Unpacking the relationships between impulsivity, neighborhood disadvantage, and adolescent violence : an application of a neighborhood-based group decomposition

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects); and from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/Career Integration Grant no. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects).Scholars have become increasingly interested in how social environments condition the relationships between individual risk-factors and adolescent behavior. An appreciable portion of this literature is concerned with the relationship between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhood settings. The present article builds upon this growing body of research by considering the more nuanced pathways through which neighborhood disadvantage shapes the development of impulsivity and provides a situational context for impulsive tendencies to manifest in violent and aggressive behaviors. Using a sample of 12,935 adolescent from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) (mean age = 15.3, 51% female; 20% Black, 17% Hispanic), we demonstrate the extent to which variation in the association between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhoods can be attributed to (1) differences in mean-levels of impulsivity and violence and (2) differences in coefficients across neighborhoods. The results of a series of multivariate regression models indicate that impulsivity is positively associated with self-reported violence, and that this relationship is strongest among youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage can be attributed primarily to the stronger effect of impulsivity on violence in these areas, while differences in average levels of violence and impulsivity account for a smaller, yet nontrivial portion of the observed relationship. These results indicate that the differential effect of impulsivity on violence can be attributed to both developmental processes that lead to the greater concentration of violent and impulsive adolescents in economically deprived neighborhoods as well as the greater likelihood of impulsive adolescents engaging in violence when they reside in economically disadvantaged communities.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Violence in the Population of England: Does Comorbidity Matter?

It is unclear whether the association between Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and violence is explained by ADHD symptoms or co-existing psychopathology. We investigated associations of ADHD and its symptom domains of hyperactivity and inattention, among individuals reporting violence in the UK population. Methods We report data from the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (2007), a representative sample of the household population of England. A randomly selected sample of 7,369 completed the Adult Self-Report Scale for ADHD and the self-reported violence module, including repetition, injury, minor violence, victims and location of incidents. All models were weighted to account for non-response and carefully adjusted for demography and clinical predictors of violence: antisocial personality, substance misuse and anxiety disorders. Results ADHD was moderately associated with violence after adjustments (OR 1.75, p = .01). Hyperactivity, but not inattention was associated with several indicators of violence in the domestic context (OR 1.16, p = .03). Mild and moderate ADHD symptoms were significantly associated with violence repetition, but not severe ADHD where the association was explained by co-existing disorders. Stratified analyses further indicated that most violence reports are associated with co-occurring psychopathology. Conclusions The direct effect of ADHD on violence is only moderate at the population level, driven by hyperactivity, and involving intimate partners and close persons. Because violence associated with severe ADHD is explained by co-existing psychopathology, interventions should primarily target co-existing disorders

Beyond crime statistics: the construction and application of a criminogenity monitor in Amsterdam

Criminologists have devoted a great deal of attention to risk factors - also called criminogenic factors - leading to criminal offending. This paper presents a criminogenity monitor which includes 19 risk factors that underlie crime. These factors do not themselves cause criminal behaviour; rather, they must be seen as signals that crimes may be committed. After discussing how the criminogenity monitor was constructed, we apply the risk factors we examined to the situation in Amsterdam, capital city of the Netherlands. The monitor is intended to function particularly as an instrument to rationalise policy-makers' work in targeting and preventing symptoms of crime at three geographical levels: the entire city, its boroughs and its neighbourhoods. © 2012 The Author(s)

Timing of immune escape linked to success or failure of vaccination

Successful vaccination against HIV should limit viral replication sufficiently to prevent the emergence of viral immune escape mutations. Broadly directed immunity is likely to be required to limit opportunities for immune escape variants to flourish. We studied the emergence of an SIV Gag cytotoxic T cell immune escape variant in pigtail macaques expressing the Mane-A*10 MHC I allele using a quantitative RT-PCR to measure viral loads of escape and wild type variants. Animals receiving whole Gag expressing vaccines completely controlled an SIVmac251 challenge, had broader CTL responses and exhibited minimal CTL escape. In contrast, animals vaccinated with only a single CTL epitope and challenged with the same SIVmac251 stock had high levels of viral replication and rapid CTL escape. Unvaccinated na&iuml;ve animals exhibited a slower emergence of immune escape variants. Thus narrowly directed vaccination against a single epitope resulted in rapid immune escape and viral levels equivalent to that of na&iuml;ve unvaccinated animals. These results emphasize the importance of inducing broadly directed HIV-specific immunity that effectively quashes early viral replication and limits the generation of immune escape variants. This has important implications for the selection of HIV vaccines for expanded human trials.<br /

Relating Differently to Intrusive Images: The Impact of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) on Intrusive Images in Patients With Severe Health Anxiety (Hypochondriasis).

Recurrent distressing intrusive images are a common experience in hypochondriasis. The aim of the current study was to assess the impact of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for hypochondriasis on the occurrence and nature of distressing intrusive imagery in hypochondriasis. A semi-structured interview was used to assess intrusive imagery, and an adapted version of the Southampton Mindfulness Questionnaire (SMQ) was used to assess participants’ relationship with their intrusive images. A consecutive series of participants (N = 20) who were receiving MBCT for hypochondriasis as part of an ongoing research program were assessed prior to participating in an 8-week MBCT intervention, immediately following the intervention, and at three month follow-up. As compared to the baseline assessment, the frequency of intrusive images, the distress associated with them, and the intrusiveness of the images were all significantly reduced at the post-MBCT assessment. Participants’ adapted SMQ scores were significantly increased following the MBCT intervention, suggesting that participants’ relationship with their intrusive images had changed in that they had developed a more ‘mindful’ and compassionate response to the images when they did occur. Effect sizes from pre- to post-intervention were medium to large (Cohen’s d = 0.75 - 1.50). All treatment gains were maintained at 3 month follow-up. Results suggest that MBCT may be an effective intervention for addressing intrusive imagery in hypochondriasis

Viscosity Sum Rules at Large Scattering Lengths

We use the operator product expansion (OPE) and dispersion relations to obtain new model-independent "Borel-resummed" sum rules for both shear and bulk viscosity of many-body systems of spin-1/2 fermions with predominantly short range S-wave interactions. These sum rules relate Gaussian weights of the frequency-dependent viscosities to the Tan contact parameter C(a). Our results are valid for arbitrary values of the scattering length a, but receive small corrections from operators of dimension larger than 5 in the OPE, and can be used to study transport properties in the vicinity of the infinite scattering length fixed point. In particular, we find that the exact dependence of the shear viscosity sum rule on scattering length is controlled by the function C(a). The sum rules that we obtain depend on a frequency scale w that can be optimized to maximize their overlap with low-energy data

Classification tree analysis of second neoplasms in survivors of childhood cancer

BACKGROUND: Reports on childhood cancer survivors estimated cumulative probability of developing secondary neoplasms vary from 3,3% to 25% at 25 years from diagnosis, and the risk of developing another cancer to several times greater than in the general population. METHODS: In our retrospective study, we have used the classification tree multivariate method on a group of 849 first cancer survivors, to identify childhood cancer patients with the greatest risk for development of secondary neoplasms. RESULTS: In observed group of patients, 34 develop secondary neoplasm after treatment of primary cancer. Analysis of parameters present at the treatment of first cancer, exposed two groups of patients at the special risk for secondary neoplasm. First are female patients treated for Hodgkin's disease at the age between 10 and 15 years, whose treatment included radiotherapy. Second group at special risk were male patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who were treated at the age between 4,6 and 6,6 years of age. CONCLUSION: The risk groups identified in our study are similar to the results of studies that used more conventional approaches. Usefulness of our approach in study of occurrence of second neoplasms should be confirmed in larger sample study, but user friendly presentation of results makes it attractive for further studies

MKEM: a Multi-level Knowledge Emergence Model for mining undiscovered public knowledge

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since Swanson proposed the Undiscovered Public Knowledge (UPK) model, there have been many approaches to uncover UPK by mining the biomedical literature. These earlier works, however, required substantial manual intervention to reduce the number of possible connections and are mainly applied to disease-effect relation. With the advancement in biomedical science, it has become imperative to extract and combine information from multiple disjoint researches, studies and articles to infer new hypotheses and expand knowledge.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We propose MKEM, a Multi-level Knowledge Emergence Model, to discover implicit relationships using Natural Language Processing techniques such as Link Grammar and Ontologies such as Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) MetaMap. The contribution of MKEM is as follows: First, we propose a flexible knowledge emergence model to extract implicit relationships across different levels such as molecular level for gene and protein and Phenomic level for disease and treatment. Second, we employ MetaMap for tagging biological concepts. Third, we provide an empirical and systematic approach to discover novel relationships.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We applied our system on 5000 abstracts downloaded from PubMed database. We performed the performance evaluation as a gold standard is not yet available. Our system performed with a good precision and recall and we generated 24 hypotheses.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our experiments show that MKEM is a powerful tool to discover hidden relationships residing in extracted entities that were represented by our Substance-Effect-Process-Disease-Body Part (SEPDB) model. </p

COSPAR Sample Safety Assessment Framework (SSAF).

The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Sample Safety Assessment Framework (SSAF) has been developed by a COSPAR appointed Working Group. The objective of the sample safety assessment would be to evaluate whether samples returned from Mars could be harmful for Earth's systems (e.g., environment, biosphere, geochemical cycles). During the Working Group's deliberations, it became clear that a comprehensive assessment to predict the effects of introducing life in new environments or ecologies is difficult and practically impossible, even for terrestrial life and certainly more so for unknown extraterrestrial life. To manage expectations, the scope of the SSAF was adjusted to evaluate only whether the presence of martian life can be excluded in samples returned from Mars. If the presence of martian life cannot be excluded, a Hold & Critical Review must be established to evaluate the risk management measures and decide on the next steps. The SSAF starts from a positive hypothesis (there is martian life in the samples), which is complementary to the null-hypothesis (there is no martian life in the samples) typically used for science. Testing the positive hypothesis includes four elements: (1) Bayesian statistics, (2) subsampling strategy, (3) test sequence, and (4) decision criteria. The test sequence capability covers self-replicating and non-self-replicating biology and biologically active molecules. Most of the investigations associated with the SSAF would need to be carried out within biological containment. The SSAF is described in sufficient detail to support planning activities for a Sample Receiving Facility (SRF) and for preparing science announcements, while at the same time acknowledging that further work is required before a detailed Sample Safety Assessment Protocol (SSAP) can be developed. The three major open issues to be addressed to optimize and implement the SSAF are (1) setting a value for the level of assurance to effectively exclude the presence of martian life in the samples, (2) carrying out an analogue test program, and (3) acquiring relevant contamination knowledge from all Mars Sample Return (MSR) flight and ground elements. Although the SSAF was developed specifically for assessing samples from Mars in the context of the currently planned NASA-ESA MSR Campaign, this framework and the basic safety approach are applicable to any other Mars sample return mission concept, with minor adjustments in the execution part related to the specific nature of the samples to be returned. The SSAF is also considered a sound basis for other COSPAR Planetary Protection Category V, restricted Earth return missions beyond Mars. It is anticipated that the SSAF will be subject to future review by the various MSR stakeholders