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This paper tests for potential cross-border substitution in casino gambling between Illinois and Missouri due to the launch of sports betting in Illinois. Using casino-level gambling revenue and admissions data, difference-in-differences, event study analysis, and regression discontinuity design, our findings suggest that the launch of sports betting increased casino revenues and admissions in the Illinois casinos and decreased revenue and admissions in Missouri casinos close to the border of Illinois and Missouri. Thus, Missouri not only lost potential sports betting tax revenue but also tax revenue from casino gambling revenue and admissions resulting from cross-border substitution between Missouri and Illinois after the launch of sports betting. The size of the lost casino and foregone sports betting tax revenues suggests Missouri and other states in similar circumstances are likely to experience continued fiscal pressure to legalize sports betting despite possible moral objections or an intent to minimize social costs through prohibition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Brassicaceae is a worldwide family that produces ornamental flowers, edible vegetables, and oilseed plants, with high economic value in agriculture, horticulture, and landscaping. This study used the Web of Science core dataset and the CiteSpace bibliometric tool to quantitatively visualize the number of publications, authors, institutions, and countries of 3139 papers related to Brassicaceae plants from 2002 to 2022. The keywords and references were divided into two phases: Phase 1 (2002-2011) and Phase 2 (2012-2022) for quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results showed: An average annual publication volume of 149 articles, with an overall fluctuating upward trend; the research force was mainly led by Professor Ihsan A. Al-shehbaz from Missouri Botanical Garden; and the United States had the highest number of publications. In the first phase, research focused on the phylogeny of Brassicaceae plants, while the second phase delved into diverse research based on previous studies, research in areas such as polyploidy, molecular technique, physiology, and hyperaccumulator has been extended. Based on this research, we propounded some ideas for future studies on Brassicaceae plants and summarized the research gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I wrote "Dolly the Sheep and Mental Deception" for my intermediate poetry course after a long drought of inspiration and a bout with depression. I looked around my dorm room, upset at my lack of motivation until I gazed upon my ratty sheep slippers with holes in the soles. This poem is focused on how the brain is a perfect saboteur. When I saw my twin slippers, I remembered learning about Dolly, the first mammal ever to be cloned from an adult sheep cell. She was living proof of the impossible, famous for her perfect replication; I found a strange connection to Dolly regarding our lack of self recognition. My use of dynamic voice throughout this poem is an attempt to envelop the reader through narrative and perspective. "Dolly the Sheep and Mental Deception" explores the stream of consciousness that is looking at your reflection and not knowing who is looking back at you. "Freshmeat" began as scrawlings of text in the margins of textbooks during my freshman year at Missouri State. I was your typical homesick, scared, confused freshman who couldn't fathom surviving college away from the comforts I knew back home. I was in my Honors seminar when my professor jokingly asked if we think about how we might die, and that is the backbone of this poem. "Freshmeat" employs typical freshman life--dorm room heat, questionable dining hall food, and ghost stories--with a sinister undertone of rapid change feeling close to death. This poem was edited and finalized from crinkled notebook paper to my final poetry portfolio in December 2020. I used conventional left-hand margins, intruding on the white space in parentheticals that mirrored my secret doodles in those textbooks and scratch paper. I look back on this poem and am satisfied with how much my perspective has changed in comparison to the desolation of freshman year. "Consumption" was started during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and finished in December of the same year; the issues of privilege and racism are timelessly pertinent, and a poem such as this one has been written a hundred different ways. I wrote this poem to analyze my point of privilege as a white woman who can only observe and sympathize with the struggle of racism in America. Examples of the narrator's experience of privilege are separated into four vignettes, taking common moments--family dinner, graduation, family heirlooms--and marking them with wickedness. The voice of this poem shifts multiple times from the perspective of an observer to a violent force that enacts their privilege insensitivity, adamant denial of understanding, and theft of culture. The two voices are differentiated by italics. Though this poem is heavily metaphorical in imagery, the underlying message is the consistent theft from people of color by white people, who continue to turn their noses up and make a mockery of important racial movements. To be an ally, you must first recognize where you stand apart: your point of privilege, your history, and how you can cause change within your community. My attempt at this message in "Consumption" is framed by horror imagery and character voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation agencies continuously and consistently work to improve the processes and systems for mitigating the impacts of roadway incidents. Such efforts include utilizing emerging technologies to reduce the detection and response time to roadway incidents. Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is an emerging transportation technology that enables communication between a vehicle and the infrastructure. This paper proposes an algorithm that utilizes V2I probe data to automatically detect roadway incidents. A simulation testbed was developed for a segment of Interstate 64 in St. Louis, Missouri to evaluate the performance of the V2I-based automatic incident detection algorithm. The proposed algorithm was assessed during peak and off-peak periods with various incident durations, under several market penetration rates for V2I technology, and with different spatial resolutions for incident detection. The performance of the proposed algorithm was assessed on the basis of the detection rate, time to detect, detection accuracy, and false alarm rate. The performance measures obtained for the V2I-based automatic incident detection algorithm were compared with California #7 algorithm performance measures. The California #7 algorithm is a traditional automatic incident detection algorithm that utilizes traffic sensors data, such as inductive loop detectors, to identify roadway events. The California #7 algorithm was implemented in the Interstate 64 simulation testbed. The case study results indicated that the proposed V2I-based algorithm outperformed the California #7 algorithm. The detection rate for the proposed V2I-based incident detection algorithm was 100% in market penetrations of 50%, 80%, and 100%. However, the California #7 algorithm's detection rate was 71%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past and present institutions (e.g., state and public hospitals, assisted living facilities, public nursing homes) have struggled with structural issues tied to patient care and neglect, which often manifests in the form of fracture trauma, and may explain why institutionalized individuals are at higher risk for this injury. Six hundred individuals from the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection born between 1822–1877 were examined to investigate hip fracture prevalence. Analysis of associated records and documentary data, including death, morgue, and census records, revealed that 36.3% (n = 218) of these individuals died in institutions such as the St. Louis State Hospital, City Infirmary, and Missouri State Hospital No. 4. Of the institutionalized individuals, 4.3% had evidence of hip fracture, significantly higher than the non-institutionalized (2.3%). Records revealed that many hip fractures were suffered around the time of death in state hospitals and were preventable, resulting from structural issues tied to understaffing and underfunding. Forensic and clinical literature, as well as current news media, indicate that structural violence in the forms of underfunding and understaffing continues to manifest as hip fractures harming institutionalized individuals today. This paper demonstrates how an anthropological perspective using paleopathological analysis sheds light on the chronicity and time depth of this issue, with the aim of driving public policy to entrench the equitable care of institutionalized people as a human right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1976, the Supreme Court of California issued its well‐known Tarasoff Principle. From this principle, other courts found a duty to warn, and some found more than just a duty to warn, a duty to protect. As courts in other states adopted a version of the Tarasoff Principle, they issued a wide variety of third‐party liability rules. In light of the dynamic, everchanging Tarasoff jurisprudence in the United States and recent relevant appellate court opinion in Missouri, a timely updated summary and update of Tarasoff‐related jurisprudence in Missouri is warranted. In the present analysis, we compiled the four appellate court decisions that pertained to the questions of Tarasoff‐like third‐party liability in the State of Missouri: Sherrill v. Wilson (1983), Matt v. Burrell (1995), Bradley v. Ray (1995), and Virgin v. Hopewell (2001). We reviewed all legal measures for clinicians to protect nonpatients in Missouri, not just those that relate to protecting nonpatients from violence as in a Tarasof‐like scenario. Thus, this paper concisely provides a compendium of such options and allows for a meaningful comparison of which legal, protective measures are mandatory and which are permissive, thereby evoking the question of whether measures of protecting nonpatients from a patient's violent acts ought to be mandatory duties or permissive application of professional judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of teacher expertise in the US have transformed over the past 40 years, arguably being "narrowed" and "numericized" due to high-stakes accountability and neoliberal education reform movements. While this trend has been thoroughly studied under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Race to the Top regimes, less consideration has been given since the Every Study Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced NCLB in 2015, which notably pivoted away from some of the most stringent accountability practices of the previous era. This paper begins a new line of inquiry into teacher expertise in our current federal policy context, especially considering how understandings of expertise are constructed in school districts that never adopted the most high-stakes evaluation measures. By relying on Jessica Holloway's (2021) technologies of risk management, this paper explores how teachers in one school understand expertise, focusing specifically on how evaluation and assessment technologies engage with and influence these understandings. Ultimately, it was found that teachers in fact held a plurality of understandings, yet complex and sometimes conflicting influences of assessment and evaluation practices also emerged. This paper argues that although risk management technologies have become commonplace, scholars and practitioners alike should continue to scrutinize their use under ESSA, particularly considering how they are being used, who they primarily benefit, and what consequences come from our reliance upon them.

