School Climate and College Attendance for Black Adolescents: Moving Beyond College-Going Culture.

Understanding how contexts promote positive educational outcomes is a critical objective of adolescent research. This study provides support for the established link between school climate and educational outcomes and expands our understanding of this association by examining multiple aspects of school climate in a sample of Black adolescents in the United States (N = 1,740). Data were drawn from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, and multinomial logistic regression and multiple group modeling in a structural equation modeling framework revealed that Black high school students' perceptions of school safety, school liking, and academic press were associated with enrollment in higher education.

Preparation for Meaningful Work and Life: Urban High School Youth's Reflections on Work-Based Learning 1 Year Post-Graduation.

The challenges confronted by low-income high school students throughout school and across the transition to higher education and employment are well-documented in the US and many other nations. Adopting a positive youth development perspective (Lerner et al., 2005), this study reports findings from interviews with 18 low-income, racially and ethnically diverse graduates of an urban Catholic high school in the US.

HPA axis reactivity: a mechanism underlying the associations among 5-HTTLPR, stress, and depression.

Background: Recent evidence indicates that individuals who are homozygous for the short (s) allele in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene have higher rates of depression and other psychiatric disorders as a function of exposure to increasing levels of stressful life events than do individuals who have one or two copies of the long (l) allele. Despite the reliability of this association, the mechanism by which this polymorphism confers risk for psychopathology in the presence of stress is not understood. This study was designed to examine the formulation that individuals who are homozygous for the s allele are characterized by a greater biological reactivity to stress than are their counterparts who have one or two copies of the l allele.

The Lower Limb Amputee Measurement Scale: reliability and predictive validity.

This study assesses the reliability and predictive validity of the Lower Limb Extremity Amputee Measurement Scale (LLAMS), which is an assessment tool designed to predict the length of stay (LOS) of patients with lower limb amputations in a rehabilitation program. In order to evaluate inter-rater reliability a prospective evaluation was completed by five independent evaluators (n = 10). Predictive validity was evaluated retrospectively by comparing the LLAMS predicted LOS to actual LOS (n = 147).

Subgenual anterior cingulate activation to valenced emotional stimuli in major depression.

Major depression has been associated with anomalous activation in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, but its response to emotional stimuli is poorly understood. The primary goal of this study was to compare levels of activation in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex of diagnosed depressed and nondepressed participants in response to happy and sad facial expressions of affect. Whereas cognitive theories of depression predict increased activation to negative stimuli, depressed participants were found to exhibit increased activation to both types of stimuli in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex.

Stability of DSM-IV criterion symptoms for major depressive disorder.

Given the chronic and recurrent nature of major depressive disorder (MDD), it is important to understand whether specific symptoms are stable over time or vary over the course of the disorder. This is the first longitudinal investigation examining the stability of the nine criterion symptoms of depression, as specified in the DSM-IV, among diagnosed depressed adults who were not recovered at follow-up. In this study, participants were assessed twice, ten months apart, with the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV, and stability of the nine criterion symptoms of MDD was examined.

The Smell Identification Test as a measure of olfactory identification ability in schizophrenia and healthy populations: a Rasch psychometric study.

This study examines University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT; R. L. Doty, 1995) performance in 133 controls and 54 chronic, medicated outpatients with schizophrenia (SZ) using item-response theory modeling.