The current study tests whether the presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits designates a group of children with conduct problems who show an especially severe and chronic pattern of conduct problems and delinquency. Ninety-eight children who were selected from a large community screening of school children in grades 3, 4, 6 and 7 were followed across four yearly assessments. Children with conduct problems who also showed CU traits exhibited the highest rates of conduct problems, self-reported delinquency, and police contacts across the four years of the study. In fact, this group accounted for at least half of all of the police contacts reported in the sample across the last three waves of data collection. In contrast, children with conduct problems who did not show CU traits continued to show higher rates of conduct problems across the follow-up assessments compared to non-conduct problem children. However, they did not show higher rates of self-reported delinquency than non-conduct problem children. In fact, the second highest rate of self-reported delinquency in the sample was found for the group of children who were high on CU traits but without conduct problems at the start of the study.

Yellowstone's missing magmatic link Yellowstone is an extensively studied “supervolcano” that has a large supply of heat coming from a pool of magma near the surface and the mantle below. A link between these two features has long been suspected. Huang et al. imaged the lower crust using seismic tomography (see the Perspective by Shapiro and Koulakov). Their findings provide an estimate of the total amount of molten rock beneath Yellowstone and help to explain the large amount of volcanic gases escaping from the region. Science , this issue p. 773 ; see also p. 758

The Yellowstone hotspot resulted from interaction of a mantle plume with the overriding North America plate highly modifying the lithosphere by magmatic-tectonic processes and producing the 17 Ma Yellowstone-Snake River Plain (YSRP) volcanic system. The accessibility of the YSRP has allowed largescale geophysical experiments to seismically image the hotspot and to evaluate its kinematic and dynamic properties using geodetic measurements. Tomography reveals a Yellowstone crustal magma body with 8-15% melt that is fed by an upper-mantle plume extending from 80 km to 660 km deep and tilting 60º west. Contemporary deformation of the Yellowstone caldera is dominated by SW-extension at up to ~3 mm/yr, a fourth of the total Basin-Range opening rate, but with superimposed volcanic uplift and subsidence at decade scales, averaging ~2 cm/yr and unprecedented caldera uplift from 2004-2008 at up to 7 cm/yr. Convection models reveal eastward upper-mantle flow beneath Yellowstone at relatively high rates of 5 cm/yr and opposite in direction to the overriding N. American Plate. This strong flow deflects the ascending plume melt into a tilted configuration, i.e., the plume is caught in a mantle "wind". Dynamic models of the Yellowstone plume revealed relatively low excess temperatures, up to 120°K, with up to 1.5% melt, properties consistent with a weak buoyancy flux of ~0.25 Mg/s. The flux is several times smaller than for oceanic plumes, but it produced a ~600-km wide topographic ~300-m high swell. Employing the plume-geometry we extrapolated the location of the Yellowstone mantle-source southwestward to its initial position at 17 million years beneath eastern Oregon and the southern edge of the LIP Columbia Plateau basalt field suggesting a common origin. Our model suggests that the original plume head rose vertically behind the subducting Juan de Fuca plate, but at ~12 Ma it lost the protection of the subducting plate and encountered cooler, thicker continental lithosphere and became affected by the eastward upper-mantle flow. Regionally, excess gravitation potential energy of the swell drives the SW motion of the YSRP lithosphere that becomes part of a general clockwise rotation pattern of intraplate western U.S. tectonism. Our models thus demonstrate that plume-plate processes of the YSRP have "continentalized" oceanic lithosphere enhancing intraplate extension and highly modifying topography, deep into the continental interior. Our results demonstrate that the dynamic properties of the Yellowstone hotspot deserved its recognition as a "window into the Earth's interior". JVGR

The Yellowstone caldera began a rapid episode of ground uplift in mid-2004, revealed by Global Positioning System and interferometric synthetic aperture radar measurements, at rates up to 7 centimeters per year, which is over three times faster than previously observed inflation rates. Source modeling of the deformation data suggests an expanding volcanic sill of approximately 1200 square kilometers at a 10-kilometer depth beneath the caldera, coincident with the top of a seismically imaged crustal magma chamber. The modeled rate of source volume increase is 0.1 cubic kilometer per year, similar to the amount of magma intrusion required to supply the observed high heat flow of the caldera. This evidence suggests magma recharge as the main mechanism for the accelerated uplift, although pressurization of magmatic fluids cannot be ruled out.