Social Capital and Violence across Racial and Ethnic Samples of Adolescents

Using a national sample of adolescents, results of this study demonstrate the important role family and school social capital plays in protecting both White and selected non- White students against violent outcomes. For example, parent-child relationship was associated with reduced violence for Black and White adolescents but not for Hispanics. School affiliation was significant in models for Hispanic and White adolescents but not in models for Black students. Sports participation was associated with greater violence among Hispanics and Whites, but not Blacks. Interestingly, club participation was significant for Whites, but, like sports, it was associated with greater violence. Parental monitoring and religious participation were significant only for Whites while neighbor involvement was significant only for Blacks

What makes a difference? Understanding the role of protective factors in Hungarian adolescents' depressive symptomatology

Depressive symptomatology contributes to morbidity and mortality across the life course. Among factors predicting adolescent depressive symptomatology, it has become increasingly important to identify factors that prevent or minimize it, i.e., protective factors. This study examines protective factors operating in three contextual domains (parental, school-related and individual) that hold promise for explicating their role in the prevention of depressive symptomatology among a non-clinical adolescent population in Hungary. Data from this cross-sectional survey were gathered using self-administered questionnaires from adolescents (N = 881; aged between 14 and 20 years; 44.6% females) from five randomly selected high schools in Szeged, Hungary. Multiple regression analyses revealed that individual level variables (i.e., life satisfaction and optimism) were important predictors of adolescent depressive symptomatology. Among parental variables, social support from the same-sex parents lowered depressive symptoms. In addition, having dinner together with one’s family was a significant protective factor for boys, whereas talking about problems with parents was significant for girls. In our study, school-related factors played only a limited role in reducing depressive symptoms; being happy with school was a protective factor only for boys. As a consequence, our findings draw attention to important gender differences in the structuring of protective factors and their role in reducing depressive symptoms, which will likely continue to be an important part of the prevention conversation

Social Differences in Health Behaviours among Jordanian Adolescents

Social differences are evident in both developed and developing countries. During adolescence, there are limited differences in morbidity and mortality, but differences do appear in terms of health behaviours. This study aims to examine the relationship(s) between social differences and students’ health behaviours. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020 with a sample of high school students (N = 2741, aged 13–18 years) in Jordan. Besides descriptive statistics, bivariate logistic regression analysis was used to detect the odds risk for each social difference indicator. Females were engaged in more healthy dietary and hygienic behaviours and less engaged in smoking. Males were more physically active. Adolescents with a higher parental education level were more engaged in healthy behaviours; however, they drank carbonated soft drinks and ate fast food more often. Higher SES (socioeconomic status) self-evaluation was positively associated with eating breakfast and fruit and vegetables, being physically active, drinking carbonated soft drinks, eating fast food, and smoking. Our findings suggest that socioeconomic differences are important to understanding Jordanian adolescents’ health behaviours. While females tend to engage in more healthy behaviours, the role of parental education and perceived family affluence is not always beneficial in terms of adolescents’ dietary habits, hygienic behaviour, or smoking

Application of broadband acoustic resonance dissolution spectroscopy (BARDS) to the gas release behaviour during rehydration of milk protein isolate agglomerates

peer-reviewedThe BARDS technique was applied in this study to acoustically assess the rehydration behaviour of milk protein isolate (MPI) agglomerates and to compare with regular MPI powder. The results showed that BARDS has potential to monitor the rehydration behaviour of agglomerates. The greater porosity (>70%) of agglomerated powders introduced more compressible gas into the water. The BARDS profile showed that there was faster initial gas release from the agglomerates, indicating better wetting and dispersion ability of the agglomerates with shorter tM (time of maximum gas volume in solution). At 0.10% powder addition, agglomerated MPI reached tM within 109 s, which was significantly less than the control MPI at 140 s. MPI with lactose binder (MPI-L) had a tM of 80 s at 0.10% powder addition and, larger size MPI-L had a tM of 60 s. At 0.20% and 0.30% powder addition, more time was required to wet and disperse the powders

Rapid fixation of non-native alleles revealed by genome-wide SNP analysis of hybrid tiger salamanders

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hybrid zones represent valuable opportunities to observe evolution in systems that are unusually dynamic and where the potential for the origin of novelty and rapid adaptation co-occur with the potential for dysfunction. Recently initiated hybrid zones are particularly exciting evolutionary experiments because ongoing natural selection on novel genetic combinations can be studied in ecological time. Moreover, when hybrid zones involve native and introduced species, complex genetic patterns present important challenges for conservation policy. To assess variation of admixture dynamics, we scored a large panel of markers in five wild hybrid populations formed when Barred Tiger Salamanders were introduced into the range of California Tiger Salamanders.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>At three of 64 markers, introduced alleles have largely displaced native alleles within the hybrid populations. Another marker (<it>GNAT1</it>) showed consistent heterozygote deficits in the wild, and this marker was associated with embryonic mortality in laboratory F2's. Other deviations from equilibrium expectations were idiosyncratic among breeding ponds, consistent with highly stochastic demographic effects.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>While most markers retain native and introduced alleles in expected proportions, strong selection appears to be eliminating native alleles at a smaller set of loci. Such rapid fixation of alleles is detectable only in recently formed hybrid zones, though it might be representative of dynamics that frequently occur in nature. These results underscore the variable and mosaic nature of hybrid genomes and illustrate the potency of recombination and selection in promoting variable, and often unpredictable genetic outcomes. Introgression of a few, strongly selected introduced alleles should not necessarily affect the conservation status of California Tiger Salamanders, but suggests that genetically pure populations of this endangered species will be difficult to maintain.</p

Low-Velocity Halo Clouds

Models that reproduce the observed high-velocity clouds (HVCs) also predict clouds at lower radial velocities that may easily be confused with Galactic disk (|z| < 1 kpc) gas. We describe the first search for these low-velocity halo clouds (LVHCs) using IRAS data and the initial data from the Galactic Arecibo L-band Feed Array survey in HI (GALFA-HI). The technique is based upon the expectation that such clouds should, like HVCs, have very limited infrared thermal dust emission as compared to their HI column density. We describe our 'displacement-map' technique for robustly determining the dust-to-gas ratio of clouds and the associated errors that takes into account the significant scatter in the infrared flux from the Galactic disk gas. We find that there exist lower-velocity clouds that have extremely low dust-to-gas ratios, consistent with being in the Galactic halo - candidate LVHCs. We also confirm the lack of dust in many HVCs with the notable exception of complex M, which we consider to be the first detection of warm dust in HVCs. We do not confirm the previously reported detection of dust in complex C. In addition, we find that most Intermediate- and Low-Velocity clouds that are part of the Galactic disk have a higher 60 micron/100 micron flux ratio than is typically seen in Galactic HI, which is consistent with a previously proposed picture in which fast-moving Galactic clouds have smaller, hotter dust grains.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures. Accepted to the Ap