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Substantial research has demonstrated the value of using risk assessment tools for the prediction and management of violence risk, including for intimate partner violence (IPV) (Mills, Kroner, and Morgan 2011). Such tools have been advocated for use by police officers (Hilton, Grant, and Rice 2010), but little is known about police officers’ perceptions of using these tools to inform their decision-making. Using a sample of 159 Canadian police officers (73% male, M age = 41.8 years, SD = 8.9), the current study examined police officer’s experiences with IPV risk tools, their attitudes about using such tools, and identified predictors of these attitudes using an online survey. Most of this sample had previously used an IPV risk tool, which was most commonly the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (64.1%). Most police officers rated use of risk tools as at least somewhat to extremely helpful (73.5%), and 67.4% indicated that they would use a risk tool with sufficient training on it. Regression analyses indicated that police officers’ perceived IPV risk tool usefulness was significantly predicted by older respondent age and greater perceived need for guidance in responding to IPV calls. In conclusion, most police officers view IPV risk screening as valuable for informing their responses to such calls for service and are likely to embrace such decision-aids with sufficient training on their potential impact for enhancing safety.

This paper explores how, and how effectively, two systems of international law have addressed exploitation, violence and abuse of people with mental disabilities. The two international systems reviewed were the Council of Europe's European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The two issues dealt with are (a) forced institutionalisation and denial of community-based services and (b) medically-sanctioned treatment as abuse or violence. The paper offers a comparative analysis of the way in which the two bodies have dealt with exploitation, violence and abuse of people with disabilities, and offers recommendations as to how the two bodies could adjust their approaches to come into closer alignment.

We compare family and parental effects on child verbal facility, verbal achievement and mathematics achievement in the United States and Great Britain. We study 3,438 5-13 year-old children from the 1994 NLSY Child-Mother Data Set and 1429 same-aged children from the National Child Development Study, also known as the British Child. Multivariate analyses suggest that the processes through which families invest in child cognition are similar across societies, with factors including low birth weight, child health, maternal cognition, family size and children's home environments being consequential. We conclude that parental investments are equally important across the two societies. The more developed welfare state in Great Britain does not notably compensate for parental investments in that society, although it may play a greater role when parental resources are absent or stretched thin.

We consider two identical oscillators with weak, time delayed coupling. We start with a general system of delay differential equations then reduce it to a phase model. With the assumption of large time delay, the resulting phase model has an explicit delay and phase shift in the argument of the phases and connection function, respectively. Using the phase model, we prove that for any type of oscillators and any coupling, the in-phase and anti-phase phase-locked solutions always exist and give conditions for their stability. We show that for small delay these solutions are unique, but with large enough delay multiple solutions of each type with different frequencies may occur. We give conditions for the existence and stability of other types of phase-locked solutions. We discuss the various bifurcations that can occur in the phase model as the time delay is varied. The results of the phase model analysis are applied to Morris–Lecar oscillators with diffusive coupling and compared with numerical studies of the full system of delay differential equations. We also consider the case of small time delay and compare the results with the existing ones in the literature.

Neurons in the inhibitory network of the striatum display cell assembly firing patterns which recent results suggest may consist of spatially compact neural clusters. Previous computational modeling of striatal neural networks has indicated that non-monotonic, distance-dependent coupling may promote spatially localized cluster firing. Here, we identify conditions for the existence and stability of cluster firing solutions in which clusters consist of spatially adjacent neurons in inhibitory neural networks. We consider simple non-monotonic, distance-dependent connectivity schemes in weakly coupled 1-D networks where cells make strong connections with their kth nearest neighbors on each side. Using the phase model reduction of the network system, we prove the existence of cluster solutions where neurons that are spatially close together are also synchronized in the same cluster, and find stability conditions for these solutions. Our analysis predicts the long-term behavior for networks of neurons, and we confirm our results by numerical simulations of biophysical neuron network models. Additionally, we add weaker coupling between closer neighbors as a perturbation to our network connectivity. We analyze the existence and stability of cluster solutions of the perturbed network and validate our results with numerical simulations. Our results demonstrate that an inhibitory network with non-monotonic, distance-dependent connectivity can exhibit cluster solutions where adjacent cells fire together.

