Parenting During COVID-19: A Sentiment Analysis of Reddit Data

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant disruption and disturbance in the lives of individuals across the globe. Especially during the early parts of the pandemic, parents took on increased caregiving responsibilities with little to no guidance from federal organizations. Further, economic strain made it difficult for parents meet their children's physical and emotional needs. Much of the research that has examined parenting during COVID-19 has stemmed from survey data. However, self-presentation biases may prevent survey researchers from obtaining authentic and accurate experiences from parents. Therefore, this study examined parents’ sentiment and emotional wellbeing during COVID-19 using Reddit data—specifically, posts from the Mommit and Daddit subreddits. Data were scraped using Python, and analyzed in R. Sentiment analysis was conducted using the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon (i.e., EmoLex). Results suggested mothers and fathers were less trusting and angrier in late-summer 2020 compared to 2019. Additionally, mothers were more negative in March 2020 compared to March 2019, and mothers’ anticipation increased from March 2020-April 2020 (which did not occur in 2019). This suggests mothers in particular may have experienced initial distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research should continue to monitor the emotional wellbeing of parents as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENT: THE CASE OF FEDERAL PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS OF ETHIOPIA

Public procurement is the main tool through which governments acquire goods, works, and services in the course of achieving public objectives. The study has focused on the accountability aspects of government procurement. The study has addressed the accountability in government procurement of the federal organizations of Ethiopia, and particular emphasis was given to ministries, agencies and commissions. Procurement accountability is related to being answerable to what has been planned, what has been implemented, what result has been achieved, and how the decisions have been made. Thus, the basic objective of the study is to examine procurement related accountability in selects federal organizations of Ethiopia. The research questions have been designed to examine how accountability related factors influence government procurement, and what areas are needed to be considered in promoting accountability. Accordingly, the data show that accountability in control of efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring value for money by taking the whole-life cost of acquisition is not strong enough in selection and awarding of suppliers, and professionalism and experiences are not created well to establish a strong accountability. It has been suggested that federal organizations have to revisit the accountability issues to obtain equivalent benefit from the amount they spend. Moreover, creating accountability to the successes as well as to failures will enhance answerability of individuals working in procurement related areas.

Ascariasis, Amebiasis and Giardiasis in Mexican children: distribution and geographical, environmental and socioeconomic risk factors

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the geographical distribution of Ascariasis, Amebiasis and Giardiasis, and to identify specific geographical, socioeconomic and environmental factors that are associated with the incidence of these infections in Mexican children. We made use of publicly available data that was reported by federal organizations in Mexico for the year 2010. The contribution of geographical, socioeconomic and environmental factors to the incidence of infections was assessed by a multivariable regression model using a backwards selection procedure. A. lumbricoides incidence was associated with mean minimum temperature of the state, the state-wide rate of households without access to piped water and toilet, explaining 77% of the incidence of A. lumbricoides infections. Mean minimum precipitation in the state, the rate of households without access to a toilet, piped water and sewage system best explained (73%) the incidence of E. histolytica infections. G. lamblia infections were only explained by the latitude of the state (11%). In addition to the well-known socioeconomic factors contributing to the incidence of A. lumbricoides and E. histolytica we found that temperature and precipitation were associated with higher risk of infection.

Hurricane Model Development at GFDL: A Collaborative Success Story from a Historical Perspective

The hurricane project at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) was established in 1970. By the mid-1970s pioneering research had led to the development of a new hurricane model. As the reputation of the model grew, GFDL was approached in 1986 by the director of the National Meteorological Center about establishing a collaboration between the two federal organizations to transition the model into an operational modeling system. After a multiyear effort by GFDL scientists to develop a system that could support rigorous requirements of operations, and multiyear testing had demonstrated its superior performance compared to existing guidance products, operational implementation was made in 1995. Through collaboration between GFDL and the U.S. Navy, the model was also made operational at Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center in 1996. GFDL scientists continued to support and improve the model during the next two decades by collaborating with other scientists at GFDL, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Environmental Modeling Center (EMC),1 the National Hurricane Center, the U.S. Navy, the University of Rhode Island (URI), Old Dominion University, and the NOAA Hurricane Research Division. Scientists at GFDL, URI, and EMC collaborated to transfer key components of the GFDL model to the NWS new Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting Model (HWRF) that became operational in 2007. The purpose of the article is to highlight the critical role of these collaborations. It is hoped that the experiences of the authors will serve as an example of how such collaboration can benefit the nation with improved weather guidance products.

