Substance Use as a Longitudinal Predictor of the Perpetration of Teen Dating Violence

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10964-012-9877-1.The prevention of teen dating violence is a major public health priority. However, the dearth of longitudinal studies makes it difficult to develop programs that effectively target salient risk factors. Using a school-based sample of ethnically diverse adolescents, this longitudinal study examined whether substance use (alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs) and exposure to parental violence predicted the perpetration of physical dating violence over time. 1,042 9th and 10th grade high schools students were recruited and assessed in the spring of 2010, and 93% of the original sample completed the 1-year follow-up in the spring of 2011. Participants who had begun dating at the initial assessment and who self-identified as African American (n = 263; 32%), Caucasian (n = 272; 33%), or Hispanic (n = 293; 35%) were included in the current analyses (n = 828; 55% female). Slightly more than half of the adolescents who perpetrated dating violence at baseline reported past year dating violence at follow-up, relative to only 11% of adolescents who did not report perpetrating dating violence at baseline. Structural equation modeling revealed that the use of alcohol and hard drugs at baseline predicted the future perpetration of physical dating violence, even after accounting for the effects of baseline dating violence and exposure to interparental violence. Despite differences in the prevalence of key variables between males and females, the longitudinal associations did not vary by gender. With respect to race, exposure to mother-to-father violence predicted the perpetration of dating violence among Caucasian adolescents. Findings from the current study indicate that targeting substance use, and potentially youth from violent households, may be viable approaches to preventing the perpetration of teen dating violence

The Association Between Problematic Parental Substance Use and Adolescent Substance Use in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of 9th and 10th Graders

Adolescents of parents who use substances are at an increased risk for substance use themselves. Both parental monitoring and closeness have been shown to mediate the relationship between parents’ and their adolescents’ substance use. However, we know little about whether these relationships vary across different substances used by adolescents. Using structural equation modeling, we examined these associations within a racially and ethnically diverse sample of 9th and 10th graders (N = 927). Path analyses indicated that maternal closeness partially mediated the association between maternal problematic substance use and adolescent alcohol use. Parental monitoring partially mediated the relationship between paternal problematic substance use and adolescent alcohol, cigarette, marijuana, inhalant, and illicit prescription drug use. These results were consistent across gender and race/ethnicity. These findings suggest that parental interventions designed to increase closeness and monitoring may help to reduce adolescent substance use

Arrest History and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration in a Sample of Men and Women Arrested for Domestic Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious and prevalent problem throughout the United States. Currently, individuals arrested for domestic violence are often court mandated to batterer intervention programs (BIPs). However, little is known about the arrest histories of these individuals, especially women. The current study examined the arrest histories of men (n = 303) and women (n = 82) arrested for domestic violence and court-referred to BIPs. Results demonstrated that over 30% of the entire sample had been previously arrested for a non-violent offense, and over 25% of the participants had been previously arrested for a violent offense other than domestic violence. Moreover, men were arrested significantly more frequently for violence-related and non-violent offenses than their female counterparts. In addition, men were more likely than women to have consumed binge-levels of alcohol prior to the offense that led to their most recent arrest and court-referral to a BIP. Lastly, arrest history was positively associated with physical and psychological aggression perpetration against an intimate partner for men only, such that more previous arrests were associated with more frequent aggression. These results provide evidence that many men and women arrested for domestic violence have engaged in a number of diverse criminal acts during their lifetimes, suggesting that BIPs may need to address general criminal behavior

The Brexit Botnet and User-Generated Hyperpartisan News

In this paper we uncover a network of Twitterbots comprising 13,493 accounts that tweeted the U.K. E.U. membership referendum, only to disappear from Twitter shortly after the ballot. We compare active users to this set of political bots with respect to temporal tweeting behavior, the size and speed of retweet cascades, and the composition of their retweet cascades (user-to-bot vs. bot-to-bot) to evidence strategies for bot deployment. Our results move forward the analysis of political bots by showing that Twitterbots can be effective at rapidly generating small to medium-sized cascades; that the retweeted content comprises user-generated hyperpartisan news, which is not strictly fake news, but whose shelf life is remarkably short; and, finally, that a botnet may be organized in specialized tiers or clusters dedicated to replicating either active users or content generated by other bots

