Violence brief interventions: a rapid review

Provision of a Violence Brief Intervention (VBI) to young men undergoing treatment for a violent injury may represent a teachable moment for the prevention of future interpersonal violence in Scotland. Prior to intervention design, a rapid review of the research literature was necessary to examine existing programmes. After title and abstract screening, eight distinct VBIs were identified from full texts. Whilst none of the programmes were a perfect match for our intervention goals, they did demonstrate the potential effectiveness of brief interventions for violence prevention at both cognitive and behavioural levels. Key themes of successful interventions included brief motivational interviewing as an effective method of engaging with at-risk participants and encouraging change, the utility of social norms approaches for correcting peer norm misperceptions, the usefulness of working with victims of violence in medical settings (particularly oral and maxillofacial surgeries), the importance of addressing the role of alcohol after violent injury, the advantages of a computer-therapist hybrid model of delivery, and the need for adequate follow-up evaluation as part of a randomised control trial. This information has been used to design a VBI which is currently under evaluation

Effectiveness of universal school-based programs for prevention of violence in adolescents

Objective: Violence is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality amongst young people. Primary preventive programs aimed at reducing the involvement of young people in violence are often implemented in a school setting. This systematic review evaluated the effectiveness of universal school-based programs aimed at the primary prevention of violence in 11-18 year olds. Method: A pre-defined search strategy was used to search various sources (i.e. databases, gray literature, previous reviews, and reference lists of included studies) for randomised design trials and quasi-experimental design trials published between 2002 and March 2014. After screening 8051 abstracts, 21 studies were identified that satisfied the inclusion/exclusion criteria. These studies evaluated 16 different programs based mainly in the US. Results: Due to the heterogeneity meta-analysis was not possible; thus a narrative synthesis was reported. The most effective interventions utilised social development and social norms components. Attitudes towards violence was the most frequently measured outcome with six studies reporting a beneficial effect and two reporting no effect; three of the six studies examining violent behaviour demonstrated a small beneficial effect; and four of the seven studies examining physical aggression demonstrated a small beneficial effect. Conclusions: In general, this review found limited evidence of the effectiveness of universal school-based programs in the primary prevention of violence in 11-18 year olds; however, those that combined social development and social norms approaches appeared to be the most effective. Additional qualitative research/process evaluation is required to establish the processes that underpin the success/failure of such programs in order to inform their refinement, and the future development of effective programs.PostprintPeer reviewe

Impact of more intensive grazing on nitrogen and phosphorus in shallow aquifers of the Southern Perth Basin

This study reports on the nutrient content, pH and salinity of groundwater samples collected from the watertable and within the Superficial and the upper Leederville Aquifers from the Southern Perth Basin, south of Pinjarra, Western Australia. Sampling was undertaken to determine the impact of intensification of broadscale grazing on groundwater nutrients in the area

Role of inflammation and infection in the pathogenesis of human acute liver failure:Clinical implications for monitoring and therapy

Acute liver failure is a rare and devastating clinical condition. At present, emergency liver transplantation is the only life-saving therapy in advanced cases, yet the feasibility of transplantation is affected by the presence of systemic inflammation, infection and resultant multi-organ failure. The importance of immune dysregulation and acquisition of infection in the pathogenesis of acute liver failure and its associated complications is now recognised. In this review we discuss current thinking regarding the role of infection and inflammation in the pathogenesis of and outcome in human acute liver failure, the implications for the management of such patients and suggest directions for future research

Preliminary research informing policy on remote alcohol monitoring in criminal justice : the Scottish experience

This study was funded in part by a grant from the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit to Peter D Donnelly (no grant number) and partly by a grant from the Scottish School of Public Health to Fergus G Neville (no grant number).Objectives. To explore the views of Scottish offenders on the impact of alcohol on their experience of offending and their lives in general. Further, to explore their views on the concept of Remote Alcohol Monitoring (RAM) as a way to address alcohol misuse upon liberation from prison. Methods. A convenience sample of 12 serving offenders participated in one of three focus groups.Data were analysed using the principles of thematic analysis. Results. Analysis of the data revealed the significant impact of alcohol on the lives of the participants. Key themes included the amount and frequency of alcohol consumption; the association of alcohol with harm; the association of alcohol with offending; previous attempts to reduce alcohol consumption and possible reasons for failure; and the views of the participants on the utility of RAM in relation to crime prevention. Conclusions. This group of offenders had significant issues with alcohol misuse prior to incarceration that had impacted on their offending and resulted in a variety of health and social harms. Participants were generally positive but pragmatic about RAM, recognising that technology alone may not be enough to change deeply ingrained and addictive behaviours.PostprintPeer reviewe

