Tennessee’s Youth in Juvenile Justice Facilities: Mental Health and Substance Abuse Issues

In order to assess the prevalence of mental health and substance abuse among youth in one state’s juvenile justice facilities, a survey was conducted of 40 Tennessee facilities. A total of 1215 youth were being held on the “one day census” that was taken as part of the survey. The survey documented many mental health and substance abuse issues: 1) 53 percent of the youth in juvenile justice facilities were experiencing mental health problems; 2) 15 percent were taking some type of psychiatric medicine while in the juvenile justice facility; 3) 42 percent were known to have substance abuse problems; and 4) 30 percent had co-occurring mental health and substance use problems. Policy and program recommendations based on these findings are discussed

Ultrafast Acoustic Vibrations of Bimetallic Nanoparticles

Investigations of the ultrafast acoustic response of metal nanosystems yield important information on the validity of continuous elastic mechanics at the nanoscale and also provide an optical way to probe nanoobject morphologies. In this context, we used femtosecond time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy to study two classes of bimetallic nanoparticles: chemically synthesized AuAg nanospheres in water in the 20-45 nm size range, both with alloyed and segregated core-shell morphologies, and mass-selected glass-embedded PtAu core-shell nanospheres in the very small size range (2.3-2.5 nm), synthesized by physical methods. The analysis of the corresponding breathing mode periods demonstrates validity of the predictions of the continuous elastic model for bimetallic nanoobjects with the investigated sizes, morphologies and composition. Moreover, discrimination of nanoparticles internal structure (alloy or core-shell) by measurement of their acoustic response is also demonstrated