The Nature-Nurture Debate and Public Policy

The contentious nature-nurture debate in developmental psychology is poised to reach a rapprochement with contemporary concepts of gene-environment interaction, transaction, and fit. Discoveries over the past decade have revealed how neither genes nor the environment offers a sufficient window into human development. Rather, the most important discoveries have come from unearthing the manner in which the environment alters gene expression (and how genes impose limits on environmental effects), how biology and the environment influence each other across time, and how maximizing gene-environment fit leads to optimal outcomes for children. The manner in which these factors operate in tandem should direct future scholarship, practice, and public policy

Coping with pediatric cancer: the importance of family member coping on the outcomes of other members

This study investigated the relations across time between stressful life events, coping, and mental and physical health symptoms among families of pediatric cancer patients. Coping was measured both in the form of self report and through assessing the perceptions each family member held regarding the coping of other family members. The results of this study showed that the relations between predictor and outcome measures differed significantly across the four groups of participants: Cancer patients, siblings, mothers, and fathers. In general, the coping of parents was a better predictor of child outcomes than was the self reported coping of the children. Parent results showed that the coping efforts of their partner and their children both predicted parent outcomes. The relations between stressful life events and outcomes also differed for the four different groups. The author suggests that coping researchers would be well advised to investigate the coping of all members of a family, especially when studying stressful events that require a response from all family members

Characterization of superconducting hardware for implementing quantum stabilizers

Superconducting qubits are one of the leading approaches being investigated for building a scalable quantum computer. In the presence of external noise and perturbations plus local microscopic fluctuations and dissipation in the qubit environment, arbitrary quantum states will decohere, leading to bit-flip and phase-flip errors of the qubit. In order to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer that can preserve and process quantum information in the presence of noise and dissipation, one must implement some form of quantum error correction. Stabilizer operations are at the heart of quantum error correction and are typically implemented in software-controlled entangling gates and measurements of groups of qubits. Alternatively, qubits can be designed so that the Hamiltonian includes terms that correspond directly to a stabilizer for protecting quantum information. In this thesis, we demonstrate such a hardware implementation of stabilizers in a superconducting circuit composed of chains of $\pi$-periodic Josephson elements called a plaquette. Each plaquette consists of a superconducting loop with two conventional Josephson junctions and two inductors. We study the phase dependence of the plaquette by incorporating it into a resonant multi-loop circuit and measuring the resonator\u27s frequency as a function of the external magnetic flux through each loop. To demonstrate the implementation of stabilizers in the Hamiltonian we made a superconducting circuit composed of a chain of three plaquettes shunted by a large capacitor. We map out the multidimensional flux space of the device by using on-chip bias lines to tune the magnetic flux through the three plaquettes independently. We measure the flux and charge dependence of the device\u27s energy levels with microwave spectroscopy. We compare these measurements with numerical modeling of the energy level spectrum and obtain good agreement between theory and experiment for the designed and fabricated device parameters. We observe a softening of the energy band dispersion with respect to flux that is exponential in the number of frustrated plaquettes, this corresponds to the device being protected against errors caused by dephasing due to flux noise. The large shunt capacitor suppresses tunneling between the qubit logical states, and thus protects the device against bit-flip errors. A future qubit based on this design will exhibit simultaneous protection against bit-flip and phase-flip errors leading to gate errors that are significantly improved over the current state of the art

Evolving Science in Adolescence

Ellis et al. (2012) bring an evolutionary perspective to bear on adolescent risky behavioral development, clinical practice, and public policy. The authors offer important insights that (a) some risky behaviors may be adaptive for the individual and the species by being hard-wired due to fitness benefits and (b) interventions might be more successful if they move with, rather than against, the natural tendencies of an adolescent. Ellis and colleagues criticize the field of developmental psychopathology, but we see the 2 fields as complementary. Their position would be enhanced by integrating it with contemporary perspectives on dynamic cascades through which normative behavior turns into genuinely maladaptive outcomes, dual processes in adolescent neural development, and adolescent decision making. Finally, they rightly note that innovation is needed in interventions and policies toward adolescent problem behavior

Evolving Science in Adolescence

Ellis et al. (2012) bring an evolutionary perspective to bear on adolescent risky behavioral development, clinical practice, and public policy. The authors offer important insights that (a) some risky behaviors may be adaptive for the individual and the species by being hard-wired due to fitness benefits and (b) interventions might be more successful if they move with, rather than against, the natural tendencies of an adolescent. Ellis and colleagues criticize the field of developmental psychopathology, but we see the 2 fields as complementary. Their position would be enhanced by integrating it with contemporary perspectives on dynamic cascades through which normative behavior turns into genuinely maladaptive outcomes, dual processes in adolescent neural development, and adolescent decision making. Finally, they rightly note that innovation is needed in interventions and policies toward adolescent problem behavior

Frailty and the Burden of Concurrent and Incident Disability in Patients With Cirrhosis: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Frailty results from the chronic effects of malnutrition and muscle wasting in patients with cirrhosis. It is well-established that frailty is strongly associated with mortality in this population. However, little is known of its relationship with physical disability, a critical patient-centered outcome. Adults with cirrhosis underwent outpatient testing of frailty using the Liver Frailty Index (LFI) and disability using activities of daily living (ADL; range 0-6) and Instrumental ADL (IADL; range 0-8) scales at one center between 2012 and 2016. We used adjusted multilevel logistic mixed-effects regression to test the association between frailty and current disability (impairment with ≥1 ADL or IADL) and incident disability at 6 months among those without baseline disability. Of the 983 participants, 20% were robust, 32% were less robust, 33% were prefrail, and 15% were frail; 587 (60%) had at least 1 assessment. The percentage of participants with at least 1 baseline ADL or IADL impairment was 28% and 37%, respectively. In adjusted regression models, each point LFI increase was associated with a 3.3 and 4.6 higher odds of current difficulty with at least 1 ADL and IADL (P < 0.001 for each), respectively. Among participants without baseline disability, each point LFI increase was associated with a 2.6 and 1.7 higher odds of having difficulty with at least 1 ADL and IADL at 6 months, respectively. Conclusion: Frailty is strongly associated with concurrent and incident disability in patients with cirrhosis. In the clinic, the LFI can be used to identify those in greatest need for additional support/resources to maintain functional independence. In research settings, the LFI may help to identify an enriched population for clinical trials of interventions aimed at those most vulnerable to disability

Where and How to Draw the Line Between Reasonable Corporal Punishment and Abuse

This article from law and child psychology provides a thorough description of relevant state laws, judicial decisions, and childprotective-services practices and argues that relevant regulation ought to be revised to the extent necessary to reflect an appropriate balance between parental-autonomy rights and the social-science evidence on the effects of corporal punishment on children’s short- and long-term developmental wellbeing