This Article will examine Chapter III Section 5 of the DSA, which requires the VLOPs and VLOSEs to rely on government-selected non-profit groups to engage in surveillance of users. The paper shows similarities between this approach and the ‘whole-of-society’ regime forwarded by certain members of the American intelligence and security apparatus in the aftermath of the 2016 US Presidential election. Several US agencies appear to have adopted this approach and, in fact, worked to limit the accessibility of online content during the 2020 elections and the Covid response. The US Supreme Court in Murthy v Missouri, No 23-411, will determine the constitutionality of these agency actions later this year. But, regardless of how the Court rules, the similarities between the ‘whole-of-society’ regime of information control and the mechanisms outlined Chapter III Section 5 of the DSA raise important questions about the role of government in controlling speech in a liberal society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the field implementation of fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) used for redecking the two-span overpass bridge in Missouri. The spans measured 38.4 and 35.05 m in length. Modeling of the structural behavior of the bridge replacement deck indicated significantly high tensile stresses at midspan (up to 45 MPa) due to the continuity of the deck over the four precast main girders. Redecking of the bridge and casting of the central diaphragm were carried out continuously and necessitated 40 concrete truck deliveries of 252 m3 of FRC. Six sensor towers were installed in the bridge deck to monitor variations of internal relative humidity, temperature, and strain in the concrete, which were monitored for 260 days. The FRC made with 30% Class C fly ash replacement had slump varying between 150 and 255 mm, and the average 56-day compressive strength was 52.6 MPa. High tensile strain of up to 2,100 μm/m was observed in the concrete near the diaphragm. The effect of the bridge's own weight was predicted using a 3D finite element model. A strain model was devised to analyze the concrete embedded sensor data. The model was also used to calculate strains and concrete shrinkage on the first day as well as the load distribution factor, which is the ratio of the load carried by the concrete at a specific age to the load carried by the corrugated sheet supporting the fresh concrete after casting, where this factor is initially equal to zero and is close to 1 when the concrete developed its maximum strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent declines in life expectancy in the US, especially for middle-aged White persons, have called attention to mortality from deaths of despair – deaths due to alcohol, drugs, and suicide. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau, this paper examined deaths of despair by race/ethnicity, age, cause of death, birth cohort, and sex in Missouri. We focused on Area Agencies on Aging as geographic units of interest to increase usefulness of our findings to public administrators. Deaths of despair began trending up for all age groups beginning in 2007–2009, with the sharpest increases occurring for Black or African American non-Hispanics beginning in 2013–2015. The most dramatic increases occurred for the population age 50–59 in St. Louis City and Area Agency on Aging regions in southern Missouri. For older adults, considerable variation in rates, trends, and cause of deaths of despair is evident across the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper describes the rationale and key aspects of how one school-university partnership leveraged resources to create, implement and refine an innovative professional pathway called the Early Childhood Certificate (ECC) program which reflects the National Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) Essential Guideline 4: Reflection and Innovation. The ECC program is an innovative, career-building model that leverages resources between a predominantly white regional state university, a nonprofit organization serving as a Head Start grantee, a large urban school district and community-based education settings across a Midwestern metropolitan region. Design/methodology/approach: This descriptive narrative documents how the ECC program developed as a professional pathway for early childhood educators to scale up their skills for teaching young children while strengthening their capacities and credentials within the early childhood education (ECE) profession pipeline. The narrative includes relevant literature and examples from the field. Findings: This paper includes a discussion of the benefits and challenges related to the design, implementation and refinement of the professional learning ECC program. Research limitations/implications: This is a descriptive narrative. As such, generalizability is lacking. Research is needed to determine the effectiveness and sustainability of innovative teacher education programs. Practical implications: Relevant research and lessons learned provide guidance for other school-university partnerships to consider how to meet workforce and career needs for educators in the field of ECE. Social implications: School-university partnerships can be change agents and positively impact early childhood educators' career development. Originality/value: This paper addresses the need for understanding how predominantly white early childhood teacher education programs can partner with schools and agencies and then together leverage resources to support workforce and career development opportunities.

