Key lessons from the RESET programme: Recommendations for the resettlement of young offenders

Reoffending rates for young offenders released from custody are high. Of approximately 6000 young people sentenced to custody each year, between 70% and 90% will reoffend within 12 months. Effective resettlement is vital to achieving better outcomes. RESET was a major experimental project led by Catch 22 and funded by European Equal, designed to improve outcomes. This executive briefing summarises the findings from the evaluation of RESET by CSR-Salford and ARCS UK. It explores lessons for mainstream resettlement support, making key recommendations about: coordinating resources and staff, making local partnerships, preparing young people for release, and communication and information flow between custody and community. It concludes that successful resettlement crucially requires: (1) widespread partnership coordination to address offenders' multiple needs; and (2) effective cooperation between custodial institutions and community agencies to ensure preparedness for release

The portrayal of women in online and print advertising

Advertising and the media have a significant and influential role in society, because we want to know what is going on around us and they set the agenda for this. Advertisements tell people what to buy, what to look like, and what to desire. Images are used to grab the attention of the potential market. Advertisers often use women for this, and in doing so exploit and demean women’s rights. Consumers are exposed to these negative portrayals of women continuously due to smart phones, social media platforms, and outdoor advertisements, as well as the traditional forms of media. This study investigates a particular group of sexist image adverts, from the years 2007 to 2017, in order to identify what form of sexism is present, documenting trends that occur along the way. A second source of research is in the form of a focus group to gather opinions from a third party regarding the depiction of women, including how/ if this depiction has changed since the 1960s. The 1960s was chosen as a comparative decade as this was the time when the degree of women’s rights was argued, leading to the emergence of the second wave of Feminism. It was found that the female depiction had altered to a different form of sexism, but had not progressed significantly, and did not reflect a modern societal attitude. Throughout the research, the impact advertising has on men, and how women are used to market to a male audience is considered

A psychology based approach for longitudinal development in cognitive robotics.

A major challenge in robotics is the ability to learn, from novel experiences, new behavior that is useful for achieving new goals and skills. Autonomous systems must be able to learn solely through the environment, thus ruling out a priori task knowledge, tuning, extensive training, or other forms of pre-programming. Learning must also be cumulative and incremental, as complex skills are built on top of primitive skills. Additionally, it must be driven by intrinsic motivation because formative experience is gained through autonomous activity, even in the absence of extrinsic goals or tasks. This paper presents an approach to these issues through robotic implementations inspired by the learning behavior of human infants. We describe an approach to developmental learning and present results from a demonstration of longitudinal development on an iCub humanoid robot. The results cover the rapid emergence of staged behavior, the role of constraints in development, the effect of bootstrapping between stages, and the use of a schema memory of experiential fragments in learning new skills. The context is a longitudinal experiment in which the robot advanced from uncontrolled motor babbling to skilled hand/eye integrated reaching and basic manipulation of objects. This approach offers promise for further fast and effective sensory-motor learning techniques for robotic learning

Learning and mutuality in municipal partnerships and beyond: a focus on northern partners

North–South municipal partnerships that are based on practitioner-to-practitioner collaboration are explicitly concerned with joint learning and knowledge production for more effective practice. Such partnerships assume a principle of mutuality – northern and southern partners are both assumed to gain from them, whether in similar or different ways. Research suggests that the processes of learning and knowledge production in North–South municipal partnerships pose challenges to mutuality both as a value and as an incentive. However, research has frequently focused on the challenges of learning by the southern partner(s) and, while recognising its importance, less analysis or reflection has been done on northern learning. However, if there are to be effective and sustainable partnerships, the investigation and promotion of northern learning is also required, as well as greater understanding of the action learning spaces in which it occurs. This article examines two partnerships in UK and Uganda, and the processes of learning and related institutional development for the northern partners. The article considers how peer exchange and learning can extend beyond the initial boundaries of cooperation, and suggests how research on mutuality and social learning can be further progressed from an institutional standpoint

On internal wave breaking and tidal dissipation near the centre of a solar-type star

We study the fate of internal gravity waves, which are excited by tidal forcing by a short-period planet at the interface of convection and radiation zones, approaching the centre of a solar-type star. We study at what amplitude these wave are subject to instabilities. These instabilities lead to wave breaking whenever the amplitude exceeds a critical value. Below this value, the wave reflects perfectly from the centre of the star. Wave breaking results in spinning up the central regions of the star, and the formation of a critical layer, which acts as an absorbing barrier for ingoing waves. As these waves are absorbed, the star is spun up from the inside out. This results in an important amplitude dependence of the tidal quality factor Q'. If the tidal forcing amplitude exceeds the value required for wave breaking, efficient dissipation results over a continuous range of tidal frequencies, leading to Q' \approx 10^5 (P/1day)^(8/3), for the current Sun. This varies by less than a factor of 5 throughout the range of G and K type main sequence stars, for a given orbit. We predict fewer giant planets with orbital periods of less than about 2 days around such stars, if they cause breaking at the centre, due to the efficiency of this process. This mechanism would, however, be ineffective in stars with a convective core, such as WASP-18, WASP-12 and OGLE-TR-56, perhaps partly explaining the survival of their close planetary companions.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, accepted in MNRAS, abstract shortened (!

