It takes a village to protect a child

This article presents a case for taking a concerted community approach to protecting children. It does this through acknowledging that: child protection is indeed ‘everyone’s business’ (Landgren, 2005) and extending this into promoting a collective response rather than relying solely on child protection authorities to work with individual families; revisiting the ‘best interests’ criterion of child rights in protecting children; reiterating the argument (Young, McKenzie, Omre, Schjelderup, & Walker, 2014) for a much more nuanced understanding of, and response to, keeping children safe; and presenting some descriptions and analyses of community approaches to protecting children

Self-disclosure in intimate relationships: Associations with individual and relationship characteristics over time

Self-disclosure is an act of intimacy and serves as a maintenance strategy, and yet very little prior research has examined self-disclosure within relationships with data collected multiple times over an extended period of time and from both partners. With longitudinal data collected from both partners in young adult dating couples, we examined how self-disclosure is associated with both individual characteristics (e.g., responsiveness, self-esteem) and relationship characteristics (satisfaction, love, commitment). Overall, men and women indicated a similar high level of self-disclosure. As hypothesized, positive associations were found between self-disclosure and the individual characteristics of self-esteem, relationship esteem (confidence as an intimate partner), and responsiveness (as indicated by data collected at Time 1). Self-disclosure also was positively associated with relationship quality (satisfaction, love, and commitment). Similar positive associations were typically found at the follow-up waves, although in many cases the correlations were not significant and were more modest in magnitude. Level of self-disclosure was generally not predictive of whether the couple stayed together or broke up over time, although the more that women perceived their partner disclosed at Time 1, the less likely the couple was to break up by Time 2. It is speculated that the generally high level of self-disclosure at Time 1 for the entire sample limited the degree to which self-disclosure could predict which relationships stayed together and which broke up over time. In an analysis that involved the subsample of couples who stayed together thoughout the study (many of whom married by Time 5), no significant change was found in levels of self-disclosure

The Effects of Footshock on the Reinforcing Efficacy of Cocaine in Male Long-Evans Rats

Many links exist between cocaine abuse and stress. The literature and laboratory studies in rats suggest that this could be because stress increases the reinforcing efficacy of cocaine. Using male Long-Evans rats, experiments in this thesis tested effects of footshock on the reinforcing efficacy of cocaine using a progressive ratio schedule of reinforcement. They also examined effects of footshock on the reinforcing efficacy of a half-maximal dose of cocaine. Finally, they tested the effects of footshock on cocaine self-administration in rats initially resistant to acquisition of cocaine self-administration. Footshock did not increase reinforcing efficacy of cocaine on a PR schedule of reinforcement, nor did it enhance sensitivity to a half-maximal dose of cocaine. Footshock did, however, cause acquisition of cocaine self-administration in acquisition-resistant rats. Therefore, while footshock stress may be capable of sensitizing acquisition-resistant rats to the reinforcing efficacy of cocaine, it does not appear that it significantly increases the reinforcing efficacy of cocaine in rats with a history of cocaine self-administration

UV frequency metrology on CO (a3Pi); isotope effects and sensitivity to a variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio

UV frequency metrology has been performed on the a3Pi - X1Sigma+ (0,0) band of various isotopologues of CO using a frequency-quadrupled injection-seeded narrow-band pulsed Titanium:Sapphire laser referenced to a frequency comb laser. The band origin is determined with an accuracy of 5 MHz (delta \nu / \nu = 3 * 10^-9), while the energy differences between rotational levels in the a3Pi state are determined with an accuracy of 500 kHz. From these measurements, in combination with previously published radiofrequency and microwave data, a new set of molecular constants is obtained that describes the level structure of the a3Pi state of 12C16O and 13C16O with improved accuracy. Transitions in the different isotopologues are well reproduced by scaling the molecular constants of 12C16O via the common mass-scaling rules. Only the value of the band origin could not be scaled, indicative of a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Our analysis confirms the extreme sensitivity of two-photon microwave transitions between nearly-degenerate rotational levels of different Omega-manifolds for probing a possible variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio, \mu=m_p/m_e, on a laboratory time scale

