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The Latent Structure of Child and Adolescent Psychopathology and its Association with Different Forms of Trauma and Suicidality and Self-Harm
No full textThe Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a multidimensional and hierarchical model of the latent structure of psychopathology. While HiTOP has received much support in child/adolescent community samples, fewer studies have assessed this model in clinical samples of children/adolescents. Here, we modelled the latent structure of 45 symptoms of psychopathology from a clinical sample of children/adolescents and assessed how dimensions of psychopathology were related to specific forms of trauma and suicidality/self-harm. Clinician-derived assessments were obtained from 507 people aged 7–18 years. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine the optimal fitting model, and structural equation modelling was used to estimate associations with trauma exposure and suicidality/self-harm. The best fitting model(s) included five first-order factors reflecting Fear, Distress, Externalizing, Thought Disorder, and Traumatic Stress, with a higher-order general factor (p) accounting for the covariation between these factors. Unique associations were identified between specific forms of trauma and each dimension of psychopathology. p was strongly associated with suicidality/self-harm, and of the first-order factors, Distress was most strongly associated with suicidality/self-harm. Findings support the predictions of HiTOP that the latent structure of child/adolescent psychopathology can be effectively described by a multidimensional and hierarchal model. Moreover, we found tentative evidence for a unique dimension of Traumatic Stress psychopathology. Our findings also highlight the unique associations between specific forms of early life trauma and specific dimensions of psychopathology, and the importance of Distress related psychopathology for suicidality/self-harm in children and adolescents
The Unresolved Threshold Issues in the Emoluments Clauses Litigation: The President Has Three Bodies and There Is No Cause of Action for Ultra Vires Conduct
No full textShortly after President Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, he was sued for violating the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses. The plaintiffs alleged that Trump’s acceptance of profits from foreign and U.S. state governments violated these once-obscure provisions of the Constitution. We filed amicus briefs in these cases, and made two arguments that had implications for separation of powers jurisprudence.
First, the Plaintiffs erred by suing President Trump in his “official capacity.” Under settled case law, a government officer violates the Constitution in his official capacity if—and only if—a government policy or custom must have played a part in the violation of federal law. Still, the Plaintiffs never alleged that President Trump acted pursuant to any government policy or custom. Nor did the Plaintiffs allege that Trump acted “under the color of law”—a precondition for pleading an individual-capacity claim. Rather, the case concerned alleged conduct that President Trump took personally. With respect to the Emoluments Clauses, the President has three bodies and can be sued in three distinct fashions: [1] an official-capacity claim involves a government policy or custom; [2] an individual-capacity claim involves action taken by a government officer under the color or law; and [3] a personal claim involves private conduct, absent state action.
We identified a second jurisdictional problem. The Plaintiffs argued that the federal courts had equitable jurisdiction to halt ultra vires action by a government officer. To support this argument, the Plaintiffs contended that federal district courts could issue an injunction—an equitable remedy—against the President. This argument conflated equitable jurisdiction and equitable relief. A plaintiff cannot establish equitable jurisdiction merely by seeking equitable relief. Rather, the plaintiffs must invoke a traditional equitable cause of action that was judicially recognized by 1789, or a cause of action that was created by Congress or the courts. The Supreme Court has not recognized a free-floating equitable cause of action to challenge ultra vires conduct by government officers.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court did not settle these issues, or any others presented by the Emoluments Clauses litigation. After President Biden’s inauguration, the Supreme Court vacated the lower-court judgments that ran against the President, and ordered the courts of appeals to dismiss the cases as moot.