Research on communication difficulties between native and nonnative speakers (NNSs) has generally focused on NNSs. However, native speakers’ (NSs) level of familiarity with nonnative accents can also affect communication. This study investigates whether implicit training (exposure to Korean-accented English through sentence transcription) and explicit training (learning about linguistic differences with a focus on Korean-accented English) can improve NSs’ comprehension of Korean-accented English. Participants in both training conditions showed greater improvement than the control group on sentence transcription tasks but not on multiple choice questions that assessed comprehension of a brief lecture. The results replicate past findings showing the effectiveness of implicit training and provide novel evidence of the effectiveness of explicit training. This suggests that explicit training can be effective in improving NSs’ understanding of short utterances when the training ensures participants have learned the material.

Mean field systems have recently been derived that adequately predict the behaviors of large networks of coupled integrate-and-fire neurons [W. Nicola and S.A. Campbell, J. Comput. Neurosci., 35 (2013), pp. 87--108]. The mean field system for a network of neurons with spike frequency adaptation is typically a pair of differential equations for the mean adaptation and synaptic gating variable of the network. These differential equations are nonsmooth, and, in particular, are piecewise smooth continuous (PWSC). Here, we analyze the smooth and nonsmooth bifurcation structure of these equations and show that the system is organized around a pair of co-dimension-two bifurcations that involve, respectively, the collision between a Hopf equilibrium point and a switching manifold, and a saddle-node equilibrium point and a switching manifold. These two co-dimension-two bifurcations can coalesce into a co-dimension-three nonsmooth bifurcation. As the mean field system we study is a nongeneric piecewise smooth conti...

The study of planktonic ecosystems is important as they make up the bottom trophic levels of aquatic food webs. We study a closed nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton (NPZ) model that includes size structure in the juvenile zooplankton. The closed nature of the system allows the formulation of a conservation law of biomass that governs the system. The model consists of a system of a nonlinear ordinary differential equation coupled to a partial differential equation. We are able to transform this system into one of delay differential equations where the delay is of threshold type and is state dependent. The system of delay differential equations can be further transformed into one with fixed delay. Using the different forms of the model, we perform a qualitative analysis of the solutions, which includes studying existence and uniqueness, positivity and boundedness, local and global stability, and conditions for extinction. Key parameters that are explored are the total biomass in the system and the maturity level at which the juvenile zooplankton reach maturity. Numerical simulations are also performed to verify our analytical results.

Mental Health Courts (MHCs) have emerged across North America in an effort to address the criminalization of persons with mental illness. Despite a growing body of literature examining MHCs, research on the role of gender in MHCs remains scarce. For this study, secondary data were analysed to examine whether gender differences in mental illness and crime affected the likelihood of MHC admission and completion in referrals to the Nova Scotia MHC (507 men, 243 women). Consistent with predictions, MHC admission and completion rates were similar between men and women. Higher rates of psychotic and substance use disorders were observed among men, whereas women had higher rates of mood and personality disorders. Although cases with psychotic and mood disorders were more likely to be admitted to the MHC, and those with substance use and personality disorders were less likely to be admitted, these differences did not vary by gender. Contrary to prediction, men had higher rates of violent index offences than women; however, this difference was only present for those who were not admitted to the MHC. Findings are discussed in terms of contributions to the literature surrounding the role of gender in MHCs, as well as notable implications for MHC practices and research.

