Criminalization of minority youth in the youth justice system in Canada

Despite the immense amount of research completed on adult correctional facilities within North America, little is known about the overrepresentation of visible minority youth within the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system is known for violent juvenile offenders, who become and remain habitual offenders. The juvenile justice system then faces questioning for creating professional criminals instead of focusing on effective rehabilitation. The face of the youth justice system within Canada is rapidly changing. Increasing forms of diversity serve as a principal pattern because the criminalization of minority youth occurs from cultural incompetence, unawareness, and insensitivity. This article recovers the institutional or systemic forms of treatment that minority youth face within the criminal justice system. It also further shows that there is little focus on the experiences of minority youth within juvenile correctional facilities due to a lack of information. Racialized and marginalized youth and young adults are apart of the vulnerable population within Canada. One must ensure that youth and young adults who are vulnerable within society, receive the best possible chance at achieve upward mobility. The youth justice system, from a racial justice lens, reveals slave-era origin within youth prisons, limiting opportunities for racialized youth across Canada. Racial antagonism within the youth justice system leads to the criminalization of minority youth, which serves as a foundation for why culture shapes the identity of racialized youth.

Community clozapine monitoring protocols: review of vital sign monitoring requirements in supporting the first two days of community clozapine initiation

Clozapine is a crucial antipsychotic medication to treat schizophrenia and has shown valuable benefits in doing so. However, there can be rare, but potentially fatal adverse drug reactions to the medication. Therefore, it is essential that there is careful monitoring of the patient while on the medication. A retrospective study was conducted to examine the effects of clozapine on vitals during the first 2 days of initiation. There were 43 (29 male, 16 female) charts analyzed retrospectively, and the average age of the patients was 45 years old. The average dose of clozapine on the first day was 9.3mg and 15.7mg on the second day. Regarding vitals, the temperature peaked 5 hours after administrating clozapine on day 1 and day 2. Furthermore, the respiration rate peaked 4 hours post-dose on the second day and the heart rate increased the most on the second day indicating a dose-related response. There was no trend in blood pressure changes that can be inferred from the data; however, individual variations in blood pressure fluctuated considerably. The study was limited due to a lack of data in patient charts, and it may be of interest to do a prospective study to gain more insight.

Association between malaria knowledge and bednet use for children under five: Angola malaria indicator survey

Despite distribution of millions of free mosquito nets in Angola, malaria remains the primary cause of mortality in young children, accounting for 35% of deaths among children under five (CU5). Our objectives were first to examine the association between malaria knowledge and bednet use for CU5, and second, to investigate the impact of multivariable logistic regression to analyze responses from a representative sample of women aged 15–49 from the Angola Malaria Indicator Survey (2011). Approximately 44% of respondents with CU5 (n=6,576) owned at least one bednet for sleeping, and of those 87.4% identified mosquitos as a cause of malaria. Adjusting for respondents’ age, region, and education, those reporting mosquitos as a cause of malaria had 1.7 (95%CI: 1.3–2.2) times the odds of bednet use for CU5 compared to those not reporting mosquitos as a malaria cause. Exposure to behaviour change communication (i.e. malaria messaging) increased the odds of bednet use where messaging encouraged sleeping under mosquito nets (OR: 1.3, 95%CI: 0.9–1.7). This study provides evidence of a positive association between malaria knowledge and bednet use, indicating that along with widescale distribution of bednets for malaria prevention, public health efforts in Angola should focus on increasing awareness and promoting bednet usage through targeted risk communication.

Use of BioID to detect protein-protein interactions

Proximity-dependent biotin identification (BioID) is a novel approach to identify protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in a natural cellular environment. BioID exploits a mutant form of a biotin protein ligase found in Escherichia coli, BirA*, that promiscuously catalyses biotinylation of proteins in close-proximity of the enzyme. Biotinylated proteins are then purified with conventional methods. BioID has been shown to overcome many of the limitations faced by traditional PPI techniques, such as co-immunoprecipitation, proximity ligation assays and yeast two-hybrid systems. The main advantages of BioID as compared to these methods include high sensitivity and spatial resolution, preservation of physiologically- relevant conditions, and detection of weak or transient interactions. Despite some inherent limitations, BioID remains a promising PPI technique and has led to more advanced methods, such as BioID2 and split-BioID.

Comparison of discourse surrounding CRISPRCas9 in the media and peer-reviewed literature

Since its development in 2013, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) Cas9 gene-editing technologies have dramatically impacted the feld of genetics research. CRISPR/Cas9 has received a lot of attention in the news in recent years, and accurate portrayal of this technology by the mainstream media has the potential to shape its perception by the public in a way that is conducive to its possible implementation as a viable tool for genetic engineering. Our aim was to evaluate how the discussion of CRISPR/ Cas9 in the mainstream media reflects and compares to that of the academic literature. We surveyed mainstream news articles (n=60) and scientific review articles (n=30) that discussed CRISPR/Cas9. Using an a priori coding scheme, we found that while the news does not accurately reflect the current state of CRISPR/Cas9 research and development, it provides more perspectives and considers broader social implications compared to the academic literature. h, both news media and academic papers provide valuable contributions to the conversation but news articles in particular have the opportunity to improve the accuracy or thoroughness of their coverage on the topic.

Exploring the role of e-mental health services in Canadian mental health care: a review

Barriers to conventional treatments for mental health concerns in Canada posit the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT) as a means of providing mental health care; this is widely referred to as e-mental health care. Such platforms currently provide a myriad of mental health services in four broad categories: information dissemination, screening and assessment, intervention and peer support. Coupled with further research, careful consideration of e-mental health models in other countries and current barriers can be used to refine pre-existing e-therapy approaches.

Exploring systems of reproduction through modification of a genetic algorithm aimed at optimizing molecular geometry

The main objective of this study was to compare the efficiency of various evolutionary systems in maximizing the fitness of the population upon which they act. This was accomplished through the development of a genetic algorithm to optimize the chemical structure of carbon dioxide (CO2), which has a precisely known solution. This allowed for the comparison of efficacy of different versions of the algorithm, each based on a different evolutionary strategy. Each breeding system represents a distinct approach to reproduction, generating unique evolutionary curves; however, the population fitnesses converge toward the optimized solution at approximately the same time. It is concluded that for the given problem all versions are practical, but for more complex problems the path taken to optimization might make one method preferable.

Ethics and the neurological effects of water contamination by methylmercury

What ethics-related discussion is present in journal articles on brain damage due to water contamination by methylmercury? As a neurotoxin, increased bioavailability of methylmercury driven by human activities can have a significant adverse impact on future generations. We categorized ethics-related content according to a framework for Environmental Neuroethics (Cabrera et al., 2016). The framework provides a systematic way of examining phenomena at the intersection of ethics, brain, and environmental change. Measures of the relative quantity of ethics-related content and sources of academic discourse were also made. The most extensive ethical discussion concerned implications for social policy and regulation. We also noted a lack of ethics-related content with regard to cross-cultural perspectives.