The Role of Parenting and Mother-Adolescent Attachment in the Intergenerational Similarity of Internalizing Symptoms

Parental depression has been identified as a risk factor for children's and adolescents' internalizing problems. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the role of maternal parenting behaviors (i.e., responsiveness and autonomy-support) and adolescents' representations of attachment to their mother (i.e., anxiety and avoidance) in the intergenerational similarity of internalizing symptoms. The sample was heterogeneous and consisted of referred (42%) and non-referred adolescents (N=238, 31% female) and their mothers. Both adolescents and mothers reported on internalizing symptoms, parenting behaviors and all adolescents reported on mother-child attachment. Results showed that parenting behaviors and mother-adolescent attachment explain at least part of the intergenerational congruence of internalizing symptoms. Moreover, there were meaningful and specific associations between dimensions of parenting and dimensions of attachment. Higher responsiveness was primarily related to lower avoidance and higher autonomy-support was primarily related to lower anxiety. The current study's results suggest that maternal depressive symptoms relate to maladaptive parenting strategies and insecure attachment representations in adolescents. Further, both attachment anxiety and avoidance seem to relate positively to adolescents' internalizing symptoms. Targeting both parenting and attachment may form a fruitful approach to prevent and treat internalizing problems in adolescence.     

Baselines for Clean Development Mechanism Projects: The Marrakesh Accords and Beyond

The Marrakesh Accords at the seventh meeting of Conference of Parties (COP-7) finally set the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) wheel moving by establishing a CDM Board and providing some broad guidelines on baselines for the CDM projects. The broad guidelines provide flexibility to develop baselines, which gives rise to prospect of more than one baseline for a project. This has been illustrated with a case study of Zafarana, a wind farm power project. seven possible baselines emerge when applying the broad guidelines included in the Accords indicating the need for detailed guidelines. In the current scenario, a project developer may have to work-out the best course of action considering criteria such as level of complexity and available expertise to develop the baseline, availability of data, expected return etc.     

Experience of training for decentralized planning in Nepal

People's participation is both a method and an objective of rural development programmes in Nepal. The government has adopted decentralization measures to facilitate this. As the subject of decentralization involves new roles and responsibilities for both people and government officials, designing viable training programmes has been emphasized. Commensurate with this, a pilot training programme has been conducted in the Tanahun District for two years. The objective of this programme was to produce a decentralized planning training module which could be replicated elsewhere. This paper deals with the content of this programme and highlights the lessons learnt.     

Education,human error,and road crash risk: An empirical investigation in the Indian states

This study examines the road accident rates from 29 Indian states and 6 Union Territories during 2006–2015. In this paper, we have employed several empirical techniques such as regression, generalized method of moments (GMM), and threshold regression models to examine how education and attitude of the drivers impact the road accident rates. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate that lawless driving is found to be positive and statistically significant while incorporating both state and year effects. We also find some interesting result in the context of education and road accidents. We notice positive relationship between higher education and road accident rates across Indian states, which tells us highly educated people are more prone to road accidents as compared with less educated people. In the threshold analysis, the study discovers the positive relationship between road injury and accidents caused by people with higher education, in cases of considering road injury rate from drunken driving as the threshold variable. There appears to be a large number of behavioral issues emanating from higher education, which contributes significantly to the road accident rates in the Indian states. Hence, there is a need for policy intervention.     

Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid stability and formation in blood and urine

Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) can cause problems in interpretation of toxicological findings due to its endogenous nature, significant production in tissues after death and potential formation in stored samples. Our study was designed to determine the influence of storage conditions on GHB levels and its possible in vitro formation in blood and urine in cases where no exogenous use of GHB or its precursors was suspected. The samples were prepared by validated method based on liquid-liquid reextraction with adipic acid internal standard and MSTFA derivatization and assayed on a GC-MS operating in EI SIM mode. The first part of the study was performed with pooled blood and urine samples obtained from living and deceased subjects stored with and without NaF (1% w/v) at 4 and -20 degrees C over 8 months. In ante-mortem samples (both blood and urine) no significant GHB production was found. After 4 months of storage, the substantial GHB rise up to 100 mg/Lwas observed in post-mortem blood stored at 4 degrees C without NaF with subsequent gradual decrease in following months. The inhibition of GHB production was apparent during storage in NaF treated frozen blood samples. In post-mortem urine only slight temporary GHB levels were ascertained (up to 8 mg/L). The second part of our study was aimed to analyse 20 individual post-mortem blood samples stored at 4 degrees C for 16-27 days between autopsy and analysis without preservation followed by storage at 4 degrees C with NaF for 4 months. The temporary GHB production with maximum of 28 mg/Lwas detected in some samples.     

Methamphetamine in hair and interpretation of forensic findings in a fatal case

Hair analysis for drugs has been developing and is considered a significant tool for distinguishing between recent and long-term drug abuse in forensic and clinical toxicology. Chronic consumption of drugs can gradually induce certain harmful effects on the human organism and can exacerbate some pre-existing diseases. Analysis for drugs in blood or urine in isolation does not provide sufficient information about the history of drug-use by a person and their results cannot be correlated directly with the toxic effects displayed. The chronic abuse of methamphetamine is known to be associated with cardiovascular diseases. During or after autopsy certain types of morphologic alterations are found in the hearts of stimulant addicts. The rapid increase in blood pressure after an intravenous methamphetamine dose can be risky for addicts with arteriosclerosis. However, the anamnestic data about a deceased person may not always be available to explain the pathological findings and to classify the cause of death correctly. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the value of hair analysis for drugs in the context of explaining pathological cardiovascular alterations observed during the autopsy in a case where methamphetamine consumption was involved. In this case, only methamphetamine and metabolites were detected with traces of ephedrine. Ephedrine is the precursor chemical in the illicit synthesis of methamphetamine (known in the Czech Republic as "Pervitin"). The femoral blood level of methamphetamine was 1500 ng/ml. It was documented by a witness that the 31-year-old man died within 1h after an intravenous injection of the drug. The cause of death was established as cerebral edema due to cerebellar bleeding shortly after an intravenous dose of methamphetamine. Findings of methamphetamine in the first three 2-cm hair segments (numbered from the roots) were nearly equal (132+/-9 ng/mg). In the fourth 2-cm segment, it was approximately one-half of previous values. In the remaining, distal 7-cm hair segment sample, the value of methamphetamine was higher and comparable to the third segment. These results provide clear evidence that the man had been a chronic methamphetamine abuser for more than 8 months. This information can help to explain the pathology, the consequence of which could be the bleeding into the cerebellum after the last single methamphetamine dose.