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One of the more serious problems faced by child welfare services involves the management of children with serious behavioral and mental health problems. Aggressive and defiant foster children are more likely to have multiple foster care placements, require extraordinary social services resources, and have poor short- and long-term mental health outcomes. Interventions that work with challenging foster children and enhance foster parents' skills in managing problem behaviors are necessary. This article presents the successful results of a single case study examining the application of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) with an aggressive young boy and his foster-adoptive parent. PCIT is a dyadic intervention that has been identified as an empirically supported treatment for abused children and for children with different types of behavioral disruption. The application of PCIT to assist foster parents is a promising direction for child welfare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their low phase noise at high carrier frequencies, photonic microwave oscillators are continuously expanding their application areas including digital signal processing, telecommunications, radio astronomy, and RADAR and LIDAR systems. Currently, the lowest noise photonic oscillators rely on traditional optical frequency combs with multiple stabilization loops that incorporate large vacuum components and complex optoelectronic configurations. Hence, the resulting systems are not only challenging to operate but also expensive to maintain. Here, we introduce a significantly simpler solution: a Photonically Referenced Extremely STable Oscillator (PRESTO). PRESTO requires only three key components: a femtosecond laser, a fiber delay element, and a pulse timing detector. The generated microwave at 10 GHz has phase noise levels of -125, -145, and <-160 dBc/Hz at 1, 10, and >100 kHz, respectively, with an integrated timing jitter of only 2 fs root mean square (RMS) over [100 Hz-1 MHz]. This approach offers a reliable solution for simplifying and downsizing photonic oscillators while delivering high performance.

In this work, we investigate an approach to scale up the output pulse energy in an all-polarization-maintaining 17.3 MHz Yb-doped fiber oscillator via implementation of a 25 µm core-diameter large-mode-area fiber. The artificial saturable absorber is based on a Kerr-type linear self-stabilized fiber interferometer, enabling non-linear polarization rotation in polarization-maintaining fibers. Highly stable mode-locked steady states in the soliton-like operation regime are demonstrated with 170 mW average output power and a total output pulse energy of ∼10 n J distributed between two output ports. An experimental parameter comparison with a reference oscillator constructed with 5.5 µm core-sized standard fiber components reveals an increase of pulse energy by a factor of 36 with simultaneously reduced intensity noise in the high-frequency range >100 k H z .

Fish within the family Tetraodontidae are potential sources of both endogenous tetrodotoxins (TTXs) and dietary derived saxitoxins (STXs). Ingestion of fish tissues containing these toxins by other vertebrates can lead to severe illness and death. The Caribbean sharpnose puffer ( Canthigaster rostrata ) is a widespread tetraodontid species within the western Atlantic. Mass settlement of juveniles into foraging habitats have been associated with large-scale puffer fish mortality events. In 2013, 2014, and 2017, puffer mortality events on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica were also associated with strandings of green turtles ( Chelonia mydas ) found to have fed on C. rostrata . Stranded sea turtles were found dead without apparent cause or alive with severe neurological signs that resolved during short periods of captivity. Puffer fish and turtle organ samples were analyzed for both TTXs and STXs. Concentrations of TTXs were extremely low in the fish (0.5-0.7 μg/g) and undetectable in turtle stomach contents. However, concentrations of STXs in whole fish (16.6-47.5 μg STX-eq/g) exceeded the 0.8 μg STX-eq/g human seafood safety threshold for STXs by orders of magnitude. Saxitoxins were also detected in samples of stomach contents (ingested fish), brain, lung, kidney, and serum from three affected turtles. Study results indicate that saxitoxicosis resulting from opportunistic foraging on C. rostrata during fish mortality events may be a significant factor in episodic stranding of green sea turtles in this region., (Copyright © 2019 Barrientos, Hernández-Mora, Alegre, Field, Flewelling, McGrath, Deeds, Chacón, Rojas Arrieta, Vargas, Artavia and Stacy.)

The self-assembly of protein polymers is a promising route to prepare sophisticated functional nanostructures. However, the interplay between protein self-assembly by itself and its co-assembly with a template is not well understood. Silk-based protein polymers that co-assemble with DNA to form rod-like artificial viruses are herein developed and the effects of silk block length, concentration, and temperature in the self-assembly of the proteins alone are characterized by using a combination of bulk dynamic light scattering (DLS) and single-molecule atomic force microscopy (AFM). Protein nanorods were slowly formed (up to hours) through the interaction of the silk-like blocks. The proteins present a silk-length dependent critical elongation concentration, and above it the amount and size of nanorods rapidly increase. Temperature-dependent light scattering data was adequately fitted into a cooperative model of nucleation-elongation. These results are also important to understand the self-assembly of designed viral coat proteins with DNA templates to form artificial virus-like particles and help us to define general guidelines to design proteins with the ability to precisely organize matter at the nanoscale., (© 2019 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

The effects of surgical cardiomyotomy and isosorbide dinitrate on esophageal emptying were compared in 18 patients with symptomatic chagasic megaesophagus. The esophageal emptying of a radiolabelled test meal was assessed three times in each patient by a scintigraphic technique, twice before and once 10-14 days after cardiomyotomy. Isosorbide dinitrate, 5 mg by the sublingual route 5 min before the meal, preceded one of the preoperative studies. Esophageal retention at the completion of the meal was significantly less (P < 0.01) after both isosorbide dinitrate and cardiomyotomy than after the preoperative study not preceded by any treatment. This difference persisted up to 10 minutes after the meal. The values measured in the isosorbide dinitrate-preceded study and after cardiomyotomy were not different (P > 0.10) even though esophageal retention at the completion of the meal was slightly less after cardiomyotomy than after isosorbide dinitrate. These results show that isosorbide dinitrate and cardiomyotomy cause similar enhancement of esophageal emptying in chagasic megaesophagus.