Meniere’s disease (MD) is a complex disorder of the inner ear characterized by the symptoms of hearing loss, tinnitus, and vertigo, with an incidence in Caucasians of one in 1000. The hallmark histopathologic feature of MD is endolymphatic hydrops. Symptoms of MD typically present in the fourth decade of life, and the vertigo attacks experienced by patients with MD can be debilitating. Treatments aimed at alleviating the symptoms of MD are ineffective in approximately 30% of patients. Several studies have attempted to identify genetic factors important in MD through the use of families segregating the disease, but causative genes have not been identified. Many of these studies have been unsuccessful due to the fact that families of sufficient size to generate meaningful linkage results are extremely rare. Attempts to identify a genetic component to MD through the use of candidate gene association studies have been underpowered or poorly designed and therefore also unsuccessful. We hypothesize Meniere’s disease is a complex disorder that is due to the interplay of genetic and environmental factors. We tested this hypothesis using linkage and association studies. Initially, we focused on candidate gene replication association studies (KCNE1, KCNE3, iNOS), as well as testing a novel candidate gene (AQP4). We were unable to replicate the previous associations and although we could not identify an association between MD and AQP4 we did discover rare variants of AQP4 in our MD patient population. These variants segregate with a ‘syndromic’ MD phenotype. We also performed a genome-wide linkage study on a large Chilean family segregating MD over three generations and identified a novel MD locus on 1q32.11q32.3. Targeted exon capture and pyrosequencing of the region identified two potential disease-causing variants in two genes of unknown function. We next screened a cohort of singleton patients with MD for variants in these same genes. Surprisingly, in both genes, we identified common and rare variants supporting a possible role for either gene

Low-dimensional yet rich dynamics often emerge in the brain. Examples include oscillations and chaotic dynamics during sleep, epilepsy, and voluntary movement. However, a general mechanism for the emergence of low dimensional dynamics remains elusive. Here, we consider Wilson-Cowan networks and demonstrate through numerical and analytical work that a type of homeostatic regulation of the network firing rates can paradoxically lead to a rich dynamical repertoire. The dynamics include mixed-mode oscillations, mixed-mode chaos, and chaotic synchronization. This is true for single recurrently coupled node, pairs of reciprocally coupled nodes without self-coupling, and networks coupled through experimentally determined weights derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging data. In all cases, the stability of the homeostatic set point is analytically determined or approximated. The dynamics at the network level are directly determined by the behavior of a single node system through synchronization in both oscillatory and non-oscillatory states. Our results demonstrate that rich dynamics can be preserved under homeostatic regulation or even be caused by homeostatic regulation., 25 pages, 5 figures

The hydroalcoholic extract of Punica granatum (pomegranate) leaves was previously demonstrated to be anti-inflammatory in a rat model of lipopolysaccharide- (LPS-) induced acute peritonitis. Here, we investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of the ethyl acetate fraction obtained from the pomegranate leaf hydroalcoholic extract (EAFPg) on the LPS-induced acute lung injury (ALI) mouse model. Male Swiss mice received either EAFPg at different doses or dexamethasone (per os) prior to LPS intranasal instillation. Vehicle-treated mice were used as controls. Animals were culled at 4 h after LPS challenge, and the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and lung samples were collected for analysis. EAFPg and kaempferol effects on NO and cytokine production by LPS-stimulated RAW 264.7 macrophages were also investigated. Pretreatment with EAFPg (100–300 mg/kg) markedly reduced cell accumulation (specially neutrophils) and collagen deposition in the lungs of ALI mice. The same animals presented with reduced lung and BALF TNF-α and IL-1β expression in comparison with vehicle controls (p<0.05). Additionally, incubation with either EAFPg or kaempferol (100 μg/ml) reduced NO production and cytokine gene expression in cultured LPS-treated RAW 264.7 macrophages. Overall, these results demonstrate that the prophylactic treatment with EAFPg attenuates acute lung inflammation. We suggest this fraction may be useful in treating ALI.

Determining the biological details and mechanisms that are essential for the generation of population rhythms in the mammalian brain is a challenging problem. This problem cannot be addressed either by experimental or computational studies in isolation. Here we show that computational models that are carefully linked with experiment provide insight into this problem. Using the experimental context of a whole hippocampus preparation in vitro that spontaneously expresses theta frequency (3---12 Hz) population bursts in the CA1 region, we create excitatory network models to examine whether cellular adaptation bursting mechanisms could critically contribute to the generation of this rhythm. We use biologically-based cellular models of CA1 pyramidal cells and network sizes and connectivities that correspond to the experimental context. By expanding our mean field analyses to networks with heterogeneity and non all-to-all coupling, we allow closer correspondence with experiment, and use these analyses to greatly extend the range of parameter values that are explored. We find that our model excitatory networks can produce theta frequency population bursts in a robust fashion.Thus, even though our networks are limited by not including inhibition at present, our results indicate that cellular adaptation in pyramidal cells could be an important aspect for the occurrence of theta frequency population bursting in the hippocampus. These models serve as a starting framework for the inclusion of inhibitory cells and for the consideration of additional experimental features not captured in our present network models.