While public libraries are commonly perceived in their role of providing access to books, many urban public libraries are finding new ways to contribute to local economic growth through services to entrepreneurs and small business owners. This paper explores the unique audiences that public libraries can reach, the assets they provide, explorations into the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and two case studies of library systems. Public libraries provide economic benefits through their physical buildings, economic mobility programmes and services, particularly their workforce development offerings. Building on this, targeted business outreach to entrepreneurs creates a new opportunity for economic impact. As inventoried by public library staff, libraries provide physical space, technology and equipment, training and education and research service assets to local entrepreneurs. The two case studies of urban public libraries in the US, Mid-Continent Public Library, Missouri and Spokane Public Library (SPL), Washington, show different service models to entrepreneurs and business owners and aligned partners. As public libraries continue to evolve their service models in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are additional opportunities for the library to contribute to their local economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illuminate for teachers how the suffrage movement is centered in whiteness. The authors posit that this historical erasure is intentional, and teachers should actively find ways to counter that erasure. This paper positions teachers to ask critical questions of dominant narratives, and have students do the same. Design/methodology/approach: Given the existence of historical erasure and the absence of Black suffrage stories, the authors sought to build teachers' content base by conducting a historiography of the dominant narrative of the women's suffrage movement. They examined how state standards and popular online archival collections perpetuate the dominant narrative. They provide teachers with a rich content base and include primary sources they could use to teach this content to their students. Findings: Unsurprising, the Texas and Missouri state standards do little to advance the voices of underrepresented people, especially when it comes to the suffrage movement. Likewise, archival collections are limited by the choice of those who curated the collections. The article presents teachers with lesser known stories of the movement and accompanying primary sources. Practical implications: Teachers cannot teach what they do not know. So the authors sought to build a teacher's content base so they could tell a more inclusive history. They want to help teachers identify dominant narratives and where historical erasure is happening, and commit to asking critical questions of those narratives and seek to diversity their histories. Originality/value: This piece is original because much of this content is missing from current history classrooms. In addition, the primary sources and additional resources provided can strengthen a teacher's ability to teach about it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work highlights the central role that enslaved people played in Missouri's guerrilla conflict. During the Civil War, with the loss of male labor to armies and guerrilla bands, households in Missouri became ever more reliant on enslaved labor. This included guerrilla households, meaning that enslaved people played a much more active role in maintaining guerrilla bands than has been previously acknowledged. By aiding guerrillas' domestic supply lines, enslaved people gained information that could prove their enslaver's disloyalty. Aware that such information could be exchanged with US officers in return for freedom papers, enslaved people across Missouri seized the opportunity to escape. In effect, their actions created a second supply line, one that moved information out of Missouri's slaveholding households and onto the desks of provost marshals. Enslaved people made the domestic supply line a tool of resistance and redefined the relationship between the army and Black refugees in Missouri. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visitation in prison is associated with a low recidivism rate after release, but the causality is not clear. This paper tries to estimate the effect of visitation experience on the recidivism outcome of state prisoners in Missouri, using an instrumental variable approach. The instrumental variable used for identification is the distance from a prison to an address before incarceration. The results support that visitation has a causal effect on recidivism in the short run. Further analysis shows that employment is an important channel of the visitation effect. However, no discernible effect on housing stability is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are fewer Certified Organic producers in the Mid-South US (southern half of Missouri, western Kentucky and Tennessee, northern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma) than in other regions of the country such as the Upper Midwest, West Coast, or Northeastern US. Taus et al. (2013) The Professional Geographer 65, 87–102, posit that these clusters suggest regional characteristics impact adoption of organic agriculture and admit that regional studies lack consensus on the role of factors that drive adoption. This paper seeks to understand if there are regionally distinct challenges and opportunities for organic production in the region. Fourteen certified organic producers in Missouri were interviewed and areas of challenges and opportunities specific to their certification were identified within the three a priori themes of (1) biophysical characteristics, (2) marketing infrastructure and (3) financial feasibility. We suggest directions for future policy support from the National Organic Program (NOP) and bolstered feedback structures within the National Organic Standards Board to address regional disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugees are at an increased risk of mental health problems due to the multiple traumas experienced. Mental health