Experiencing educational opportunities in all formative phases is best predictor of higher educational attainment and earnings for youth in low-income households

Boston College

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A new study led by a Boston College researcher found that experiencing educational opportunities in all stages of childhood and adolescence is the best predictor of higher educational attainment and earnings for disadvantaged American youth, as opposed to the impact of learning access during any single phase.

The findings, published in the June 30, 2026, issue of Educational Researcher, point to the critical value of educational opportunities for children from low-income households across their formative years, an alternative belief to the widely held viewpoint of the exceptional importance of exposure during early childhood. 

“We found that experiencing educational opportunities in all phases — early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence— is the ideal scenario,” said Eric Dearing, principal investigator and a professor in Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development's Counseling, Development & Educational Psychology department. “Experiencing just one educational opportunity in each stage increased a child’s odds of graduating with a four-year degree by more than threefold.”

The researchers utilized the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development — a 26-year longitudinal study of educational opportunity — with an exclusive focus on 226 children born into low-income households. They examined this cohort’s educational attainment and earnings at age 26 as a function of when they experienced educational opportunities, observing both the unique predicative power of opportunities accrued within the three developmental stages, and the additive predicative power of opportunities across stages. 

For early childhood, opportunities included living in an enriching home environment, attending a high-quality childcare facility and/or pre-school, or residing in a socioeconomically advantaged neighborhood. For kindergarten through fifth grade, did they receive high quality elementary school instruction, and participate in organized afterschool activities in addition to an enhanced home and neighborhood?  For adolescence, did they experience upward family economic mobility in addition to the other positive factors? 

According to the researchers, educational opportunities in each development stage demonstrated positive and statistically significant associations with achieving education beyond high school.

“Opportunities in early childhood and adolescence predicted increases in the probability of going beyond high school to gain some college education or a two-year degree, and opportunities in both early and middle childhood predicted increases in the probability of completing a four-year degree or more education,” noted Dearing and his co-investigators Henrik Daae Zachrisson, professor of educational sciences at the University of Oslo; and  University of California, Irvine School of Education Associate Professor Andres S. Bustamante, and Chancellor's Professor of Education Emerita Deborah Lowe Vandell. “While less than 50 percent of low-income children who experienced none of these opportunities in any stage was likely to pursue education beyond high school, this percentage was greater than 60 percent for those with just one opportunity during at least one stage.” 

Furthermore, more than 80 percent of disadvantaged children who experienced at least one opportunity in each of the three stages were likely to pursue education beyond high school, with approximately one-third of these children earning a four-year college degree. 

 “These correlational findings are among the first to point to the importance of educational opportunities during each development stage for outcomes in adulthood,” said Dearing, who also serves as the executive director of the Mary E. Walsh School for Thriving Children at Boston College. “We believe these results can help inform the public about what we, as a society, should expect from educational policies that target a single state of development versus strategies that provide more opportunities for disadvantaged children throughout their foundational years.”

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Journal

Educational Researcher

DOI

10.3102/0013189X261463238 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Developmental Timing of Educational Opportunities for Children in Low-Income Households

34th Milan No-Till Field Day will highlight weed control solutions

Herbicide-resistant weeds challenge row crop production

University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture

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If left unmanaged, weeds can quickly overwhelm a crop field and impact end-of-season yield.

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Credit: Photo courtesy UTIA.

Effective and affordable weed management is essential for protecting crop yields and maintaining farm profitability. However, increasing herbicide resistance in weed populations is leaving producers with fewer reliable control options. To help growers address these challenges, experts from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) will present their latest research-based recommendations during the 34th Milan No-Till Field Day on July 23, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. CDT at the AgResearch and Education Center at Milan. There is no cost to attend.

Attendees can learn more during the tour “Herbicide-Resistant Weed Management” held at 11 a.m. Larry Steckel, row crop weed specialist at UTIA, will partner with Hayden Love, graduate research assistant in the UT Herbert College of Agriculture, to lead this one-hour presentation on emerging resistance issues and practical control strategies.

“Frequent rainfall in June made timely herbicide applications difficult, allowing weed populations to grow beyond ideal treatment stages,” says Steckel. “Palmer amaranth and goosegrass continue to be some of our most troublesome species, and we’re witnessing declining effectiveness of once dependable herbicide options.”

Standard postemergence recommendations for Palmer amaranth have included Liberty, dicamba or a tankmix of the two. However, some populations are showing increased tolerance, allowing plants to survive these applications. This late in the growing season, Steckel recommends hooded or post-direct applications of Liberty tankmixed with either Direx, Caparol, Valor, Zidua or Dual Magnum.