BACKGROUND: There is little alcohol research that reports on the thematic contents of contemporary alcohol advertisements in U.S. television. Studies of alcohol ads from 2 decades ago did not identify "Partying" as a social theme. Aim of this study was to describe and classify alcohol advertisements aired in national television in terms of contents, airing times, and channel placements and to identify different marketing strategies of alcohol brands. METHODS: Content analysis of all ads from the top 20 U.S. beer and spirit brands aired between July 2009 and June 2011. These were 581 unique alcohol ads accounting for 272,828 (78%) national television airings. Ads were coded according to predefined definitions of 13 content areas. A latent class analysis (LCA) was conducted to define content cluster themes and determine alcoholic brands that were more likely to exploit these themes. RESULTS: About half of the advertisements (46%) were aired between 3 am and 8 pm, and the majority were placed either in Entertainment (40%) and Sports (38%) channels. Beer ads comprised 64% of the sample, with significant variation in airing times and channels between types of products and brands. LCA revealed 5 content classes that exploited the "Partying," "Quality," "Sports," "Manly," and "Relax" themes. The partying class, indicative of ad messages surrounding partying, love, and sex, was the dominant theme comprising 42% of all advertisements. Ads for alcopops, flavored spirits, and liqueur were more likely to belong to the party class, but there were also some beer brands (Corona, Heineken) where more than 67% of ads exploited this theme. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first analysis to identify a partying theme to contemporary alcohol advertising. Future analyses can now determine whether exposure to that or other themes predicts alcohol misuse among youth audiences. Language: en

The current study examined the impact of a mental health court (MHC) on mental health recovery, criminogenic needs, and recidivism in a sample of 196 community-based offenders with mental illness. Using a pre-post design, mental health recovery and criminogenic needs were assessed at the time of MHC referral and discharge. File records were reviewed to score the Level of Service/Risk-Need-Responsivity instrument (Andrews, Bonta, & Wormith, 2008) to capture criminogenic needs, and a coding guide was used to extract mental health recovery information at each time point. Only mental health recovery data were available at 12 months post-MHC involvement. Recidivism (i.e., charges) was recorded from police records over an average follow-up period of 40.67 months post-MHC discharge. Case management adherence to the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model of offender case management was also examined. Small but significant improvements were found for criminogenic needs and some indicators of mental health recovery for MHC completers relative to participants who were prematurely discharged or referred but not admitted to the program. MHC completers had a similar rate of general recidivism (28.6%) to cases not admitted to MHC and managed by the traditional criminal justice system (32.6%). However, MHC case plans only moderately adhered to the RNR model. Implications of these results suggest that the RNR model may be an effective case management approach for MHCs to assist with decision-making regarding admission, supervision intensity, and intervention targets, and that interventions in MHC contexts should attend to both criminogenic and mental health needs.

We consider a general model for a network of all-to-all coupled oscillators with time delayed connections. We reduce the system of delay differential equations to a phase model where the time delay enters as a phase shift. By analyzing the phase model, we study the existence and stability of cluster solutions. These are solutions where the oscillators divide into groups; oscillators within a group are synchronized, while oscillators in different groups are phase-locked with a fixed phase difference. We show that the time delay can lead to the multistability between different cluster states. Analytical results are compared with numerical studies of the full system of delay differential equations.