help-seeking and utilization remains low among resettled refugees in the US, however, with stigma as a major barrier. The goal of this paper was to explore second-generation youth's perceptions of parents' mental health and perceived stigma. Data includes in-depth interviews with 62 Bosnian youth resettled in St. Louis. Results indicate that from the perspective of their children, first-generation refugee parents continue to face mental health challenges. The findings show that parents' and youth's understanding of mental health is tied to cultural stigma surrounding mental health. Additionally, intergenerational trauma might be affecting the child-parent relationship. As mass violence around the world continues and people are at continued risk of becoming refugees, this study contributes by advancing research on the long-term mental health and well-being of refugees and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pre-harvest estimation of seed composition from standing crops is imperative for field management practices and plant phenotyping. This paper presents for the first time the potential of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-based high-resolution hyperspectral and LiDAR data acquired from in-season stand crops for estimating seed protein and oil compositions of soybean and corn using multisensory data fusion and automated machine learning. UAV-based hyperspectral and LiDAR data was collected during the growing season (reproductive stage five (R5)) of 2020 over a soybean test site near Columbia, Missouri and a cornfield at Urbana, Illinois, USA. Canopy spectral and texture features were extracted from hyperspectral imagery, and canopy structure features were derived from LiDAR point clouds. The extracted features were then used as input variables for automated machine-learning methods available with the H2O Automated Machine-Learning framework (H2O-AutoML). The results presented that: (1) UAV hyperspectral imagery can successfully predict both the protein and oil of soybean and corn with moderate accuracies; (2) canopy structure features derived from LiDAR point clouds yielded slightly poorer estimates of crop-seed composition compared to the hyperspectral data; (3) regardless of machine-learning methods, the combination of hyperspectral and LiDAR data outperformed the predictions using a single sensor alone, with an R2 of 0.79 and 0.67 for corn protein and oil and R2 of 0.64 and 0.56 for soybean protein and oil; and (4) the H2O-AutoML framework was found to be an efficient strategy for machine-learning-based data-driven model building. Among the specific regression methods evaluated in this study, the Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) and Deep Neural Network (NN) exhibited superior performance to other methods. This study reveals opportunities and limitations for multisensory UAV data fusion and automated machine learning in estimating crop-seed composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent substance use is a growing problem that causes a myriad of negative outcomes. Using substances during adolescence can lead to decreased executive functioning and is correlated with the top three causes of deaths for adolescents. Treatment options vary and the impact on outcomes are mixed, with engagement being of the most important indicators. Gaming is a popular activity among adolescents, and yet smartphone applications are relatively unexplored within substance use disorder treatment programs. This paper explores the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a mobile application as a supplement to existing adolescent substance use disorder treatment in a behavioral health agency in eastern Missouri. Feedback was received from staff and clients to assess feasibility and acceptability of implementation with barriers discussed. Results indicate there is promise with incorporation of smartphone-based applications into existing interventions and act as recommendations for other providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Breast cancer is a leading cause of death in women in the United States. However, there exist inequalities in outcomes of breast cancer and medically underserved populations by race, insurance status, educational background, and geography. Here, we present efforts by the Siteman Cancer Center to address disparities over the past 15+ years. As an academic center, we have partnered with community organizations to help support patients and reduce barriers to receiving care. We also ran a mobile van to offer mammograms to women living in both urban and rural areas of Missouri. These efforts resulted in earlier detection of breast cancer and increased use of mammograms. The mammography van managed to reach mostly poor, uninsured, or underinsured women with limited educational backgrounds. This work demonstrates the potential for collaborations between academic and community partners to improve community health outcomes. Community-based participatory strategies are a promising approach to addressing disparities in community health outcomes. This paper details the efforts of Siteman Cancer Center to achieve breast health equity over the past 15+ years. We begin by describing the activities and successes arising from our breast health community partnerships including identifying priorities, developing recommendations, and implementing patient navigation services to advance breast health. This system-wide coordinated navigation approach that includes primary and specialty care providers helped to increase potential impact on reducing breast health disparities by expediting care, increasing care efficiency, and standardizing referral procedures across systems for all women including those who are uninsured and underinsured. We also discuss a mobile mammography unit that has been deployed to serve women living in both urban and rural regions. The van reached a particularly vulnerable population that was mostly