“Never give up.” Adjudicated girls’ school experiences and implications for academic success

There is limited literature on best practices for promoting academic success for adjudicated girls. The goal of this qualitative study was to elicit information about the educational experiences of female juvenile offenders within a residential facility. Interviews with 10 girls and two teachers were audio-recorded and transcribed. Data were analyzed for narratives pertaining to success stories and challenges the girls faced in educational settings. Themes were: Barriers in school; Individual Characteristics that Promote Success; Coping Skills; Relationships that Promote Success; School Environments that Promote Success; Transitioning to Traditional Schools. Findings inform strategies to promote academic success for detained youth. The authors discuss implications for school social workers and other school-based behavioral health providers

Change in Age-Specific, Psychosocial Correlates of Risky Sexual Behaviors Among Youth: Longitudinal Findings From a Deep South, High-Risk Sample

The current study examined psychosocial predictors of change in intercourse frequency and number of sexual partners among youth within a socio-ecological framework and assessed whether these determinants vary by stage of adolescent development. Longitudinal data were derived from a large, community study of adolescent risky behavior among predominantly high-risk, African American youth. Significant predictors of intercourse frequency for early adolescents included age, gender, self-worth, and familial factors; for older youth, age, gender, self-worth, curfews, and sense of community exerted significant effects. Among early adolescents, age, gender, self-worth, familial factors, and sense of community predicted change in the number of sexual partners in the previous year, while age, gender, self-worth, parental knowledge, curfews, and sense of community were predictive of change in the number of sexual partners in the previous year among older youth. Study implications and future directions are discussed

SOCIO-ECOLOGICAL PREDICTORS OF INTERCOURSE FREQUENCY AND NUMBER OF SEXUAL PARTNERS AMONG MALE AND FEMALE AFRICAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS.

The current study examined 14 waves of data derived from a large, community-based study of the sexual behavior of impoverished youth between 12 and 17 years of age residing in the Deep South. We used multilevel linear modeling to identify ecological predictors of intercourse frequency and number of sexual partners among gender-specific subsamples. Results indicated that predictors of adolescent sexual behavior differed by both type of sexual behavior and gender. For males, age, maternal warmth, parental knowledge, curfew, self-worth, and sense of community predicted intercourse frequency, while age, parental knowledge, curfew, self-worth, friend support, and sense of community were significantly associated with having multiple sexual partners. Among females, age, curfew, and self-worth exerted significant effects on intercourse frequency, while age, parental knowledge, curfew, and self-worth exerted significant effects on having multiple sexual partners. Implications and future directions are discussed

Quality-Controlled Small-Scale Production of a Well-Defined Bacteriophage Cocktail for Use in Human Clinical Trials

We describe the small-scale, laboratory-based, production and quality control of a cocktail, consisting of exclusively lytic bacteriophages, designed for the treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus infections in burn wound patients. Based on succesive selection rounds three bacteriophages were retained from an initial pool of 82 P. aeruginosa and 8 S. aureus bacteriophages, specific for prevalent P. aeruginosa and S. aureus strains in the Burn Centre of the Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels, Belgium. This cocktail, consisting of P. aeruginosa phages 14/1 (Myoviridae) and PNM (Podoviridae) and S. aureus phage ISP (Myoviridae) was produced and purified of endotoxin. Quality control included Stability (shelf life), determination of pyrogenicity, sterility and cytotoxicity, confirmation of the absence of temperate bacteriophages and transmission electron microscopy-based confirmation of the presence of the expected virion morphologic particles as well as of their specific interaction with the target bacteria. Bacteriophage genome and proteome analysis confirmed the lytic nature of the bacteriophages, the absence of toxin-coding genes and showed that the selected phages 14/1, PNM and ISP are close relatives of respectively F8, φKMV and phage G1. The bacteriophage cocktail is currently being evaluated in a pilot clinical study cleared by a leading Medical Ethical Committee

