A unique new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institute (KI) suggests that the attitude of families and the public have little impact on if adults decide to have sex with persons of the same or the opposite sex. Instead, hereditary factors and the individual’s unique experiences have the strongest influence on our choice of sexual partners.

The study is the largest in the world so far and was performed in collaboration with the Queen Mary University of London. More than 7,600 Swedish twins (men and women) aged 20-47 years responded to a 2005 – 2006 survey of health, behaviour, and sexuality. Seven percent of the twins had ever had a same-sex sexual partner.

Publication: ‘Genetic and Environmental Effects on Same-sex Sexual Behaviour: A Population Study of Twins in Sweden’, Niklas Långström, Qazi Rahman, Eva Carlström, Paul Lichtenstein, Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 7 June 2008, doi 10.1007/s10508-008-9386-1.

A child’s innocence and vulnerability presents a target for a sexual predator’s abusive behavior. University of Missouri researchers are beginning to understand the communication process by which predators lure victims into a web of entrapment. This information could better equip parents and community members to prevent, or at least interrupt, the escalation of child sexual abuse.

“Our children are our greatest gift and our greatest responsibility. The fact that they could be abused in any way, shape or form is horrific–both in the moment of the abuse and in the long-term effect,” said Loreen Olson, MU associate professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science. “It’s a social problem with grave consequences that is prevalent and needs attention. It’s incomprehensible, but it’s happening. The sexual abuse of children has dramatic negative consequences to their emotional well-being throughout their lives.”

According to the researchers, in order for the process of entrapment to take place, the perpetrator must first gain access to the potential victim through various exploitive means. Olson and her team identified several communicative elements in the cycle of entrapment, including the core phenomenon of “deceptive trust development.” Deceptive trust development describes the predator’s ability to build a trusting relationship with the victim in order to improve the likelihood of sexual encounter.

Deceptive trust development is central to other manipulative strategies used by the predator such as grooming. Grooming sets the stage for abuse by desensitizing the victim to sexual contact. Grooming may include activities such as sitting on a child’s bed and watching them get into their bedclothes; “accidentally” touching the child inappropriately; showing the child pornographic images; and making contact or sex play with implicit sexual suggestions.

As perpetrators are grooming their victims and building deceptive trust, they also work to isolate them both physically and emotionally from their support network. Isolation strategies may include offers to baby sit, giving the child a ride home, and taking advantage of fragile family and friend relationships. Isolation causes the victim to become more and more dependent on the perpetrator.

A third strategy is approach, which is the initial physical contact or verbal lead-ins that occur just prior to the sexual act. Examples of approach strategies include suggestions to play sex games, more explicit discussions about sexual issues, giving a child a “rubdown,” bathing or undressing a child, and instigating wrestling and other physical games as a means to escalate sexual physical contact.

Olson, and her co-authors analyzed existing published material on pedophilia and child sexual abuse and proposed their theory that explains the communication process used by child sexual predators. Their theory of luring communication is part of a new area of study which Olson calls “the communication of deviance.”

“The more we know about how these adults are entrapping children and building a sexual relationship with them, the better we can either intervene and stop the cycle from happening, or de-escalate it,” Olson said.

According to the study, the theory of luring communication also may offer important insight into social, deviant and communicative problems plaguing society, such as how con-artists lure victims and the recruitment strategies of gang or cult members.

The study, “Entrapping the Innocent: Toward a Theory of Child Sexual Predators’ Luring Communication,” co-authored by Joy Daggs, Barbara Ellevold and Teddy Rogers, was recently published by the International Communication Association journal, Communication Theory.

When young people dress according to the customs of their own ethnic group, they may be less likely to have mental health problems later in life.

Adolescents are especially prone to mental health problems, and often, their identities are displayed in clothing and in their choices of friends. As a result, it is valuable to understand how this clothing and kinship can influence mental health status.

These findings were based on an investigation of approximately 1,000 white British and Bangladeshi students between the ages of 11 and 14 in schoos in East London. These schools display some of the highest levels of population diversity in the United Kingdom. The pupils were asked about their culture, social life, and health in 2001. Then, two years later, they were surveyed again with a focus on mental health.

