Services for troubled adolescents: exploring user variation

This paper outlines some of the main findings from an exploratory study of a sample of 257 adolescents living in children's homes, foster homes and residential special schools ‘for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties’ (‘EBD’). It focuses on the characteristics of service users, particularly contrasting the looked after and EBD groups. Though there are some similarities, there are also important differences between the populations in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, reasons for separation, legal status, family background and education. An attempt was made systematically to compare groups by creating a subsample of ‘difficult’ adolescents, based on involvement in anti‐social behaviour. Unexpectedly, this revealed that half of the teenagers were not ‘difficult’. Factors associated with being identified as ‘difficult’ were explored.     

Perceived income adequacy and selected financial management practices among families in Chile and Mexico

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceived adequacy of families' incomes and selected financial management practices (food budgetin debt, saving) in two Latin American countries. An interview survey was used to gather socioeconomic and demographic information from 537 families in Chile and Mexico. There were major differences between Chile and Mexico in the income adequacy responses and also major differences within countries between income levels. Implications of the findings for policy makers and curriculum planners who work in developing countries with inflationary conditions and income inadequacies are discussed.     

EXACT TWO-SAMPLE MEDIAN TESTS WHEN ONE "SAMPLE" VALUE POSSIBLY FROM A DIFFERENT POPULATION

Random samples are assumed for the univariate two-sample problem. Sometimes this assumption may be violated in that an observation in one “sample”, of size m, is from a population different from that yielding the remaining m—1 observations (which are a random sample). Then, the interest is in whether this random sample of size m—1 is from the same population as the other random sample. If such a violation occurs and can be recognized, and also the non-conforming observation can be identified (without imposing conditional effects), then that observation could be removed and a two-sample test applied to the remaining samples. Unfortunately, satisfactory procedures for such a removal do not seem to exist. An alternative approach is to use two-sample tests whose significance levels remain the same when a non-conforming observation occurs, and is removed, as for the case where the samples were both truly random. The equal-tail median test is shown to have this property when the two “samples” are of the same size (and ties do not occur).     

Lessons from Drosophila models of DJ-1 deficiency

Mutations in the DJ-1 gene are associated with rare forms of autosomal recessive early-onset Parkinson's disease (PD). Although the precise physiological function of DJ-1 remains obscure, accumulating evidence suggests that DJ-1 may normally function as a redox-sensitive molecular chaperone that can protect against the deleterious effects of oxidative stress, particularly in mitochondria. Recent studies in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, have shed further light on the biological role of DJ-1. DJ-1-deficient Drosophila models exhibit distinct phenotypes but collectively highlight a prominent neuroprotective role for DJ-1 against oxidative insult. However, Drosophila lacking DJ-1 do not consistently produce a useful PD-like phenotype (that is, they generally fail to exhibit degeneration of neurons that contain the neurotransmitter dopamine), which may reflect putative compensatory neuroprotective mechanisms. DJ-1-deficient fly models further highlight the utility of Drosophila as an important tool for elucidating protein function and for modeling neurodegenerative disease.     

Shaping the future of social work in end-of-life and palliative care

The second Social Work Summit on End-of-Life and Palliative Care was held from June 1 to June 3, 2005. Sixty representatives of more than 35 social work and other professional organizations with a commitment to improve care for the terminally ill, dying, and bereaved, attended and formulated key priority directions and initiatives that will further the field.