“Our field observations across multiple counties in West Tennessee indicate that Palmer amaranth just two to three inches tall is occasionally escaping Liberty applications as well,” says Sally Reed, graduate research assistant in the UT Herbert College of Agriculture. “In these cases, a rescue treatment featuring a hooded application of Gramoxone tankmixed with either diuron, Caparol or Valor is ideal.”

During the presentation, Steckel will also discuss management strategies for glyphosate-resistant goosegrass, a biotype that continues to spread across Tennessee. Love will share findings from his graduate research on Italian ryegrass, which has become an increasingly significant challenge in Tennessee no-till production.

Milan No-Till Field Day began in 1981 to teach producers about the benefits of no-till farming over traditional tillage. Today, the event is held every other year and continues to attract thousands of people from across the nation interested in improving soil conservation and agricultural production. Instead of tents on the main lawn, all agricultural presentations will begin in the sheds near the lake. Certified Crop Adviser and other pesticide recertification points will be available for attendees.

The AgResearch and Education Center at Milan is located at 3 Ledbetter Gate Road in Milan, Tennessee. For the full event program, including presentations, demonstrations and other activities, please visit milannotill.tennessee.edu. 

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is comprised of the Herbert College of Agriculture, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch and UT Extension. Through its land-grant mission of teaching, research and outreach, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans and beyond. utia.tennessee.edu. 

Cheaper catalytic system turns captured carbon into ethanol

University of Manchester

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An international team of researchers has developed a homogeneous catalytic process that converts methanol, carbon dioxide and hydrogen into ethanol using inexpensive and stable catalyst precursors.  

Published in Royal Society of Chemistry’s Catalysis Science & Technology, the study addresses a key challenge in efforts to transform captured carbon dioxide into useful chemicals. While ethanol can be produced from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, many existing homogeneous catalytic systems rely on expensive or complex catalyst precursors that can be difficult to deploy at industrial scale.  

In the study – a collaboration between researchers from The University of Manchester, the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, and Fuzhou University - the team designed a homogeneous catalytic system using commercially available ruthenium chloride hydrate and cobalt chloride hexahydrate. After activation with carbon monoxide, the catalyst converted methanol, carbon dioxide and hydrogen into ethanol under relatively mild reaction conditions of 170°C.  

Under optimised conditions, the catalyst achieved an ethanol selectivity of 64.9% and an ethanol space-time yield of 3.9 g L⁻¹ h⁻¹, which the authors report is higher than previous ruthenium-cobalt catalyst systems used for this type of reaction.  

Dr Jie Li, co-author and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Process Integration, based in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Manchester explains: 

“One of the challenges in this area is developing catalytic systems that combine strong performance with practical considerations such as cost, stability and ease of handling. Our study shows that readily available catalyst precursors can be activated to drive ethanol production efficiently, while also offering advantages for storage, recycling and potential scale-up.”  

Ethanol is one of the world's most widely used chemicals. It is used in fuels, solvents, disinfectants and as a feedstock for manufacturing. Finding new ways to produce ethanol from carbon-containing waste streams could help support broader efforts to make chemical production less dependent on fossil resources. The study focused on a process in which methanol acts as a starting material and carbon dioxide provides an additional carbon source.  

The team also investigated how the catalyst works. Their experiments showed that carbon dioxide is first converted into carbon monoxide through a reverse water gas shift reaction. The carbon monoxide then acts as an intermediate in forming ethanol. The researchers found that ruthenium and cobalt perform complementary roles, with ruthenium helping drive hydrogenation steps and cobalt promoting the carbon-carbon bond formation needed to build the ethanol molecule.  

Beyond performance, the researchers assessed characteristics important for industrial use. The activated catalyst remained stable during storage tests and retained good activity after five recycling cycles. The catalyst system also uses precursor materials that are easier to obtain and store than many alternatives previously reported for similar reactions.  

The work has already progressed to preliminary scale-up studies. The authors report that the catalyst maintained high activity and ethanol selectivity in larger-scale reactor (3 L). Based on these findings, the team proposed a process flow for producing ethanol from methanol, carbon dioxide and hydrogen, with catalyst recycling and recovery of unreacted materials built into the design.  

Dr Li adds: “There is still further work to do before a process such as this could be implemented commercially. However, these results demonstrate a promising route that combines accessible catalyst materials with recyclability and strong performance, which are all important considerations when developing practical carbon utilisation technologies.”  

This international collaboration was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFE0206500) from MOST International S&T Cooperation Centre. 