Listeners often feel comfortable making non-linguistic judgements about speakers, including drawing conclusions about their education, economic status and personality based on their pronunciation. This is particularly true of reactions to non-native speakers (NNSs), whose pronunciation is often measured against native speaker (NS) norms. However, there are also several other factors that affect listeners’ evaluations, such as where they believe, or are told, the speaker is from and what this person looks like. Educators, researchers and NNSs themselves may wish to take an understanding of such factors into account when deciding how to respond to negative evaluations of non-native pronunciation. The chapter’s first section introduces key terms and approaches used to investigate attitudes towards NNS pronunciation and the findings from studies that employed these methods. The chapter’s later sections consider other social factors that affect how people evaluate and react to NNSs. Finally, the chapter suggests future directions for teachers and researchers interested in addressing issues related to listeners’ attitudes towards non-native pronunciation.

From Harry Potter to American Horror Story, fanfiction is extremely popular among young people. Sites such as Fanfiction.net host millions of stories, with thousands more posted each day. Enthusiasts are sharing their writing and reading stories written by others. Exactly how does a generation known more for videogame expertise than long-form writing become so engaged in reading and writing in these communities? Via a nine-month ethnographic investigation of fanfiction communities that included participant observation, interviews, a thematic analysis of 4,500 reader reviews and an in-depth case study of a discussion group, we found that members of fanfiction communities spontaneously mentor each other in open forums, and that this mentoring builds upon previous interactions in a way that is distinct from traditional forms of mentoring and made possible by the affordances of networked publics. This work extends and develops the theory of distributed mentoring. Our findings illustrate how distributed mentoring supports fanfiction authors as they work to develop their writing skills. We believe distributed mentoring holds potential for supporting learning in a variety of formal and informal learning environments.

The study of familial disorders characterized by recurring changes in neurodynamics, such as epileptic seizures, paralysis and headaches, provide opportunities to identify the mechanisms for dynamic changes in the nervous system. Many of these diseases are channelopathies. The computational challenge is to understand how a constantly present molecular defect in an ion channel can give rise to paroxysmal changes in neurodynamics. The most common of these channelopathies is childhood absence epilepsy (CAE). Here we review the dynamical properties of three neural microcircuits thought to be important in epilepsy: counter inhibition, recurrent inhibition and recurrent excitation. Time delays, \(\tau \), are an intrinsic property of these microcircuits since the time for a signal to travel between two neurons depends on the distance between them and the axonal conduction velocity. It is shown that all of these microcircuits can generate multistability provided that \(\tau \) is large enough. The term “multistability” means that there can be the co-existence of two or more attractors. Attention is drawn to the transient dynamics which can be associated with transitions between attractors, such as delay-induced transient oscillations. In this way we link the paroxysmal nature of seizure recurrences in CAE with time-delayed multistable dynamical systems. The tendency of children with CAE to outgrow their epilepsy is linked to developmental changes in axonal myelination which decrease \(\tau \).

The present investigation examined the predictive validity of the Level of Service/Risk–Need–Responsivity (LS/RNR) instrument for general and violent recidivism in a sample of 138 community-supervised adult mentally disordered offenders. The General Risk/Need section was strongly predictive of general recidivism, whereas the Specific Risk/Need section most strongly predicted violent recidivism. Among males, the General Risk/Need section produced a large effect size for general recidivism, whereas general and violent outcomes for females were best predicted by the Specific Risk/Need section. Across diagnostic subgroups, the General and Specific Risk/Need sections predicted general but not violent recidivism; however, many subgroups were small, highlighting a need for replication research with larger samples. The Other Client Issues and Special Responsivity Considerations sections did not significantly inform recidivism prediction. Broadly interpreted, the overall pattern supports the LS/RNR instrument as valid for use with mentally disordered offenders.

