Healthier prisons: The role of a prison visitors' centre

Since the inception of the prison as a ‘setting’ for health promotion, there has been a focus on how the health of those men and women who spend ‘time inside’ can at least be maintained and if possible, enhanced, during their prison sentence. This paper presents findings from a mainly qualitative evaluation of a prison visitors' centre in the UK. It reports experiences of prisoners' families, prisoners, prison staff, the local community and the ways in which the visitors' centre has contributed positively to their health and well-being. In addition, key stakeholders were interviewed to ascertain the role this visitors' centre has in policy frameworks related to re-offending. The findings from this evaluation underscore how the visitors' centre improved the quality of visits, and contributed towards the maintenance of family ties through the help and support it provides for families and prisoners. The paper concludes by suggesting that visitors' centres are an essential part of a modern prison service helping to address the government's health inequalities agenda

Storm-time meridional flows: a comparison of CINDI observations and model results

During a large geomagnetic storm, the electric field from the polar ionosphere can expand far enough to affect the mid-latitude and equatorial electric fields. These changes in the equatorial zonal electric field, called the penetration field, will cause changes in the meridional ion flows that can be observed by radars and spacecraft. In general this E × B ion flow near the equator caused by the penetration field during undershielding conditions will be upward on the dayside and downward on the nightside of the Earth. Previous analysis of the equatorial meridional flows observed by CINDI instrument on the C/NOFS spacecraft during the 26 September 2011 storm showed that all of the response flows on the dayside were excess downward flows instead of the expected upward flows. These observed storm-time responses are compared to a prediction from a physics-based coupled model of thermosphere–ionosphere–inner-magnetosphere in an effort to explain these observations. The model results suggest that the equatorial downward flow could be attributed to a combined effect of the overshielding and disturbance dynamo processes. However, some discrepancy between the model and observation indicates a need for improving our understanding of how sensitive the equatorial electric field is to various model input parameters that describe the magnetosphere–ionosphere coupling processes

The significance of 'the visit' in an English category-B prison: Views from prisoners, prisoners' families and prison staff

A number of claims have been made regarding the importance of prisoners staying in touch with their family through prison visits, firstly from a humanitarian perspective of enabling family members to see each other, but also regarding the impact of maintaining family ties for successful rehabilitation, reintegration into society and reduced re-offending. This growing evidence base has resulted in increased support by the Prison Service for encouraging the family unit to remain intact during a prisoner’s incarceration. Despite its importance however, there has been a distinct lack of research examining the dynamics of families visiting relatives in prison. This paper explores perceptions of the same event – the visit – from the families’, prisoners’ and prison staffs' viewpoints in a category-B local prison in England. Qualitative data was collected with 30 prisoners’ families, 16 prisoners and 14 prison staff, as part of a broader evaluation of the visitors’ centre. The findings suggest that the three parties frame their perspective of visiting very differently. Prisoners’ families often see visits as an emotional minefield fraught with practical difficulties. Prisoners can view the visit as the highlight of their time in prison and often have many complaints about how visits are handled. Finally, prison staff see visits as potential security breaches and a major organisational operation. The paper addresses the current gap in our understanding of the prison visit and has implications for the Prison Service and wider social policy

Estimation of changes in the force of infection for intestinal and urogenital schistosomiasis in countries with Schistosomiasis Control Initiative-assisted programmes

The last decade has seen an expansion of national schistosomiasis control programmes in Africa based on large-scale preventative chemotherapy. In many areas this has resulted in considerable reductions in infection and morbidity levels in treated individuals. In this paper, we quantify changes in the force of infection (FOI), defined here as the per (human) host parasite establishment rate, to ascertain the impact on transmission of some of these programmes under the umbrella of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)