Far from just a poke : Common painful needle procedures and the development of needle fear

Background: Vaccine injections are the most common painful needle procedure experienced throughout the lifespan. Many strategies are available to mitigate this pain; however, they are uncommonly utilized, leading to unnecessary pain and suffering. Some individuals develop a high level of fear and subsequent needle procedures are associated with significant distress. Objective: The present work is part of an update and expansion of a 2009 knowledge synthesis to include the management of vaccinerelated pain across the lifespan and the treatment of individuals with high levels of needle fear. This article will provide a conceptual foundation for understanding: (a) painful procedures and their role in the development and maintenance of high levels of fear; (b) treatment strategies for preventing or reducing the experience of pain and the development of fear; and (c) interventions for mitigating high levels of fear once they are established. Results: First, the general definitions, lifespan development and functionality, needle procedure-related considerations, and assessment of the following constructs are provided: pain, fear, anxiety, phobia, distress, and vasovagal syncope. Second, the importance of unmitigated pain from needle procedures is highlighted from a developmental perspective. Third, the prevalence, course, etiology, and consequences of high levels of needle fear are described. Finally, the management of needle-related pain and fear are outlined to provide an introduction to the series of systematic reviews in this issue. Discussion: Through the body of work in this supplement, the authors aim to provide guidance in how to treat vaccination-related pain and its sequelae, including high levels of needle fear

Comprehensive Biotransformation Analysis of Phenylalanine-Tyrosine Metabolism Reveals Alternative Routes of Metabolite Clearance in Nitisinone-Treated Alkaptonuria

Metabolomic analyses in alkaptonuria (AKU) have recently revealed alternative pathways in phenylalanine-tyrosine (phe-tyr) metabolism from biotransformation of homogentisic acid (HGA), the active molecule in this disease. The aim of this research was to study the phe-tyr metabolic pathway and whether the metabolites upstream of HGA, increased in nitisinone-treated patients, also undergo phase 1 and 2 biotransformation reactions. Metabolomic analyses were performed on serum and urine from patients partaking in the SONIA 2 phase 3 international randomised-controlled trial of nitisinone in AKU (EudraCT no. 2013-001633-41). Serum and urine samples were taken from the same patients at baseline (pre-nitisinone) then at 24 and 48 months on nitisinone treatment (patients N = 47 serum; 53 urine) or no treatment (patients N = 45 serum; 50 urine). Targeted feature extraction was performed to specifically mine data for the entire complement of theoretically predicted phase 1 and 2 biotransformation products derived from phenylalanine, tyrosine, 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid and 4-hydroxyphenyllactic acid, in addition to phenylalanine-derived metabolites with known increases in phenylketonuria. In total, we observed 13 phase 1 and 2 biotransformation products from phenylalanine through to HGA. Each of these products were observed in urine and two were detected in serum. The derivatives of the metabolites upstream of HGA were markedly increased in urine of nitisinone-treated patients (fold change 1.2–16.2) and increases in 12 of these compounds were directly proportional to the degree of nitisinone-induced hypertyrosinaemia (correlation coefficient with serum tyrosine = 0.2–0.7). Increases in the urinary phenylalanine metabolites were also observed across consecutive visits in the treated group. Nitisinone treatment results in marked increases in a wider network of phe-tyr metabolites than shown before. This network comprises alternative biotransformation products from the major metabolites of this pathway, produced by reactions including hydration (phase 1) and bioconjugation (phase 2) of acetyl, methyl, acetylcysteine, glucuronide, glycine and sulfate groups. We propose that these alternative routes of phe-tyr metabolism, predominantly in urine, minimise tyrosinaemia as well as phenylalanaemia

The Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar Flares (GRIPS)

The balloon-borne Gamma-Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar flares (GRIPS) instrument will provide a near-optimal combination of high-resolution imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry of solar-flare gamma-ray/hard X-ray emissions from approximately 20 keV to greater than approximately 10 MeV. GRIPS will address questions raised by recent solar flare observations regarding particle acceleration and energy release, such as: What causes the spatial separation between energetic electrons producing hard X-rays and energetic ions producing gamma-ray lines? How anisotropic are the relativistic electrons, and why can they dominate in the corona? How do the compositions of accelerated and ambient material vary with space and time, and why? The spectrometer/polarimeter consists of sixteen 3D position-sensitive germanium detectors (3D-GeDs), where each energy deposition is individually recorded with an energy resolution of a few keV FWHM and a spatial resolution of less than 0.1 cubic millimeter. Imaging is accomplished by a single multi-pitch rotating modulator (MPRM), a 2.5-centimeter thick tungsten alloy slit/slat grid with pitches that range quasi-continuously from 1 to 13 millimeters. The MPRM is situated 8 meters from the spectrometer to provide excellent image quality and unparalleled angular resolution at gamma-ray energies (12.5 arcsec FWHM), sufficient to separate 2.2 MeV footpoint sources for almost all flares. Polarimetry is accomplished by analyzing the anisotropy of reconstructed Compton scattering in the 3D-GeDs (i.e., as an active scatterer), with an estimated minimum detectable polarization of a few percent at 150-650 keV in an X-class flare. GRIPS is scheduled for a continental-US engineering test flight in fall 2013, followed by long or ultra-long duration balloon flights in Antarctica