Large Area Forest Yield Estimation with Pushbroom Digital Aerial Photogrammetry

Low-cost methods to measure forest structure are needed to consistently and repeatedly inventory forest conditions over large areas. In this study we investigate low-cost pushbroom Digital Aerial Photography (DAP) to aid in the estimation of forest volume over large areas in Washington State (USA). We also examine the effects of plot location precision (low versus high) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM) resolution (1 m versus 10 m) on estimation performance. Estimation with DAP and post-stratification with high-precision plot locations and a 1 m DTM was 4 times as efficient (precision per number of plots) as estimation without remote sensing and 3 times as efficient when using low-precision plot locations and a 10 m DTM. These findings can contribute significantly to efforts to consistently estimate and map forest yield across entire states (or equivalent) or even nations. The broad-scale, high-resolution, and high-precision information provided by pushbroom DAP facilitates used by a wide variety of user types such a towns and cities, small private timber owners, fire prevention groups, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), counties, and state and federal organizations.

An Overview of Ethics and How Public Health Does Its Work

Modern public health in the United States is conducted by a network of private, public, local, state, tribal, and federal organizations, agencies, individuals, and communities. The ethical mandate of public health has always been to protect and promote the health and well-being of the population. This chapter introduces the ways in which public health actors work to achieve those goals, and how their efforts can be squared with the quintessential American value of personal liberty, as well as with the increasing recognition of the importance of justice as a foundation for public health. It also provides chapter overviews for the related section of The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics, which includes chapters on the ethics and public health system, public health interventions, and public health law and regulation.

The National Plan of E-Government

This chapter explores the readiness of federal authority employees and their current skills, adoption, and knowledge about e-government. It also examines the new technologies and e-technologies in GCC and UAE. The researcher has collected information and opinions from different areas in the country creating a survey analysis in this research. The study aims are to discover the experts among the employees, explore the developments of e-governments in the UAE federal agencies, gain information about the strategies of the services, and gain knowledge about training and challenges that face the employees who work in federal positions. Research questions include, Are federal organizations employees prepared to adopt and use the e-government? What are the struggles that face them?

Using Systems Analysis and Dynamics to Evaluate Public Private Partnerships with Data and Best Practices from SAFER Santa Rosa

Public private partnerships have been gaining the interest of emergency management and security-related federal organizations. In 2010, the National Academies Press published a framework for resilience-focused private-public sector collaboration which may be the catalyst for how resilience-oriented public private partnerships are developed in the future (National Academies Press. 2010). Public private partnerships can be utilized to increase citizen awareness and preparedness, to address a specific need in a community, or to accomplish any other function that brings a community and government together. “Utilized correctly, a public private partnership is a win-win situation for all participants” (Hahn, 2010, p. 274). Although perceived as very successful, no prior systems analysis has been conducted on these partnerships. In this chapter, a successful public private partnership is evaluated using systems analysis techniques. Results of that analysis, along with details of the original case study and the public private partnership itself are presented.

Exercise24

Can populations self organize a crisis response? This is a field report on the first two efforts in a continuing series of exercises termed “Exercise24 or x24.” The first Exercise 24 focused on Southern California, while the second (24 Europe) focused on the Balkan area of Eastern Europe. These exercises attempted to demonstrate that self-organizing groups can form and respond to a crisis using low-cost social media and other emerging web technologies. Over 10,000 people participated in X24 while X24 Europe had over 49,000 participants. X24 involved people from 79 nations while X24 Europe officially included participants from at least 92 countries. Exercise24 was organized by a team of workers centered at the SDSU Viz Center including significant support from the US Navy as well as other military and Federal organizations. Dr. George Bressler, Adjunct Faculty member at the Viz Center led both efforts. Major efforts from senior professionals EUCOM and NORTHCOM contributed significantly to the preparation for and success of both X24 and especially X24 Europe. This paper presents lessons learned and other experiences gained through the coordination and performance of Exercise24.