This project will work closely with existing service partners involved in street level services and focus on testing and evaluating three approaches for street level interventions for youth who are homeless and who have severe or moderate mentally illness. Youth will be asked to choose their preferred service approach:

Housing First related initiatives focused on interventions designed to move youth to appropriate and available housing and ongoing housing supports.

Treatment First initiatives to provide Mental Health/Addiction supports and treatment solutions, and; Simultaneous attention to both Housing and Treatment Together

Our primary objective is to understand the service delivery preferences of homeless youth and understand the outcomes of these choices. Our research questions include:

1. 1. Which approaches to service are chosen by youth?

2. 2. What are the differences and similarities between groups choosing each approach?

3. 3. What are the critical ingredients needed to effectively implement services for homeless youth from the perspectives of youth, families and service providers?

Focus groups with staff and family members will occur to assist in understanding the nature of each of service approach, changes that evolve within services, & facilitators and barriers to service delivery. This work will be important in determining which approach is chosen by youth and why. Evaluating the outcomes with each choice will provide valuable information about outcomes for the service options chosen by youth. This assist in better identifying weaknesses in the services offered and inform further development of treatment options that youth will accept.

Objective: Idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (INPH) is a neurological disorder presenting with gait, cognitive, and bladder symptoms in the context of ventricular enlargement. Although gait is the primary indicator for treatment candidacy and outcome, additional monitoring tools are needed. Line Tracing Test (LTT) and Serial Dotting Test (SDT), two psychomotor tasks, have been introduced as potential outcome measures but have not been widely studied. This preliminary study examined whether LTT and SDT are sensitive to motor dysfunction in INPH and determined if accuracy and time are important aspects of performance. Methods: Eighty-four INPH subjects and 36 healthy older adults were administered LTT and SDT. Novel error scoring procedures were developed to make scoring practical and efficient; interclass correlation showed good reliability of scoring procedures for both tasks (0.997; p<.001). Results: The INPH group demonstrated slower performance on SDT (p<.001) and made a greater number of errors on both tasks (p<.001). Combined Time/Error scores revealed poorer performance in the INPH group for original-LTT (p<.001), modified-LTT (p≤.001) and SDT (p<.001). Conclusions: These findings indicate LTT and SDT may prove useful for monitoring psychomotor skills in INPH. While completion time reflects impaired processing speed, reduced accuracy may suggest planning and self-monitoring difficulties, aspects of executive functioning known to be compromised in INPH. This is the first study to underscore the importance of performance accuracy in INPH and introduce practical/reliable error scoring for these tasks. Future work will establish reliability and validity of these measures and determine their utility as outcome tools. (JINS, 2016, 22, 341–349)

Developing management strategies for invasive plant species requires identifying effective treatment methods (e.g., physical or chemical treatments) and optimally timing their application. For invasive annual plants, effects of treatments on seed production and germinability are paramount to reduce seed banks and subsequent plant establishment. We compared effects of a range of physical and chemical treatments applied to plants containing seeds at different developmental stages at field sites in the Mojave Desert (Nevada and Arizona) for managing the exotic annual forb, African mustard. Effectiveness of physical treatments (hand pulling entire plants, breaking plants, or separating siliques from plants) for reducing African mustard seed size and germination varied by treatment and seed maturity stage at which treatments were applied. With all treated plant material remaining in the field (i.e., not bagged and transported off site), hand pulling or breaking plants resulted in 90 to 100% of developing and developed seeds still able to germinate. Separating siliques from plants, however, resulted in 0% germination of undeveloped and developing seeds. All three tested herbicides (glyphosate, 2,4-D, and metsulfuron) reduced germination to zero or near zero across all seed development stages. Results suggest that physical treatments are most effective at early stages of seed development, whereas several different herbicides are effective across seed developmental stages. Results also highlight the importance of considering the potential for continued seed development and germinability on treated plant material when choosing invasive plant treatment types and timing.

Using data from a large-scale three-dimensional simulation of supersonic isothermal turbulence, we have tested the validity of an exact flux relation derived analytically from the Navier–Stokes equation by Falkovich, Fouxon & Oz (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 644, 2010, p. 465). That relation, for compressible barotropic fluids, was derived assuming turbulence generated by a large-scale force. However, compressible turbulence in simulations is usually initialized and maintained by a large-scale acceleration, as in gravity-driven astrophysical flows. We present a new approximate flux relation for isothermal turbulence driven by a large-scale acceleration, and find it in reasonable agreement with the simulation results.

Fetal supply with long-chain PUFA (LC-PUFA) during pregnancy is important for brain growth and visual and cognitive development and is provided by materno–fetal placental transfer. We recently showed that maternal fatty acid desaturase (FADS) genotypes modulate the amounts of LC-PUFA in maternal blood. Whether FADS genotypes influence the amounts of umbilical cord fatty acids has not been investigated until now. The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of maternal and child FADS genotypes on the amounts of LC-PUFA in umbilical cord venous plasma as an indicator of fetal fatty acid supply during pregnancy. A total of eleven cord plasma n-6 and n-3 fatty acids were analysed for association with seventeen FADS gene cluster SNP in over 2000 mothers and children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. In a multivariable analysis, the maternal genotype effect was adjusted for the child genotype and vice versa to estimate which of the two has the stronger influence on cord plasma fatty acids. Both maternal and child FADS genotypes and haplotypes influenced amounts of cord plasma LC-PUFA and fatty acid ratios. Specifically, most analysed maternal SNP were associated with cord plasma levels of the precursor n-6 PUFA, whereas the child genotypes were mainly associated with more highly desaturated n-6 LC-PUFA. This first study on FADS genotypes and cord fatty acids suggests that fetal LC-PUFA status is determined to some extent by fetal fatty acid conversion. Associations of particular haplotypes suggest specific effects of SNP rs498793 and rs968567 on fatty acid metabolism.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012.

A new Mo potential, developed recently by using an ab initio quantum mechanics theory, was used to study formation and time evolution of radiation defects, such as self-interstitial atoms (SIAs), vacancies, and small clusters of SIAs, using molecular dynamics (MD). MD models were developed for calculation of the diffusion coefficients of vacancies, self-interstitials, and small dislocation loops containing 2 to 37 SIAs; and the rate constants were calculated. Interactions of small SIA loops with SIAs were simulated. The results show that rotation of SIA from one <111> to another equivalent direction is an important mechanism that significantly contributes to kinetic coefficients.