Motivating a volunteer workforce in the criminal justice system

The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) requires that police detention processes are monitored and inspected. The United Kingdom is partially ensuring this provision through the use of an existing independent volunteer workforce. This research explores the conditions required for the effective use of this volunteer workforce through 12 semi-structured interviews. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used that initially generated 46 motivator codes that were clustered into six themes of volunteer motivation consisting of: personal affect, personal growth, social goals, altruistic, activity and values. Ten demotivators were also revealed through the interviews. The implications of these findings for volunteer motivation and how organisations may capitalise on this are discusse

Food webs in forest and pasture streams in the Waikato region, New Zealand: A study based on analyses of stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, and fish gut contents.

Stable isotopes of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) were studied in 11 stream communities in the Waikato region of New Zealand. From comparisons of mean d13C and d15N values, food webs in the shaded, forest streams were clearly based on allochthonous material (conditioned leaf litter and terrestrial invertebrates). Autotrophs in forest streams were not a significant C source for the food webs. However, the C source of food webs in the unshaded pasture streams appeared to be a mixture of allochthonous and autochthonous material. Conditioned leaf litter appeared to contribute to the pasture stream food webs, and the d13C and d15N of some samples of epilithic diatoms indicated their consumption by invertebrates in pasture streams. Fish ate a wide range of aquatic invertebrates; longfinned eels (Anguilla dieffenbachiai) and banded kokopu (Galaxias fasciatus) also had a large proportion of terrestrial invertebrates in their diet. Filamentous green algae were found only at pasture sites, where they were sometimes abundant. The wide range of d13C values of filamentous green algae (-18.8 to -29.7[[perthousand]]) complicated understanding of their role in the stream food webs. The d13C values of Cladophora were related to water velocity, with more 13C-enriched values in pools than in runs (-23.2[[perthousand]] in pools, mean velocity 0.12 m s-1; -28.1[[perthousand]] in runs, mean velocity 0.24 m s-1). Crayfish and the gastropod mollusc Potamopyrgus appeared to be the only invertebrates to eat filamentous green algae

Motivating a volunteer workforce in the criminal justice system

The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) requires that police detention processes are monitored and inspected. The United Kingdom is partially ensuring this provision through the use of an existing independent volunteer workforce. This research explores the conditions required for the effective use of this volunteer workforce through 12 semi-structured interviews. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used that initially generated 46 motivator codes that were clustered into six themes of volunteer motivation consisting of: personal affect, personal growth, social goals, altruistic, activity and values. Ten demotivators were also revealed through the interviews. The implications of these findings for volunteer motivation and how organisations may capitalise on this are discusse

Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm

In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European Higher Education Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and the additional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborative learning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels

Acyclic orientations on the Sierpinski gasket

We study the number of acyclic orientations on the generalized two-dimensional Sierpinski gasket $SG_{2,b}(n)$ at stage $n$ with $b$ equal to two and three, and determine the asymptotic behaviors. We also derive upper bounds for the asymptotic growth constants for $SG_{2,b}$ and $d$-dimensional Sierpinski gasket $SG_d$.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures and 6 table

Divergences in QED on a Graph

We consider a model of quantum electrodynamics (QED) on a graph. The one-loop divergences in the model are investigated by use of the background field method.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, RevTeX4. References and typos adde

Some Exact Results on the Potts Model Partition Function in a Magnetic Field

We consider the Potts model in a magnetic field on an arbitrary graph $G$. Using a formula of F. Y. Wu for the partition function $Z$ of this model as a sum over spanning subgraphs of $G$, we prove some properties of $Z$ concerning factorization, monotonicity, and zeros. A generalization of the Tutte polynomial is presented that corresponds to this partition function. In this context we formulate and discuss two weighted graph-coloring problems. We also give a general structural result for $Z$ for cyclic strip graphs.Comment: 5 pages, late

Chemical Raman Enhancement of Organic Adsorbates on Metal Surfaces

Using a combination of first-principles theory and experiments, we provide a quantitative explanation for chemical contributions to surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy for a well-studied organic molecule, benzene thiol, chemisorbed on planar Au(111) surfaces. With density functional theory calculations of the static Raman tensor, we demonstrate and quantify a strong mode-dependent modification of benzene thiol Raman spectra by Au substrates. Raman active modes with the largest enhancements result from stronger contributions from Au to their electron-vibron coupling, as quantified through a deformation potential, a well-defined property of each vibrational mode. A straightforward and general analysis is introduced that allows extraction of chemical enhancement from experiments for specific vibrational modes; measured values are in excellent agreement with our calculations.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures and Supplementary material included as ancillary fil

Food System Transformation: Integrating a Political-Economy and Social-Ecological Approach to Regime Shifts.

Sustainably achieving the goal of global food security is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The current food system is failing to meet the needs of people, and at the same time, is having far-reaching impacts on the environment and undermining human well-being in other important ways. It is increasingly apparent that a deep transformation in the way we produce and consume food is needed in order to ensure a more just and sustainable future. This paper uses the concept of regime shifts to understand key drivers and innovations underlying past disruptions in the food system and to explore how they may help us think about desirable future changes and how we might leverage them. We combine two perspectives on regime shifts-one derived from natural sciences and the other from social sciences-to propose an interpretation of food regimes that draws on innovation theory. We use this conceptualization to discuss three examples of innovations that we argue helped enable critical regime shifts in the global food system in the past: the Haber-Bosch process of nitrogen fixation, the rise of the supermarket, and the call for more transparency in the food system to reconnect consumers with their food. This paper concludes with an exploration of why this combination of conceptual understandings is important across the Global North/ Global South divide, and proposes a new sustainability regime where transformative change is spearheaded by a variety of social-ecological innovations

The importance of integrated projects in historic conservation education

The Erasmus Mundus Advanced Masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions (SAHC) is a unique European program. It is a Master Program jointly run by four Universities on the conservation of architectural heritage structures, with the goal of producing an international platform of competence. The educational objective of SAHC is to offer an advanced engineering program on the conservation of structures, with a focus on cultural heritage buildings. The program is composed of eight units (SA-1 through SA-8). SA-7 is the Integrated Project which is a projectbased unit that includes group projects to solve real engineering problems with heritage structures. This paper will describe and demonstrate the importance of the integrated project as part of the overall education of emerging engineering professionals in the field of conservation of the built cultural heritage. While successful in Europe, the SAHC program with its Integrated Project could be used as a model for other countries to implement a quality education program for engineers in the conservation of heritage structures