Increasing Youth Safety and Responsible Behavior Online: Putting in Place Programs that Work.

Hundreds of programs are being developed to promote safe and responsible online behavior among youth. They are being successfully marketed and eagerly adopted because of their appealing content, exciting graphics, engaging games, catchy phrases and cool characters. But that is not enough. The bottom line for everyone to remember -- funders, program developers, communities, schools, and families -- is that these programs need to actually work. They need to change youth attitudes and inspire youth to make smart and ethical choices about how they behave online. If programs are not doing this, then no matter how beautiful the graphics or sophisticated the video production, time and money are being wasted. Children are not safer and parents and teachers may wrongly conclude that they have successfully addressed the problems. Unfortunately, right now, we have no information that Internet safety programs work. Or which ones are most likely to work. We see parents and schools excited about the material. We hear stories about kids who did something important after seeing a program. But prevention and education experts know that “feelings” and stories can be very misleading. We’ve made such mistakes before—particularly in trying to prevent youth drug and alcohol abuse. There are striking parallels in our eagerness to educate youth about Internet safety and the rushed and ultimately disastrous efforts to prevent drug problems in the 1970s and 80s (see Box 1). It is critical that we avoid making the same mistakes. Rigorous, scientific evaluation is necessary to tell us what works. And it is crucial to have this information before programs are disseminated widely. Those unfamiliar with program evaluation might be unsure about why it is so necessary or worry that it will stifle innovation. There can be confusion about how to organize an evaluation. Evaluation can be expensive and it does take time to complete. But lower costs and speedy dissemination are questionable benefits when there is no evidence whatsoever that a program is helping youth. With this paper, we hope to inspire the Internet safety field to make evaluation an integral part of program development, and consumers to insist on information about effectiveness. We make a case for evaluation, try to de-mystify the process, respond to common concerns or questions about evaluation, and propose some steps to ensure that our programs help youth stay safe online

The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases.

Of all crimes against children, sexual abuse has arguably captured the greatest share of attention from child advocates, professionals, policymakers, and the general public. During the 1980’s, increasing numbers of victims were identified each year (American Association for the Protection of Children, 1988) and concerns about this crime intensified. However, a dramatic shift in child sexual abuse trends has occurred. Data from child protective services (CPS) agencies across the country indicate that the increases of the 1980’s were followed by an extensive period of marked declines in the 1990’s. Unfortunately, little effort has been expended to uncover the reasons why fewer cases of child sexual abuse have been identified each year. The decline in child sexual abuse cases is being highlighted as a part of OJJDP’s Crimes Against Children Series to illustrate the importance of tracking and investigating trends in child victimization. This Bulletin uses data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) and the Annual Fifty State Survey conducted by Prevent Child Abuse America to present evidence about the decline in reported and substantiated child sexual abuse cases since the early 1990’s. Several explanations for the decline are considered, and corresponding policy implications are discussed

Updated Trends in Child Maltreatment, 2006.

New data released by the federal government show continuing national declines in sexual and physical abuse in 2006, but no decline in neglect. The data detailed in the attached table and figure, come from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), which aggregates and publishes statistics from state child protection agencies. The most recent data from NCCANDS were released in April, 2008 and concern cases of child maltreatment investigated in 2006

Explanations for the Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases.

Discusses the decline in the number of sexual abuse cases substantiated by child protective service agencies between 1992 and 2000. This OJJDP Crimes Against Children Bulletin explores the strengths and weaknesses of six possible explanations for the decline by using data from a number of different sources: aggregate data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System; detailed child protective service data from Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania; and self-report data from the National Crime Victimization Survey and from schoolchildren in Minnesota

Mesopelagic fishes dominate otolith record of past two millennia in the Santa Barbara Basin.

The mesopelagic (200-1000 m) separates the productive upper ocean from the deep ocean, yet little is known of its long-term dynamics despite recent research that suggests fishes of this zone likely dominate global fish biomass and contribute to the downward flux of carbon. Here we show that mesopelagic fishes dominate the otolith (ear bone) record in anoxic sediment layers of the Santa Barbara Basin over the past two millennia. Among these mesopelagic fishes, otoliths from families Bathylagidae (deep-sea smelts) and Myctophidae (lanternfish) are most abundant. Otolith deposition rate fluctuates at decadal to centennial time scales and covaries with proxies for upper ocean temperature, consistent with climate forcing. Moreover, otolith deposition rate and proxies for temperature and primary productivity show contemporaneous discontinuities during the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age. Mesopelagic fishes may serve as proxies for future climatic influence at those depths including effects on the carbon cycle

Updated Trends in Child Maltreatment, 2010.

Even in the midst of continuing difficult economic times, 2010 national statistics showed no increase in child maltreatment. Overall substantiated child maltreatment actually declined 1% from 2009 to 2010, including a 3% decline in sexual abuse and a 2% decline in physical abuse. Child maltreatment fatalities also declined 8%, but some known administrative changes af‐ fected the rates

Updated Trends in Child Maltreatment, 2008.

Recently released national child maltreatment data for 2008 show a generally encouraging situation during the first year of the serious recession that began in late 2007. Overall substantiated child maltreatment declined 3% from the previous year, including a 6% decline in sexual abuse. Child maltreatment fatalities stayed stable

Updated Trends in Child Maltreatment, 2013.

New national data for 2013 show continued declines in child maltreatment, after a one year discontinuity (2012) in which some rates briefly increased. But from 2012 to 2013, sexual abuse declined 4%, physical abuse declined 3%, child maltreatment fatalities declined 7% and overall substantiated child maltreatment declined 1%. Neglect by contrast rose 1%

Updated trends in Child Maltreatment, 2012.

National statistics from 2012 showed increases in some forms of child maltreatment for the first time in many years. While overall substantiated child maltreatment was flat from 2011 to 2012, there was a 2% rise in sexual abuse and a 5% rise in physical abuse. Neglect declined 3%, but child maltreatment fatalities rose 4% from 1557 to 1620

Deep learning extends de novo protein modelling coverage of genomes using iteratively predicted structural constraints

The inapplicability of amino acid covariation methods to small protein families has limited their use for structural annotation of whole genomes. Recently, deep learning has shown promise in allowing accurate residue-residue contact prediction even for shallow sequence alignments. Here we introduce DMPfold, which uses deep learning to predict inter-atomic distance bounds, the main chain hydrogen bond network, and torsion angles, which it uses to build models in an iterative fashion. DMPfold produces more accurate models than two popular methods for a test set of CASP12 domains, and works just as well for transmembrane proteins. Applied to all Pfam domains without known structures, confident models for 25% of these so-called dark families were produced in under a week on a small 200 core cluster. DMPfold provides models for 16% of human proteome UniProt entries without structures, generates accurate models with fewer than 100 sequences in some cases, and is freely available.Comment: JGG and SMK contributed equally to the wor