Age and Sex-Specific Joint Biomechanics in Response to Partial and Complete ACL Injury in the Porcine Model

Context: Pediatric anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury rates are increasing and are highest in adolescent females. Complete ACL tears are typically surgically reconstructed, but there are few guidelines and very limited data regarding the need for surgical reconstruction or rehabilitation for partial ACL tears in skeletally immature patients. Objective: To evaluate the impact of partial (anteromedial bundle) and complete ACL transection on joint laxity and tissue forces under anterior and rotational loads in male and female stifle joints throughout skeletal growth in the porcine model. Design: Descriptive Laboratory Study. Setting: Laboratory. Patients or Other Participants: Sixty male and female Yorkshire cross-breed pigs aged 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6, and 18 months (n=6/age/sex). Main Outcome Measure(s): Joint laxity was measured in intact, anteromedial bundle-transected, and ACL-transected joints under applied anterior-posterior drawer and varus-valgus torque using a robotic testing system. The loading of the soft tissues in the stifle joint was measured under each condition. Results: Anterior-posterior joint laxity increased by 13–50% (p<0.05) after anteromedial bundle transection and 75–178% (p<0.05) after ACL transection. Destabilizations after anteromedial bundle transection increased with age (p<0.05) and were greater in late adolescent females than late adolescent males (p<0.05). In anteromedial bundle-transected joints, the posterolateral bundle resisted the anterior load. In ACL-transected joints, the medial collateral ligament (MCL) contribution was largest, followed by the medial meniscus. MCL contribution was larger while medial meniscus contribution was smaller in males versus females. Conclusions: Partial ACL transection resulted in moderate increases in joint laxity, while the remaining bundle performed the primary ACL function. Destabilizations due to partial ACL transection were largest in late adolescent joints, indicating that operative treatment should be considered in active, late adolescent patients. Increased forces in the MCL and medial meniscus after ACL transection suggest that rehabilitation protocols may need to focus on protecting these tissues.

“Is Restorative Justice Greek to Me?”: Exploring Its Applicability in Greek Youth Detention Centres

Justice systems around the world are constantly working to balance reform/rehabilitation/re-entry and punishment in response to juvenile delinquency. In recent years, there has been a strong emphasis on the notion of restorative justice as an alternative approach to criminal justice, yet there continues to be a dearth of information on the interrelation between restorative justice, religion and imprisonment, especially among youth. The present research seeks to explore the applicability and possible future implementation of restorative justice programmes for late adolescent and young adult male offenders (18–21 years old) held in the Special Detention Institutions of Greece. It also aims to identify any links between restorative justice and religion in youth custodial settings among the large migrant population hosted in these institutions. A self-administered quantitative study was distributed to achieve this aim. The data analysis provided no statistically significant relationships between the inmates’ willingness to meet with their actual/surrogate victims and ask for forgiveness/restore relationships with them. Equally insignificant was found the inmates’ eagerness to get involved in restorative mediation with their capacity to acknowledge the harm that their illegal actions inflicted on others, and to make amends.

Evolved Features of Artistic Motivation: Analyzing a Brazilian Database Spanning Three Decades