poor, uninsured, and with limited educational backgrounds regardless of their zip code of service. This work shows that collaborations between academic and community partners have resulted in decreased late stage at diagnosis and improved access to mammography. Furthermore, we offer lessons learned and recommendations that may be applicable to other communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elaine J. Lawless demonstrates a deep and abiding concern for the ethical questions posed by narratives: how they are told and collected, the implications of these narratives (and the telling of these) for their tellers' lives, the relationship between teller and listener/writer, and how these narratives are retold and reconstructed for a reader far removed from the original context. From her work on women's folk traditions, life stories, and self-representation within master narratives in religious contexts to her work with survivors of domestic violence to the aftermath of the intentional flooding and destruction of the African American community of Pinhook, Missouri, Lawless provides a framework for considering the poetics and politics of reciprocal ethnography. This paper discusses Lawless's multifaceted use and sophisticated understanding of narrative as not only text but also as ethical practice throughout her collected works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of peer effects on farmers' decision to adopt Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). This relationship is analysed by means of a Bayesian spatial autoregressive probit model applied to spatially explicit data describing the awareness, attitudes, and adoption of UAVs by 809 Missouri farmers. Results show that it is not only the farmers' characteristics, awareness, and attitudes towards UAVs that affect adoption, but also the adoption behaviour and traits of neighbouring peers. Peer effects arise both from UAV adoption of nearby farmers and from spatial spillovers of farmers' characteristics, awareness of UAV agricultural applications, expectations of economic and environmental benefits from UAV use and perceived neighbour privacy concerns in the use of UAVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this review is to highlight the work of Dr. James D. Anderson, whose contributions to educational and historical scholarship has provided critical counter evidence demonstrating that the African American community has represented nothing less than the full embrace of the promise of education. Over the span of his career, his body of work has shifted our understanding of the role of African Americans in educational leadership, informed legal debates related to access and opportunity, and has contributed to civic discourse associated with public education. The work of Dr. Anderson was also instrumental in a number of desegregation and affirmative action cases, including Liddell v.Missouri , Jenkins v. Missouri , Knight v. Alabama , U.S. andAyers v. Fordice , and Gratz v. Bollinger. Drawing on his seminal book and numerous articles and position papers, our review article highlights a few of the ways in which Dr. Anderson's contributions demonstrate the relationships between political, economic, legal, and educational interests of African Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes data on Missouri's casino industry to examine how clustered casinos, such as those in Kansas City and St. Louis, perform compared to dispersed or isolated casinos, such as those in Boonville, Caruthersville, La Grange, and St. Joseph. Missouri limits the number of casino licenses allowed; however, it does not explicitly mandate casino locations. Missouri provides a unique natural experiment for comparing location model performance. Although there is no published research on which type of casino location model is more effective for generating industry revenues and associated taxes, state legislatures have nevertheless been following an isolated casino location model. But it is not at all obvious that this strategy leads to higher aggregate revenues. Using 2011 data on Missouri's casino industry, we find that casino performance may not depend on whether it is isolated or in a cluster. This result suggests that the casino market is relatively efficient, given the regulations it faces. However, there may still be significant costs from restricting casino locations. We speculate that politicians are likely to use the isolated model as a mechanism to maximize voter support for casino legalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freshwater mussels (Bivalvia: Unionida) are an ecologically important faunal group. Excessive sediments, both in suspended and deposited formats, are believed to have negative effects on survival of freshwater mussels. However, there is a lack of quantitative tools for assessing the impact of abrupt and excessive sedimentation on freshwater mussel habitats. This gap in knowledge poses challenges for construction planning that necessitates evaluating sedimentation effects on mussels. In this paper, we present a simple Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) model designed to investigate the downstream distances from the sediment release point where mussels may face risks of sediment exposure and burial during episodic sedimentation events. We validated the model in predicting the deposition of sands ranging from 125 to 625 μ m in diameter within an open channel. Subsequently, we applied the LPT model to a representative stretch of mussel habitats in the lower Osage River, Missouri, USA. Implementing the LPT model using computational fluid dynamics analysis of river hydrodynamics, we investigated the downstream distances impacted by a hypothetical sedimentation event. The results indicate that the mussels within tens and hundreds of meters may be at risk of burial under low and high flow conditions, respectively. Mussels within hundreds and potentially thousands of meters