Fatty acids of more than 18-carbons, generally known as very long chain fatty acids (VLCFAs) are essential for eukaryotic cell viability, and uniquely in terrestrial plants they are the precursors of the cuticular lipids that form the organism's outer barrier to the environment. VLCFAs are synthesized by fatty acid elongase (FAE), which is an integral membrane enzyme system with multiple components. The genetic complexity of the FAE system, and its membrane association has hampered the biochemical characterization of FAE. In this study we computationally identified Zea mays genetic sequences that encode the enzymatic components of FAE and developed a heterologous expression system to evaluate their functionality. The ability of the maize components to genetically complement Saccharomyces cerevisiae lethal mutants confirmed the functionality of ZmKCS4, ZmELO1, ZmKCR1, ZmKCR2, ZmHCD and ZmECR, and the VLCFA profiles of the resulting strains were used to infer the ability of each enzyme component to determine the product profile of FAE. These characterizations indicate that the product profile of the FAE system is an attribute shared among the KCS, ELO, and KCR components of FAE.

This essay argues that Frances Burney in Cecilia; or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782) critiques political debates and literary conventions focused on clandestine marriage. Through two plots of this novel, one economic and one focused on courtship, Burney interprets clandestine marriage as a scapegoat for the deeply flawed institution of marriage itself. The courtship narrative rewrites several aspects of conventional clandestine marriage plots, such as stock male characters, lengthy debates between love and duty, climactic wedding scenes, and punitive conclusions. The economic plot, featuring the stories of Mrs. Hill, Henrietta Belfield, and Priscilla Harrel, undermines Parliament’s claims about the economic outcomes of heiresses’ marital choices. The economic plot eventually usurps the courtship plot, leading to a dystopian conclusion that tacitly argues marriage itself is the problem, not deviations from an idealized norm of parentally approved companionate marriages of choice.

In this paper, we consider a delayed system of differential equations modeling two neurons: one is excitatory, the other is inhibitory. We study the stability and bifurcations of the trivial equilibrium. Using center manifold theory for delay differential equations, we develop the universal unfolding of the system when the trivial equilibrium point has a double zero eigenvalue. In particular, we show a universal unfolding may be obtained by perturbing any two of the parameters in the system. Our study shows that the dynamics on the center manifold are characterized by a planar system whose vector field has the property of 1:2 resonance, also frequently referred as the Bogdanov–Takens bifurcation with $$Z_2$$ symmetry. We show that the unfolding of the singularity exhibits Hopf bifurcation, pitchfork bifurcation, homoclinic bifurcation, and fold bifurcation of limit cycles. The symmetry gives rise to a “figure-eight” homoclinic orbit.

In his essay “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?,” Jean-Francois Lyotard offers a useful paradigm with which to elucidate the practice of consumption within an ever- expanding framework...

Unmanaged maternal opioid addiction poses health and social risks to both mothers and children in their care. Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) is a targeted public health service to which nurses and other allied health professionals may refer these high risk families for support. Mothers participating in MMT to manage their addiction and their service providers were interviewed to identify resources to maximize mothers’ engagement in treatment and enhance mothers’ parenting capacity. Twelve mothers and six service providers were recruited from an outpatient Atlantic Canadian methadone treatment program. Two major barriers to engagement in MMT were identified by both mothers and service providers including (1) the lack of available and consistent childcare while mothers attended outpatient programs and (2) challenges with transportation to the treatment facility. All participants noted the potential benefits of adding supportive resources for the children of mothers involved in MMT and for mothers to learn how to communicate more effectively with their children and rebuild damaged mother-child relationships. The public health benefits of integrating parent-child ancillary supports into MMT for mothers are discussed.

We consider a general model for a network of oscillators with time delayed, circulant coupling. We use the theory of weakly coupled oscillators to reduce the system of delay differential equations to a phase model where the time delay enters as a phase shift. We use the phase model to study the existence and stability of cluster solutions. Cluster solutions are phase locked solutions where the oscillators separate into groups. Oscillators within a group are synchronized while those in different groups are phase-locked. We give model independent existence and stability results for symmetric cluster solutions. We show that the presence of the time delay can lead to the coexistence of multiple stable clustering solutions. We apply our analytical results to a network of Morris Lecar neurons and compare these results with numerical continuation and simulation studies.

We consider a linear scalar delay differential equation (DDE), consisting of two arbitrary distributed time delays. We formulate necessary conditions for stability of the trivial solution which are independent of the distributions. For the case of one discrete and one gamma distributed delay, we give an explicit description of the region of stability of the trivial solution and discuss how this depends on the model parameters.