Having friends from their own and other cultures, called integrated friendships, or having friends exclusively with the same culture made no difference in the mental health of the student. However, clothing choices did: those Bangladeshi students who wore traditional clothing were less likely to have problems with their mental health than those whose dress tended to mid traditional styles with British/North American tastes. In comparing the genders, females in particular showed this association. The white British pupils who wore a mixture still enjoyed relatively good mental health.

The authors state that cultural integration is generally the healthiest option for young people confronted with today’s increasingly multicultural society. However, social pressures towards changes in lifestyle, attitudes, or behaviors can cause added stress. They conclude from this study that retaining cultural identity through clothing in particular may be an important way to contribute to better mental health of adolescents.

Cultural identity, clothing and common mental disorder: a prospective school-based study of white British and Bangladeshi adolescents
K Bhui, Y Khatib, R Viner, E Klineberg, C Clark, J Head, S Stansfeld
Epidemiol Community Health 2008; 62: 435-441.

1. Treatment must be family- driven and child-focused. Families and youth, (when appropriate), must have a primary decision-making role in their treatment.

2. Children should receive care in home and community-based settings as close to home as possible.

3. Mental health services are an integral part of a child’s overall healthcare. Insurance companies must not discriminate against children with mental illnesses by imposing financial burdens and barriers to treatment, such as differential deductibles, co-pays, annual or lifetime caps, or arbitrary limits on access to medically necessary inpatient and/or outpatient services.

4. Children should receive care from highly- qualified professionals who are acting in the best interest of the child and family, with appropriate informed consent.

5. Parents and children are entitled to as much information as possible about the risks and benefits of all treatment options, including anticipated outcomes.

6. Children receiving medications for mental disorders should be monitored appropriately to optimize the benefit and reduce any risks or potential side effects which may be associated with such treatments.

7. Children and their families should have access to a comprehensive continuum of care, based on their needs, including a full range of psychosocial, behavioral, pharmacological, and educational services, regardless of the cost.

8. Children should receive treatment within a coordinated system of care where all agencies (e.g., health, mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice, and schools, etc.) delivering services work together to support recovery and optimize treatment outcome.

9. Children and families are entitled to an increased investment in high-quality research on the origin, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood disorders.

10. Children and families need and deserve access to mental health professionals with appropriate training and experience. Primary care professionals providing mental health services must have access to consultation and referral resources from qualified mental health professionals.

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

University of Minnesota School of Public Health researchers have found that older adolescents who have a bedroom television are less likely to engage in healthy activities such as exercising, eating fruits or vegetables, and enjoying family meals. They also consumed larger quantities of sweetened beverages and fast food, were categorized as heavy TV watchers, and read or studied less than teens without TVs in their bedrooms.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents remove television sets from their children’s bedrooms. Despite this recommendation, almost two-thirds of our sample had a bedroom TV, which appears to be a factor for less than optimal behavior,” said Daheia Barr-Anderson, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., first author of the study.

A study group of 781 socioeconomically and ethnically diverse teens participating in the School of Public Health Project Eating Among Teens (EAT) study reported on their television viewing habits, study habits, grades, diet, exercise habits, and family connectedness. Nearly two-thirds of the participants had a television in their bedroom or sleeping area, and those who did watched four to five more hours of television each week.

Girls with a TV in their bedrooms spent less time in vigorous activity each week than girls without TVs in their rooms (1.8 versus 2.5 hours). They also ate fewer vegetables (1.7 versus 2 servings per day), and had fewer family meals (2.9 versus 3.7 meals per week). Boys with TVs in their rooms not only had lower fruit intake (1.7 versus 2.2) and fewer family meals (2.9 versus 3.6), they also had a lower grade point average compared with their counterparts with no TVs in the bedroom (2.6 versus 2.9).

Barr-Anderson suggests that the first step parents can take to help their teens decrease unhealthy behaviors is to keep, or remove, a TV from the bedroom of their teen. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., principal investigator of Project EAT notes, “Our findings suggest the importance of not having a television in a child’s bedroom. When families upgrade their living room television, they may want to resist the temptation to put the older television set in their children’s bedroom.”