Reconstructing 7000 years of North Atlantic hurricane variability using deep-sea sediment cores from the western Great Bahama Bank

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 28 (2013): 31–41, doi:10.1002/palo.20012.Available overwash records from coastal barrier systems document significant variability in North Atlantic hurricane activity during the late Holocene. The same climate forcings that may have controlled cyclone activity over this interval (e.g., the West African Monsoon, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)) show abrupt changes around 6000 yrs B.P., but most coastal sedimentary records do not span this time period. Establishing longer records is essential for understanding mid-Holocene patterns of storminess and their climatic drivers, which will lead to better forecasting of how climate change over the next century may affect tropical cyclone frequency and intensity. Storms are thought to be an important mechanism for transporting coarse sediment from shallow carbonate platforms to the deep-sea, and bank-edge sediments may offer an unexplored archive of long-term hurricane activity. Here, we develop this new approach, reconstructing more than 7000 years of North Atlantic hurricane variability using coarse-grained deposits in sediment cores from the leeward margin of the Great Bahama Bank. High energy event layers within the resulting archive are (1) broadly correlated throughout an offbank transect of multi-cores, (2) closely matched with historic hurricane events, and (3) synchronous with previous intervals of heightened North Atlantic hurricane activity in overwash reconstructions from Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Bahamas. Lower storm frequency prior to 4400 yrs B.P. in our records suggests that precession and increased NH summer insolation may have greatly limited hurricane potential intensity, outweighing weakened ENSO and a stronger West African Monsoon—factors thought to be favorable for hurricane development.This research was supported by awards from the Division of Ocean Sciences and the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences of the National Science Foundation to William B. Curry and an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship to Peter van Hengstum.2013-09-1

Vortex Lattice Locking in Rotating Two-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates

The vortex density of a rotating superfluid, divided by its particle mass, dictates the superfluid's angular velocity through the Feynman relation. To find how the Feynman relation applies to superfluid mixtures, we investigate a rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensate, composed of bosons with different masses. We find that in the case of sufficiently strong interspecies attraction, the vortex lattices of the two condensates lock and rotate at the drive frequency, while the superfluids themselves rotate at two different velocities, whose ratio is the ratio between the particle mass of the two species. In this paper, we characterize the vortex-locked state, establish its regime of stability, and find that it surives within a disk smaller than a critical radius, beyond which vortices become unbound, and the two Bose-gas rings rotate together at the frequency of the external drive.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Wavelet pressure reactivity index: a validation study.

KEY POINTS: The brain is vulnerable to damage from too little or too much blood flow. A physiological mechanism termed cerebral autoregulation (CA) exists to maintain stable blood flow even if cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) is changing. A robust method for assessing CA is not yet available. There are still some problems with the traditional measure, the pressure reactivity index (PRx). We introduce a new method, the wavelet transform method (wPRx), to assess CA using data from two sets of controlled hypotension experiments in piglets: one set had artificially manipulated arterial blood pressure (ABP) oscillations; the other group were spontaneous ABP waves. A significant linear relationship was found between wPRx and PRx in both groups, with wPRx providing a more stable result for the spontaneous waves. Although both methods showed similar accuracy in distinguishing intact and impaired CA, it seems that wPRx tends to perform better than PRx, although not significantly so. ABSTRACT: We present a novel method to monitor cerebral autoregulation (CA) using the wavelet transform (WT). The new method is validated against the pressure reactivity index (PRx) in two piglet experiments with controlled hypotension. The first experiment (n = 12) had controlled haemorrhage with artificial stationary arterial blood pressure (ABP) and intracranial pressure (ICP) oscillations induced by sinusoidal slow changes in positive end-expiratory pressure ('PEEP group'). The second experiment (n = 17) had venous balloon inflation during spontaneous, non-stationary ABP and ICP oscillations ('non-PEEP group'). The wavelet transform phase shift (WTP) between ABP and ICP was calculated in the frequency range 0.0067-0.05 Hz. Wavelet semblance, the cosine of WTP, was used to make the values comparable to PRx, and the new index was termed wavelet pressure reactivity index (wPRx). The traditional PRx, the running correlation coefficient between ABP and ICP, was calculated. The result showed a significant linear relationship between wPRx and PRx in the PEEP group (R = 0.88) and non-PEEP group (R = 0.56). In the non-PEEP group, wPRx showed better performance than PRx in distinguishing cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) above and below the lower limit of autoregulation (LLA). When CPP was decreased below LLA, wPRx increased from 0.43 ± 0.28 to 0.69 ± 0.12 (P = 0.003) while PRx increased from 0.07 ± 0.21 to 0.27 ± 0.37 (P = 0.04). Moreover, wPRx provided a more stable result than PRx (SD of PRx was 0.40 ± 0.07, and SD of wPRx was 0.28 ± 0.11, P = 0.001). Assessment of CA using wavelet-derived phase shift between ABP and ICP is feasible