 

Journal: Catalysis Science & Technology   

Full title: Synthesis of ethanol via methanol homologation with CO₂ and H₂ using an industrially relevant Ru–Co catalyst  

DOI: 10.1039/D6CY00285D 

URL: https://doi.org/10.1039/d6cy00285d

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Journal

Catalysis Science & Technology

DOI

10.1039/D6CY00285D 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Synthesis of ethanol via methanol homologation with CO2 and H2 using an industrially relevant Ru–Co catalyst

 

Uptake of a treatment for opioid use disorder is highly uneven across the United States

Rutgers and Columbia researchers investigate overall increased use of a long-acting injectable buprenorphine, but large disparities persist

Rutgers University

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There was a substantial increase in recent years in the use of a form of the primary medication to treat opioid use disorder, according to a Rutgers Health study.

 

Researchers also noted sharp differences in growth trends across the United States.

 

The first long-acting injectable form of buprenorphine, the most common medication for treating opioid use disorder, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in 2018. As a partial rather than full blocker of the opioid receptor, it blocks the effects of opioid drugs such as heroin or fentanyl and reduces risk of overdose. Long-acting injectables deliver buprenorphine via a shot, slowly releasing it into the bloodstream over a full month to provide a steady level of medication over time, as opposed to sublingual or oral forms.

 

The study, published in Health Affairs, examined pharmacy prescription claims from 2021 to 2024, including more than 4 billion prescriptions dispensed annually. Researchers explored state-level trends in the volume of long-acting injectable buprenorphine prescriptions as well as trends in insurance payer type, such as Medicaid, Medicare, commercial or self-pay and prescriber specialty, such as physicians or advanced practice clinicians.

 

“The data showed a rapid uptake of long-acting injectable buprenorphine, with the total number of buprenorphine prescriptions in injectable form increasing tenfold from 2021 to 2024,” said Stephen Crystal, the director of the Rutgers Center for Health Services Research and a coauthor of the study. “This matters because an injectable formulation could be lifesaving for those patients who struggle to stabilize on a daily oral medication. Sustained levels of medication, potentially reducing cravings for illicit drugs and assured protection for a full month may reduce the risk of overdose, particularly for individuals at high risk, such as those treated for prior overdose or in unstable living situations.”

 

Researchers observed marked increases in prescriptions for patients with Medicaid insurance benefits, the joint federal and state program that provides free or low-cost health coverage to low-income or disabled Americans. Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Alaska and Ohio had the highest rates of long-acting injectable prescriptions, possibly because of policies of their Medicaid plans that made this type of buprenorphine more accessible, according to researchers.

 

While overall prescription increases were observed, researchers noted significant differences in growth trends across states. In some states, less than 1% of buprenorphine prescribed was in long-acting injectable form, and in other states, close to 13% of buprenorphine was prescribed in injectable form by 2024.

 

“Given the variation across states, it’s evident that state-level policy decisions and insurance plan designs have a meaningful impact on expanding access to lifesaving opioid-use disorder treatment,” said Arthur Robin Williams, an associate professor at Columbia University and the lead author of the study.

 

Researchers also found disproportionate increases in long-acting injectable buprenorphine prescriptions among advanced practice clinicians, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

 

“These findings highlight the crucial role of Medicaid, as well as advanced practice clinicians, rather than physicians in combating the opioid crisis,” said Crystal, who is also a Distinguished Research Professor at Rutgers School of Social Work.

 

Coauthors include Mark Olfson of Columbia University and Hillary Samples and Jialiang Hua of Rutgers Institute for Health.

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Journal

Health Affairs

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Publication Date

7-Jul-2026

 

Perceived risk of fentanyl use among US adolescents

JAMA Network Open

About The Study: 

In this survey study, an appreciable portion of adolescents—particularly the younger ones—were not aware of the dangers of fentanyl use. Clinicians, parents, schools, and public education programs all have important roles in communicating the potentially life-threatening risks of fentanyl misuse to adolescents.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Richard Miech, PhD, email ramiech@umich.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.22039)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article 

 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.22039?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=070726

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

Ferreira group kicking off a revolution in computer numerical control for manufacturing

University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering

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Six of the seven authors accept their NAMRC Outstanding Paper award on June 17, 2026. At the far left and far right are conference officials Xun Xu and Brett Conner. Holding the plaques are (left to right) authors Shivam Garg, Aryan Shroff, Ricardo Toro, Jorge E. Correa, Shiv G. Kapoor, and Placid M. Ferreira. Co-author Liang Tung Chen was not present.

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Credit: The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

At times, it might seem like the computing technologies that pervade the modern world are continually making a whirlwind of dizzying advances. But that isn’t always the case. Computer automation has long played a critical role in manufacturing, notably including the use of computer numerical control (CNC) to control machine tools. Yet despite the importance of CNC to industry, the fundamental approach underlying its use has remained unchanged for decades.

Placid Ferreira’s research group is now shaking up that status quo in a big way. They’ve introduced the Cloud-Direct NC (C-DNC) framework, which represents a fundamental rethinking of how machine control is done. The paper describing the framework just won a NAMRC Outstanding Paper in the Journal of Manufacturing Systems award, which was presented to the team at the 54th North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC).