Chlamydia pneumoniae is an obligate intracellular pathogen that has been found in atherosclerotic lesions and chronic infection has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. C. pneumoniae infects all of the cell types in normal and diseased blood vessels. In this chapter, we discuss the receptors that mediate the cellular uptake of C. pneumoniae and the unique intracellular developmental cycle of C. pneumoniae including conversion to a persistent phenotype. We further discuss the specific in vitro responses of vascular cells to C. pneumoniae infection with a focus on the role of toll-like receptors and induction of cytokine expression as well as effects on cellular metabolism and turnover. We also discuss the in vivo responses including the effects on vascular reactivity and atherosclerosis and include discussion of the results of clinical trials with antibiotics for reducing cardiovascular disease end points. We conclude the chapter by discussing how C. pneumoniae infection can have indirect systemic effects that could have an impact on the progression of vascular disease.

The current study examined long-term offending patterns in relation to youth psychopathic traits. Criminal records of 126 adolescent offenders (80 male; 46 female) were analyzed for criminal activity between the ages of 12 and 23. Total scores on the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version were positively correlated with a higher number of overall offending incidents. After classifying youths into low ( n = 62), moderate ( n = 26), and high ( n = 38) psychopathic trait groups, results indicated that the moderate- and high-trait groups had consistently higher mean rates of criminal events (i.e., violent, nonviolent, drug related, and technical violations) throughout the follow-up period than the low-trait group. Contrary to what has been argued in previous psychopathy literature, a decrease in offending over time was observed in all three psychopathic trait groups. These results suggest that youths with psychopathic traits tend to display a higher level of criminal activity during adolescence, but are similar to lower psychopathic groups in also showing at least an initial decline in this behavior as they approach early adulthood.

The current study compared the antisocial and mental health functioning of incarcerated adolescents with histories of serious and persistent institutional misconduct to those with histories of minor forms of institutional misconduct. Institutional offense histories of 192 incarcerated adolescent offenders (84.5% male) were reviewed and their mental health was assessed using the Youth Self-Report (YSR) to determine whether mental health factors were more prevalent in serious/persistent institutional offenders. Youths with a history of serious/prolific institutional offending were younger at first arrest, had more convictions, spent more time incarcerated, and scored higher on YSR aggression and delinquency subscales than those with low/moderate institutional offending. Although antisociality is likely a major contributor to serious and persistent forms of institutional misconduct, these youths, especially the females, had significantly higher YSR anxiety/depression symptoms than the low/moderate institutional offending group. Although traditional criminogenic factors may be more salient to the risk of institutional misconduct, mental health should remain an important area of case management given its comorbidity with higher levels of misconduct and its potential impact on youths' responsivity to interventions focusing on criminogenic needs.

Little research has been conducted on the public perception of mental health courts (MHCs) despite its potential to influence government support and funding. To measure public and professionals’ opinions about MHCs, self-report attitude measures were administered online to members of the general public (n = 272) and professional groups with previous employment-related exposure to persons with mental health issues (n = 237). Over 86% of the professional exposure sample had positive attitudes towards MHCs, whereas only 4% reported negative opinions. Approximately 70% of professionals supported government funding for a MHC in their community and 57% agreed even if this led to a tax increase. The public sample was also generally positive in their opinions, and only 3% reported negative opinions. Approximately 80% of public sample reported that they would support or strongly support government funding for a MHC in their community, and 58% would support it even if it led to a tax increase. Positive attitudes we...

We consider two identical oscillators with time delayed coupling, modelled by a system of delay differential equations. We reduce the system of delay differential equations to a phase model where the time delay enters as a phase shift. By analyzing the phase model, we show how the time delay affects the stability of phase-locked periodic solutions and causes stability switching of in-phase and anti-phase solutions as the delay is increased. In particular, we show how the phase model can predict when the phase-flip bifurcation will occur in the original delay differential equation model. The results of the phase model analysis are applied to pairs of Morris-Lecar oscillators with diffusive or synaptic coupling and compared with numerical studies of the full system of delay differential equations.