Producer Nutritional Quality Controls Ecosystem Trophic Structure

Trophic structure, or the distribution of biomass among producers and consumers, determines key ecosystem values, such as the abundance of infectious, harvestable or conservation target species, and the storage and cycling of carbon and nutrients. There has been much debate on what controls ecosystem trophic structure, yet the answer is still elusive. Here we show that the nutritional quality of primary producers controls the trophic structure of ecosystems. By increasing the efficiency of trophic transfer, higher producer nutritional quality results in steeper ecosystem trophic structure, and those changes are more pronounced in terrestrial than in aquatic ecosystems probably due to the more stringent nutritional limitation of terrestrial herbivores. These results explain why ecosystems composed of highly nutritional primary producers feature high consumer productivity, fast energy recycling, and reduced carbon accumulation. Anthropogenic changes in producer nutritional quality, via changes in trophic structure, may alter the values and functions of ecosystems, and those alterations may be more important in terrestrial ecosystems

Emergent global patterns of ecosystem structure and function from a mechanistic general ecosystem model

Anthropogenic activities are causing widespread degradation of ecosystems worldwide, threatening the ecosystem services upon which all human life depends. Improved understanding of this degradation is urgently needed to improve avoidance and mitigation measures. One tool to assist these efforts is predictive models of ecosystem structure and function that are mechanistic: based on fundamental ecological principles. Here we present the first mechanistic General Ecosystem Model (GEM) of ecosystem structure and function that is both global and applies in all terrestrial and marine environments. Functional forms and parameter values were derived from the theoretical and empirical literature where possible. Simulations of the fate of all organisms with body masses between 10 µg and 150,000 kg (a range of 14 orders of magnitude) across the globe led to emergent properties at individual (e.g., growth rate), community (e.g., biomass turnover rates), ecosystem (e.g., trophic pyramids), and macroecological scales (e.g., global patterns of trophic structure) that are in general agreement with current data and theory. These properties emerged from our encoding of the biology of, and interactions among, individual organisms without any direct constraints on the properties themselves. Our results indicate that ecologists have gathered sufficient information to begin to build realistic, global, and mechanistic models of ecosystems, capable of predicting a diverse range of ecosystem properties and their response to human pressures

Timing of embryonic quiescence determines viability of embryos from the calanoid copepod, Acartia tonsa (Dana)

<div><p>Like 41 other calanoid copepods, <i>Acartia tonsa</i>, are capable of inducing embryonic quiescence when experiencing unfavorable environmental conditions. The ecdysone-signaling cascade is known to have a key function in developmental processes like embryogenesis and molting of arthropods, including copepods. We examined the role of <i>ecdysteroid-phosphate phosphatase</i> (<i>EPPase</i>), <i>ecdysone receptor</i> (<i>EcR</i>), <i>ß fushi tarazu transcription factor 1</i> (<i>ßFTZ-F1</i>), and the <i>ecdysteroid-regulated early gene E74</i> (<i>E74</i>), which represent different levels of the ecdysone-signaling cascade in our calanoid model organism. Progression of embryogenesis was monitored and hatching success determined to evaluate viability. Embryos that were induced quiescence before the gastrulation stage would stay in gastrulation during the rest of quiescence and exhibited a slower pace of hatching as compared to subitaneous embryos. In contrast, embryos developed further than gastrulation would stay in gastrulation or later stages during quiescence and showed a rapid pace in hatching after quiescence termination. Expression patterns suggested two peaks of the biological active ecdysteroids, 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E). The first peak of 20E was expressed in concert with the beginning of embryogenesis originating from yolk-conjugated ecdysteroids, based on <i>EPPase</i> expression. The second peak is suggested to originate from <i>de novo</i> synthesized 20E around the limb bud stage. During quiescence, the expression patterns of <i>EPPase</i>, <i>EcR</i>, <i>ßFTZ-F1</i>, and <i>E74</i> were either decreasing or not changing over time. This suggests that the ecdysone-signaling pathway play a key role in the subitaneous development of <i>A</i>. <i>tonsa</i> embryogenesis, but not during quiescence. The observation is of profound ecological and practical relevance for the dynamics of egg banks.</p></div

Disease and the Dynamics of Food Webs

What models and statistical tools can best help us assess how ecosystems respond to the impact of multiple factors, such as disease, predation, fire, and rain