The Relation Between Therapeutic Alliance and Treatment Motivation in Residential Youth Care: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

This study investigated the longitudinal relation between therapeutic alliance and treatment motivation in a sample of 174 adolescents receiving residential treatment in the Netherlands. Structural equation modeling with a cross-lagged panel design was used to examine the relation between therapeutic alliance and treatment motivation up to 9 months of treatment. Results revealed that autoregressive associations between initial therapeutic alliance and alliance at subsequent time points were significant, whereas for treatment motivation a significant association was found after 6 months, but not after 9 months. Results also showed that a higher level of therapeutic alliance after 3 months was predictive of a higher level of treatment motivation after 6 months. Furthermore, a higher level of therapeutic alliance after 6 months was predictive of a higher level of treatment motivation after 9 months. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Snake parasitism in an urban old-growth forest

Urban-associated changes can have immediate or long-term consequences on animal populations. Such changes may be assessed through parasite prevalence and abundance in wildlife hosts, as urbanization can influence parasitism and disease transmission in wildlife. Snakes are widespread and diverse vertebrates that often persist in urban environments; however, parasitism of snakes in urban environments has yet to be studied, leaving the roles of snakes in parasite transmission uncharacterized. Field ecology, microscopy, molecular techniques, and geographic information science (GIS) were integrated to characterize parasitism of snakes in an urban old-growth forest park. The species, sex, mass, length, location, and prevalence of ecto-, hemo-, and fecal parasites were determined for 34 snakes of 6 species. Ectoparasites (mite), hemoparasites (Hepatozoon spp.), and fecal parasites (Entamoeba spp., Trichomonas spp., Strongloides spp., and an unidentified helminth) were detected in snakes and 64.7?% of snakes were infected by at least one of these parasites. Parasite infections were generally not related to the sex, age, or body condition of snakes. The locations of infected snakes were used to produce risk maps indicating where parasite prevalence is predicted to be greatest. The analysis of these maps indicated that snakes with fecal parasites were closer than non-infected snakes to the edge of the forest. This study confirms that snakes may be important parasite hosts or reservoirs in parasite transmission pathways in urban environments and it provides an integrative multidisciplinary approach that may be used to monitor parasitism dynamics in other urban wildlife areas.     

Some Results Based on a Version of the Generalized Dynamic Entropies

We propose new dynamic measures of uncertainty based on the notion of generalized dynamic entropy introduced in Di Crescenzo and Longobardi (2006). These can uniquely determine distribution functions in continuous and discrete cases, and the characterizations of some well-known distributions are provided. We also define some orderings and aging notions based on the generalized dynamic measures, and prove some of their properties, obtaining as corollaries results that have recently appeared in the literature.     

Perceptions of Randomized Security Schedules

Security of infrastructure is a major concern. Traditional security schedules are unable to provide omnipresent coverage; consequently, adversaries can exploit predictable vulnerabilities to their advantage. Randomized security schedules, which randomly deploy security measures, overcome these limitations, but public perceptions of such schedules have not been examined. In this experiment, participants were asked to make a choice between attending a venue that employed a traditional (i.e., search everyone) or a random (i.e., a probability of being searched) security schedule. The absolute probability of detecting contraband was manipulated (i.e., 1/10, 1/4, 1/2) but equivalent between the two schedule types. In general, participants were indifferent to either security schedule, regardless of the probability of detection. The randomized schedule was deemed more convenient, but the traditional schedule was considered fairer and safer. There were no differences between traditional and random schedule in terms of perceived effectiveness or deterrence. Policy implications for the implementation and utilization of randomized schedules are discussed.     

Longitudinal Links between Adolescent and Peer Conduct Problems and Moderation by a Sensitivity Genetic Index

The most extensively studied influence on adolescent conduct problem behaviors is peers, and the literature points to genetics as one source of individual differences in peer influence. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that an environmental sensitivity genetic index comprised of DRD4, 5‐HTTLPR, and GABRA2 variation would moderate the association between peer and adolescent conduct problems. Latent growth modeling was applied to PROSPER project longitudinal data from adolescents and their peers. Results showed the hypothesis was supported; adolescents with more copies of putative sensitivity alleles were more strongly influenced by their peers. The interaction form was consistent with differential susceptibility in follow‐up analyses. Strengths and weaknesses of genetic aggregates for sensitivity research are discussed.     

Identifying Changing Aviation Threat Environments Within an Adaptive Homeland Security Advisory System

A critical component of aviation security consists of screening passengers and baggage to protect airports and aircraft from terrorist threats. Advancements in screening device technology have increased the ability to detect these threats; however, specifying the operational configurations of these devices in response to changes in the threat environment can become difficult. This article proposes to use Fisher information as a statistical measure for detecting changes in the threat environment. The perceived risk of passengers, according to prescreening information and behavior analysis, is analyzed as the passengers sequentially enter the security checkpoint. The alarm responses from the devices used to detect threats are also analyzed to monitor significant changes in the frequency of threat items uncovered. The key results are that this information‐based measure can be used within the Homeland Security Advisory System to indicate changes in threat conditions in real time, and provide the flexibility of security screening detection devices to responsively and automatically adapt operational configurations to these changing threat conditions.     

Extending social security coverage to the rural sector in China

In late 2009 China launched an innovative, voluntary programme that by 2011 had extended pension coverage to 326.4 million people in the rural sector, including contributors and beneficiaries. It requires one contribution per year and provides a flat‐rate benefit and a contributions‐related benefit through a contributory individual account, with a government guarantee that the benefit will continue for life. The programme encourages participation of persons who do not pay income taxes, and thus have no tax incentive to participate, by providing substantial government subsidies. As a further incentive, old‐age benefits are provided to older parents when all their adult children participate in the contributory programme.     

An Additive–Multiplicative Restricted Mean Residual Life Model

The mean residual life measures the expected remaining life of a subject who has survived up to a particular time. When survival time distribution is highly skewed or heavy tailed, the restricted mean residual life must be considered. In this paper, we propose an additive–multiplicative restricted mean residual life model to study the association between the restricted mean residual life function and potential regression covariates in the presence of right censoring. This model extends the proportional mean residual life model using an additive model as its covariate dependent baseline. For the suggested model, some covariate effects are allowed to be time‐varying. To estimate the model parameters, martingale estimating equations are developed, and the large sample properties of the resulting estimators are established. In addition, to assess the adequacy of the model, we investigate a goodness of fit test that is asymptotically justified. The proposed methodology is evaluated via simulation studies and further applied to a kidney cancer data set collected from a clinical trial.