Parental involvement: a grounded theory of the role of parents in adolescent help seeking for mental health problems

There is a high prevalence of mental health problems within adolescent populations, but they are unlikely to seek help. Adults, including parents are important within this help seeking process. The study therefore aimed to develop a theory of the influence of parents upon adolescent help seeking. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with adolescents, their parents and clinicians working within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). A grounded theory analysis allowed for the in-depth exploration of participants’ experiences. A model was developed identifying help seeking as a family journey. Parents were highly influential, and parents who were able to be more available to their adolescents tended to be more involved in the help seeking process. Other adults were utilised within the help seeking process. Once adolescents were engaged with the help seeking process they were often able to then seek further help independently. The findings suggest that consideration should be given to making services accessible to adolescents. CAMHS services should explore ways with adolescents to give control over parental involvement, and ways with parents to develop availability. Future research should consider the experiences of older and younger adolescents separately, and the transition into adult services

Economic profitability of organic vs. conventional cotton-based production systems in a long-term field trial in India

The debate on the relative benefits of conventional and organic farming systems is more topical than ever. The achievements of conventional high-input agriculture were largely brought about at the cost of deteriorating soil fertility; furthermore, they were based to a large extent on fossil fuels. Developing more sustainable farming practices on a large scale is of utmost importance. However, information about the performance of agricultural production systems under organic and conventional management in tropical and subtropical regions is largely lacking. This study aimed to assess agronomic and economic data from a long-term farming systems comparison trial under semi-arid conditions in central India

Age and sex-specific rates of leaf regeneration in the Mojave Desert moss Syntrichia caninervis

The extremely skewed female-biased sex ratio in the desert moss Syntrichia caninervis was investigated by assessing the regeneration capacity of detached leaves. Juvenile, green, yellow-green, and brown leaves equating to approximately 0, 2, 6, and 12 yr of age, respectively, were detached from individuals of S. caninervis collected from 10 field populations and grown in a growth chamber for 58 d at a light intensity of 33–128 µmol · m–2 · s–1. Younger leaves (0–2 yr old) tended to have a greater viability, regenerate more quickly, extend their protonemal filaments farther, produce shoots (gametophores) more quickly, produce more shoots, and accumulate a greater biomass than older leaves (6 and 12 yr old). Among younger leaf classes, regenerating female leaves were more likely to produce a shoot than male leaves and produced more shoots than male leaves. The sexes did not differ significantly in time until protonemal emergence, linear extension of protonemata, or rate of biomass accumulation. However, protonemata of male leaves tended to emerge more quickly and produce a greater total biomass, ultimately consisting mostly of protonemata, than did female leaves. The more rapid proliferation of shoots by female leaf regenerants may help to explain the rarity of males in this species

Spin flip from dark to bright states in InP quantum dots

We report measurements of the time for spin flip from dark (non-light emitting) exciton states in quantum dots to bright (light emitting) exciton states in InP quantum dots. Dark excitons are created by two-photon excitation by an ultrafast laser. The time for spin flip between dark and bright states is found to be approximately 200 ps, independent of density and temperature below 70 K. This is much shorter than observed in other quantum dot systems. The rate of decay of the luminescence intensity, approximately 300 ps, is not simply equal to the radiative decay rate from the bright states, because the rate of decay is limited by the rate of conversion from dark excitons into bright excitons. The dependence of the luminescence decay time on the spin flip time is a general effect that applies to many experiments.Comment: 3 figure

Langzeit-Systemvergleiche in Kenia und Indien: Konventionelle und biologische Erträge aus dem ersten Umstellungsjahr

Organic agriculture is more and more perceived as a promising approach to increase food security in developing countries. However, only few attempts have been made so far to assess agronomic and economic performance of organic agriculture in these^regions in a systematic way. This article reports the first year’s results of two long-term farming systems comparison field trials in Kenya and India. In sub-humid Central Kenya, on a high potential site in Meru South District (Chuka), there were no differences between yields of conventional and organic systems for the first maize and brassica crops. In contrast, organic yields were 14 to 60% lower than conventional yields on a trial site in a medium potential zone in Maragua District (Thika). It is assumed that the organic crops in Chuka could benefit from N and P mobilisation from the soil. In Thika, where N and P were less available, the crop depended on the easily soluble nutrients applied in the conventional treatments. In the semi-arid cotton belt of^Central India, biodynamic, organic, conventional and genetically modified (GM) cotton are compared. Soya and wheat are also part of the crop rotation under study. Biodynamic and organic cotton and wheat yields were 30% lower than conventional and GM yields. Soya yields did not differ between the treatments. It is suggested that yield in organic farming systems in conversion depends on initial inherent soil fertility and crop

The Utility of Video Diaries for Organizational Research

This article assesses the utility of video diaries as a method for organization studies. While it is frequently suggested that video-based research methodologies have the capacity to capture new data about the minutiae of complex organizational affairs, as well as offering new forms of dissemination to both academic and professional audiences, little is known about the specific benefits and drawbacks of video diaries. We compare video diaries with two established and “adjacent” methods: traditional diary studies (written or audio) and other video methods. We evaluate each in relation to three key research areas: bodily expressions, identity, and practice studies. Our assessment of video diaries suggests that the approach is best used as a complement to other forms of research and is particularly suited to capturing plurivocal, asynchronous accounts of organizational phenomena. We use illustrations from an empirical research project to exemplify our claims before concluding with five points of advice for researchers wishing to employ this method

Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual (SBOL Visual) Version 2.0

People who are engineering biological organisms often find it useful to communicate in diagrams, both about the structure of the nucleic acid sequences that they are engineering and about the functional relationships between sequence features and other molecular species. Some typical practices and conventions have begun to emerge for such diagrams. The Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual (SBOL Visual) has been developed as a standard for organizing and systematizing such conventions in order to produce a coherent language for expressing the structure and function of genetic designs. This document details version 2.0 of SBOL Visual, which builds on the prior SBOL Visual 1.0 standard by expanding diagram syntax to include functional interactions and molecular species, making the relationship between diagrams and the SBOL data model explicit, supporting families of symbol variants, clarifying a number of requirements and best practices, and significantly expanding the collection of diagram glyphs