In addition, through a new venture called ToolBit, Ferreira’s students Shivam Garg and Aryan Shroff are in the process of commercializing one application of the framework: a technology they call Numerical Control as a Service (NCaaS). That effort has already won another two awards.

What makes C-DNC so novel?

Ferreira, who is the Tungchao Julia Lu Professor in mechanical science & engineering and an affiliate of the Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory and the Coordinated Science Laboratory, explained that until now, there has been a dichotomy between hardware and software.

“On one side, in manufacturing, you have the machines, and on the other side, you have software, and there’s always been a sort of barrier between the two,” he said. “Sometimes, that barrier has been justified, as it’s good for security and so forth. But in general it fragments the flow of information. It introduces various kinds of breaks in the flow of information where somebody has to manually translate the file, or do something to a file to get a program to run on the machine.”

Ferreira said the team asked themselves a fundamental question: knowing what we know today in terms of cloud computing, high-bandwidth communications, emerging AI applications, affordable sensing options, and so on, would we still want to use the same old approach for CNC? Or would we do something different?

“We came to the conclusion that one has to have a much more sort of integrated view of how things are done, rather than ‘this is done in software outside the machine; this is done on the machine.’ And we developed and implemented an architecture which seamlessly... recruits cloud resources, it recruits client resources, it recruits embedded systems resources, and integrates them together to define a really seamless flow of information.”

Ferreira said the ultimate result will be that machines gain “the potential to be much smarter.”

“[A machine] can react to what is happening better,” he said. “It can learn from what it previously did more efficiently so it doesn’t do the same thing, it can compensate for its errors. It can become much, much more sensitive and perceptive with respect to its environment... And then by connecting it to client and cloud resources, it can analyze these data much more easily that it’s collecting. It can store and manage and curate this information much more easily. And it can access web resources to do learning algorithms and online learning. So you can have a much, much better integrated stack.”

Students Garg and Shroff have been strategizing about how to commercialize aspects of C-DNC. In Spring 2026, they took the Landuyt Center for Entrepreneurship’s course TE 598, Accelerating Deep Tech Enterprises, and used it as a springboard for developing plans.

Shroff explained that the C-DNC framework is an umbrella that implies a wide range of different sub-technologies. The piece that he and Garg are starting with, which they call ToolBit, is “the hardware device that essentially does the communication” between a company’s manufacturing machines and the C-DNC cloud architecture.

Shroff said that TE 598 has two sides: in part it’s a traditional class in which students learn about marketing and other business principles, but it’s also a pitching competition with judges brought in from all over the U.S. “It’s kind of a hybrid combination of a class and a startup accelerator,” he said.

ToolBit ended up winning the $5,000 third-place prize in the TE 598 competition. Earlier in the semester, the team also won an EnterpriseWorks Student Startup Tenancy Prize after Garg and Shroff presented the work at the Landuyt Center’s 2026 Cozad Demo Day. That prize includes access to co-working and conference spaces in EnterpriseWorks, the startup incubator at the University of Illinois Research Park.

Both awards indicate that the competitions’ judges were convinced that ToolBit has high potential for success.

Garg intends to waste no time in pursuing that success after he graduates with his M.S. this August. He is already working hard on customer discovery, networking with people who work and invest in the manufacturing domain to gain a deep understanding of what they see as problems. “These are the domains that I really want to understand right now. And then I’ll proceed to work on problem-solving on those problems,” he said.

Team member Jorge E. Correa, a teaching assistant professor in mechanical science & engineering, reflected, “I think this is the first time that the underlying basis of the numerical control technology, which is the backbone of our automation... has been given real thought in the past 30 or 40 years, and we’re proposing a new way of rearranging it that can have a lot of benefits... This is the first time that a team has thought about it deeply and proposed a new way of architecting it that can bring real advantages to CNC and automation.”

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Affiliations in The Grainger College of Engineering:

Liang Tung Chen graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in December 2025.

Jorge E. Correa is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, where he previously earned an M.S. (2015) and Ph.D. (2017).

Placid Ferreira is the Tungchao Julia Lu Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering. He is also affiliated with the Holonyak Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory (HMNTL) and the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) in The Grainger College of Engineering. He is also the director of the Center for Networked Intelligent Components and Environments (C-NICE) in CSL.

Shivam Garg is set to graduate with an M.S. in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering in August 2026.

Shiv Kapoor is Grayce Wicall Gauthier Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering.

Aryan Shroff is pursuing an M.S. in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering.

Ricardo Toro is a Research Engineer in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering.

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DOI

10.1016/j.jmsy.2026.04.019 

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