Maybe when we were their age, we walked five miles to school, rain or shine. So why don’t most children today walk or bike to school?

It’s not necessarily because they’re spoiled, lazy or over scheduled. According to a University of Michigan researcher, concerns about safety are the main reason that less than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or biked to school in 2004, compared to more than 50 percent who did so in 1969.

“These concerns are strongly linked to the kind of physical environment children navigate between home and school,” said Byoung-Suk Kweon, an environmental and landscape architecture researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

“The greener the route, the more likely it is that children will walk and bike.”

Using Geographic Information System (GIS) data combined with a survey of 186 parents of 5th through 8th grade students, Kweon found that parents were most concerned about the speed and volume of traffic students would encounter en route to school; the possibility of crime; and the weather.

“In Texas, where we lived when I conducted this study, our sons did not walk to school because we lived too far away,” said Kweon, who is also affiliated with the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. In general, she found, children who walk to school usually live less than three-quarters of a mile away.

“In Ann Arbor, they do walk to school. We have a 27 degree rule. If it’s colder than that, we drive them; if it’s warmer than that, they walk.”

In her study, Kweon found that children use sidewalks, not bike lanes, when they ride to school. “Parents may be concerned about the safety of bike lanes, and they may be telling their children to ride on the sidewalk because it’s safer,” she said. “We may need to re-think how to place bike lanes in school walk zones.”

To learn more about how the physical environment influences parents’ perceptions of safety and their willingness to allow their children walk or bike to school, Kweon and colleagues conducted a series of laboratory-based simulation studies, testing six different pedestrian environments.

“It’s very important for parents that there be a separation or buffer between traffic and the sidewalk,” she said. “They are much more willing to let their children walk when this buffer is at least eight feet wide, and when there are also trees in this area.” Trees not only provide shade, but also serve as a sort of vertical barrier between sidewalk and street.

Although improving the physical environment reduces parents’ concerns for their children’s safety, Kweon found that the social environment—especially the likelihood of crime—strongly affects parental perceptions of safety as well. Kweon hopes to conduct a related study in Detroit to examine how the intersection of social and physical factors influences the likelihood that children will walk to school.

By identifying environmental elements conducive to walking and biking to school, Kweon hopes her research may help improve children’s physical health and reduce the incidence of childhood obesity, especially prevalent among minority children.

“Walking or biking to school helps children develop an early habit of engaging in physical activity, and that can lead to a healthier and more active and healthier population,” she said.

Students who bully others tend to have difficulties with other relationships, such as those with friends and parents. Targeting those relationships, as well as the problems children who bully have with aggression and morality, may offer ideas for intervention and prevention.

Those are the findings of a new study that was conducted by scientists at York University and Queens University. It appears in the March/April 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers looked at 871 students (466 girls and 405 boys) for seven years from ages 10 to 18. Each year, they asked the children questions about their involvement in bullying or victimizing behavior, their relationships, and other positive and negative behaviors.

Bullying is a behavior that most children engage in at some point during their school years, according to the study. Almost a tenth (9.9 percent) of the students said they engaged in consistently high levels of bullying from elementary through high school. Some 13.4 percent said they bullied at relatively high levels in elementary school but dropped to almost no bullying by the end of high school. Some 35.1 percent of the children said they bullied peers at moderate levels. And 41.6 percent almost never reported bullying across the adolescent years.

The study also found that children who bullied tended to be aggressive and lacking in a moral compass and they experienced a lot of conflict in their relationships with their parents. In addition, their relationships with friends also were marked by a lot of conflict, and they tended to associate with others who bullied.

The findings provide clear direction for prevention of persistent bullying problems, according to Debra Pepler, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University and Senior Associate Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children. Pepler, who is the study’s lead author, calls bullying “a relationship problem.”

