Leaving ideological social groups behind: A Grounded theory of psychological disengagement

Much of the current disengagement literature focuses on the causes of an individual leaving a radical social group with the intention of countering fundamentalism and violent extremism. However, the link between the cause and the decision to disengage is unclear as one cause may facilitate disengagement for one member and not another. Minimal empirical research exists on the individual’s psychological experience of disengagement and the studies that have been done tend to focus on sole ideologies or group types. What is lacking in the field of disengagement is a broader understanding of the core psychological experience across a broad range of ideological social group types. The current research addressed this gap by including participants from a diverse range of ideological social groups, where the criterion that defined these social groups was the member’s identification. The strength of identification to the group was to be sufficiently strong so that members were willing to jeopardise their wellbeing, or that of others, for the benefit of the group’s objectives. The current research sought to further the understanding of psychological disengagement and to construct a theory drawn from the experiences of those who have left ideological social groups. In-depth interviews were conducted with 27 former members of social groups with high levels of entitativity, such as one percent motorcycle clubs, military special operations forces, cults, white supremacy, and fundamental religious or political groups. Utilising a grounded theory methodology and analysis, the discrepancy between group membership and the self-concept was identified as the core theme in the disengagement experience. The grounded theory of psychological disengagement details the process of experiencing a threat relating to the self, identifying a self-concept discrepancy and subsequent methods to reduce this discrepancy, achieving physical disengagement and developing a post-exit identity. The findings demonstrate that participants followed a consistent pattern of moving towards membership reappraisal and disengagement. This process began with a personal threat that was related to, or derived from, the social group, and ended with the reformation of the self as a former member. The group was perceived as inconsistent with the self-concept held by the participant in four domains; (1) competence, (2) virtue, (3) power and (4) significance. The inconsistency and the psychological identification with such a group conflicted with personally held goals and values, and threatened the participants’ psychological integrity. For the participants in the current study, this self-discrepancy was resolved by employing four self-concept management strategies to restore psychological integrity; (1) the forming of an atypical identity, (2) utilising adaptive preferences (3) using justifications and rationalisations, and (4) the making of amends. These self-concept strategies, applied in isolation or in combination, contributed to participants psychologically, as well as physically, disengaging from the group as a means of restoring consistency between their self-concept and social identity. The physical disengagement led to initial feelings of relief over the decision-making process and freedom over the removal of lifestyle restrictions. These positive emotions gave way to feelings of grief over the loss of positive in-group aspects and concerns for the future. A post exit identity was adopted when the group experience was embraced and personal reflections followed a more positive approach. Implications for policy and specific areas where members may benefit from additional support are identified. This research contributes to the current understanding of disengagement, as well as group dependency and ideological attachment from a unique perspective. Directions for future research and implementations of the findings of the current research are discussed

Designated teachers’ experiences of supporting previously looked after children in primary school settings: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study.

The aim of this research was to explore Designated Teachers’ (DTs) experiences of supporting Previously Looked After Children. The purpose of this research was to gain insight into how DTs experience their evolving role in order to better understand how the role can be supported and developed at the individual, school and Local Authority (LA) level to improve outcomes for Previously Looked After Children. The role of the Designated Teacher was established in 2009 to promote the educational achievement of Looked After Children, in maintained schools in England and Wales. In 2018 this statutory requirement was extended to include Previously Looked After Children, who after leaving local authority care, have been adopted, made subject to a Special Guardianship Order, or made subject to a Child Arrangement Order. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with three Designated Teachers working within primary schools. The participants were selected purposefully, ensuring that participants met specific sampling criteria which would allow them to reflect upon their experiences of supporting Previously Looked After Children. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was adopted as the methodological approach and four superordinate themes emerged from the analysis. The DTs explored the idea of working in ‘the overlooked role’ in relation to their working relationships with others. Further to this, the DTs highlighted their role in ‘focusing on the child’, stressing the importance of developing a holistic picture of the child, their needs and required support. In addition, the DTs highlighted the importance of ‘increasing capacity’, detailing the importance of personal and staff development. Finally, the DTs explored the importance of ‘working collaboratively’, indicating the significance of working in partnership with parents and carers. The findings were discussed in relation to the relevant existing literature and practice, with conclusions, limitations and recommendations also presented. The conclusions will be presented to Local Authority staff, including the Educational Psychology Service to offer more nuanced support and guidance to Designated Teachers and the Virtual School

Analysis of the flavonoid component of bioactive New Zealand mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey and the isolation, characterisation and synthesis of an unusual pyrrole

The flavonoid components of New Zealand mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey have been quantified in a series of 31 honeys of varying non-peroxide antibacterial activity to clarify discrepancies between previous studies reported in the literature. Total flavonoid content was 1.16 mg/100 g honey. The principal flavonoids present were pinobanksin, pinocembrin, luteolin and chrysin and together these represented 61% of the total flavonoid content. 1, 2-formyl-5-(2-methoxyphenyl)-pyrrole, which was weakly correlated with the non-peroxide antibacterial activity, was isolated from the flavonoid fraction and separately synthesised. 1 did not display inhibitory activity against Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and thus the origin of the correlation, which is still unknown, is not a direct contribution

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Competency-Based Training Package to Teach Behavior Management Skills to Direct Support Staff

Cooper, Heron and Heward define maintenance as the extent to which a learner continues to perform a target behavior after the intervention has been terminated. Testing for maintenance allows the trainer to see if gains were sustained following the termination of a treatment program. In addition, once it is shown that a learner's skills have remained in the repertoire, assessment of generalization is possible. Previous literature in behavior skills training have assessed maintenance in a variety of settings for a variety of skills. Following maintenance assessments, booster sessions are commonly used to re-train skills that did not maintain at criterion levels. The current project assessed the maintenance of caregivers' skills following a training package used to teach three behavior management techniques (use reinforcement, pivot, protect-redirect) at a large, residential care facility. Procedures were developed to assess caregivers' maintenance of the three behavior management techniques using a pre-test- post-test design. If needed, skills were re-established using 5-20 minute booster sessions. The results showed that time between post-test and maintenance did not seem to have a strong effect on maintenance scores. In general, post-test scores were somewhat indicative of maintenance scores, and patterns were most apparent across tools

On the Semantics of Snapshot Isolation

Snapshot isolation (SI) is a standard transactional consistency model used in databases, distributed systems and software transactional memory (STM). Its semantics is formally defined both declaratively as an acyclicity axiom, and operationally as a concurrent algorithm with memory bearing timestamps. We develop two simpler equivalent operational definitions of SI as lock-based reference implementations that do not use timestamps. Our first locking implementation is prescient in that requires a priori knowledge of the data accessed by a transaction and carries out transactional writes eagerly (in-place). Our second implementation is non-prescient and performs transactional writes lazily by recording them in a local log and propagating them to memory at commit time. Whilst our first implementation is simpler and may be better suited for developing a program logic for SI transactions, our second implementation is more practical due to its non-prescience. We show that both implementations are sound and complete against the declarative SI specification and thus yield equivalent operational definitions for SI. We further consider, for the first time formally, the use of SI in a context with racy non-transactional accesses, as can arise in STM implementations of SI. We introduce robust snapshot isolation (RSI), an adaptation of SI with similar semantics and guarantees in this mixed setting. We present a declarative specification of RSI as an acyclicity axiom and analogously develop two operational models as lock-based reference implementations (one eager, one lazy). We show that these operational models are both sound and complete against the declarative RSI model

Increased uptake and new therapies are needed to avert rising hepatitis C-related end stage liver disease in England: modelling the predicted impact of treatment under different scenarios.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Hepatitis C (HCV) related disease in England is predicted to rise, and it is unclear whether treatment at current levels will be able to avert this. The aim of this study was to estimate the number of people with chronic HCV infection in England that are treated and assess the impact and costs of increasing treatment uptake. METHODS: Numbers treated were estimated using national data sources for pegylated interferon supplied, dispensed, or purchased from 2006 to 2011. A back-calculation approach was used to project disease burden over the next 30 years and determine outcomes under various scenarios of treatment uptake. RESULTS: 5000 patients were estimated to have been treated in 2011 and 28,000 in total from 2006 to 2011; approximately 3.1% and 17% respectively of estimated chronic infections. Without treatment, incident cases of decompensated cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma were predicted to increase until 2035 and reach 2290 cases per year. Treatment at current levels should reduce incidence by 600 cases per year, with a peak around 2030. Large increases in treatment are needed to halt the rise; and with more effective treatment the best case scenario predicts incidence of around 500 cases in 2030, although treatment uptake must still be increased considerably to achieve this. CONCLUSIONS: If the infected population is left untreated, the number of patients with severe HCV-related disease will continue to increase and represent a substantial future burden on healthcare resources. This can be mitigated by increasing treatment uptake, which will have the greatest impact if implemented quickly

