A conference round-table discussion gets to grips with a double-conundrum: people want effective programs (arguably more than some politicians want them) but they would rather get the information they need from TV than from psychologists in a clinic.

These are good times for prevention scientists: improving evidence, more effective programs and better evaluation support their progress, and their cross-disciplinary value is no longer in dispute. But there’s a funding squeeze on the horizon and political ideologues still walk the corridors of power…

It doesn’t seem that long ago that genetics was the tantalizing mystery at the heart of child development, and reckoning with the force of environmental factors in young lives was an all too routine aspect of prevention studies. Now comes a curious reversal: we can identify a single influential gene, but we have no unifying concept of “environment”.

A multidisciplinary research initiative that began in the late 1980s as a series of discussions between staff from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse is bringing around 1,000 delegates to San Francisco for its eighteenth annual conference – on the global dimensions of prevention science.

In Ireland, Wales, England, the US or Norway, when it comes to persuading Governments to take the clear lessons of two decades of prevention science seriously, Charles Darwin’s motto “it’s dogged does it” – still does it.

“We’re a bit of an odd couple you and I, Judy. We’re clinicians who want to do research. Why are there so few of us? How can we train clinicians to think more like researchers and researchers to think more like clinicians?”

Irish Minister for Children Barry Andrews has promised his country a "re-balancing and refocusing of services towards early intervention within the context of supporting and building the resilience of families".

How do we make parenting programs as routinely valuable and unobtrusive as ante natal services? How do we help parents encourage desirable behavior while responding sensitively to their children’s needs? Ireland begins the Incredible Years journey toward an answer, this week.

Analysis of the social trends underlying the UK's 1990s anxieties about the triple measles, mumps and rubella vaccine might lead to smarter public health strategies for improving immunization rates and designing targeted services.

A collection of essays offering eminently practical guidance on how to design randomized controlled trials so that they illuminate why programs work and in what conditions should begin to sway UK critics.

Emory University in Atlanta is among US centers whose studies are improving understanding of the relationship between early trauma, resilience and the influence of a stress-related gene in the chemistry of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Cornell University research analysts suggest that changes in memory function as children approach adulthood should be taken into account when deciding how evidence is best offered and interpreted during court proceedings.

Researchers at the Minnesota Twin Center are among the growing number attempting to understand the relationship between genetic and environmental influences on personality development.

Researchers at Cardiff University are beginning to shed light on the unusual dynamics that operate in families where a child shows symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Cognitive scientists at Ohio State University are challenging the conventional wisdom of decades of school math teaching by suggesting that using “real world” examples to explain abstract concepts may not help children to learn.

We know it’s wrong to judge others by the lucky or unlucky events that befall them – but US researchers are finding that that’s what children the world over tend to do, with important consequences for the less fortunate.

Long-term studies of the behavior of 1,000 families in the Netherlands suggest that too little sleep early in life is associated with later anxiety and aggression.

Harvard researchers’ scrutiny of after-school programs has identified numerous academic and health benefits, particularly when parents help to plan the content.

The causes of autism continue to perplex, but Pittsburgh researchers find some evidence that family functioning, which may itself have a genetic aspect, can mitigate or aggravate certain of the symptoms.