Dealing With Radicalised Youth Offenders: The Development and Implementation of a Youth-Specific Framework.

Background: In 2018 in the Australian State of New South Wales, a specialist Countering Violent Extremism Unit was established in the youth criminal justice system. This was in direct response to a number of youth below the age of 18 who have been charged for terrorism offences and identified as involved in violent extremist acts. This youth-specific framework was the first of its kind in Australia. It was designed to provide multidisciplinary practitioner-based approaches for the early-identification, diversion, and disengagement of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders. Aims: This paper will explore the experiences and lessons learned by the Youth Justice New South Wales Countering Violent Extremism Unit. It will discuss the relevance of youth radicalisation within Australia's evolving national security climate. This includes emerging trends in relation to youth radicalisation to varied violent extremist ideologies. This paper will explore the specialist approach adopted for preventing and countering violent extremism through the identification, assessment, and case management of at-risk and radicalised youth offenders. Implications: The Youth Justice New South Wales experience indicates that youth criminal justice settings can be designed to tackle the challenges posed by at-risk and radicalised youth. The practitioner experience canvassed in this paper highlights that a pluralistic and non-punitive approach to supervision, client-focused assessment and case management processes, and widespread resourcing of multidisciplinary practitioners and programs can be used to account for developmental and psychosocial vulnerabilities in addition to violent extremism risk factors amongst youth offenders. These approaches should be supplemented by youth-specific countering violent extremism practitioner expertise, and a range of violent extremism case management and risk assessment measures.

Targeting TGFß Signaling to Address Fibrosis Using Antisense Oligonucleotides.

Fibrosis results from the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix in chronically injured tissue. The fibrotic process is governed by crosstalk between many signaling pathways. The search for an effective treatment is further complicated by the fact that there is a degree of tissue-specificity in the pathways involved, although the process is not completely understood for all tissues. A plethora of drugs have shown promise in pre-clinical models, which is not always borne out translationally in clinical trial. With the recent approvals of two antisense oligonucleotides for the treatment of the genetic diseases Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy, we explore here the potential of antisense oligonucleotides to knockdown the expression of pro-fibrotic proteins. We give an overview of the generalized fibrotic process, concentrating on key players and highlight where antisense oligonucleotides have been used effectively in cellular and animal models of different fibrotic conditions. Consideration is given to the advantages antisense oligonucleotides would have as an anti-fibrotic therapy alongside factors that would need to be addressed to improve efficacy. A prospective outlook for the development of antisense oligonucleotides to target fibrosis is outlined.

Effects of urbanization on the population structure of freshwater turtles across the United States.

Landscape-scale alterations that accompany urbanization may negatively affect the population structure of wildlife species such as freshwater turtles. Changes to nesting sites and higher mortality rates due to vehicular collisions and increased predator populations may particularly affect immature turtles and mature female turtles. We hypothesized that the proportions of adult female and immature turtles in a population will negatively correlate with landscape urbanization. As a collaborative effort of the Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN), we sampled freshwater turtle populations in 11 states across the central and eastern United States. Contrary to expectations, we found a significant positive relationship between proportions of mature female painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) and urbanization. We did not detect a relationship between urbanization and proportions of immature turtles. Urbanization may alter the thermal environment of nesting sites such that more females are produced as urbanization increases. Our approach of creating a collaborative network of scientists and students at undergraduate institutions proved valuable in terms of testing our hypothesis over a large spatial scale while also allowing students to gain hands-on experience in conservation science.

Ideas as art. Interview by Dane Cutu.

Three years ago, consultants Laurence Prusak and Thomas H. Davenport asked prominent management thinkers to name their gurus and reported the results in HBR. James G. March appeared on more lists than any other person except Peter Drucker. A professor emeritus in management, sociology, political science, and education at Stanford University, March has taught courses in subjects as diverse as organizational psychology, behavioral economics, leadership, rules for killing people, friendship, computer simulation, and statistics. He is perhaps best known for his pioneering contributions to organization and management theory. March's accomplishments in that field, and in many others, have conferred on him an almost unprecedented reputation as a rigorous scholar and a deep source of wisdom. As University of Chicago professor John Padgett wrote in the journal Contemporary Sociology, "March's influence, unlike that of any of his peers, is not limited to any possible subset of the social science disciplines; it is pervasive." March approaches thought aesthetically; he cares that ideas have "some form of elegance or grace or surprise." His poetic sensibility can be felt in the metaphors he has created over the years--the "garbage can theory" of organizational choice, for instance, and the "hot-stove effect" in learning. In this edited interview with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, March shares his thinking on aesthetics, leadership, the role of folly, and the irrelevance of relevance when it comes to the pursuit of ideas. He also comments on the fundamental differences between academic and experiential knowledge, underscoring the need for both.

Testing isosource: stable isotope analysis of a tropical fishery with diverse organic matter sources.

We sampled consumers and organic matter sources (mangrove litter, freshwater swamp-forest litter, seagrasses, seagrass epiphytes, and marine particulate organic matter [MPOM]) from four estuaries on Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia for stable isotope (sigma13C and sigma34S) analysis. Unique mixing solutions cannot be calculated in a dual-isotope, five-endmember scenario, so we tested IsoSource, a recently developed statistical procedure that calculates ranges in source contributions (i.e., minimum and maximum possible). Relatively high minimum contributions indicate significant sources, while low maxima indicate otherwise. Litter from the two forest types was isotopically distinguishable but had low average minimum contributions (0-8% for mangrove litter and 0% for swamp-forest litter among estuaries). Minimum contribution of MPOM was also low, averaging 0-13% among estuaries. Instead, local marine sources dominated contributions to consumers. Minimum contributions of seagrasses averaged 8-47% among estuaries (range 0-88% among species). Minimum contributions of seagrass epiphytes averaged 5-27% among estuaries (range 0-69% among species). IsoSource enabled inclusion of five organic matter sources in our dual-isotope analysis, ranking trophic importance as follows: seagrasses > seagrass epiphytes > MPOM > mangrove forest > freshwater swamp-forest. IsoSource is thus a useful step toward understanding which of multiple organic matter sources support food webs; more detailed work is necessary to identify unique solutions.

Endotoxin exposure in early life alters the development of anxiety-like behaviour in the Fischer 344 rat.

Previous research in the rat has demonstrated that neonatal exposure to bacterial endotoxin alters the level of anxiety-like behaviour displayed in adulthood. Currently, however, little is known about the emergence and development of this type of behaviour. Given the ability of neonatal endotoxin exposure to alter neural substrates involved in regulating anxiety, we tested the hypothesis that it may also alter the developmental trajectory of anxiety-like behaviour in the rat. Male Fischer 344 neonatal rats were treated with endotoxin (0.05 mg/kg lipopolysaccharide from Salmonella enteriditis) or vehicle on postnatal days 3 and 5. Age related changes in anxiety-like behaviour were subsequently investigated using the elevated plus maze apparatus at three developmental time points; adolescence (43 days), adulthood (80 days) and senescence (400 days). Neonatal endotoxin exposure was found to significantly increase circulating levels of corticosterone on postnatal days 3 and 5 at 4 h postadministration (P < 0.05). Additionally, endotoxin exposure was found to markedly alter anxiety-like behaviour in adulthood and senescence (P < 0.05). Specifically, adult and senescent endotoxin treated animals displayed significantly more anxiety-like behaviour than vehicle treated controls. Interestingly no significant differences in anxiety-like behaviour were observed between treatment groups during adolescence. These findings highlight the importance of the early life microbial environment in the development of emotional behaviour and suggests that neonatal infection may be an important predictor of susceptibility to anxiety related disorders in adult life.