Fluorescent IGF-II analogues for FRET-based investigations into the binding of IGF-II to the IGF-1R

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. Material from this article can be used in other publications provided that the correct acknowledgement is given with the reproduced material.The interaction of IGF-II with the insulin receptor (IR) and type 1 insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R) has recently been identified as potential therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer. Understanding the interactions of IGF-II with these receptors is required for the development of potential anticancer therapeutics. This work describes an efficient convergent synthesis of native IGF-II and two nonnative IGF-II analogues with coumarin fluorescent probes incorporated at residues 19 and 28. These fluorescent analogues bind with nanomolar affinities to the IGF-1R and are suitable for use in fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) studies. From these studies the F19Cou IGF-II and F28Cou IGF-II proteins were identified as good probes for investigating the binding interactions of IGF-II with the IGF-1R and its other high affinity binding partners

The Anthelmintic Activity of Praziquantel Analogs Correlates with Structure-Activity Relationships at TRPMPZQ Orthologs.

The anthelmintic drug praziquantel remains a key clinical therapy for treating various diseases caused by parasitic flatworms. The parasite target of praziquantel has remained undefined despite longstanding usage in the clinic, although a candidate ion channel target, named TRPMPZQ, has recently been identified. Intriguingly, certain praziquantel derivatives show different activities against different parasites: for example, some praziquantel analogs are considerably more active against cestodes than against schistosomes. Here we interrogate whether the different activities of praziquantel analogs against different parasites are also reflected by unique structure-activity relationships at the TRPMPZQ channels found in these different organisms. To do this, several praziquantel analogs were synthesized and functionally profiled against schistosome and cestode TRPMPZQ channels. Data demonstrate that structure-activity relationships are closely mirrored between parasites and their TRPMPZQ orthologs, providing further support for TRPMPZQ as the therapeutically relevant target of praziquantel

The Causal Relationship between Patent Growth and Growth of GDP with Quarterly Data in the G7 Countries: Cointegration, ARDL and Error Correction Models

This empirical study investigates the dynamic link between patent growth and GDP growth in G7 economies. ARDL model showed that there exist positive relationship in long run between quarterly growth of patents and quarterly GDP growth. The error correction term suggests that 20,6 percent of the adjustment back to long run equilibrium of industrial production in G7 countries is corrected by 20,6% a year, following a shock like the one in 1974 , which in our study is controlled by a dummy variable D74. In the short run however at one or two lags there exist negative relationship between quarterly patents growth and quarterly growth of GDP. Johansen’s procedure for cointegration showed that long run multipliers are positive between the patent growth and GDP growth in G7 economies. Granger causality test showed that patent growth Granger cause GDP growth in G7 countries. Unrestricted VAR showed that there exists positive relationship between patent growth and GDP growth at two or three lags

Measurement of red blood cell eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) levels in a randomised trial of EPA in patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases

We investigated red blood cell (RBC) PUFA profiles, and the predictive value of RBC EPA content for tumour EPA exposure and clinical outcomes, in the EMT study, a randomised trial of EPA in patients awaiting colorectal cancer (CRC) liver metastasis surgery (Cockbain et al., 2014). There was a significant increase in RBC EPA in the EPA group (n=43; median intervention 30 days; mean absolute 1.26 [±0.14]% increase; P<0.001), but not in the placebo arm (n=45). EPA incorporation varied widely in EPA users and was not explained by treatment duration or compliance. There was little evidence of ‘contamination’ in the placebo group. The EPA level predicted tumour EPA content (r=0.36; P=0.03). Participants with post-treatment EPA ≥1.22% (n=49) had improved OS compared with EPA <1.22% (n=29; HR 0.42[95%CI 0.16–0.95]). RBC EPA content should be evaluated as a biomarker of tumour exposure and clinical outcomes in future EPA trials in CRC patients