The Tnt1 Retrotransposon Escapes Silencing in Tobacco, Its Natural Host

Retrotransposons' high capacity for mutagenesis is a threat that genomes need to control tightly. Transcriptional gene silencing is a general and highly effective control of retrotransposon expression. Yet, some retrotransposons manage to transpose and proliferate in plant genomes, suggesting that, as shown for plant viruses, retrotransposons can escape silencing. However no evidence of retrotransposon silencing escape has been reported. Here we analyze the silencing control of the tobacco Tnt1 retrotransposon and report that even though constructs driven by the Tnt1 promoter become silenced when stably integrated in tobacco, the endogenous Tnt1 elements remain active. Silencing of Tnt1-containing transgenes correlates with high DNA methylation and the inability to incorporate H2A.Z into their promoters, whereas the endogenous Tnt1 elements remain partially methylated at asymmetrical positions and incorporate H2A.Z upon induction. Our results show that the promoter of Tnt1 is a target of silencing in tobacco, but also that endogenous Tnt1 elements can escape this control and be expressed in their natural host

Serving the Stigmatized: Working Within the Incarcerated Environment

America\u27s incarceration rate was roughly constant from 1925 to 1973, with an average of 110 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents. By 2013, however, the rate of incarceration in state and federal prisons had increased sevenfold to 716. Compared with 102 for Canada, 132 for England andWales, 85 for France, and a paltry 48 in Japan, the United States is the worlds\u27 most aggressive jailer. When one factors in those on parole or probation, the American correctional system is in control of more than 7.3 million Americans, or one in every 31 U.S. adults. This means that 6.7 millionadult men and women - about 3.1 percent of the total U.S. adult population - are now very non-voluntary members of America\u27s correctional community. Some key questions that need to be addressed are: What are we doing with those 7.3 million Americans? How are they being treated while they are incarcerated? How can we best prepare them to return to their communities? More than 650,000 offenders are released back into our communities every year;however, 70% are rearrested within three years of their release. Serving the Stigmatized is the first book of its kind that explores best practices when dealing with a specific prison population while under some form of institutional control. If the established goal of a correctional facility is to rehabilitate, then it is imperative that the rehabilitation is effective and does not simply serve as a political buzz word. The timing of releasing this book coincides with a real movement in the United States, supported by both conservative and liberal advocates and foundations, to decrease thesize of the prison population by returning more offenders to their communities. The text examines 14 specific populations and how to effectively treat them in order to better serve them and our communities.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1028/thumbnail.jp

The Familial Union between Caregivers and the Juvenile Justice System

This research describes an initial exploration of the phenomenon of caregivers’ learning of their child’s detention, an area of exploration that has little previous attention in the literature. This initial exploration was rooted in a desire to gain an understanding of the caregiver’s experience with both their family member (adjudicated juvenile) and the criminal justice system. A qualitative, phenomenological approach was used in this study to gain rich understanding into the lived experiences shared by twelve caregivers of youth being adjudicated in the juvenile justice system. Two overarching themes emerged from the data: 1) the system, with communication, fairness, and substitute parental provider as notable subthemes, and 2) the family, with family strength and relationship to support needs as a notable subtheme. Gaining insight into this critical point of family crisis has implications for intervention frameworks addressing family stability and support for long-term outcomes

Sexual behavior in juveniles with psychopathic traits

The current study looked at three related areas of research in the field of child psychopathy. It extends the findings of adult research investigating the link between sexual behavior and psychopathy to a sample of detained juveniles. It also examined the factor structure of youth psychopathy and sexual behavior as well as the Big Five personality domains that have been associated with these constructs. Participants completed self-report measures of psychopathy, personality, and sexual behavior. Results of the current study suggest that, as predicted, there is a relation between promiscuous sexual behavior and psychopathy. The results support promiscuity being a salient predictor of psychopathy for females but not for males. Exploratory factor analyses suggest that the original two-factor structure best captures the structure of psychopathy and sexual behavior in a group of youthful offenders. In both the two and three factor models, promiscuous sexual behavior loaded with the items that comprise the Callous-Unemotional factor on the APSD. Loading on the Callous-Unemotional factor was predicted in the current study and suggests that promiscuous sexual behavior is related to the personality features of psychopathy and not merely a behavioral outcome of psychopathy. Finally, results of the current study find that the Big Five personality profile of youth with psychopathic traits resembles that which has been demonstrated in adult samples: low agreeableness and low conscientiousness. Contrary to expectations, the Big Five profile of youth with psychopathic traits did not include high extraversion. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries