An exploratory study of the attitudes and perceptions of correctional officers towards their role in contributing to the offender rehabilitation at Pollsmoor Prison, in Cape Town.

Thesis (M.A.)- University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.Crime in the developing South African context presents a major sociopolitical challenge that goes beyond offender rehabilitation. Correctional services based rehabilitation programmes however represent an important component of a multi-dimensional strategy for impacting on crime and recidivism. Reports of the Correctional Service Department highlight the lack of resources and specialised personnel needed for rehabilitation programme delivery. The rehabilitation needs of the growing offender population are not being met and the need for personnel to facilitate the process is critical. The aim of this study was to explore the attitudes and perceptions of correctional officers towards their role in contributing to the offender rehabilitation process. The aims and objectives were to assess the self reported abilities, potential and willingness of these correctional officers towards contributing to the offender rehabilitation process. In part, this study hopes that the Department of Correctional Services might take note of the attitude and perceptions of these correctional officers concerning their role in rehabilitating offenders in order to construct an appropriate role for them in the rehabilitation process. The sample consisted of 117 correctional officers, 81 males and 36 females, of different age, sex, race, ranks, level of education and length of service. A questionnaire was designed, made up of rating scales to measure knowledge of rehabilitation models and services, attitudes and perceptions towards contributing to offender rehabilitation process and perceptions of personal and prison environment conditions. Even though the results show that correctional officers have a limited understanding and knowledge of the principles of the Programme-Developed Model of offender rehabilitation, they perceived offender rehabilitation within the framework of this model as a growth and development programme that will benefit offenders to cope with their life stresses. It is difficult however to tease out whether they have changed from a conceptually punitive to a rehabilitative way of conceptualising, relating to and treating the offenders. More research in this topic might clarify the attitude and perception of correctional officers towards offender rehabilitation because this will in part lay the basis for the success of the rehabilitation process. Better-educated correctional officers perceive themselves as motivated, skillful and willing to be trained further in order to partake in offender rehabilitation processes. Correctional officers perceived social work and education and training rehabilitation services as more useful and would like to do further training in these services in order to contribute towards facilitating offender rehabilitation programmes. Important differences in respect of gender, level of education and length of service were found which qualify this general finding. Stress, burnout and environmental conditions were found to impact negatively on correctional service officers' willingness and capacity to contribute to the rehabilitation process. Female correctional officers appear to experience prison conditions more negatively compared to males. These findings are discussed in terms of developing recommendations for the effective and rational use of correctional service officers as skilled members of a rehabilitation orientated team of professionals

Hateful Messages: A Conversational Data Set of Hate Speech produced by Adolescents on Discord

With the rise of social media, a rise of hateful content can be observed. Even though the understanding and definitions of hate speech varies, platforms, communities, and legislature all acknowledge the problem. Therefore, adolescents are a new and active group of social media users. The majority of adolescents experience or witness online hate speech. Research in the field of automated hate speech classification has been on the rise and focuses on aspects such as bias, generalizability, and performance. To increase generalizability and performance, it is important to understand biases within the data. This research addresses the bias of youth language within hate speech classification and contributes by providing a modern and anonymized hate speech youth language data set consisting of 88.395 annotated chat messages. The data set consists of publicly available online messages from the chat platform Discord. ~6,42% of the messages were classified by a self-developed annotation schema as hate speech. For 35.553 messages, the user profiles provided age annotations setting the average author age to under 20 years old

Vascular basis of mucosal color

BACKGROUND: Besides the color of the teeth the color of the alveolar gingiva plays a crucial role in esthetic rehabilitation in dento-alveolar treatment. Whereas nowadays the color of the teeth can be determined exactly and individually, the specific influence of the red color of the gingiva on treatment has not been assessed yet. The aim of this study was to evaluate the vascularization as the basis for gingival esthetics. METHODS: Standardized photographs of defined areas of the alveolar gingiva in operated and non-operated patients were taken and assigned to groups with same characteristics after color comparisons. In addition, histologic and immunohistologic analyses of gingival specimens were performed for qualitative and quantitative assessment of vessels and vascularization. Finally, colors and number of vessels were correlated. RESULTS: Our results demonstrated three different constellations of colors of the alveolar gingiva in healthy patients. The operated patients could not be grouped because of disparate depiction. There was a clear correlation between color and vessel number in the alveolar gingiva. CONCLUSION: Our investigations revealed the connections between vascularization and gingival color. Recommendations for specific change or even selection of colors based on the results cannot be given, but the importance of vascularly based incision lines was demonstrated

O negro na construção da identidade nacional: auto e heteroimagens no romance abolicionista cubano e brasileiro

Die vorliegende Arbeit nahm sich vor, das Bild des Afroamerikaners in jeweils zwei kubanischen und brasilianischen Romanen des 19. Jahrhunderts zu analysieren: El negro Francisco, Cecilia Valdés, A escrava Isaura und O mulato. Das Hauptziel war es, zu untersuchen, wie das Bild des Afroabstammenden von den Autoren angeeignet und instrumentalisiert wurde, um Veränderungen in ihren Gesellschaften zu erzielen. Darüber hinaus, versuchte man darzustellen, wie der Afroamerikaner und seine Kultur aus dem kubanischen und brasilianischen nationalen Projekt ausgeschlossen wurden. Zunächst wurden die Haupttheorien über die Konstruktion von Auto- und Heterostereotypen vorgestellt und auf die Relevanz der Stereotypenbildung im kolonialen Kontext hingewiesen. Daraufhin wurde der historische Kontext der Sklaverei und der Abolition in Kuba und in Brasilien dargelegt. Auf diese Basis wurden die Werke analysiert. Im letzten Kapitel wurde auf die Resultate der Fragestellungen eingegangen, die die vorliegende Arbeit geleitet haben. Solche wie: Welche Bilder der Weißen und der Schwarzen wurden in den Werken kreiert? Wie positioniert sich der Autor bezüglich der Abolition und der Vermischung der Ethnien? Welche Bedeutung hatten die ethnischen Diskurse im kubanischen und brasilianischen kollektiven Gedächtnis des 19. Jahrhunderts? Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass das Bild des Afroamerikaners in den Romanen verwendet wurde, um die Zukunft der eigenen Nation zu projizieren, von der der Schwarze nur ein Teil werden könnte, wenn er die weiße Kultur und Hautfarbe annehmen würde, das heißt, wenn er sich dem Prozess eines physischen und kulturellen „branqueamento“ unterziehen würde. Die abolitionistische Narrative, auch wenn sie nach außen hin dem Schwarzen zu verteidigen scheint, trug in Wahrheit zur Fixierung und Perpetuierung der ethnischen Stereotype bei, die die Schwarzen in den marginalen Sphären der Gesellschaft verewigten und die Macht in den Händen der Weißen konsolidierten

A REPRESENTAÇÃO DO NEGRO NA LITERATURA OITOCENTISTA BRASILEIRA À LUZ DO PÓS-COLONIALISMO

Abstract: The colonization of the American Continent had innumerous consequences to the development of the global capitalist system we have today. The racial ranking/classification was one of them. During the colonial period, the Whites established themselves as the model of culture and civilization, while different cultures were rejected. In order to legitimize the colonization and the slavery system, the colonizer fabricated the image of the Indian and the Negro as inferior. According to the postcolonial theory, the literary productions were an important ally in the construction process of the Other. Starting from this proposition, we intend, with this paper, to present and analyze the representations of the Negro in the Brazilian literature of the nineteenth century. Keywords: Racial stereotypes; Brazilian Literature of the nineteenth century; Postcolonial theory.         Resumo: A colonização do continente americano teve inúmeras consequências para o desenvolvimento do atual sistema capitalista global. A hierarquização racial foi uma delas. Durante o período colonial, o branco se firmou como exemplo de cultura e civilização enquanto culturas divergentes foram rechaçadas. A fim de legitimar a colonização e o sistema escravagista, o colonizador fabricou a imagem do índio e do negro como inferior. Segundo a teoria pós-colonial, as produções literárias foram uma importante aliada no processo de construção do Outro. Partindo dessa premissa, o presente artigo propõe-se expor e analisar as representações do negro na literatura brasileira do século XIX. Palavras-chave: Estereótipos raciais; Literatura brasileira do século XIX; Teoria pós-colonial.

Perioperative complications in infant cleft repair

BACKGROUND: Cleft surgery in infants includes special risks due to the kind of the malformation. These risks can be attributed in part to the age and the weight of the patient. Whereas a lot of studies investigated the long-term facial outcome of cleft surgery depending on the age at operation, less is known about the complications arising during a cleft surgery in early infancy. METHODS: We investigated the incidence and severity of perioperative complications in 174 infants undergoing primary cleft surgery. The severity and the complications were recorded during the intraoperative and the early postoperative period according to the classification by Cohen. RESULTS: Our study revealed that minor complications occurred in 50 patients. Severe complications were observed during 13 operations. There was no fatal complication in the perioperative period. The risk of complications was found to be directly correlated to the body weight at the time of the surgery. Most of the problems appeared intraoperatively, but they were also followed by complications immediately after the extubation. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, cleft surgery in infancy is accompanied by frequent and sometimes severe perioperative complications that may be attributed to this special surgical field

O tempo médio entre o nascimento e a primeira mamada: o ideal e o real

Em 1992 o Brasil adotou a Iniciativa Hospital Amigo da Criança (IHAC) como estratégia para aumentar os índices de aleitamento materno. Este estudo se delimita no 4o Passo desse programa. Os objetivos foram determinar o tempo médio entre o nascimento e a primeira mamada e verificar a sua relação com o tipo de parto. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo com abordagem quantitativa realizado no Instituto Fernandes Figueira (IFF). Foram entrevistadas 50 mulheres internadas com seus bebês em alojamento conjunto no período de março a maio de 2007. Os dados foram analisados pelo programa Epi-Info 3.4 de 2007. O tempo médio entre o nascimento e a primeira mamada dos partos cesáreos foi 6:29h, quanto ao parto vaginal, foi 1:55h. Os resultados encontrados vão contra a recomendação da IHAC

The Higgs as a Portal to Plasmon-like Unparticle Excitations

12 LaTeX pages, 2 figures.-- Published in: JHEP04(2008)028.-- Final full-text version available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1126-6708/2008/04/028.A renormalizable coupling between the Higgs and a scalar unparticle operator O_U of non-integer dimension d_U<2 triggers, after electroweak symmetry breaking, an infrared divergent vacuum expectation value for O_U. Such IR divergence should be tamed before any phenomenological implications of the Higgs-unparticle interplay can be drawn. In this paper we present a novel mechanism to cure that IR divergence through (scale-invariant) unparticle self-interactions, which has properties qualitatively different from the mechanism considered previously. Besides finding a mass gap in the unparticle continuum we also find an unparticle pole reminiscent of a plasmon resonance. Such unparticle features could be explored experimentally through their mixing with the Higgs boson.Work supported in part by the European Commission under the European Union through the Marie Curie Research and Training Networks “Quest for Unification” (MRTN-CT- 2004-503369) and “UniverseNet” (MRTN-CT-2006-035863); by the Spanish Consolider- Ingenio 2010 Programme CPAN (CSD2007-0042); by a Comunidad de Madrid project (P-ESP-00346) and by CICYT, Spain, under contracts FPA 2007-60252 and FPA 2005-02211

HIF1-alpha overexpression indicates a good prognosis in early stage squamous cell carcinomas of the oral floor

BACKGROUND: Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) is a transcription factor, which plays a central role in biologic processes under hypoxic conditions, especially concerning tumour angiogenesis. HIF-1α is the relevant, oxygen-dependent subunit and its overexpression has been associated with a poor prognosis in a variety of malignant tumours. Therefore, HIF-1α expression in early stage oral carcinomas was evaluated in relation to established clinico-pathological features in order to determine its value as a prognostic marker. METHODS: 85 patients with histologically proven surgically treated T1/2 squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the oral floor were eligible for the study. Tumor specimens were investigated by means of tissue micro arrays (TMAs) and immunohistochemistry for the expression of HIF-1. Correlations between clinical features and the expression of HIF-1 were evaluated by Kaplan-Meier curves, log-rank tests and multivariate Cox regression analysis. RESULTS: HIF-1α was frequently overexpressed in a probably non-hypoxia related fashion. The expression of HIF-1α was related with a significantly improved 5-year survival rate (p < 0.01) and a significantly increased disease free period (p = 0.01) independent from nodal status and tumour size. In primary node negative T1/T2 SCC of the oral floor, absence of HIF-1α expression specified a subgroup of high-risk patients (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: HIF-1α overexpression is an indicator of favourable prognosis in T1 and T2 SCC of the oral floor. Node negative patients lacking HIF-1α expression may therefore be considered for adjuvant radiotherapy