As the Emoluments Clauses litigation fades in the rear-view mirror, this Article offers a retrospective of these two unresolved threshold issues. Our article also provides some guidance on how to litigate future allegations that the President personally violated the Constitution
Bored of the rings: Methodological and analytic approaches to operationalizing Bronfenbrenner's PPCT model in research practice
No full textBronfenbrenner's ecological (and later bioecological) theory has been a mainstay in the theoretical wheelhouse of developmental and family sciences since its inception in the 1970s. However, few studies accurately operationalize Bronfenbrenner's process-person-context-time (PPCT) research model. The aim of this paper is to provide a practical guide to the design, implementation, and analysis of PPCT research studies. Using recent qualitative and quantitative publications from developmental and family science journals, we illustrate how his theory can be operationalized simply and effectively in 21st-century research. The eight studies, three qualitative and five quantitative, feature participants from Chile, China, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States
A review of the scientific knowledge of the seascape off Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica
No full textDespite the exclusion of the Southern Ocean from assessments of progress towards achieving the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Strategic Plan, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) has taken on the mantle of progressing eforts to achieve it. Within the CBD, Aichi Target 11 represents an agreed commitment to protect 10% of the global coastal and marine environment. Adopting an ethos of presenting the best available scientifc evidence to support policy makers, CCAMLR has progressed this by designating two Marine Protected Areas in the Southern Ocean, with three others under consideration. The region of Antarctica known as Dronning Maud Land (DML; 20°W to 40°E) and the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean that abuts it conveniently spans one region under consideration for spatial protection. To facilitate both an open and transparent process to provide the vest available scientifc evidence for policy makers to formulate management options, we review the body of physical, geochemical and biological knowledge of the marine environment of this region. The level of scientifc knowledge throughout the seascape abutting DML is polarized, with a clear lack of data in its eastern part which is presumably related to difering levels of research efort dedicated by national Antarctic programmes in the region. The lack of basic data on fundamental aspects of the physical, geological and biological nature of eastern DML make predictions of future trends difcult to impossible, with implications for the provision of management advice including spatial management. Finally, by highlighting key knowledge gaps across the scientifc disciplines our review also serves to provide guidance to future research across this important region
QUBIC Experiment Toward the First Light
No full textThe Q & U Bolometric Interferometer for Cosmology (QUBIC) is a cosmology experiment that aims to measure the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Measurements of the primordial B-mode pattern of the CMB polarization are in fact among the most exciting goals in cosmology as it would allow testing of the inflationary paradigm. Many experiments are attempting to measure the B-modes, from the ground and the stratosphere, using imaging Stokes polarimeters. The QUBIC collaboration developed an innovative concept to measure CMB polarization using bolometric interferometry. This approach mixes the high sensitivity of bolometric detectors with the accurate control of systematics due to the interferometric layout of the instrument. We present the calibration results for the Technological Demonstrator, before its commissioning in the Argentinian observing site and preparation for first light
Youth arts as popular education: Cultural Studies at the edges of the creative industries
No full textYouth arts is a form of education that operates primarily through
affect and, perhaps because of this, has not received attention in
terms of its capacity to develop young people’s employability. In
this paper we identify and discuss the much vaunted and highly
desirable ‘21st century skills’ learnt in youth arts settings. Drawing
on arguments first advanced by Dick Hebdidge and Raymond
Williams, we show that while 21st century skills are learnt through
affect, the processes through which this learning proceeds produces skills that are seen as valuable commodities. Taking the
everyday seriously as a site for learning, we explore youth arts
projects as a site for skills development and argue for a framing of
micro-credentials that at once recognizes and problematizes this
modality of training. We do so by outlining how our reading of
cultural studies scholarship can provide a foundation for understanding the everyday spaces of youth arts as critical sites of knowledge production. Examining the intersections of identity, being and
culture as pedagogical, we outline how the everyday experiences of
diverse youth participating in arts might be captured so as to build
pathways into the future based on competency in ‘the now’
Linguistic Bootstrapping Allows More Real-world Object Concepts to Be Held in Mind
No full textThe linguistic-simulation approach to cognition predicts that language can enable more
efficient conceptual processing than purely sensorimotor-affective simulations of
concepts. We tested the implications of this approach in memory for sequences of
real-world objects, where use of linguistic labels (i.e., words and phrases) could enable
more efficient representation of object concepts than representation via full
sensorimotor simulation; a proposal called linguistic bootstrapping. In three
pre-registered experiments using a nonverbal paradigm, we asked participants to
remember sequences of contextually-situated, real-world objects (e.g., the ingredients for
a recipe), and later asked them to select the correct objects from arrays of distractors.
Critically, we used articulatory suppression to selectively suppress implicit activation of
linguistic labels, which we predicted would impair performance by reducing the number
of objects that could be held in mind simultaneously. We found that suppressing access
to language when learning the sequences impaired accuracy of object recognition, though
not latency, and that this impairment was not simply dual-task load. Results show that a
sequence of up to 10 contextually-situated object concepts can be held in mind when
language is inhibited, but this increases to 12 objects when language is available. The
findings support the linguistic bootstrapping hypothesis that representing familiar object
concepts normally relies on language, and that implicitly-retrieved object labels, used as
linguistic placeholders, can increase the number of objects that can be simultaneously
represented beyond what sensorimotor information alone can accomplish
“The Clumsy Blunt Instrument That is the Criminal Justice System”: Secondary Victimisation, Therapeutic Jurisprudence & the Potential of Legal System Victim Impact Statements as a Tool for Irish Criminal Justice Reform.
