Low incidence of cannibalism among brood parasitic cuckoo catfish embryos.

Brood parasites have demanding needs of host resources. Brood parasitic offspring are highly competitive and frequently cause the failure of host broods and the survival of a single parasitic offspring. Accordingly, virulent brood parasites lay a single egg in the same host nest to avoid sibling competition.

Niche construction through a Goldilocks principle maximizes fitness for a nest-sharing brood parasite.

Generalist brood parasites that share nests with host nestlings can optimize resource acquisition from host parents by balancing the benefits that host nest-mates provide, including attracting increased provisions to the nest, against the costs of competing with the same host young over foster parental resources. However, it is unclear how parasitic chicks cope when faced with more nest-mates than are optimal for their survival upon hatching. We suggest that, in the obligate brood parasitic brown-headed cowbird (), chicks use a niche construction strategy and reduce larger, more competitive host broods to maximize the parasites' survival to fledging.

Exposure to a mimetic or non-mimetic model avian brood parasite egg does not produce differential glucocorticoid responses in an egg-accepter host species.

Avian obligate brood parasitism, a reproductive strategy where a parasite lays its egg into the nest of another species, imposes significant fitness costs upon host parents and their offspring. To combat brood parasitism, many host species recognize and reject foreign eggs (rejecters), but others are accepters that raise the parasitic progeny. Some accepter hosts may be unable to grasp or pierce parasitic eggs even if they recognize them as foreign eggs in the clutch, whereas other accepters may not have evolved the cognitive skillsets to recognize dissimilar eggs in the nest.

Marching to a Different Drummer: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Young Adolescents Who Challenge Gender Norms.

Purpose: Little is known about how gender norms regulate adolescents' lives across different cultural settings. This study aims to illustrate what is considered as violating gender norms for boys and girls in four urban poor sites as well as the consequences that follow the challenging of gender norms.

Methods: Data were collected as part of the Global Early Adolescent Study, a 15-country collaboration to explore gender norms and health in early adolescence.

Interpreting Narratives Within a Cross-National Interdisciplinary Study: A Case Study of a Collaborative Process.

Purpose: This article presents a case study of a collaborative process for the analysis of a young girl's narrative on becoming an adolescent in Shanghai. The purpose was to illuminate how interpretation of narratives can be strengthened with a diverse team of researchers.

Methods: Three different researchers, each representing a different discipline and lens for analyzing qualitative data, collaboratively analyzed and interpreted a 12-year-old girl's narrative from Shanghai as part of the Global Early Adolescent Study.

Reviving a Positive Discourse on Sexuality within Social Work.

Sexuality is not an invisible dimension within social work. Social workers are constantly engaged with aspects of sexuality across virtually all practice domains. Indeed, some of the most fundamental and frequent concerns of social workers involve sexual abuse, sexual violence, and HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Reorienting adolescent sexual and reproductive health research: reflections from an international conference.

On December 4th 2014, the International Centre for Reproductive Health (ICRH) at Ghent University organized an international conference on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) and well-being. This viewpoint highlights two key messages of the conference--(1) ASRH promotion is broadening on different levels and (2) this broadening has important implications for research and interventions--that can guide this research field into the next decade. Adolescent sexuality has long been equated with risk and danger.

Resisting resistance: practical decision tools for choosing antimicrobials safely.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to provide, in a concise format, information about evidence-based decision-making strategies and support tools available for appropriate antimicrobial prescribing. A brief review of the current status of antimicrobial resistance, prescribing practices of nurse practitioners (NPs), and factors associated with inappropriate prescribing practices is included to further explicate the need for such support tools.

Data Sources: Journal articles, Internet websites, reference texts.

Narratives of desire in mid-age women with and without arousal difficulties.

There is controversy about the nature of women's sexual desire. The aim was to explore narrative descriptions of sexual desire among mid-aged women in hopes of clarifying how women define and experience sexual desire, and how these might differ among women with and without female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD). Mid-aged women without (age: M = 45, n = 12) and with (age: M = 55, n = 10) FSAD took part in in-depth interviews that invited them to share personal stories of sexual desire.

Girls' relationship authenticity and self-esteem across adolescence.

Feminist psychologists have long posited that relationship authenticity (i.e., the congruence between what one thinks and feels and what one does and says in relational contexts) is integral to self-esteem and well-being.

From sex to sexuality: exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television.