Darwin explored the evolutionary processes underlying artistic propensities in humans. He stressed the universality of the human mind by pointing to the shared pleasure which all populations take in dancing, engaging in music, acting, painting, tattooing, and self-decorating. Artistic motivation drives/reinforces individuals to engage in aesthetically oriented activities. As curiosity/play, artistic behavior is hypothesized as a functionally autonomous activity motivated intrinsically through an evolved, specific, and stable aesthetic motivational system. The author tested whether artistic motivation is rather intrinsically sourced, domain-specific, and temporally stable using a large decades-long real-life public Brazilian database of university applications. In Study I, the author analyzed reasons for career-choice responded to by 403,832 late-adolescent applicants (48.84% women), between 1987 and 1998. In Study II, the author analyzed another career-choice reason question responded to by 1,703,916 late-adolescent applicants (51.02% women), between 1987 and 2020. Music, Dance, Scenic Arts, Visual Arts, and Literary Studies, in combination, presented a higher percentage of individuals reporting intrinsic factors (e.g., personal taste/aptitude/fulfillment) and the lower proportion reporting extrinsic motives (e.g., the influence of media/teacher/family, salary, social contribution/prestige) than other career groups. If artistic motivation were a recent by-product of general curiosity or status-seeking, artistic and non-artistic careers would not differ. Overall, intrinsic motives were 2.60–6.35 times higher than extrinsic factors; among artistic applicants’ were 10.81–28.38 times higher, suggesting domain-specificity. Intrinsic motivation did not differ among artistic careers and remained stable throughout the periods. Converging results corroborated a specific, stable, and intrinsically sourced artistic motivation consistent with its possible evolutionary origins.

The Trends and Experiences of Sexual and Reproductive Health among Late Female Adolescents in Bangladesh

Adolescence period is a very important transitional stage of human develoment as in this period a human being undergoes some major physical, emotional and social changes. Bangladesh has an adolescent population consisting one fifth of the total population. Among them almost half of them are girls. Among the adolescent girls who belong to the late adolescent age group are in the most exposed and disadvantaged situation in the context of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) of Bangladesh. Therefore, the aim of this article is to concentrate on the SRH of adlescents girls (15-19 years) with an aim to reveal the trends and experieces of SRH among this group and some major challenges so that female adolescent SRH issues can receive proper attention in the policy making level.

Determinants of late adolescent nutritional status in Indonesia: a nation-wide cross-sectional survey

Purpose This study aims to examine determinants of underweight and overweight nutritional status among late adolescents in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional analysis of the 2015 Indonesian Family Life Survey 5 (IFLS-5) was conducted. Respondents for this study were selected through stratified and multistage random sampling. Of all IFLS-5 respondents, 2,791 were adolescents 18–24 years old. Multinomial logistic regression was applied to identify major determinants of nutritional status among late adolescents. Findings The prevalence of underweight and overweight nutritional status was 19.10% and 12.79%, respectively. Underweight status among late adolescents was strongly associated with smoking (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.72, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.29–2.33). Moreover, living in urban areas showed the strongest association with overweight status among the same group (AOR = 1.77, 95%CI = 1.29–2.44). Research limitations/implications This study gained the advantage from the use of national data that are collected by trained enumerators. Therefore, the possibility of bias is very small, and the study results can be generalized to a late adolescent group in Indonesia. However, this study also has limitations in the types of data available, as it uses secondary data. The lack of detailed data regarding food security, frequency of food consumption in a month and sources of income of the adolescents limit the interpretation of the study. Further studies should consider using a retrospective cohort approach in all adolescent age groups using data from the IFLS-1 to IFLS-5 so that the temporal relationship of the multifactorial nutrition variables can be identified. Practical implications Provide input and advice to policymakers in all sectors related to adolescent health and educational curricula for consideration in making interventions that focus on improving nutrition by taking into account the characteristics of adolescents, such as smoking habits, area of residence, income and age of adolescents because nutritional problems are multifactorial. Social implications This study can provide education to adolescents to create healthier consumption habits to reduce non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the adult phase, ideal body weight, reduce unhealthy lifestyles (smoking, drinking alcohol and drugs) and increase self-esteem and reduce depression. Originality/value This study brings significant findings on the dominant determinant of nutritional status among late adolescents in Indonesia and their vulnerability to NCDs. To address the high prevalence of underweight and overweight nutritional status in Indonesia, a collaboration between smoking cessation, community nutrition and reproductive health programs is required for preventing the underweight nutritional status in adolescents, with a focus on obesity prevention for adolescents living in urban areas. It is expected that this collaboration will support the early prevention of NCD risks.

