The use of technology and electronic media in adolescent dating violence

Abstract Electronic communication and social media have dramatically changed the way in which individuals communicate with one another. Through this shift, they have opened the doors for inappropriate and damaging behaviour to take place. Cyberbullying occurs when the internet is continuously used to insult or intimidate a person or persons in order to hurt them in a deliberate manner (Valkenburg et. al., 2010). In adolescent dating relationships, the online environment facilitates the way in which individuals who are or were dating continue to correspond. This closer proximity between individuals, however, enables abusive and controlling behaviours within these relationships to occur outside of face-to-face contact. This study examined adolescents’ perceptions of the severity of cyberbullying, motives, and the point in a dating relationship at which it is likely to become most severe. A mixed methodology was utilized within this study, using a sample of 70 grade 12 students at a high school in southwestern Ontario. It was found that cyberbullying behaviours are most likely to occur upon termination of a dating relationship, revenge is perceived as a common motive, and the severity of cyberbullying tends to be minimized. Keywords: Cyberbullying, bullying, gender, grade, age, violence, dating, adolescent, mixed-methods, focus group

Missed opportunities for saving children from domestic homicide: Implications for prevention, intervention, & community collaboration

This dissertation is comprised of three studies that explored the risks faced by children exposed to domestic violence, as well as systemic and agency-related recognition of, and responses to, these risks. Literature in the field has demonstrated that children living in these circumstances are at risk of significant adverse outcomes stemming from their exposure to domestic violence, and at its extreme, domestic homicides (Alisic et al., 2017; Jenney & Alaggia, 2014). In addition, these children are also at risk of becoming homicide victims in the context of domestic violence, either through being directly targeted in the homicide, or as a result of being caught in the altercation occurring between the perpetrator and victim (Jaffe, Campbell, Hamilton, & Juodis, 2012). This dissertation explored the ways in which the diverse needs of children are accounted for by systems and agencies involved with families experiencing domestic violence. In Study One, a retrospective analysis of Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Committee (DVDRC) child domestic homicide cases was conducted to explore risk factors and agency involvement in these cases. The study utilized a quantitative analysis of 140 cases in Ontario, Canada and identified unique risk factors in cases where children existed in the family unit, with some significant differences between cases involving and not involving children. Other significant findings were based on expected outcomes for child-specific cases. The study’s findings are indicative of children’s risk of harm as a result of their exposure to domestic violence. In Study Two, themes are identified in domestic violence death review reports in Canada and the U.S. A thematic analysis of annual reports from three jurisdictions between 2004 to 2016 was conducted and results highlight key barriers, recommendations, and promising practices specific to children living with domestic violence. In Study Three, the perspectives of Ontario Violence Against Women (VAW) service providers were examined in order to identify the ways in which children are included in their services and the barriers they encounter with providing child-specific interventions, particularly as they relate to risk assessment and safety planning. The study utilized a thematic analysis with 27 service providers in order to identify these barriers, which fell within individual, agency, and community-related domains. Altogether, findings from these studies suggest that domestic homicides involving children, with the benefits of hindsight, appear predictable and/or preventable. In particular, there are warning signs that provide an opportunity for systems and agencies such as the VAW sector, to intervene with appropriate risk assessment, risk management, and safety planning strategies. Overall, a coordinated community response is needed, comprised of public awareness, professional training, the use of risk assessment tools, as well as specialized interventions

A Pretrainer's Guide to Training Data: Measuring the Effects of Data Age, Domain Coverage, Quality, & Toxicity

Pretraining is the preliminary and fundamental step in developing capable language models (LM). Despite this, pretraining data design is critically under-documented and often guided by empirically unsupported intuitions. To address this, we pretrain 28 1.5B parameter decoder-only models, training on data curated (1) at different times, (2) with varying toxicity and quality filters, and (3) with different domain compositions. First, we quantify the effect of pretraining data age. A temporal shift between evaluation data and pretraining data leads to performance degradation, which is not overcome by finetuning. Second, we explore the effect of quality and toxicity filters, showing a trade-off between performance on standard benchmarks and risk of toxic generations. Our findings indicate there does not exist a one-size-fits-all solution to filtering training data. We also find that the effects of different types of filtering are not predictable from text domain characteristics. Lastly, we empirically validate that the inclusion of heterogeneous data sources, like books and web, is broadly beneficial and warrants greater prioritization. These findings constitute the largest set of experiments to validate, quantify, and expose many undocumented intuitions about text pretraining, which we hope will help support more informed data-centric decisions in LM development

