Toxicologic analysis in cases of possible sudden infant death syndrome: a worthwhile exercise?

The diagnosis of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is one of exclusion. At the Department of Forensic Medicine, Westmead Hospital, toxicologic analysis is performed as part of the postmortem examination of all apparent SIDS deaths. The results for the 5-year period January 1, 1994, to December 31, 1999, were audited to determine whether such routine testing was worthwhile. During this time there were 117 cases with a history consistent with SIDS. Drugs were detected in 19 (16%) of these cases. In 1 case, death was attributed to the finding of methadone. The presence of methadone was regarded as a possible contributing factor to death in a further 2 cases. The presence of possible methadone toxicity had not been expected from the history given before the examination in these 3 cases. In 114 cases there was a suitable sample for alcohol testing; in no case was alcohol detected. In 13 cases the postmortem examination revealed an anatomic cause of death (including 3 cases consistent with whiplash/shaken baby/impact head injury), which excluded a diagnosis of SIDS. In conclusion, routine toxicologic testing in all possible cases of SIDS death supplements the postmortem examination in excluding cases of non-SIDS.     

Determination of human immunodeficiency virus antibody status in forensic autopsy cases in Vancouver using a recombinant immunoblot assay

Sera from 207 forensic autopsy cases were tested for the presence of antibody to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) using a recombinant immunoblot assay (RIBA) technique developed by Chiron Corporation of Emeryville, California--the Chiron RIBA-HIV216 test system. Out of these cases, 172 autopsies were of individuals with no known risk factors for HIV infection, and of these, 169 had no detectable antibodies to HIV. In 2 cases, the serum reacted with p24 alone on the RIBA-HIV216 assay, but these results were not confirmed by further testing and are considered to be false positive reactions. In 1 case, the serum reacted only with gp41 on the RIBA-HIV216 test but was nonreactive with further testing. This result has been designated equivocal. Of the 35 cases at high risk of HIV infection, 4 had antibodies to HIV detected in postmortem serum samples. The sensitivity (100%) and specificity (98.5%) of the RIBA-HIV216 test system are high. However, the test appears to be more suitable for routine diagnosis of HIV infection than for rapid screening in the mortuary.     

The Distortion of Related Beliefs

When forming beliefs about themselves, politics, and how the world works more generally, people often face a tension between conclusions they inherently wish to reach and those which are plausible. And the likelihood of beliefs about one variable (e.g., the performance of a favored politician) depends on beliefs about other, related variables (e.g., the quality and bias of newspapers reporting on the politician). I propose a formal approach to combine these two forces, creating a tractable way to study the distortion of related beliefs. The approach unifies several central ideas from psychology (e.g., motivated reasoning, attribution) that have been applied heavily to political science. Concrete applications shed light on why successful individuals sometimes attribute their performance to luck (“imposter syndrome”), why those from advantaged groups believe they in fact face high levels of discrimination (the “persecution complex”), and why partisans disagree about the accuracy and bias of news sources.     

Autonomy-related Parenting Processes and Adolescent Adjustment in Latinx Immigrant Families

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - It is unclear how autonomy-related parenting processes are associated with Latinx adolescent adjustment. This study uses Latent Profile Analysis to identify...     

Juvenile Offenders’ Alcohol and Marijuana Trajectories: Risk and Protective Factor Effects in the Context of Time in a Supervised Facility

The current study modeled trajectories of substance use from ages 15 to 20 among 1,095 male serious juvenile offenders (M age = 16.54; 42% African-American, 34% Latino, 20% European-American, and 4% other ethnic/racial backgrounds) and prospectively predicted trajectories from risk and protective factors before and after controlling for time spent in a supervised setting. Results indicated that supervised time suppressed age-related growth in substance use. Trajectories of offenders with no supervised time and low levels of supervised time increased in substance use across age, whereas offenders with high levels of supervised time showed no growth. Almost all risk and protective factors had effects on initial substance use but only adolescent history of substance use, impulse control, and psychosocial maturity had an effect on change in substance use over time. Findings highlight the importance of formal sanctions and interventions superimposed on normal developmental processes in understanding trajectories of substance use among serious juvenile offenders.

Individual and Contextual Predictors of Cyberbullying: The Influence of Children’s Provictim Attitudes and Teachers’ Ability to Intervene

Electronic social communication has provided a new context for children to bully and harass their peers and it is clear that cyberbullying is a growing public health concern in the US and abroad. The present study examined individual and contextual predictors of cyberbullying in a sample of 16, 634 students in grades 3–5 and 7–8. Data were obtained from a large cluster-randomized trial of the KiVa antibullying program that occurred in Finland between 2007 and 2009. Students completed measures at pre-intervention assessing provictim attitudes (defined as children’s beliefs that bullying is unacceptable, victims are acceptable, and defending victims is valued), perceptions of teachers’ ability to intervene in bullying, and cyberbullying behavior. Students with higher scores on provictim attitudes reported lower frequencies of cyberbullying. This relationship was true for individual provictim attitudes as well as the collective attitudes of students within classrooms. Teachers’ ability to intervene assessed at the classroom level was a unique, positive predictor of cyberbullying. Classrooms in which students collectively considered their teacher as capable of intervening to stop bullying had higher mean levels of cyberbullying frequency. Our findings suggest that cyberbullying and other indirect or covert forms of bullying may be more prevalent in classrooms where students collectively perceive their teacher’s ability to intervene in bullying as high. We found no evidence that individual or contextual effects were conditional on age or gender. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

In Search of Paradise

<正>When winter rolls over northern China and endless days of smog have you wandering around in a comatose state,there is only one remedy—and it doesn’t come in a bottle.It’s sunshine,blue skies,and beaches.I conducted a survey amongst my friends regarding the best place to catch some waves and the same location kept coming up.