may be at risks of sediment exposure under low and high flow conditions, respectively. The impacted distance is highly dependent on the sediment diameters and flow conditions. These results contribute valuable insights into the potential impacts of sedimentation on freshwater mussel habitats, aiding in informed decision-making for construction projects near these critical aquatic ecosystems. • A Lagrangian particle tracking model is developed to study sediment impact on mussels. • The location of sediment-streambed is modeled to inform sediment exposure risk to mussels. • The location of sediment deposition is modeled to inform risk of mussel burials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Diabetes is a serious public health problem affecting 37.3 million Americans. Diabetes shared medical appointments (SMAs) are an effective strategy for providing diabetes self-management support and education in primary care. However, practices delivering SMAs experience implementation challenges. This analysis examined conditions associated with successful practice implementation of diabetes SMAs in the context of participation in a pragmatic trial. Methods: Mixed methods study using qualitative and quantitative data collected from interviews, observations, surveys, and practice-reported data, guided by the practical, robust implementation and sustainability model (PRISM). Data were analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Successful implementation was defined as meeting patient recruitment targets (Reach) during the study period. Participants were clinicians and staff members from 22 primary care practices in Colorado and Missouri, USA. Results: The first necessary condition identified from the QCA was the presence of additional resources for patients with diabetes in the practice. Within practices that had these additional resources, we found that a sufficiency condition was the presence of an effective key person to make things happen with the SMAs. A second QCA was conducted to determine conditions underlying the presence of the effective key person (often performing functions of an implementation champion), which revealed factors including low or managed employee turnover, a strong baseline practice culture, and previous experience delivering SMAs. Conclusions: Identification of key factors necessary and sufficient for implementation of new care processes is important to enhance patient access to evidence-based interventions. This study suggests that practice features and resources have important implications for implementation of diabetes SMAs. There may be opportunities to support practices with SMA implementation by enabling the presence of skilled implementation champions. Trial registration: Registered at clinicaltrials.gov under trial ID NCT03590041, registered on July 18, 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the post-graduation employment location preferences of international students preparing to participate in the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program in the United States. An exploratory survey asked international students in their final semesters at three midwestern public universities to indicate their employment location preferences via an online text- and map-based questionnaire. Two main questions guided the research: 1) Do international students hold employment location preferences before graduation? and 2) Where in the United States do international students applying for OPT prefer to work? Results indicated the affirmative and that preference geographies extend well beyond the state in which the students earned their degrees. In applying for OPT, participants in this study signaled their intent to remain incountry. As such, the scale of analysis shifts from traditional country-to-country migration flows of international students to the internal movements within the host country in anticipation of post-graduation employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial justice movements sparked by police killings of Black and Brown persons have led to a reassessment of the role of policing in America. This has promoted important conversations about how best to improve public safety and design law enforcement practices that are equitable and just across communities. A component of this conversation is addressing stress and trauma faced by police as a routine part of their duties, as it can affect the quality of policing. Job-related stress and trauma experienced by police officers are an international phenomenon, yet underexplored areas in social work research and practice. Police officers experience high levels of stress from routine exposure to traumatic situations, leading to high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use, and depression. Officers who are actively experiencing symptoms of stress and trauma are more likely to engage in misconduct, including the unnecessary use of force. This study explores the stress and trauma-related experiences of police officers. We conducted one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with 23 officers from an urban police department in St Louis, Missouri. Analysis of interviews addressed three areas: (1) stress and trauma experiences associated with police work, (2) negative effects of stress and trauma on officers, and (3) factors impacting officer access to treatment. We conclude that social work can contribute to improved policing outcomes by helping officers address their job-related stress and trauma through engaged research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pell Grant is the foundational need-based student aid program in the United States, providing students of lower socio-economic status a pathway to afford college costs and educational expenses. Currently, over one-third of all U.S. undergraduate students receive Pell. This paper examines federal Pell assistance and institutional costs for students at the 38 publicly controlled regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which serve high average percentages of low-income students and students of color. By deploying the University of Alabama Education Policy Center's new Mission-Driven Classification System to enrollment, tuition and fees, and other costs metrics along with federal Pell and student loan data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a more direct apples-to-apples comparison of the 38 public regional HBCUs to the 182 public regional non-HBCU in the same 19 southern states, is revealed, as are comparisons to the universe of 461 public regional universities nationally. This paper finds that America's most financially disadvantaged students rely on Pell Grants to alleviate financial constraints at public regional HBCUs, where 55 percent of students are Pell recipients, a rate 24 percent higher than their non-HBCU counterparts. Moreover, the data underscore an opportunity for Congress to construct a meaningful federal role in higher education by providing stable and sustainable funding for the Pell Grant program.

Introduction: Electric scooter (e-scooter) rental usage has increased exponentially around the country, expanding to more than 120 cities by the end of 2018. Early attempts to capture the safety effects of widespread adoption of this technology have been hampered by lack of accurate ridership data. Here we describe a 17-month evolution of ridership characteristics in St. Louis, Missouri, and the frequency of e-scooter rental-related injuries serious enough to require an emergency department (ED) visit over this time frame; we also provide estimates of incidence rates of injuries based on company ridership data. Methods: We performed a combination retrospective chart review and prospective questionnaire-based analysis of adult e-scooter rental-related ED visits in both downtown St. Louis Level 1 trauma centers during the first 17 months of e-scooter rental usage (August 2018-December 2019). The retrospective portion focused on demographics, alcohol use, helmet use, disposition, operative repair, and temporal and severity markers. The prospective portion focused on more detailed crash and rider data. Finally, we used ridership data from both e-scooter rental companies in St. Louis to estimate incidence and temporal trends. Results: A total of 221 patients had e-scooter rental-related ED visits. The median age of our population was 31 years with 58.8% male and 53.8% White. There were no deaths. Ninety-two patients were found to have fractures with 38% requiring surgery. Of the 21 patients diagnosed with head injury, five had an intracranial bleed. Overall incidence of ED visits related to e-scooters was 2.1 per 10,000 trips and 2.2 per 10,000 miles with the number of ED visits by month closely correlated with the number of rides per month (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.95). Conclusion: The number of e-scooter rental-related injuries seen in St. Louis trauma centers was relatively low and correlated closely with overall number of rides. The number of injuries decreased and were less severe from 2018 to 2019 with infrequent intracranial injuries and a large percentage of fractures requiring operative repair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phosphorus (P) can be recovered from wastewater and used as an alternative fertilizer, namely, struvite [MgNH4PO4·6(H2O)]. However, the soil mobility of wastewater‐derived P and other nutrients needs to be evaluated. The objective of this study was to compare the vertical distribution of water‐soluble (WS) soil P and other nutrients from a synthetic‐wastewater‐derived electrochemically precipitated struvite (ECST) to that from a chemically precipitated struvite (CPST), triple superphosphate (TSP), monoammonium phosphate (MAP), and a control in six soils from Arkansas (AR; loam [L] and silt loam [SiL]), Missouri (MO; SiL 1 and SiL 2), and Nebraska (NE; sandy loam [SL] and SiL). A column‐leaching experiment was conducted with the six soils and five fertilizer‐P treatments. Water‐soluble (WS) P from the two struvite materials generally did not differ (p > 0.05) and was similar to that of MAP in the depths of 0–3, 3–6, and 6–10 cm, but was greater than that of TSP in the top 6 cm in four of the six soils. WS P from CPST in the MO‐SiL 2 and NE‐SL soils (6.6 and 12.7 mg kg−1, respectively) was larger than that from ECST, MAP, and TSP. In the AR‐L and MO‐SiL 1 soils, TSP was the only fertilizer‐P source that had increased WS P concentrations in the top 6 cm relative to the other fertilizer‐P sources. Results showed that ECST‐derived, WS P had similar soil profile distributions in the top 10 cm, suggesting that ECST will be equally protective of environmental health and leachate quality across multiple soil textures as other common fertilizer‐P sources. Core Ideas: Soil P from electrochemically precipitated struvite is not more mobile than that from other P fertilizers.Near‐surface soil pH and nutrient distributions are similar between struvite and other P fertilizers.Struvite appears to behave similar to other common fertilizer‐P sources across multiple soil textures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the connection between methamphetamine use and sex have tended to focus on gay men or men who have sex with men. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with 40 cisgender heterosexual women who used methamphetamine in rural Missouri, we investigate the multiple ways in which sex played into their market navigations. Our findings reveal the nuances of sexual agency within patriarchal structural constraints. We use and expand upon a queer criminological framework to investigate the intersecting gendered and sexualized expectations that cisgender heterosexual men imposed on women. Our study reveals how compulsory heterosexuality shapes behavior within the rural methamphetamine market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]