Temporal Variations of Skin Pigmentation in C57Bl/6 Mice Affect Optical Bioluminescence Quantitation

ABSTRACT PURPOSE: Depilation-induced skin pigmentation in C57Bl/6 mice is a known occurrence, and presents a unique problem for quantitative optical imaging of small animals, especially for bioluminescence. The work reported here quantitatively investigated the optical attenuation of bioluminescent light due to melanin pigmentation in the skin of transgenic C57B1/6 mice, modified such that luciferase expression is under the transcription control of a physiologically and pharmacologically inducible gene. PROCEDURE: Both in vivo and ex vivo experiments were performed to track bioluminescence signal attenuation through different stages of the mouse hair growth cycle. Simultaneous reflectance measurements were collected in vivo to estimate melanin levels. RESULTS: Biological variability of skin pigmentation was found to dramatically affect collected bioluminescent signal emerging through the skin of the mice. When compared to signal through skin with no pigmentation, the signal through highly-pigmented skin was attenuated an average of 90%. Correlation of reflectance signals to bioluminescence signal loss forms the basis of the proposed correction method. We observed, however, that variability in tissue composition, which results in inconsistent reflectance spectra, limits the accuracy of the correction method but can be improved by incorporating more complex analysis. CONCLUSION: Skin pigmentation is a significant variable in bioluminescent imaging, and should be considered in experimental design and implementation for longitudinal studies, and especially when sensitivity to small signal changes, or differences among animals, is required

Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) for Panic Disorder: Relationship of Anxiety and Depression Comorbidity with Treatment Outcome

Research evaluating the relationship of comorbidity to treatment outcome for panic disorder has produced mixed results. The current study examined the relationship of comorbid depression and anxiety to treatment outcome in a large-scale, multi-site clinical trial for cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for panic disorder. Comorbidity was associated with more severe panic disorder symptoms, although comorbid diagnoses were not associated with treatment response. Comorbid generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) were not associated with differential improvement on a measure of panic disorder severity, although only rates of comorbid GAD were significantly lower at posttreatment. Treatment responders showed greater reductions on measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms. These data suggest that comorbid anxiety and depression are not an impediment to treatment response, and successful treatment of panic disorder is associated with reductions of comorbid anxiety and depressive symptoms. Implications for treatment specificity and conceptual understandings of comorbidity are discussed

Epitaxial Growth and Processing of Compound Semiconductors

Contains an introduction and reports on six research projects.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research University Research Initiative Subcontract N00014-92-J-1893Joint Services Electronics Program Grant DAAH04-95-1-0038National Center for Integrated Photonics Technology Contract 542-381National Science Foundation Grant DMR 92-02957MIT Lincoln Laboratory Contract BX-6085National Center for Integrated Photonics Technology Subcontract 542-383U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research Grant F49620-96-1-0126U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-91-J-1956National Science Foundation Grant DMR 94-0033

Gas Source Molecular Beam Epitaxy of Compound Semiconductors

Contains an introduction and reports on seven research projects.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Subcontract 284-25041Joint Services Electronics Program Contract DAAL04-95-1-0038National Center for Integrated Photonic Technology Contract 542-381U.S. Army Research Office/ AASERT Contract DAAH04-93-G-0175National Science Foundation Grant DMR 92-02957Joint Services Electronics Program Grant DAAL04-95-1-0038National Science Foundation Grant DMR 90-22933National Science Foundation Grant DMR 92-02957National Center for Integrated Photonic Technology Contract 542-381MIT Lincoln LaboratoryNational Center for Integrated Photonic Technology Subcontract 542-383National Science Foundation DMR 94-0033

Biology of Francisella tularensis Subspecies holarctica Live Vaccine Strain in the Tick Vector Dermacentor variabilis

