Black Bears (Ursus americanus) versus Brown Bears (U. arctos): Combining Morphometrics and Niche Modeling to Differentiate Species and Predict Distributions Through Time

Late Pleistocene American black bears (Ursus americanus) often overlap in size with Pleistocene brown bears (U. arctos), occasionally making them difficult to diagnose. Large U. americanus have previously been distinguished from U. arctos by the length of the upper second molar (M2). However, the teeth of fossil U. americanus sometimes overlap size with U. arctos. As such, there is need for a more accurate tool to distinguish the two species. Here, 2D geometric morphometrics is applied to the occlusal surface of the M2 to further assess the utility of this tooth for distinguishing U. americanus and U. arctos specimens. When combined with an Ecological Niche Model of U. americanus and U. arctos in North America from the Last Glacial Maximum, this morphometric technique can be applied to key regions. A case of two Pleistocene specimens previously identified as U. arctos from eastern North America exemplifies the utility of this combination

The inhibitors and enablers of emerging adult COVID-19 mitigation compliance in a township context.

Young adults are often scapegoated for not complying with COVID-19 mitigation strategies. While studies have investigated what predicts this population’s compliance and non-compliance, they have largely excluded the insights of African young people living in South African townships. Given this, it is unclear what places young adult South African township dwellers at risk for not complying with physical distancing, face masking and handwashing, or what enables resilience to those risks. To remedy this uncertainty, the current article reports a secondary analysis of transcripts (n=119) that document telephonic interviews in June and October 2020 with 24 emerging adults (average age: 20 years) who participated in the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments (RYSE) study. The secondary analysis, which was inductively thematic, pointed to compliance being threatened by forgetfulness; preventive measures conflicting with personal/collective style; and structural constraints. Resilience to these compliance risks lay in young people’s capacity to regulate their behaviour and in the immediate social ecology’s capacity to co-regulate young people’s health behaviours. These findings discourage health interventions that are focused on the individual. More optimal public health initiatives will be responsive to the risks and resilience-enablers associated with young people and the social, institutional, and physical ecologies to which young people are connected.Significance:• Emerging adult compliance with COVID-19 mitigation strategies is threatened by risks across multiple systems (i.e. young people themselves; the social ecology; the physical ecology).• Emerging adult resilience to compliance challenges is co-facilitated by young people and their social ecologies.• Responding adaptively to COVID-19 contagion threats will require multisystem mobilisation that is collaborative and transformative in its redress of risk and co-championship of resilience-enablers

Preparing community forestry for REDD+: engaging local communities in the mapping and MRV requirements of REDD+

Based on fieldwork carried out over the last five years, this article presents the case for communities being permitted to make their own forest carbon inventories for the purposes of monitoring under national REDD+ programmes, following brief training. Modern technology, particularly PDAs (small, handheld computers), can provide the platform both for mapping and for storing data, and can easily be used by people with only a few years primary education, although a technical agency will be needed to back up such systems. There are many advantages to this approach: costs are much lower than when professionals do the work, while the data are equally accurate. ‘Ownership´ of the data may be important in legitimising communities´ claims to carbon credits in the forests they manage

Resilience and mental health : how multisystemic processes contribute to positive outcomes

More is known about the factors that predict mental disorder than about the factors and processes that promote positive development among individuals exposed to atypically high levels of stress or adversity. In this brief Review of the science of resilience, we show that the concept is best understood as the process of multiple biological, psychological, social, and ecological systems interacting in ways that help individuals to regain, sustain, or improve their mental wellbeing when challenged by one or more risk factors. Studies in fields as diverse as genetics, psychology, political science, architecture, and human ecology are showing that resilience depends just as much on the culturally relevant resources available to stressed individuals in their social, built, and natural environments as it does on individual thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. With growing interest in resilience among mental health-care providers, there is a need to recognise the complex interactions across systems that predict which individuals will do well and to use this insight to advance mental health interventions.http://www.thelancet.com/psychiatry2021-05-01hj2020Educational Psycholog

Limiting the impacts of child abuse and neglect by understanding which supports matter most : a differential impact approach

No abstract available.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chiabuneg2019-04-01hj2019Educational Psycholog

The association between family adversity and youth mental health outcomes

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.BACKGROUND: The association between family adversity and young people's mental health outcomes in communities that experience economic instability has not been well explored in the South African context. Furthermore, the overtime interaction between resilience factors, family adversity, and young people's psychological functioning in African settings, like South Africa, is under‐investigated. PURPOSE: This study investigates the relationship between family adversity and conduct problems and depression at two‐time points in a sample of youths in two South African communities stressed by their dependency on economically volatile oil and gas industries. METHOD: This article draws on longitudinal data generated by the Resilient Youth inStressed Environments (RYSE) study in South Africa, which included 914 and 528(wave 1 and 3) adolescents and emerging adults (14–27‐year‐olds;Mage = 18.36years) living in Secunda/eMbalenhle and Sasolburg/Zamdela. Participants were sampled at baseline (wave 1) and 18–24 months later (wave 3). They self-reported experiences of community violence, family adversity, resilience‐enabling resources, conduct difficulties, and depression symptoms. Regression analyses were used to examine the unadjusted and adjusted association of family adversity on conduct problems and depression. RESULTS: About 60% of participants reported high family adversity. Regressions, however, revealed no association between family adversity and conduct problems and depression cross‐sectionally and over time. Individual resilience, biological sex, and experience of victimization in the community, however, were associated with conduct difficulty while all three resilience factors were associated with decreased depression among participants. CONCLUSION: Our study sheds light on the risk and protective factors for mental health outcomes of adolescents and youths who reside in volatile, turbulent communities and experience ongoing familial challenges. To effectively support the mental well‐being of young individuals in such contexts, interventions must consider the potential potential of the resilience factors they aim to strengthen.The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the National Research Foundation.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10959254Educational Psycholog

