Across cultures, people use natural and supernatural explanations to explain adverse life events, such as illness or death. Yet little is known about the psychological implications of this type of causal reasoning. Here, we ask, does explanatory coexistence help or hinder coping with significant misfortune? We examined this question through structured interviews with a diverse sample of 147 Los Angelinos who had suffered from severe illness or bereavement during the COVID-19 pandemic. As predicted, mean scores on the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory were significantly higher for participants who employed coexisting explanations for their misfortune than those who employed singular explanations (natural, supernatural) alone. These findings provide evidence of an association between coexistence reasoning about misfortune and positive post-event processing.

A quasi-experimental study of a novel, cross-content area vocabulary intervention program called Word Generation showed significantly greater growth among 6th- to 8th-grade students in schools implementing the program than in comparison schools, on a curriculum-specific test. Furthermore, the language-minority students in the treatment, but not the comparison, schools showed greater growth than the English-only students. Improvement on the curriculum-specific test predicted performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) English language arts assessment, again only for students in the treatment schools. Recognizing the need to implement a more rigorous experimental study of this program, nonetheless we conclude that participation in the intervention, with its focus on deep reading, comprehension of current-events topics, productive classroom discussion, developing arguments, and producing persuasive essays, was a plausible contributor to student performance on the MCAS.

Vocabulary instruction in schools is often fragmented, which results in students having problems engaging with textbooks and other academic materials. A system of cross-content, whole-school vocabulary could prove to be the solution to better reading comprehension. In order to implement a program of whole-school vocabulary instruction, the teaching team needs to select vocabulary words to teach, ensure that these words are repeated and that students are well-exposed to their usage, encourage students to experiment with and use these words, and teach them word learning strategies. Students from the Word Generation Program, which supports reading accuracy, fluency, syntax issues, background knowledge, and comprehension, learned more words over a shorter time span than students who did not participate in the program.

This longitudinal quasi-experimental study examines the effects of Word Generation, a middle-school vocabulary intervention, on the learning, maintenance, and consolidation of academic vocabulary for students from English-speaking homes, proficient English speakers from language-minority homes, and limited English-proficiency students. Using individual growth modeling, we found that students receiving Word Generation improved more on target word knowledge during the instructional period than students in comparison schools did, on average. We found an interaction between instruction and home-language status such that English-proficient students from language-minority homes improved more than English-proficient students from English-speaking homes. Limited English-proficiency students, however, did not realize gains equivalent to those of more proficient students from language-minority homes during the instructional period. We administered follow-up assessments in the fall after the instructional period ended and in the spring of the following year to determine how well students maintained and consolidated target academic words. Students in the intervention group maintained their relative improvements at both follow-up assessments.

This longitudinal quasi-experimental study examines the effects of Word Generation, a middle-school vocabulary intervention, on the learning, maintenance, and consolidation of academic vocabulary for students from English-speaking homes, proficient English speakers from language-minority homes, and limited English-proficiency students. Using individual growth modeling, we found that students receiving Word Generation improved more on target word knowledge during the instructional period than students in comparison schools did, on average. We found an interaction between instruction and home-language status such that English-proficient students from language-minority homes improved more than English-proficient students from English-speaking homes. Limited English-proficiency students, however, did not realize gains equivalent to those of more proficient students from language-minority homes during the instructional period. We administered follow-up assessments in the fall after the instructional period ended and in the spring of the following year to determine how well students maintained and consolidated target academic words. Students in the intervention group maintained their relative improvements at both follow-up assessments.

Lead fluoride, PbF2, was investigated experimentally in the laser-heated diamond anvil cell by x-ray diffraction to pressures of 75 GPa at room temperature and to 64.5 GPa and 2430 K, as well as through first-principles density functional theory calculations up to 70 GPa. During room temperature compression, no discontinuous changes in the x-ray diffraction pattern or volume were observed, but the lattice parameters displayed highly anomalous trends between 10-22 GPa with enhanced compressibility along the a direction and reduced or even negative compressibility along b and c. Theoretical calculations of valence electron densities at 22 GPa showed that α-PbF2 underwent a pressure-induced isosymmetric phase transition to a postcotunnite Co2Si structure and also revealed the detailed atomic rearrangements associated with the development of an extra Pb-F bond in the high-pressure phase. Our x-ray results and theoretical calculations are consistent with an isosymmetric phase transition smoothly occurring over 10-22 GPa rather than abruptly as previously suggested. The characteristic values for the cell constants a/c and (a+c)/b, which are used to distinguish among cotunnite-, Co2Si-, and Ni2In-type phases, require modification based on our results. An equation of state fit yields a bulk modulus, K0, of 72(3) GPa for the cotunnite-type, and an ambient-pressure volume, V0, of 182(2)Å3, and K0=81(4)GPa for the Co2Si-type phase when fixing the pressure derivative of the bulk modulus, K0′=4. Upon heating above 1200 K at pressures at or above 25.9 GPa, PbF2 partially transformed to the hexagonal Ni2In-type phase but wholly or partially reverted back to Co2Si-type phase upon temperature quench. From 43-65 GPa, nearly complete transformation to the Ni2In-type PbF2 was observed at high temperature, but the material partially transformed back to the orthorhombic phase upon temperature quench. Our results show that high-pressure behavior of PbF2 is distinct from that of the alkaline earth fluorides with similar ionic radii. Our results also have relevance to understanding the behavior of lanthanide and actinide dioxides, which have been predicted theoretically to exhibit similar isosymmetric transitions at Mbar pressures.