Hopelessness and Excessive Drinking among Aboriginal Adolescents: The Mediating Roles of Depressive Symptoms and Drinking to Cope

Canadian Aboriginal youth show high rates of excessive drinking, hopelessness, and depressive symptoms. We propose that Aboriginal adolescents with higher levels of hopelessness are more susceptible to depressive symptoms, which in turn predispose them to drinking to cope—which ultimately puts them at risk for excessive drinking. Adolescent drinkers (n = 551; 52% boys; mean age = 15.9 years) from 10 Canadian schools completed a survey consisting of the substance use risk profile scale (hopelessness), the brief symptom inventory (depressive symptoms), the drinking motives questionnaire—revised (drinking to cope), and quantity, frequency, and binge measures of excessive drinking. Structural equation modeling demonstrated the excellent fit of a model linking hopelessness to excessive drinking indirectly via depressive symptoms and drinking to cope. Bootstrapping indicated that this indirect effect was significant. Both depressive symptoms and drinking to cope should be intervention targets to prevent/decrease excessive drinking among Aboriginal youth high in hopelessness

Overview of the interactive task in BioCreative V

Fully automated text mining (TM) systems promote efficient literature searching, retrieval, and review but are not sufficient to produce ready-to-consume curated documents. These systems are not meant to replace biocurators, but instead to assist them in one or more literature curation steps. To do so, the user interface is an important aspect that needs to be considered for tool adoption. The BioCreative Interactive task (IAT) is a track designed for exploring user-system interactions, promoting development of useful TM tools, and providing a communication channel between the biocuration and the TM communities. In BioCreative V, the IAT track followed a format similar to previous interactive tracks, where the utility and usability of TM tools, as well as the generation of use cases, have been the focal points. The proposed curation tasks are user-centric and formally evaluated by biocurators. In BioCreative V IAT, seven TM systems and 43 biocurators participated. Two levels of user participation were offered to broaden curator involvement and obtain more feedback on usability aspects. The full level participation involved training on the system, curation of a set of documents with and without TM assistance, tracking of time-on-task, and completion of a user survey. The partial level participation was designed to focus on usability aspects of the interface and not the performance per se. In this case, biocurators navigated the system by performing pre-designed tasks and then were asked whether they were able to achieve the task and the level of difficulty in completing the task. In this manuscript, we describe the development of the interactive task, from planning to execution and discuss major findings for the systems tested

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

An Alcohol Abuse Early Intervention Approach with Mi’kmaq Adolescents

This paper describes the development of and pilot results for an alcohol abuse early intervention program targeting at-risk Mi’kmaq youth conducted in partnership with the communities in which these youth live and the schools which they attend. This intervention was based on a previously-established, successful psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioral approach for at-risk adolescent drinkers from the majority culture that focuses on differentpersonality pathways to alcohol abuse in youth (Conrod, Stewart, Comeau, & MacLean, 2006). Through partnership and collaboration with two Mi’kmaq communities, the original intervention was adapted to be culturally appropriate for Mi’kmaq youth. The culturally-adapted intervention included traditional Mi’kmaq knowledge and teachings in order to make the program as meaningful and relevant as possible in the partner communities (Comeau et al., 2005). The pilot results were encouraging. Compared to pre-intervention, students who participated in the intervention drank less, engaged in less binge-drinking episodes (i.e., 5 drinks or more/occasion), had fewer alcoholrelated problems, and were more likely to abstain from alcohol use. Moreover, students who participated in the intervention also reduced their marijuana use at four-month post-intervention, even though the intervention was specifically designed to target alcohol misuse. No such significant changes were observed in a non-random control group of eligible students who did not participate in the intervention. Future research should determine if this intervention is effective for at-risk youth in other First Nations communities across Canada, and whether the promising, but preliminary results with marijuana mean that the benefits of the intervention might extend to adolescents’ use of substances other than alcohol

An alcohol abuse early intervention approach with Mi'kmaq adolescents. The First Peoples Child and Family

Abstract This paper describes the development of and pilot results for an alcohol abuse early intervention program targeting at-risk Mi'kmaq youth conducted in partnership with the communities in which these youth live and the schools which they attend. This intervention was based on a previously-established, successful psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioral approach for at-risk adolescent drinkers from the majority culture that focuses on different personality pathways to alcohol abuse in youth (Conrod, Stewart, Comeau, & MacLean, 2006). Through partnership and collaboration with two Mi'kmaq communities, the original intervention was adapted to be culturally appropriate for Mi'kmaq youth. The culturally-adapted intervention included traditional Mi'kmaq knowledge and teachings in order to make the program as meaningful and relevant as possible in the partner communities . The pilot results were encouraging. Compared to pre-intervention, students who participated in the intervention drank less, engaged in less binge-drinking episodes (i.e., 5 drinks or more/occasion), had fewer alcoholrelated problems, and were more likely to abstain from alcohol use. Moreover, students who participated in the intervention also reduced their marijuana use at four-month post-intervention, even though the intervention was specifically designed to target alcohol misuse. No such significant changes were observed in a non-random control group of eligible students who did not participate in the intervention. Future research should determine if this intervention is effective for at-risk youth in other First Nations communities across Canada, and whether the promising, but preliminary results with marijuana mean that the benefits of the intervention might extend to adolescents' use of substances other than alcohol

Building a Collaborative Understanding of Pathways to Adolescent Alcohol Misuse in a Mi’kmaq Community: A Process Paper

In April of 2006, a team of researchers consisting of both university and community partners from a Mi’kmaq reserve in Nova Scotia began the data-collection phase of a high school-based research study that had been two years in planning. The study examines the possible relationships between youth-reported childhood maltreatment, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depressive symptoms, alcohol misuse, and resiliency factors. The aim of the research study is to provide information about adolescent alcohol misuse that is of practical benefit to community-based service providers, and capable of making a scholarly contribution to the scientific study of the relations of anxiety/mood symptoms and addictive behaviours. The primary aim of this paper is to present both the context from which the project grew, and the steps involved in conducting research with our school partners and the community service providers. A secondary aim is to present some of the preliminary data from the study, with a specific focus on resiliency

American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research

OBJECTIVE: The factor structure of the Drinking Motives Cooper, 1994

Weighing the evidence for newborn screening for early-infantile Krabbe disease

PURPOSE: To summarize the evidence regarding screening, diagnosis, and treatment of early-infantile Krabbe disease in consideration of its addition to the core panel for newborn screening as has been done in New York state. METHODS: Systematic review of articles indexed in MEDLINE and Embase published between January 1988 and July 2009. Thirteen articles describing studies related to screening, diagnosis, or treatment were included in this review. RESULTS: Case series studies suggest that allogeneic hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation soon after the development of signs or symptoms of early-infantile Krabbe disease decreases early-childhood mortality and may improve neurodevelopment. However, limited data suggest there may be loss of motor function among some children who undergo transplantation. No long-term follow-up data are available from these case series. Of the approximately 550,000 newborns reported to have been screened in New York, 25 tested positive. None of these were clinically recognized to have Krabbe disease prior these results. Four were considered to be high risk for early-onset Krabbe disease. Two were subsequently diagnosed and underwent stem-cell transplantation, of whom one died from complications. No data are available regarding the impact on families of a positive newborn screen. CONCLUSIONS: Although early treatment with hematopoietic stem-cell transplant seems to alter early-childhood mortality and some of the morbidity associated with early-infantile Krabbe disease, significant gaps in knowledge exist regarding the accuracy of screening, the strategy for establishing diagnosis, the affect of a positive screen on families, the benefits and harms of treatment, and long-term prognosis