INTERDISCIPLINARY LAW AND PSYCHOLOGY TRAINING AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY

The opportunity to do interdisciplinary research and training is both exciting and daunting. As Indiana University forges a partnership between law and psychology, graduate and law students are on the frontlines of the collaboration—present for both the rewards and the challenges of bringing two disciplines together. We are grateful for this chance to represent the voices of students involved in interdisciplinary training and education. As a third-year law student at Indiana School of Law (M.N.) and a first-year graduate student in Clinical Psychology at Indiana University (R.B.), we respond to the following questions about our interdisciplinary experiences in law and psychology. ¹     

Invited Commentary: Understanding Brain Mechanisms of Pain Processing in Adolescents’ Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

Whereas non-suicidal self injury (NSSI) is reported in 13–23% of adolescents and is an increasingly studied topic, there has been little investigation into the pathophysiology behind self-injury. This commentary examines recent research into pain and emotional distress to discuss implications for the manner we should understand, research, and treat NSSI in the future. Research indicates that adolescents may be particularly vulnerable to NSSI behaviors due to neurodevelopmental changes in the processing of distress and pain. Additionally, emotional distress and physical pain neural pathways may have been altered in these individuals, leading to the development of NSSI behaviors during adolescence when changes in ongoing brain development may lead to further emotional dysregulation and poor impulse control. Further studies that directly characterize the relationship between emotional distress and physical pain in adolescence, as well as the neural differences between self-injurers and non-self-injurers, are needed.     

Are Family Meals as Good for Youth as We Think They Are? A Review of the Literature on Family Meals as They Pertain to Adolescent Risk Prevention

Regular family meals have been shown to reduce adolescents’ engagement in various risk behaviors. In this article, we comprehensively examine the literature to review the association between family meals and eight adolescent risk outcomes: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs; aggressive and/or violent behaviors; poor school performance; sexual behavior; mental health problems; and disordered eating patterns. The majority of the studies reviewed found associations in the relationship between family meals and adolescents’ risk profiles. More specifically, studies reporting significant associations found that adolescents who frequently ate meals with their family and/or parents were less likely to engage in risk behaviors when compared to peers who never or rarely ate meals with their families. Additionally, the influence of family meal frequency on youth risk outcomes appears to be dependent on gender, with family meals being a protective factor for females and males differently, depending on the outcome examined. However, the studies available about family meals and adolescent risk only examined the effect of family meal frequency, and not other components of family meals that contribute to the protective effect, and, thus, hinder the understanding of the mechanisms unique to family meals’ protective characteristics. Regardless of these limitations, the studies examined indicate that family meals may be protective and, therefore, have practical implications for parents, clinicians, and organizations looking to reduce adolescent risk behaviors. However, further examination is needed to better understand the mechanisms that contribute to the protective effect afforded by family meal frequency on adolescents.     

Anterior femoral curvature revisited: race assessment from the femur.

The increasing need for accurate race assessment from postcranial skeletal remains has emphasized the lack of simple, replicable methods by which to accomplish the task. Several techniques have been proposed, but without adequate results. Anterior femoral curvature was first suggested and researched by T. Dale Stewart in 1962 (6). The technique used in that study was subjective at best. He provided no substantial discrimination between whites or blacks. Two later studies only reused Stewart's technique and/or data. This study was assumed to address these issues and provide an improved technique. Skeletal collections at the Smithsonian, as well as the forensic collections at the University of Florida and the University of Tennessee, provided the specimens for this study. The historical collection of the First African Baptist Church of Philadelphia, PA, and the modern forensic collection at Louisiana State University provided the test samples. Only black and white individuals were used, and those were selected based on previous soft tissue or positive identification. Thirteen measurements were taken, including six newly developed measures. Age, race, and sex were also documented. Discriminant analysis was used to develop functions for race assessment. After analyzing the data through SPSSx using Discriminant, the variables selected provided an accuracy of 88.15% using the right femur and 86.10% with the left femur. Age was divided into two groups: under 30 and over 30. Most skeletons can be easily aged into these categories.     

Development and validation of a next generation STR ESS-pentaplex

We constructed a simple STR pentaplex of new loci recommended as next generation markers for the European Standard Set (ESS) comprising normal-amplicon STRs: D12S391 and D1S1656, plus mini-amplicon STRs: D2S441, D10S1248 and D22S1045. Validation of the pentaplex included evaluation of its ability to amplify DNA from a variety of degraded forensic casework samples. Although the ESS-pentaplex was designed in the first instance to generate allele frequency data to supplement existing databases of established STRs, the multiplex proved to be a valuable tool for the analysis of challenging DNA when certain markers of Identifiler or MiniFiler occasionally failed.     

Flooding the Permafrost: The Role of Environmental Claims in the Effort to Regulate Global Warming Emissions

This article focuses on the role that public and private claims play in spurring, supporting, supplementing, and, at times, impeding, climate change initiatives. Sections 1 and 2 describe the essential features of greenhouse gases and briefly detail the history of federal initiatives and the collapse of will that precipitated many of the claims filed by states, municipalities, and environmental groups. Section 3 discusses plaintiffs' early challenges and efforts to compel regulatory action; nuisance actions that have been filed by states, public interest groups, and individuals; and the possible trajectory of future claims. Section 4 discusses the role of climate change claims in enforcing compliance, improving corporate responsibility, and promoting interorganizational benchmarking in governmental and market-based standards programs. Section 5 concludes with a discussion of the precautionary principle and ways in which companies can protect themselves against future climate change-related claims.     

Tax-exempt bonds and sponsored research

"Sponsored research," wherein a business corporation or the government pays a portion of the cost of research activities carried out by a university or hospital, is increasingly important both for state institutions and for Section 510(c)(3) organizations. Sponsored research arrangements that are not properly structured can jeopardize the status of tax-exempt bonds issued to finance the facility at which the sponsored research occurs. While these rules have been difficult to apply in practice, properly structured agreements can provide funding for research without undue risk. This Article discusses the multiple pieces of guidance put forth by the Internal Revenue Service to clarify the many issues and tiers of analysis necessary to ensure a properly-structured sponsored research agreement.     

Y chromosome STR haplotype data for an Irish population

Y chromosome haplotype data was collected for 155 Irish males residing in the Republic of Ireland. Eleven short tandem repeat (STR) markers: DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS437, DYS438 and DYS439 were analysed and the allele and haplotype frequencies calculated. This Irish data is presented here and was found to be less diverse when compared with the neighbouring UK population.     

Dynamics of Polarizing Rhetoric in Congressional Tweets

Affective polarization is pervasive in modern US politics, and can be intensified by strategic messaging from members of Congress. But there are gaps in our knowledge of the dynamics of polarizing appeals from elected representatives on social media. We explore the usage of polarizing rhetoric by members of Congress on Twitter using the 4.9 million tweets sent by members of Congress from 2009 to 2020, coded for the presence of polarizing rhetoric via a novel and highly accurate application of supervised machine learning methods. Fitting with our expectations, we find that more ideologically extreme members, those from safer districts, and those who are not in the president’s party are more likely to send polarizing tweets, and that polarizing tweets garner more engagement, increasing campaign funding for more polarizing members.