The first patient I saw after coming back from Africa had floaters. I had just spent several months in the war-torn region between Chad and the Sudan, staffing a Médecins Sans Frontières project doing its best to keep up with the demand: a hundred youngsters with malaria every week, malnourished infants, shrapnel wounds, and worse. I knew it would be tough coming back to the routine grind of pr...

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common neurobehavioral disorder in youth. About one-half of these youngsters continue to have symptoms as they enter their 20s. Of these, some also have co-morbid conditions such as conduct disorders, psychiatric problems and substance abuse. The medical director must be able to recognize the small subset of affected individuals whose ...

Delinquency and criminality are common characteristics of FASD. It is widely believed that the pervasive neurobehavioral anomalies in FASD are the cause of criminality. These include impulsivity, lack of understanding of social cues and other dysfunction. We suggest an alternative hypothesis: There is strong association between excessive alcohol intake and criminality. There is also strong heri...

The birth of an infant is not only an event of obvious biological significance; as many of us know from direct experience, it is also one that initiates enormous changes in the daily life of parents, siblings, and others who care for relatively undeveloped and dependent youngsters. Among group-living mammals, newborns usually attract excited attention from other group members, and we humans ext...

In this paper we show how certain notions of modern cryptogra phy can be presented to youngsters using combinatorial constructions Among the topics discussed are the use of Boolean circuits for bit com mitment protocols and hash functions and the construction of a public key message transmission system using perfect codes in a graph We also discuss how e orts such as this in popularizing mathem...

The aim of the present study was to determine the extent to which direct and indirect bullying and victimization at school affects the mental and physical health of 661 Italian boys and girls, aged 11 to 15 years old. The impact of bullying and victimization is assessed by taking into account the relative buffering effect of a positive relationship with one or both parents. Internalizing sympto...

Objective: Referred obese adolescents often display psychological problems. The present study aimed at investigating whether Young’s schema theory constitutes a comprehensive framework to understand psychopathology in youth in general and in referred obese adolescents in particular. Methods: 91 youngsters referred for obesity treatment and 91 normal weight controls (all between 12 and 18 years ...

Childhood obesity is on the rise in both industrialized and developing countries. The investigation of the psychosocial aspects of childhood obesity has been the focus of long- standing theoretical and empirical endeavor. Overweight in children and adolescents is associated with a host of psychological and social problems such as reduced school and social performance, less favorable quality of ...