Effect of Victimization on Impulse Control and Binge Drinking among Serious Juvenile Offenders from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

A vast literature has found longitudinal effects of early life stress on substance use and self-regulatory processes. These associations may vary by period-specific development among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current study used an accelerated longitudinal design and auto-regressive latent trajectory with structure residuals (ALT-SR) model to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between binge drinking, impulse control, and victimization from 15 to 25 years of age. A large sample (N?=?1100) of justice-involved youth were followed longitudinally for 7 years (M _{age baseline} ?=?15.8, M _{age conclusion} ?=?22.8). In general, the sample was ethnically diverse (41% Black, 34% Hispanic, 21% White, 4.3% Other) and primarily male (87.2%). Participants reported on their frequency of binge drinking, impulse control, and frequency of victimization at each time point. The results indicated that, during adolescence, victimization and binge drinking attenuated impulse control, which resulted in more binge drinking and victimization during young adulthood. The current study highlights the importance of assessing developmental processes and period-specific transitions among at risk youth, especially for youth experiencing early life stress.     

Affective Development from Middle Childhood to Late Adolescence: Trajectories of Mean-Level Change in Negative and Positive Affect

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescence has long been purported to be a period of emotional upheaval, yet relatively little is known regarding normative patterns of change in youth positive...     

Identifying Fatal Head Injuries on Postmortem Computed Tomography Using Convolutional Neural Network/Deep Learning: A Feasibility Study

Postmortem computed tomography (PMCT) is a relatively recent advancement in forensic pathology practice that has been increasingly used as an ancillary investigation and screening tool. One area of clinical CT imaging that has garnered a lot of research interest recently is the area of “artificial intelligence” (AI), such as in screening and computer-assisted diagnostics. This feasibility study investigated the application of convolutional neural network, a form of deep learning AI, to PMCT head imaging in differentiating fatal head injury from controls. PMCT images of a transverse section of the head at the level of the frontal sinus from 25 cases of fatal head injury were combined with 25 nonhead-injury controls and divided into training and testing datasets. A convolutional neural network was constructed using Keras and was trained against the training data before being assessed against the testing dataset. The results of this study demonstrated an accuracy of between 70% and 92.5%, with difficulties in recognizing subarachnoid hemorrhage and in distinguishing congested vessels and prominent falx from head injury. These results are promising for potential applications as a screening tool or in computer-assisted diagnostics in the future.     

Designing policy for the long term: agency,policy feedback and policy change

Policy Sciences - Policy feedback research faces a potential pivot point owing to recent theoretical and substantive advances. Concerted attention now spans new scientific communities, such as...     

The Cultural Realignment of State White Electorates in the 21st Century

Political Behavior - Since the beginning of the new millennium, the partisan leanings and presidential voting of state white electorates have been changing. Drawing on party realignment theories...     

An Afrocentric exploration of Jacob Zuma's anti Apartheid stance: The question of Israeli–Palestinian struggle

In this article, the author utilizes interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis to analyse the state of South Africa–Israel relations under the Zuma‐led African National Congress (ANC). The author ground roots this article on Afrocentricity as the alternative theoretical framework to identify the position of the ANC in relation to the unfolding events in Israel and broadly analyse this position in order to make sense of it. This is done within the context of the Zuma‐led ANC in order to tease out major contradictions, which characterizes the administration of Zuma's stance on attested Apartheid Israel. The central question engaged with in this article is to determine whether political and ideological counterstatements to those the ANC communicated, by some of the opposition political parties such as African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), had any major implications on South Africa's foreign policy on the Apartheid Israel. In this article, the author argues extensively that Zuma's foreign policy on Israel can best be understood when located into his entire term as president of South Africa and the NASREC resolution of 2017.     

An Afrocentric critique of China's security concerns in Africa: The cases of Mali and South Sudan

China's security concerns in Africa has recently become a subject of much academic debate. Most of the academic studies on this subject have wrongly assumed a continental standpoint, which does not take into contemplation the distinctive national captivates of China toward each distinctive African State. Such analytic discourse analysis were also heavily subjected to North [ern] angled perspectives as expressed in either liberal or realist contextual lens, views, and critics. Despite this, the Scholarly discourse on the security concerns of China towards Mali and South Sudan have not been proportionately apprehended. Based on the alternative Afrocentric perspective, this article seeks to employ Mali and South Sudan as test cases to critique the Security Concerns of China toward Mali and South Sudan. The central argument of this article is that, China's Security Concerns towards Mali and South Sudan can best be understood when located within the context of mineral resources complex. Methodologically, this article is based on document review and interdisciplinary discourse analysis in their comprehensive form.     

Reactions of potential jurors to a hypothetical malpractice suit: alleging failure to perform a prostate-specific antigen test

We conducted focus groups with 47 potential jurors who were presented with different scenarios in a hypothetical malpractice case involving failure to order a PSA test. Better documentation that a patient made an informed decision to decline a PSA test appeared to provide more medical-legal protection for physicians, especially with the use of a decision aid.