and later violence. There were no significant indirect paths from neglect or physical abuse to violence via attachment avoidance. Implications and future directions are discussed.

High-entropy and multiprincipal element alloys present exciting opportunities and challenges for computational modeling of their structure and phase stability. Recent interest has catalyzed rapid development of techniques and equally rapid growth of new results. This review surveys the essential concepts of thermodynamics and total energy calculation, and the bridge between them provided by statistical mechanics. Specifically, we review the electronic density functional theory of alloy total energy as applied to supercells and special quasirandom structures. We contrast these with the coherent potential approximation and semi-empirical approximations. Statistical mechanical approaches include cluster expansions, hybrid Monte Carlo/molecular dynamics simulations, and extraction of entropy from correlation functions. We also compare first-principles approaches with Calculation of Phase Diagrams (CALPHAD) and highlight the need to augment experimental databases with first-principles derived data. Numerous example applications are given highlighting recent progress utilizing the concepts and methods that are introduced.

This article provides a short review on computational modeling on the formation, thermodynamics, and elasticity of single-phase high-entropy alloys (HEAs). Hundreds of predicted single-phase HEAs were re-examined using various empirical thermo-physical parameters. Potential BCC HEAs (CrMoNbTaTiVW, CrMoNbReTaTiVW, and CrFeMoNbReRuTaVW) were suggested based on CALPHAD modeling. The calculated vibrational entropies of mixing are positive for FCC CoCrFeNi, negative for BCC MoNbTaW, and near-zero for HCP CoOsReRu. The total entropies of mixing were observed to trend in descending order: CoCrFeNi > CoOsReRu > MoNbTaW. Calculated lattice parameters agree extremely well with averaged values estimated from the rule of mixtures (ROM) if the same crystal structure is used for the elements and the alloy. The deviation in the calculated elastic properties from ROM for select alloys is small but is susceptible to the choice used for the structures of pure components.

This paper examines the relationship between childhood exposure to cumulative risk and three indicators of psychosocial adjustment in adulthood (educational attainment, mental health, and criminal behavior) and tests three different models (linear, quadratic, and interaction). Data were collected over several time points from individuals who were part of a prospective cohort design study that matched children with documented cases of abuse and/or neglect with children without such histories and followed them into adulthood. Hierarchical multiple regressions compared linear and quadratic models and then examined potential moderating effects of child abuse/neglect and gender. Exposure to a greater number of childhood risk factors was significantly related to fewer years of education, more anxiety and depression symptomatology, and more criminal arrests in adulthood. The relationship between cumulative risk and years of education demonstrated a curvilinear pattern, whereas the relationship between cumulative risk and both mental health and criminal arrests was linear. Child abuse/neglect did not moderate these relationships, although there were direct effects for both child abuse/neglect and gender on criminal arrests, with more arrests for abused/neglected individuals than controls and more for males than females. Gender interacted with cumulative risk to impact educational attainment and criminal behavior, suggesting that interventions may be more effective if tailored differently for males and females. Interventions may need to be multifaceted and designed to address these different domains of functioning.

This paper examined whether childhood maltreatment increases the risk of living in neighborhoods with less desirable characteristics (i.e., more disorder and disadvantage, less social cohesion, social control and advantage, and fewer resources) in middle adulthood and whether these neighborhood characteristics influence subsequent illicit drug use. Using a prospective cohort design study, court documented cases of childhood abuse and neglect and matched controls (n = 833) were first interviewed as young adults (mean age = 29 years) from 1989 to 1995 and again in middle adulthood from 2000 to 2002 (mean age = 40 years) and 2003 to 2005 (mean age = 41 years). In middle adulthood, individuals with histories of childhood abuse and neglect were more likely to live in neighborhoods with more disorder and disadvantage and less social cohesion and advantage compared to controls and to engage in illicit drug use during the past year. Path analyses showed an indirect effect on illicit drug use via neighborhood disorder among maltreated children, even after accounting for drug abuse symptoms in young adulthood, although this was sex specific and race specific, affecting women and Whites. Overall, child abuse and neglect places children on a negative trajectory that dynamically influences negative outcomes at multiple levels into middle adulthood.