An AC electric trap for ground-state molecules

We here report on the realization of an electrodynamic trap, capable of trapping neutral atoms and molecules in both low-field and high-field seeking states. Confinement in three dimensions is achieved by switching between two electric field configurations that have a saddle-point at the center of the trap, i.e., by alternating a focusing and a defocusing force in each direction. AC trapping of 15ND3 molecules is experimentally demonstrated, and the stability of the trap is studied as a function of the switching frequency. A 1 mK sample of 15ND3 molecules in the high-field seeking component of the |J,K>=|1,1> level, the ground-state of para-ammonia, is trapped in a volume of about 1 mm^3

Pain and physical functioning in neuropathic pain: a systematic review of psychometric properties of various outcome measures

INTRODUCTION: A range of outcome measures across various domains are used to evaluate change following an intervention in clinical trials on chronic neuropathic pain (NeP). However, to capture a real change in the variable of interest, the psychometric properties of a particular measure should demonstrate appropriate methodological quality. Various outcome measures in the domains of pain and physical functioning have been used in the literature for NeP, for which individual properties (eg, reliability/validity) have been reported. To date, there is no definitive synthesis of evidence on the psychometric properties of those outcome measures; thus, the aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the methodological quality [COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) guidelines] of studies that evaluated psychometric properties of pain and physical functioning outcome measures used for NeP. METHODS: Specific MeSH/keywords related to 3 areas (pain and/or physical functioning, psychometric properties, and NeP) were used to retrieve relevant studies (English language) in key electronic databases (MEDLINE (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCO), Scopus, AMED, and Web of Science) from database inception-July 2012. Articles retrieval/screening and quality analysis (COSMIN) were carried out by 2 independent reviewers. RESULTS: Twenty-four pain and thirty-seven physical functioning outcome measures were identified, varying in methodological quality from poor-excellent. CONCLUSION: Although a variety of pain and physical functioning outcome measures have been reported in the literature, few have demonstrate methodologically strong psychometric properties. Thus, future research is required to further investigate the psychometric properties of existing pain and physical functioning outcome measures used for clinical and research purposes

Dissociable Processes of Cognitive Control during Error and Non-Error Conflicts: A Study of the Stop Signal Task

Conflict detection and subsequent behavioral adjustment are critical to daily life, and how this process is controlled has been increasingly of interest. A medial cortical region which includes the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been theorized to act as a conflict detector that can direct prefrontal activity for behavioral adjustments. This conflict monitoring hypothesis was supported by many imaging studies of the Stroop task, with a focus on non-error processes. Here we sought to examine whether this circuit could be generalized to the stop signal task (SST), another behavioral paradigm widely used to study cognitive control. In particular, with a procedure to elicit errors in the SST, we examined whether error and non-error control were mediated by the same pathways.In functional magnetic resonance imaging of 60 healthy adults, we demonstrated that the medial cortical activity during stop success (SS) as compared to go success (G) trials is correlated with increased prefrontal activity in post-stop SS as compared to post-go SS trials, though this correlation was not specific to the medial cortical region. Furthermore, thalamic and insular rather than medial cortical activation during stop error (SE) as compared to G trials correlated with increased prefrontal activity in post-stop SS as compared to post-go SS trials.Taken together, these new findings challenge a specific role of the ACC and support distinct pathways for error and non-error conflict processing in cognitive control

Young people today: news media, policy and youth justice

The new sociology of childhood sees children as competent social agents with important contributions to make. And yet the phase of childhood is fraught with tensions and contradictions. Public policies are required, not only to protect children, but also to control them and regulate their behaviour. For children and young people in the UK, youth justice has become increasingly punitive. At the same time, social policies have focused more on children's inclusion and participation. In this interplay of conflict and contradictions, the role the media play is critical in contributing to the moral panic about childhood and youth. In this article, we consider media representations of “antisocial” children and young people and how this belies a moral response to the nature of contemporary childhood. We conclude by considering how a rights-based approach might help redress the moralised politics of childhood representations in the media