Perspectives on supporting fathers affected by postnatal depression and a history of violence

Intimate partner violence in the perinatal period is a significant problem that remains underscreened, underdiagnosed and undertreated. The establishment of evidence-based guidelines to enable health visitors to identify couples experiencing violence and offer appropriate support has been hampered by the complex interplay between maternal and paternal mental health problems and violence. This study explored the experiences of UK fathers who voluntarily engaged with services designed to eliminate their ideation to violence. The findings indicate that the tendency to violence is increased by stresses associated with the transition to parenthood. Men felt pressured by concerns for their partner's mental health, changes in the relationship, sleep disturbances and the burden of infant care they assumed when the mother was unable to cope. Health visitors are ideally placed to assess for factors linked to the emergence of violence and put in place interventions to minimise occurrence

Dumb and Lazy? A Comparison of Color Learning and Memory Retrieval in Drones and Workers of the Buff-Tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, by Means of PER Conditioning

More than 100 years ago, Karl von Frisch showed that honeybee workers learn and discriminate colors. Since then, many studies confirmed the color learning capabilities of females from various hymenopteran species. Yet, little is known about visual learning and memory in males despite the fact that in most bee species males must take care of their own needs and must find rewarding flowers to obtain food. Here we used the proboscis extension response (PER) paradigm to study the color learning capacities of workers and drones of the bumblebee, Bombus terrestris. Light stimuli were paired with sucrose reward delivered to the insects’ antennae and inducing a reflexive extension of the proboscis. We evaluated color learning (i.e. conditioned PER to color stimuli) in absolute and differential conditioning protocols and mid-term memory retention was measured two hours after conditioning. Different monochromatic light stimuli in combination with neutral density filters were used to ensure that the bumblebees could only use chromatic and not achromatic (e.g. brightness) information. Furthermore, we tested if bees were able to transfer the learned information from the PER conditioning to a novel discrimination task in a Y-maze. Both workers and drones were capable of learning and discriminating between monochromatic light stimuli and retrieved the learned stimulus after two hours. Drones performed as well as workers during conditioning and in the memory test, but failed in the transfer test in contrast to workers. Our data clearly show that bumblebees can learn to associate a color stimulus with a sugar reward in PER conditioning and that both workers and drones reach similar acquisition and mid-term retention performances. Additionally, we provide evidence that only workers transfer the learned information from a Pavlovian to an operant situation

The DRUID study: racism and self-assessed health status in an indigenous population

BackgroundThere is now considerable evidence from around the world that racism is associated with both mental and physical ill-health. However, little is known about the mediating factors between racism and ill-health. This paper investigates relationships between racism and self-assessed mental and physical health among Indigenous Australians as well as potential mediators of these relationships.MethodsA total of 164 adults in the Darwin Region Urban Indigenous Diabetes (DRUID) study completed a validated instrument assessing interpersonal racism and a separate item on discrimination-related stress. Self-assessed health status was measured using the SF-12. Stress, optimism, lack of control, social connections, cultural identity and reactions/responses to interpersonal racism were considered as mediators and moderators of the relationship between racism/discrimination and self-assessed health status.ResultsAfter adjusting for socio-demographic factors, interpersonal racism was significantly associated with the SF-12 mental (but not the physical) health component. Stress, lack of control and feeling powerless as a reaction to racism emerged as significant mediators of the relationship between racism and general mental health. Similar findings emerged for discrimination-related stress.ConclusionsRacism/discrimination is significantly associated with poor general mental health among this indigenous population. The mediating factors between racism and mental health identified in this study suggest new approaches to ameliorating the detrimental effects of racism on health. In particular, the importance of reducing racism-related stress, enhancing general levels of mastery, and minimising negative social connections in order to ameliorate the negative consequences of racism