“Interventions must focus on the children who bully, with attention to their aggressive behavior problems, social skills, and social problem-solving skills. A focus on the child alone is not sufficient. Bullying is a relationship problem that requires relationship solutions by focusing on the bullying children’s strained relationships with parents and risky relationships with peers,” according to Pepler. “By providing intensive and ongoing support starting in the elementary school years to this small group of youth who persistently bully, it may be possible to promote healthy relationships and prevent their ‘career path’ of bullying that leads to numerous social-emotional and relationship problems in adolescence and adulthood.”

Press Release 11 March – 2008 National STD Prevention Conference

“Lots of people are doing research around the Web…and there are interesting results, but a lack of a core curriculum in the universities,” Tim Berners-Lee told a gathering of scientists at HP Labs and other Silicon Valley executives here. “I’ve been told the Web has 10 to the 10 to the 11 (number of) Web sites. The brain we study as a complex system.” So why not the Web?

What millions of Internet users take for granted every day–using the Web as a means to download movies, read the news, or check Facebook–will look drastically different five years from now, and that calls for study of it as a science, according to Berners-Lee and his colleagues at the Web Science Research Initiative . Launched a year ago, WSRI is a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Southampton in England, and is encouraging the study of both the social and technological implications of wide-scale use of the Web.

Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee and Wendy Hall of WSRI visited HP Labs in Palo Alto.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)

On a tour to encourage the adoption of Web science as a course of study at local universities, Berners-Lee spoke about what kind of challenges the increasingly social Web presents. Corralling the information about us out on the Web, identifying where it came from and who is allowed access to it are major issues that come up every day. Facebook’s decision to combine user profiles with advertising is just one example.

But there are even more serious implications of a Web that is a growing collection of our personal information. Who owns it? And how do we determine how our information is used?

One example Berners-Lee gave is hospital records. It’s still unclear how to be sure that doctors can have access to patient information to identify and treat you, but at the same time keep that information hidden from, say, your employer. There is no answer yet. “It’s about building systems and understanding where data is coming from,” he said. And though that will take time to come up with a new way of storing and organizing information on the Web, he and others are already working on it.

Phishing scams, spam, an overload of our current Web infrastructure, as well as the democracy of online communities, are each major ideas that need to be looked at with an academic eye, said Berners-Lee, rather than from a closed, proprietary, or corporate perspective. Berners-Lee has long advocated a universal and open Internet, and is one of the founders of the World Wide Web Consortium, the organization that supports open Web standards.

Though much of the future of the Web is wide open, one thing that will happen is that we won’t be inputting our personal information into separate social networks, he said. In other words, we’ll have one profile that compiles all information related to us and our social networks. “Right now, so many people are complaining that they have told one Web site who their friends are, and another one who their friends are…In five years time, I hope people will be programming not at the document level, but at the application level,” he said. “You will have something which is an application which is consistent for looking at different aspects of people. It (will use) your role as their friend for putting together a very powerful, all-encompassing view of them (online).”

Webware: Cool Web 2.0 apps for everyone – Posts in Networking

“E-mail has died away for a group of users. For the younger generation, they don’t use e-mail,” he said, talking about the young Web users who have started to abandon e-mail for Facebook messaging and mobile texting. “They see it as this noisy spam-filled thing that annoys them every day…they see it as how you talk to the university, how you talk to the bank.” Marks pointed to technologies like OpenID that promote the notion that online identities these days are defined by so much more than e-mail addresses–URLs and social-networking profiles, to name a few.

Marks wasn’t the only one expounding upon e-mail’s suckiness. Earlier in the day, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg inferred that overwhelming volumes of spam were making Web users explore options other than e-mail.

And when a lively group of Web 2.0 elite (including Mullenweg, Digg’s Kevin Rose, Pownce’s Leah Culver, and Flickr’s Cal Henderson) tackled a panel led by TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld that involved creating the concept for a new Web app in 45 minutes, their end result was a product that would make e-mail less of a headache by making sure that users reply to everything. (It was done in 45 minutes, so the specifics weren’t totally ironed out.)

To top it all off, when I had a meeting with Marks on Friday morning, we used Twitter direct messaging rather than e-mail to confirm the time and location.

Webware: Cool Web 2.0 apps for everyone – Posts in Networking