Background: The c-proteobacterium Francisella tularensis is the etiologic agent of seasonal tick-transmitted tularemia epizootics in rodents and rabbits and of incidental infections in humans. The biology of F. tularensis in its tick vectors has not been fully described, particularly with respect to its quanta and duration of colonization, tissue dissemination, and transovarial transmission. A systematic study of the colonization of Dermacentor variabilis by the F. tularensis subsp. holarctica live vaccine strain (LVS) was undertaken to better understand whether D. variabilis may serve as an inter-epizootic reservoir for F. tularensis. Methodology/Principal Findings: Colony-reared larva, nymph, and adult D. variabilis were artificially fed LVS via glass capillary tubes fitted over the tick mouthparts, and the level of colonization determined by microbial culture. Larvae and nymphs were initially colonized with 8.860.8610 1 and 1.160.03610 3 CFU/tick, respectively. Post-molting, a significant increase in colonization of both molted nymphs and adults occurred, and LVS persisted in 42 % of molted adult ticks at 126 days post-capillary tube feeding. In adult ticks, LVS initially colonized the gut, disseminated to hemolymph and salivary glands by 21 days, and persisted up to 165 days. LVS was detected in the salivary secretions of adult ticks after four days post intra-hemocoelic inoculation, and LVS recovered from salivary gland was infectious to mice with an infectious dose 50 % of 3 CFU. LVS in gravid female ticks colonized via the intra-hemocoelic route disseminated to the ovaries and then t

A novel, integrated in vitro carcinogenicity test to identify genotoxic and non-genotoxic carcinogens using human lymphoblastoid cells

Human exposure to carcinogens occurs via a plethora of environmental sources, with 70–90% of cancers caused by extrinsic factors. Aberrant phenotypes induced by such carcinogenic agents may provide universal biomarkers for cancer causation. Both current in vitro genotoxicity tests and the animal-testing paradigm in human cancer risk assessment fail to accurately represent and predict whether a chemical causes human carcinogenesis. The study aimed to establish whether the integrated analysis of multiple cellular endpoints related to the Hallmarks of Cancer could advance in vitro carcinogenicity assessment. Human lymphoblastoid cells (TK6, MCL-5) were treated for either 4 or 23 h with 8 known in vivo carcinogens, with doses up to 50% Relative Population Doubling (maximum 66.6 mM). The adverse effects of carcinogens on wide-ranging aspects of cellular health were quantified using several approaches; these included chromosome damage, cell signalling, cell morphology, cell-cycle dynamics and bioenergetic perturbations. Cell morphology and gene expression alterations proved particularly sensitive for environmental carcinogen identification. Composite scores for the carcinogens’ adverse effects revealed that this approach could identify both DNA-reactive and non-DNA reactive carcinogens in vitro. The richer datasets generated proved that the holistic evaluation of integrated phenotypic alterations is valuable for effective in vitro risk assessment, while also supporting animal test replacement. Crucially, the study offers valuable insights into the mechanisms of human carcinogenesis resulting from exposure to chemicals that humans are likely to encounter in their environment. Such an understanding of cancer induction via environmental agents is essential for cancer prevention

PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways

Large language models have been shown to achieve remarkable performance across a variety of natural language tasks using few-shot learning, which drastically reduces the number of task-specific training examples needed to adapt the model to a particular application. To further our understanding of the impact of scale on few-shot learning, we trained a 540-billion parameter, densely activated, Transformer language model, which we call Pathways Language Model PaLM. We trained PaLM on 6144 TPU v4 chips using Pathways, a new ML system which enables highly efficient training across multiple TPU Pods. We demonstrate continued benefits of scaling by achieving state-of-the-art few-shot learning results on hundreds of language understanding and generation benchmarks. On a number of these tasks, PaLM 540B achieves breakthrough performance, outperforming the finetuned state-of-the-art on a suite of multi-step reasoning tasks, and outperforming average human performance on the recently released BIG-bench benchmark. A significant number of BIG-bench tasks showed discontinuous improvements from model scale, meaning that performance steeply increased as we scaled to our largest model. PaLM also has strong capabilities in multilingual tasks and source code generation, which we demonstrate on a wide array of benchmarks. We additionally provide a comprehensive analysis on bias and toxicity, and study the extent of training data memorization with respect to model scale. Finally, we discuss the ethical considerations related to large language models and discuss potential mitigation strategies