Although it is widely recognized that sexual content pervades television, research rarely examines how television's sexual messages are gendered and occur in a relational context. This study describes the development and implementation of a new coding scheme to evaluate sexual content from a feminist perspective. Merging scripting theory (Gagnon and Simon, 1987) with the theory of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich, 1980), we explicate a heteronormative and dominant sexual script, the Heterosexual Script, and assessed its presence in the 25 primetime television programs viewed most frequently by adolescents.

Rethinking the associations between television viewing and adolescent sexuality development: bringing gender into focus.

Purpose: To investigate associations between adolescents' television viewing, their sexual behavior, and their perceptions of having power and control in sexual situations (i.e., sexual agency).

To be seen and not heard: femininity ideology and adolescent girls' sexual health.

This study used a feminist developmental framework to test the hypothesis that internalizing conventional ideas about femininity in two domains--inauthenticity in relationships and body objectification--is associated with diminished sexual health among adolescent girls. In this study, sexual health was conceptualized as feelings of sexual self-efficacy (i.e.

Mom, dad, I'm straight: the coming out of gender ideologies in adolescent sexual-identity development.

Little attention has been given to how femininity and masculinity ideologies impact sexual-identity development. Differentiating violations of conventional femininity and masculinity ideologies as part of an overt process of sexual-identity development in sexual-minority adolescents suggested the possibility of a parallel process among heterosexual adolescents. Based on feminist theory and analysis of heterosexual adolescents narratives about relationships, the importance of negotiating femininity and masculinity ideologies as part of sexual-identity development for all adolescents is described.

Gender matters: constructing a model of adolescent sexual health.

This article illustrates the construction of a new model of adolescent sexual health, one that addresses the complex relationships between gender and adolescent sexuality. A review of sexual health models highlights the absence of gender; in contrast, research illuminates the significance of gender. This article describes the process of building a model of sexual health explicitly for girls, guided by feminist research on adolescent girls' sexuality and a "web of theories".

Desegregating sexuality research: cultural and biological perspectives on gender and desire.

Scholarly investigations into male and female sexuality over the life course have long occupied two separate "camps": One focused on the biological aspects of sexuality and one focused on the sociocultural/political aspects. This bifurcated approach has been particularly ill suited for the study of sexual desire, a topic that has been generally undertheorized by sex researchers. A modern reappraisal of gender and sexual desire is proposed that takes into coordinated account both the biological and sociocultural/political factors that produce and shape subjective sexual desires over the life course.

Patients with reconstruction of craniofacial or intraoral defects: development of instruments to measure quality of life.

Patients with reconstruction of craniofacial or intraoral defects experience a profound impact on their quality of life (QOL). This impact on QOL is influenced by the patients' medical conditions and the treatment interventions. Instruments to measure general QOL have been available for many years.

Influenza vaccination does not promote cellular or humoral activation among heart transplant recipients.

Background: The impact of influenza vaccination on in vitro parameters of cellular and humoral immunity, anti-viral titers, and clinical outcome was evaluated among cardiac transplant recipients.

Methods: Blood was collected from 29 patients before and 3-4 weeks after influenza vaccination and tested for phenotypic changes in lymphoid subpopulations and generation of antibodies against the allograft and vaccine.

Results: Vaccination did not change the percentage of lymphoid subpopulations and did not induce generation of anti-HLA alloantibodies.

Maxillary antral-nasal inlay autogenous bone graft reconstruction of compromised maxilla: a 12-year retrospective study.

During a 12-year period (1984-1996), 118 maxillary inlay autogenous bone grafts and 248 commercially pure titanium threaded root-form endosseous implants were placed in 54 consecutively treated patients with compromised maxillary bone. In this retrospective clinical study, 3 groups of patients were reviewed, group selection being based on anatomic location and surgical access to the recipient site. Group 1 included patients with bone grafts placed in the antrum floor via an intraoral antrostomy exposure, group 2 included patients with bone grafts placed in the nasal floor via an anterior intraoral nasotomy exposure, and group 3 included patients with bone grafts placed in the antral and nasal floor via an intraoral Le Fort I osteotomy downfracture exposure.

Femininity as a barrier to positive sexual health for adolescent girls.

Objectives: To introduce a new model of female adolescent sexual health based on feminist principles and to investigate the extent to which adolescent girl's beliefs about femininity are associated with three specific elements of their sexual health.

Methods: 148 eighth-grade adolescent girls completed a survey with questions about sexual self-concept, sexual agency, attitudes toward romance conventions, femininity ideology, and demographic background. Correlational and regression analyses were conducted.