A multisystemic perspective on the temporal interplay between adolescent depression and resilience-supporting individual and social resources

BACKGROUND : Adolescent depression can severely interfere with age-appropriate and lifetime development and functionality. Physical functioning in daily life (as a means of individual support) as well as social support from family and friends have been shown to enhance adolescent resilience against depression. By applying a multisystemic model of resilience, this study investigates how these resources reciprocally influence each other and how they interact with depression over time. METHODS : Longitudinal data (three assessments over three years) from the Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments project was analyzed using panel network analysis to investigate short- and long-term uni- and bidirectional effects. The sample consisted of N = 500 adolescents from Canada (mean age = 18.49, SD = 3.01, 56.40% young women) at the first assessment. RESULTS : Depression seemed to fluctuate, while the resources showed significant stability over the course of the study. Perceived family and friend support were not significantly influenced by depression while they had significantly negative temporal effects on depression. Only physical functioning showed a negative feedback loop, notably with somatic symptoms of depression. Family and friend support shared a reinforcing feedback loop, while physical functioning was not related to either type of support. LIMITATIONS : Future studies should address the low average of depressive symptomatology and subjective, global measures of social support. CONCLUSIONS : The resources show potential time-dependent effects: symptom-specific resources need to be applied in the short-term, while a pool of multisystemic resilience resources seems necessary over the long-term to increase the resilience to depression among adolescents.The Canadian Institutes of Health Research.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/jadhj2023Educational Psycholog

Resilience to COVID-19-related stressors : insights from emerging adults in a South African township

There is widespread recognition that stressors related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) jeopardize the development of emerging adults, more particularly those living in disadvantaged communities. What is less well understood is what might support emerging adult resilience to COVID-19-related stressors. In response, this article reports a 5-week qualitative study with 24 emerging adults (average age: 20) living in a South African township. Using digital diaries and repeated individual interviews, young people shared their lived experiences of later (i.e., month 4 and 7) lockdown-related challenges (i.e., contagion fears; livelihood threats; lives-on-hold) and how they managed these challenges. An inductive thematic analysis showed that personal and collective compliance, generous ways-ofbeing, and tolerance-facilitators enabled emerging adult resilience to said challenges. Importantly, these resilience-enablers drew on resources associated with multiple systems and reflected the situational and cultural context of the township in question. In short, supporting emerging adult resilience to COVID-19-related stressors will require contextually aligned, multisystemic responses.Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the University of Leicester’s QR Global Challenges Research Fund.http://www.plosone.orgam2022Educational Psycholog

Pathways of resilience : predicting school engagement trajectories for South African adolescents living in a stressed environment

School engagement is associated with the resilience of adolescents living in stressed environments in sub-Saharan Africa. Even so, there is scant understanding of the antecedents of African students’ school engagement. In response, this article reports the results of an exploratory study conducted in 2018 and 2020 with a sample of 172 adolescents (average age: 16.02 years; SD = 1.67) from a risk-exposed municipality in South Africa. Clustered school engagement trajectories were identified using a longitudinal variant of k-means based on affective, behavioural, and cognitive school engagement. Evolutionary classification trees were used to identify meaningful predictors of the identified trajectories. The results point to specific combinations of factors – i.e., student age, parental/caregiver warmth, school resource levels, teacher competence – that sustained low and high school engagement trajectories. These combinations direct the attention of school psychologists and other service providers to the multiple systems that matter in varying ways for the school engagement of African students. They also call for continued investigation of the resource combinations that are salient to student engagement across stressed environments in sub-Saharan Africa.The RYSE study is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and JH position was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.https://www.elsevier.com/locate/cedpsycham2023Educational Psycholog

African emerging adult resilience : insights from a sample of township youth

What enables the resilience of African emerging adults who live in sub-Saharan Africa and must contend with an everyday reality that is characterized by structural disadvantage and related hardship? This question directed the exploratory qualitative research that we report in this article. Its genesis was the relative inattention to the resilience of African emerging adults—that is, young people living in sub-Saharan Africa, aged 18–29. To answer this question, 16 South African participants (average age 21) from a significantly stressed community participated in group interviews and generated digital stories. A deductive analysis of the content yielded the understanding that the self is central to emerging adult resilience. Family members mattered too, but there was scant reference to any other social or ecological resource. These findings urge attention to the dangers to resilience if social ecologies are not resourced to better co-facilitate positive outcomes for disadvantaged emerging adults.The RYSE study is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant IP2-150708). The digital story work is funded by the British Academy (grant NMGR1180197).http://journals.sagepub.com/home/eaxhj2020Educational Psycholog