Adolescent Sexual Onset: An Intergenerational Analysis

Adolescents have begun to initiate sexual activity at increasingly early ages in the past few decades. Using a sample of 2,494 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), structural and parental process variables were examined in the prediction of sexual onset. Results indicated that the age at which youth initiate sexual intercourse is related to the structural characteristics of their grandmothers and mothers, as well as puberty, gender, and race. There is support for partial mediation of the effects of these grandmother characteristics via mother characteristics and parental process. Results are discussed within the framework of the life course perspective and provide support for the importance of previous generations in the explanation of adolescent sexual behavior. Implications for families and adolescents are also addressed

Adolescent Sexual Onset: An Intergenerational Analysis

Adolescents have begun to initiate sexual activity at increasingly early ages in the past few decades. Using a sample of 2,494 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), structural and parental process variables were examined in the prediction of sexual onset. Results indicated that the age at which youth initiate sexual intercourse is related to the structural characteristics of their grandmothers and mothers, as well as puberty, gender, and race. There is support for partial mediation of the effects of these grandmother characteristics via mother characteristics and parental process. Results are discussed within the framework of the life course perspective and provide support for the importance of previous generations in the explanation of adolescent sexual behavior. Implications for families and adolescents are also addressed

Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E): Special Consideration for Students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Prevention programing in the area of alcohol and other drug abuse had made significant progress in the past several years. From the scare tactics and testimonials of recovering addicts we have progressed to efforts aimed at building self-esteem and teaching refusal skills. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing often continue to experience a lack of quality prevention services. Because information from the media is often inaccessible to these students and because school and community-based programs often do not take into account the special cultural and communication considerations of this population, their knowledge and skill base often lag behind that of their hearing peers. This project is an attempt to make one proactive prevention program accessible, meaningful and beneficial for students who are deaf or hard of hearing

What would Karl Popper say? Are current psychological theories of ADHD falsifiable?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common and highly heritable neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorder. Here, we critically review four major psychological theories of ADHD – the Executive Dysfunction, the State Regulation, the Delay Aversion and the Dynamic Developmental – on their abilities to explain all the symptoms of ADHD, their testability and their openness to falsification. We conclude that theoreticians should focus, to a greater extent than currently practiced, on developing refutable theories of ADHD

Betty Burbridge

In 1941, publications like Life and The Saturday Evening Post featured an advertisement for Smith-Corona typewriters. Presenting an image of screenwriter Betty Burbridge at work, the advertisement described her as “Gene Autry’s script writer,” having “typed her way to the top” (117). Although she did, indeed, work with Autry on many films for Republic Pictures during the 1930s and 1940s, becoming a prominent screenwriter for B-movie Westerns in particular, Burbridge’s career in Hollywood started long before that

High Resolution Linear Polarimetric Imaging for the Event Horizon Telescope

Images of the linear polarization of synchrotron radiation around Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) identify their projected magnetic field lines and provide key data for understanding the physics of accretion and outflow from supermassive black holes. The highest resolution polarimetric images of AGN are produced with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). Because VLBI incompletely samples the Fourier transform of the source image, any image reconstruction that fills in unmeasured spatial frequencies will not be unique and reconstruction algorithms are required. In this paper, we explore extensions of the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) to linear polarimetric VLBI imaging. In contrast to previous work, our polarimetric MEM algorithm combines a Stokes I imager that uses only bispectrum measurements that are immune to atmospheric phase corruption with a joint Stokes Q and U imager that operates on robust polarimetric ratios. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique on 7- and 3-mm wavelength quasar observations from the VLBA and simulated 1.3-mm Event Horizon Telescope observations of Sgr A* and M87. Consistent with past studies, we find that polarimetric MEM can produce superior resolution compared to the standard CLEAN algorithm when imaging smooth and compact source distributions. As an imaging framework, MEM is highly adaptable, allowing a range of constraints on polarization structure. Polarimetric MEM is thus an attractive choice for image reconstruction with the EHT.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Imaging code available at https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging

In utero and childhood polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) exposures and neurodevelopment in the CHAMACOS study.

BackgroundCalifornia children's exposures to polybrominated diphenyl ether flame retardants (PBDEs) are among the highest worldwide. PBDEs are known endocrine disruptors and neurotoxicants in animals.ObjectiveHere we investigate the relation of in utero and child PBDE exposure to neurobehavioral development among participants in CHAMACOS (Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas), a California birth cohort.MethodsWe measured PBDEs in maternal prenatal and child serum samples and examined the association of PBDE concentrations with children's attention, motor functioning, and cognition at 5 (n = 310) and 7 years of age (n = 323).ResultsMaternal prenatal PBDE concentrations were associated with impaired attention as measured by a continuous performance task at 5 years and maternal report at 5 and 7 years of age, with poorer fine motor coordination-particularly in the nondominant-at both age points, and with decrements in Verbal and Full-Scale IQ at 7 years. PBDE concentrations in children 7 years of age were significantly or marginally associated with concurrent teacher reports of attention problems and decrements in Processing Speed, Perceptual Reasoning, Verbal Comprehension, and Full-Scale IQ. These associations were not altered by adjustment for birth weight, gestational age, or maternal thyroid hormone levels.ConclusionsBoth prenatal and childhood PBDE exposures were associated with poorer attention, fine motor coordination, and cognition in the CHAMACOS cohort of school-age children. This study, the largest to date, contributes to growing evidence suggesting that PBDEs have adverse impacts on child neurobehavioral development