The effects of organizational factors on citizen participation in community crime prevention programs in Japan

Structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling were used to examine the effects of citizen participation in crime prevention programs and fear of crime among residents in Japan. The democratic and efficient management of the programs by citizen leaders, and their adequate support by the police, were found to increase the commitment of residents to crime prevention activities. Further, a sense of personal control over the neighborhood was found to mediate much more of the amount of the impact of these organizational factors on the commitment of residents to crime prevention activities than was the perceived social cohesion of the neighborhood. By contrast, perceived social cohesion was found to significantly decrease the fear of crime among residents, although it did not mediate a substantial amount of the alleviating effects of support by police on the fear of crime. The cross-cultural and policy implications are discussed

Parental deviance, parent-child bonding, child abuse, and child sexual aggression

Structural equation modeling was used to test a theoretical model of the etiology of the deviant sexual aggression by adolescents. The subjects were 117 juvenile male sexual offenders who had been referred from either criminal justice or social service agencies to a clinic that treated offenders. The tested theoretical model included several family factors: parental deviance, child physical and sexual abuse history, and children's bonding to their parents. The model as a whole fitted the data very well. As for the specific hypotheses in the model, physical abuse by the father and sexual abuse by males were found to increase sexual aggression by adolescents. Also, children's bonding to their mother was found to decrease their sexual aggression. These results are explained from the social learning perspective and parent-child attachment or social control perspective. Further, the directions for the future research are suggested

Effect of AST on age-associated changes of vocal folds in a rat model.

[Objectives/Hypothesis]Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are associated with aging. Astaxanthin (AST) is a strong antioxidant and has been reported to prevent various ROS-induced diseases. In the current study, we investigated the effect of AST on age-associated histological and mRNA changes of vocal folds. [Study Design]Prospective animal experiment with control. [Methods]Six-month-old Sprague-Dawley rats were fed on a normal powder diet with 0.01% (w/w) AST (aged AST-treated group) or without AST (aged sham-treated group). After 12 months of feeding, the larynges were harvested for histology, immunohistochemical detection of 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4-HNE), and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction for basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF). Thirteen-week-old rats were used as a young control group (young group). [Results]The expression of 4-HNE, an oxidative stress marker, significantly increased in the two aged groups compared with the young group. Histological examination showed that the deposition of hyaluronic acid in the lamina propria (LP) was significantly reduced in the aged sham-treated group compared with the young group, but no significant difference was observed between the aged AST-treated group and the young group. There were no significant differences in the mRNA expression of bFGF and HGF between the aged AST-treated group and the young group, although the expression of these genes was significantly reduced in the aged sham-treated group as compared with the young group. [Conclusions]These results suggest that AST has the potential to attenuate age-associated changes of vocal folds

Establishment of the experimental procedure for prediction of conjugation capacity in mutant UGT1A

UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 1A1 (UGT1A1) is an enzyme that is found in the endoplasmic reticulum membrane and can reportedly have a large number of amino acid substitutions that result in the reduction of glucuronidation capacity. For example, adverse drug reactions when patients receive CPT-11 (irinotecan) such as in cancer chemotherapy are caused by amino acid substitutions in UGT1A1. We previously found that the extent of the docking when the hydroxyl residue of bilirubin was oriented toward UDP-glucuronic acid correlated with in vitro conjugation capacity. In this study, we analyzed the conformation of mutant UGT1A1s by means of structural optimization with water and lipid bilayers instead of the optimization in vacuo that we used in our previous study. We then derived a mathematical model that can predict the conjugation capacities of mutant UGT1A1s by using results of substrate docking in silico and results of in vitro analysis of glucuronidation of acetaminophen and 17β-estradiol by UGT1A1s. This experimental procedure showed that the in silico conjugation capacities of other mutant UGT1A1s with bilirubin or SN-38 were similar to reported in vitro conjugation capacities. Our results suggest that this experimental procedure described herein can correctly predict the conjugation capacities of mutant UGT1A1s and any substrate