Over the past few decades, four distinct and largely independent research and policy communities--disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, environmental management and poverty reduction--have been actively engaged in reducing socio-economic vulnerability to natural hazards. However, despite the significant efforts of these communities, the vulnerability of many individuals and communities to natural hazards continues to increase considerably. In particular, it is hydro-meteorological hazards that affect an increasing number of people and cause increasingly large economic losses. Arising from the realisation that these four communities have been largely working in isolation and enjoyed only limited success in reducing vulnerability, there is an emerging perceived need to strengthen significantly collaboration and to facilitate learning and information exchange between them. This article examines key communalities and differences between the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction communities, and proposes three exercises that would help to structure a multi-community dialogue and learning process.

Prior research has shown that most known risk factors for suicide attempts in the general population actually predict suicide ideation rather than attempts among ideators. Yet clinical interest in predicting suicide attempts often involves the evaluation of risk among patients with ideation. We examined a number of characteristics of suicidal thoughts hypothesized to predict incident attempts in a retrospective analysis of lifetime ideators (N = 3,916) drawn from a large (N = 29,982), representative sample of United States Army soldiers. The most powerful predictors of first nonfatal lifetime suicide attempt in a multivariate model controlling for previously known predictors (e.g., demographics, mental disorders) were: recent onset of ideation, presence and recent onset of a suicide plan, low controllability of suicidal thoughts, extreme risk-taking or "tempting fate," and failure to answer questions about the characteristics of one's suicidal thoughts. A predictive model using these risk factors had strong accuracy (area under the curve [AUC] = .93), with 66.2% of all incident suicide attempts occurring among the 5% of soldiers with highest composite predicted risk. This high concentration of risk in this retrospective study suggests that a useful clinical decision support model could be constructed from prospective data to identify those with highest risk of subsequent suicide attempt. (PsycINFO Database Record

This study investigated whether major depression in adolescence is characterized by neurocognitive deficits in attention, affective decision making, and cognitive control of emotion processing. Neuropsychological tests including the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, the Continuous Performance Test–Identical Pairs, the Attention Network Test, the Iowa Gambling Task, the Emotional Go-NoGo Task, and the Face Go-NoGo Task were administered to adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) (n = 31) and psychiatric diagnosis free controls (n = 30). Findings indicated that compared with controls, depressed adolescents exhibited impaired sustained attention; a gender by group interaction on affective decision making such that depressed males tended to make less advantageous choices on the IGT; and an inverse pattern of correlations between depressive symptom counts and reaction time to affective stimuli, characterizing greater affective reactivity in depressed adolescents. Findings demonstrate that adolescents with MDD display selective neurocognitive impairments on tasks capturing ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ executive functioning.

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the association between circadian rhythms of cortisol and physical and relational aggression. Morning arrival, pre-lunch, and afternoon predeparture salivary cortisol were assessed among 418 maltreated and nonmaltreated children (52% maltreated; 49% female) attending a summer day camp. Counselors and peers rated participants' involvement in physically and relationally aggressive behaviors. Results indicated that physical aggression was associated with heightened cortisol following morning arrival and relatively steep declines in cortisol over the day whereas relational aggression was associated with low cortisol following morning arrival and blunted diurnal change in cortisol. Moreover, maltreatment was a significant moderator of this relationship such that aggression was related to greater cortisol dysregulation among nonmaltreated than maltreated children. The findings suggest that physiological correlates of aggression may differ for physical and relational forms of aggression and among maltreated versus nonmaltreated populations. Keywords aggression; gender; cortisol; maltreatment Involvement in aggressive and antisocial behavior is associated with a host of problems for children and adolescents, including rejection by peers, internalizing symptoms, and academic difficulties (e.g., Buhs, Ladd, & Herald, 2006;Crick, 1996;Farmer et al., 2003;Murray-Close, Ostrov, & Crick, 2007). Mounting evidence suggests that a number of biological processes, including resting heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, and skin conductance are implicated in the development of aggressive and antisocial behavior (e.g., Kibler, Prosser, & Ma, 2004;Scarpa, Fikretoglu, & Luscher, 2000;Scarpa & Raine, 1997;Susman, 2006). Researchers have extended studies assessing biological underpinnings Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to Dianna Murray-Close, Psychology Department, 2 Colchester Avenue, Burlington, VT, 05405−0134 dmurrayc@uvm.edu.. Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at http://www.apa.org/journals/dev/ NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptDev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 July 1. Published in final edited form as:Dev Psychol. 2008 July ; 44(4): 1160-1176. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript of aggression to examine the role of the stress hormone cortisol (e.g., McBurnett, Lahey, Rathouz, & Loeber, 2000). However, existing research investigating the relation between cortisol and aggression is limited in...