No full textSecondary victimisation, in which criminal justice processes, professionals, and agencies retraumatise victims of crime, is widely recognised in the empirical criminal justice literature. This literature suggests that secondary victimisation occurs within Ireland. However, there has been virtually no empirical research examining the scale or nature of this issue within Irish criminal justice. This thesis posits that therapeutic jurisprudence offers a useful and novel theoretical framework within which to consider this issue, as well as a new practical tool which may help address the harms that arise from secondary victimisation: a Legal System Victim Impact Statement. To that end, the objectives of this research were to : 1) address this deficit in the Irish criminal justice literature by determining the extent and nature of secondary victimisation for victims of all crime types; and 2) critically evaluate the ability of a Legal System Victim Impact Statement to identify the therapeutic and antitherapeutic properties of the Irish legal system and inform criminal justice reform.
Adopting a mixed methods approach, this was achieved by conducting semi-structured interviews and digital surveys with individuals who work directly with victims of crime through various victim support organisations. Secondary data analysis was also employed for evaluation of the Legal System Victim Impact Statement. The results of this research support the hypothesis that victims of crime in the Irish criminal justice system are subjected to secondary victimisation by criminal justice processes, professionals, and agencies. The Legal System Victim Impact Statement was regarded positively by most participants as a potential tool of criminal justice reform, but important logistical and design limitations were raised by others. These limitations are addressed with recommendations as how best to mitigate them. This research concludes by placing an onus on agencies of the State to think creatively about reducing secondary victimisation for a vulnerable cohort within criminal justice, recommending the Legal System Victim Impact Statement as a manner by which this may be achieved
How has aridity changed over West Africa in the past four decades?
No full textNotable dryland expansion from changes in global aridity has been documented in previous studies, particularly with the increase in global mean temperature. Here, we examined the changes in the aridity of the western region of Africa over the past four decades. Using the aridity index (P/PET) as an indicator, the Climate Research Unit (CRU TS) data was used to identify drying and wetting areas of the region. The result showed that intense warming of 0.018 °C per year has occurred which was more evident in the last two decades. The warming in the past two decades caused a significant increase in PET. The first two decades were the driest compared to the last decades, particularly the first decade which also had major drought occurrences across the region. The aridity index increased by 0.86 (x10−3) per year within the past four decades, with the greatest change at the semi-arid zone. Result showed that precipitation exerts dominant control on aridity changes in the region despite a significant increase in PET. This was evident in the expansion of the wet areas between 2000 and 2019 compared to the 1979–1998 period
Using Satellite-Based Data to Facilitate Consistent Monitoring of the Marine Environment around Ireland
No full textAs an island nation, Ireland needs to ensure effective management measures to protect marine ecosystems and their services, such as the provision of fishery resources. The characterization of marine waters using satellite data can contribute to a better understanding of variations in the upper ocean and, consequently, the effect of their changes on species populations. In this study, nineteen years (1998–2016) of monthly data of essential climate variables (ECVs), chlorophyll (Chl-a), and the diffuse attenuation coefficient (K490) were used, together with previous analyses of sea surface temperature (SST), to investigate the temporal and spatial variability of surface waters around Ireland. The study area was restricted to specific geographically delineated divisions, as defined by the International Council of the Exploration of the Seas (ICES). The results showed that SST and Chl-a were positively and significantly correlated in ICES divisions corresponding to oceanic waters, while in coastal divisions, SST and Chl-a showed a significant negative correlation. Chl-a and K490 were positively correlated in all cases, suggesting an important role of phytoplankton in light attenuation. Chl-a and K490 had significant trends in most of the divisions, reaching maximum values of 1.45% and 0.08% per year, respectively. The strongest seasonal Chl-a trends were observed in divisions VIId and VIIe (the English Channel), primarily in the summer months, followed by northern divisions VIa (west of Scotland) and VIb (Rockall) in the winter months