Men's experiences of having the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Objectives There is a lack of attention and evidence in the literature regarding Borderline Personality Disorder (hereafter BPD) and men and how the disorder is conceptualised and understood by clinicians’ and researchers’ in relation to men. Thus, this study adds to the limited literature by exploring how men in this study understood the role of physical, emotional and sexual abuse in the development of BPD and questions whether complex trauma in men is being discounted and overshadowed by clinical services assessing risk and danger.DesignSemi-structured interviews were used to collect data that were then analysed qualitatively using IPA.MethodsSix men with a working diagnosis of BPD were interviewed about their experiences of having the diagnosis of BPD. More specifically, this article focuses on their understanding of how they came to develop BPD.Results One of two superordinate themes that emerged from the data is discussed here; ‘You can’t grow up like I did as a kid and grow up normal’. Two corresponding subordinate themes are also explored; ‘It certainly wasn't the Walton’s house mate’ and ‘I thought I was going to die’. ConclusionsThese findings highlight men’s experiences of abuse as a way of understanding the diagnosis as a response to trauma rather than a weakness in personality or defective male position. By understanding BPD in men as an understandable response to abuse then interventions can be developed to acknowledge men’s experiences and develop interventions to facilitate emotional regulation and processing

Validation and Improvement of the Beef Production Sub-index in Ireland for Beef Cattle

End of project reportThe objectives of the following study were to: a. Quantify the effect of sire genetic merit for BCI on: 1. feed intake, growth and carcass traits of progeny managed under bull or steer beef production systems. 2. live animal scores, carcass composition and plasma hormone and metabolite concentrations in their progeny. b. Compare the progeny of : 1. Late-maturing beef with dairy breeds and 2. Charolais (CH), Limousin (LM), Simmental (SM) and Belgian Blue (BB) sires bred to beef suckler dams, for feed intake, blood hormones and metabolites, live animal measurements, carcass traits and carcass value in bull and steer production systems

Towards N=1 Super-Yang-Mills on the Lattice

We consider the lattice regularization of N=1 supersymmetric Yang--Mills theory with Wilson fermions. This formulation breaks supersymmetry at any finite lattice spacing; we discuss how Ward identities can be used to define a supersymmetric continuum limit, which coincides with the point where the gluino becomes massless. As a first step towards the understanding of the zero gluino-mass limit, we present results on the quenched low-lying spectrum of SU(2) N=1 Super-Yang--Mills, at $\beta=2.6$ on a $V=16^3 \times 32$ lattice, in the OZI approximation. Our results, in spite of the quenched and OZI approximations, are in remarkable agreement with theoretical predictions in the supersymmetric theory, for the states with masses which are not expected to get a large contribution from fermion loops.Comment: 25 Latex pages, 5 figure

Merging DNA metabarcoding and ecological network analysis to understand and build resilient terrestrial ecosystems

Summary 1. Significant advances in both mathematical and molecular approaches in ecology offer unprecedented opportunities to describe and understand ecosystem functioning. Ecological networks describe interactions between species, the underlying structure of communities and the function and stability of ecosystems. They provide the ability to assess the robustness of complex ecological communities to species loss, as well as a novel way of guiding restoration. However, empirically quantifying the interactions between entire communities remains a significant challenge. 2. Concomitantly, advances in DNA sequencing technologies are resolving previously intractable questions in functional and taxonomic biodiversity and provide enormous potential to determine hitherto difficult to observe species interactions. Combining DNA metabarcoding approaches with ecological network analysis presents important new opportunities for understanding large-scale ecological and evolutionary processes, as well as providing powerful tools for building ecosystems that are resilient to environmental change. 3. We propose a novel ‘nested tagging’ metabarcoding approach for the rapid construction of large, phylogenetically structured species-interaction networks. Taking tree–insect–parasitoid ecological networks as an illustration, we show how measures of network robustness, constructed using DNA metabarcoding, can be used to determine the consequences of tree species loss within forests, and forest habitat loss within wider landscapes. By determining which species and habitats are important to network integrity, we propose new directions for forest management. 4. Merging metabarcoding with ecological network analysis provides a revolutionary opportunity to construct some of the largest, phylogenetically structured species-interaction networks to date, providing new ways to: (i) monitor biodiversity and ecosystem functioning; (ii) assess the robustness of interacting communities to species loss; and (iii) build ecosystems that are more resilient to environmental change

Layer guided-acoustic plate mode biosensors for monitoring MHC-peptide interactions

The transduction signals from the immobilisation of a class I heavy chain, HLA-A2, on a layer guided acoustic plate mode device, followed by binding of beta(2)-microglobulin and subsequent selective binding of a target peptide are reported