Pole dancing for fitness: The physiological and metabolic demand of a 60-minute class

Nicholas, JC, McDonald, KA, Peeling, P, Jackson, B, Dimmock, JA, Alderson, JA, and Donnelly, CJ. Pole dancing for fitness: The physiological and metabolic demand of a 60-minute class. J Strength Cond Res 33(10): 2704–2710, 2019—Little is understood about the acute physiological or metabolic demand of pole dancing classes. As such, the aims of this study were to quantify the demands of a standardized recreational pole dancing class, classifying outcomes according to American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) exercise-intensity guidelines, and to explore differences in physiological and metabolic measures between skill- and routine-based class components. Fourteen advanced-level amateur female pole dancers completed three 60-minute standardized pole dancing classes. In one class, participants were fitted with a portable metabolic analysis unit. Overall, classes were performed at a mean Vo2 of 16.0 ml·kg−1·min−1, total energy cost (EC) of 281.6 kcal (4.7 kcal·min−1), metabolic equivalent (METs) of 4.6, heart rate of 131 b·min−1, rate of perceived exertion (RPE) of 6.3/10, and blood lactate of 3.1 mM. When comparing skill- and routine-based components of the class, EC per minute (4.4 vs. 5.3 kcal·min−1), peak Vo2 (21.5 vs. 29.6 ml·kg−1·min−1), METs (4.3 vs. 5.2), and RPE (7.2 vs. 8.4) were all greater in the routine-based component (p \u3c 0.01), indicating that classes with an increased focus on routine-based training, as compared to skill-based training, may benefit those seeking to exercise at a higher intensity level, resulting in greater caloric expenditure. In accordance with ASCM guidelines, an advanced-level 60-minute pole dancing class can be classified as a moderate-intensity cardiorespiratory exercise; when completed for ≥ 30 minutes, ≥ 5 days per week (total ≥ 150 minutes) satisfies the recommended level of exercise for improved health and cardiorespiratory fitness

Pole dancing for fitness: The physiological and metabolic demand of a 60-minute class

Nicholas, JC, McDonald, KA, Peeling, P, Jackson, B, Dimmock, JA, Alderson, JA, and Donnelly, CJ. Pole dancing for fitness: The physiological and metabolic demand of a 60-minute class. J Strength Cond Res 33(10): 2704–2710, 2019—Little is understood about the acute physiological or metabolic demand of pole dancing classes. As such, the aims of this study were to quantify the demands of a standardized recreational pole dancing class, classifying outcomes according to American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) exercise-intensity guidelines, and to explore differences in physiological and metabolic measures between skill- and routine-based class components. Fourteen advanced-level amateur female pole dancers completed three 60-minute standardized pole dancing classes. In one class, participants were fitted with a portable metabolic analysis unit. Overall, classes were performed at a mean Vo2 of 16.0 ml·kg−1·min−1, total energy cost (EC) of 281.6 kcal (4.7 kcal·min−1), metabolic equivalent (METs) of 4.6, heart rate of 131 b·min−1, rate of perceived exertion (RPE) of 6.3/10, and blood lactate of 3.1 mM. When comparing skill- and routine-based components of the class, EC per minute (4.4 vs. 5.3 kcal·min−1), peak Vo2 (21.5 vs. 29.6 ml·kg−1·min−1), METs (4.3 vs. 5.2), and RPE (7.2 vs. 8.4) were all greater in the routine-based component (p \u3c 0.01), indicating that classes with an increased focus on routine-based training, as compared to skill-based training, may benefit those seeking to exercise at a higher intensity level, resulting in greater caloric expenditure. In accordance with ASCM guidelines, an advanced-level 60-minute pole dancing class can be classified as a moderate-intensity cardiorespiratory exercise; when completed for ≥ 30 minutes, ≥ 5 days per week (total ≥ 150 minutes) satisfies the recommended level of exercise for improved health and cardiorespiratory fitness