Long-term consequences of alcohol use in early adolescent mice: focus on neuroadaptations in GR, CRF and BDNF

Our aim was to assess the cognitive and emotional state, as well as related-changes in Glucocorticoid Receptor (GR), Corticotropin-Releasing Factor (CRF) and Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) expression of adolescent C57BL/6J male mice after a 5-week two-bottle choice protocol (postnatal day (pd) 21 to pd52). Additionally, we wanted to analyze whether the behavioral and neurobiological effects observed in the late adolescence (pd62) lasted until the adulthood (pd84). Behavioral testing revealed that alcohol during early adolescence increased anxiety-like and compulsive-related behaviors and it was maintained in the adulthood. Concerning cognition, working memory was only altered in late adolescent mice, whereas object location test performance was impaired in both ages. In contrast, novel object recognition remained unaltered. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that alcohol during adolescence diminished BDNF+ cells in the cingulate cortex, the hippocampal CA1 layer and the central amygdala. Regarding hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) functioning, alcohol abuse increased the GR and CRF expression in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus and the central amygdala. Besides, GR density was also higher in the prelimbic cortex and the basolateral amygdala regardless of animals age. Our findings suggest that adolescent alcohol exposure led to long-term behavioral alterations along with changes in BDNF, GR and CRF expression in limbic brain areas involved in stress response, emotional regulation, and cognition.

Psychopathy, Delinquency & Attachment: Testing the Meditational Relationship in Adolescence

<p>Research on psychopathy in adolescence has increased substantially over the last two decades. The majority of this research has focussed on the developmental trajectory of psychopathy and the predictive reliability for future offending (Lynam et al., 2007). There has been a recent shift towards an understanding of potential protective factors that may act as a buffer against negative outcomes for young people with psychopathic characteristics. Attachment has been proposed as one of these potential mediators (Saltaris, 2002). The current research hypothesised that attachment to parents and peers would act as a mediator between psychopathy and self-reported delinquency. Two separate populations were sampled, undergraduate university students (predominantly late adolescent and young adult), and high school students (adolescents aged 16 to18). Participants completed self-report measures of psychopathy, delinquency and attachment to peers and parents, with the university sample doing so at three separate time points. Results indicate that attachment to parents, but not peers, acted as a significant protective factor, reducing the strength of the relationship between psychopathy and delinquency for the university sample only. This finding was stable over a 16-week period. Although male participants reported higher levels of psychopathy than females across both samples, undergraduate females report increasing levels of primary psychopathy over the three time points. Additionally, high-school females report significantly higher levels of primary psychopathy than university females. The focus on adolescent self-report psychopathy is a first in this country. While further research is needed in this area, these findings point to the significance of bonds between adolescents and their caregivers.</p>

Psychopathy, Delinquency & Attachment: Testing the Meditational Relationship in Adolescence

<p>Research on psychopathy in adolescence has increased substantially over the last two decades. The majority of this research has focussed on the developmental trajectory of psychopathy and the predictive reliability for future offending (Lynam et al., 2007). There has been a recent shift towards an understanding of potential protective factors that may act as a buffer against negative outcomes for young people with psychopathic characteristics. Attachment has been proposed as one of these potential mediators (Saltaris, 2002). The current research hypothesised that attachment to parents and peers would act as a mediator between psychopathy and self-reported delinquency. Two separate populations were sampled, undergraduate university students (predominantly late adolescent and young adult), and high school students (adolescents aged 16 to18). Participants completed self-report measures of psychopathy, delinquency and attachment to peers and parents, with the university sample doing so at three separate time points. Results indicate that attachment to parents, but not peers, acted as a significant protective factor, reducing the strength of the relationship between psychopathy and delinquency for the university sample only. This finding was stable over a 16-week period. Although male participants reported higher levels of psychopathy than females across both samples, undergraduate females report increasing levels of primary psychopathy over the three time points. Additionally, high-school females report significantly higher levels of primary psychopathy than university females. The focus on adolescent self-report psychopathy is a first in this country. While further research is needed in this area, these findings point to the significance of bonds between adolescents and their caregivers.</p>