One of Tom Dishion's most significant contributions to prevention science was the development of affordable, ecologically valid interventions, such as the Family Check-Up, that screen for child and family risk factors broadly, but concentrate family-specific interventions on those with greatest potential for population impact. In the spirit of this approach, investigators examined effects of a brief, universal postnatal home visiting program on child emergency medical care and billing costs from birth to age 24 months. Family Connects is a community-wide public health intervention that combines identification and alignment of community services and resources with brief, postpartum nurse home visits designed to assess risk, provide supportive guidance, and connect families with identified risk to community resources. Over 18 months, families of all 4,777 resident Durham County, North Carolina, births were randomly assigned based on even or odd birth date to receive a postnatal nurse home visiting intervention or services as usual (control). Independently, 549 of these families were randomly selected and participated in an impact evaluation study. Families, blind to study goals, provided written consent to access hospital administrative records. Results indicate that children randomly assigned to Family Connects had significantly less total emergency medical care (by 37%) through age 24 months, with results observed across almost all subgroups. Examination of billing records indicate a $3.17 decrease in total billing costs for each $1 in program costs. Overall, results suggest that community-wide postpartum support program can significantly reduce population rates of child emergency medical care through age 24 months while being cost-beneficial to communities.

Over the past decade, large outbreaks of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) infections have occurred in correctional facilities across the country. Although many have been managed with aggressive interventions, response to standard infection control procedures has been variable, highlighting our incomplete understanding of staphylococcal transmission in this setting. Environmental contamination has recently emerged as a possible target for novel prevention and control strategies. This study sought to characterize the relationship between environmental contamination and clinical infection in this vulnerable population.

We conducted a case-control study of S. aureus environmental contamination at 2 New York State (NYS) maximum security prisons: Sing Sing (men) and Bedford Hills (women).

Equal amounts of carbon-12 methyl halides and carbon-13 methane, along with hydrogen, have been introduced into a hot-filament diamond CVD chamber. The isotopic ratios of the as-deposited diamond films on tantalum have been measured by Raman spectroscopy. It was found that methyl chloride yielded carbon-12 enriched diamond films, while the other methyl halides resulted in equal amounts of carbon-13 and carbon-12 in the films. Furthermore, the carbon-12 enrichment was more enhanced as the substrate temperature was lowered. Matrix-isolation FTIR analyses of the gas samples collected during the deposition indicated that there was no straightforward agreement between the 12C/13C ratios of the gas phase species, methane and acetylene, and that of the diamond films. The results imply the presence of a new chlorocarbon radical such as CH2Cl, which is postulated as a more effective growth species than the methyl radical.

Growth rates of homoepitaxial (110), (111), and (100) diamond films were experimentally determined, for the first time, in a hot filament reactor using methane and carbon tetrachloride as the carbon source. Methane concentrations from 0.07 % to 1.03 % in H2 were studied at a substrate temperature of 970°C. Growth rates were found to be crystal-face dependent with respect to methane concentration, being linear or first order for the (100)-orientation, sublinear for (110), and sigmoidal for (111). The observed growth kinetics of (111) suggest the viability of an acetylene mechanism for (111), along with the methyl radical mechanism at methane concentrations above 0.73%. CC14 concentrations from 0.06% to 0.69% in H2 were also investigated at a substrate temperature of 970°C. Growth rate behavior was similar to that of methane for all three crystal faces.

The temperature dependence of the growth rates was also crystal-orientation dependent. At substrate temperatures above 730°C, growth rates are thought to be mainly transport limited, yielding effective activation energies of 8±3, 18±2, and 12±4 kcal/mole for (100), (110), and (111) orientations, respectively. At substrate temperatures below 730°C, growth rates are thought to be surface reaction rate-limited, with an overall effective activation energy of 50±19 kcal/mole for the three crystal-orientations studied.

The incorporation of methane into low-pressure CVD diamond thin films has been compared to that of acetylene. 13CH4 and 12C2 H2 were used as the hydrocarbon sources in a heated-filament CVD diamond growth process at a total concentration of 0.5% hydrocarbon in 99.5% hydrogen. Results indicated that methane and/or methyl radical is the dominant carbon source for diamond growth in a hot filament reactor under steady state conditions and that acetylene is rapidly hydrogenated to methane. Results also indicated that diamond surface reactions play an important role in determining the relative methane to acetylene ratios.