Past and present societies world-wide have employed well over 100 distinct notational systems for representing natural numbers, some of which continue to play a crucial role in intellectual and cultural development today. The diversity of these notations has prompted the need for classificatory schemes, or typologies, to provide a systematic starting point for their discussion and appraisal. The present paper provides a general framework for assessing the efficacy of these typologies relative to certain desiderata, and it uses this framework to discuss the two influential typologies of Zhang & Norman and Chrisomalis. Following this, a new typology is presented that takes as its starting point the principles by which numerical notations represent multipliers (the principles of cumulation and cipherization), and bases (those of integration, parsing, and positionality). Many different examples show that this new typology provides a more refined classification of numerical notations than the ones put forward previously. In addition, the framework provided here can be used to assess typologies not only of numerical notations, but also of many other domains.

Database researchers have recognized that integrating a production rules facility into a database system provides a uniform mechanism for a number of advanced database features including integrity constraint enforcement, derived data maintenance, triggers, protection, version control, and others. In addition, a database system with rule processing capabilities provides a useful platform for large and efficient knowledge-base and expert systems. Database systems with production rules are referred to as active database systems, and the field of active database systems has indeed been active. This paper summarizes current work in active database systems, and suggests future research directions. Topics covered include database rule languages, rule processing semantics, and implementation issues.

Bulk metallic glass forms when liquid metal alloys solidify without crystallization. In the search for iron-based bulk glass-forming alloys of the metal–metalloid type (Fe–B- and Fe–C-based), crystals based on the structural prototype C6Cr23 often preempt the amorphous phase. Destabilizing this competing crystal structure could enhance glass formability. We carried out first-principles total energy calculations of enthalpy of formation to identify third elements that can effectively destabilize C6Cr23. Yttrium appears optimal among transition metals, and rare earths also are suitable. Atomic size is the dominant factor.

Recent experiments discovered an order-disorder transition occuring at low temperatures in large unit 1/1 cell cubic approximants of the stable Cd-based binary alloy quasicrystals. The transition is related to correlations among orientational degrees of freedom whose separations are around 12 Å. We analyze the interactions between the degrees of freedom using ab-initio calculations for Cd-Ca alloys and derive an equivalent antiferromagnetic Ising model which shows a similar phase transition. However, the calculated transition temperature is higher than observed experimentally, indicating that the actual structure and its order-disorder transition are more complex than originally proposed. A side-benefit of our study is the discovery of a canonical-cell decoration model for the Cd-Ca icosahedral phase.

We identify several new quasicrystal approximants in alloy systems in which quasicrystals have not been previously reported. Some occur in alloys with large size contrast between the constituent elements, either containing small Boron atoms, or large Ca/Eu atoms, leading to quasicrystal structures quite different from currently known systems where the size contrast is smaller. Another group of the approximants are layered Frank-Kasper structures, demonstrating competition between decagonal and dodecagonal ordering within this family of structures.

Fe-rich Fe-B amorphous metals exhibit approximately collinear magnetic structure. When a certain amount of Fe atoms are replaced with Mn, the magnetic structure of the alloys is found to become non-collinear. We performed electronic structure calculations using the locally self-consistent multiple scattering (LSMS) method for supercell samples generated by ab initio molecular dynamics simulation using the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP). We present the distribution of moment sizes and angular distributions in the FeMn-B amorphous metal samples. We discuss the Mn effect on the magnetic structure of the alloys.

With atomistic force fields derived from ab-initio energies and atomic forces, we cooled Fe80B20 from the liquid to the glass state. The pair-distribution functions and the diffusion coefficients were used to characterize the structural changes that Fe80B20 underwent during the simulation. In the FeFe and FeB pair-distribution functions, when the temperature is lowered the first neighbor-peak becomes narrower and the second-neighbor peak splits at around 1000K. In the BB pair-distribution we observed that the first peak undergoes a significant change at the glass transition temperature, and that the first BB peak remains present at low temperatures. That the first BB peak exists at low temperature seems to contradict the prevailing view of the structure of transition metal-metalloid glasses.

We investigate the high temperature decagonal quasicrystalline phase of Al72Ni20Co8 using a quasilattice gas Monte-Carlo simulation. To avoid biasing towards a specific model we use an over-dense site list with a large fraction of free sites, permitting the simulation to explore an extended region of perpendicular space. Representing the atomic surface occupancy in a basis of harmonic functions directly reveals the 5-fold symmetric component of our data. Occupancy is examined in physical and perpendicular space.