Prison Research from the Inside: The Role of Convict Autoethnography

A perspective that has often been absent in criminal justice research is that of former prisoners. This article discusses the establishment, in 1997, of “convict criminology,” a group of scholars producing research informed by their experiences of crime and the criminal justice process; that is, either those who have served time themselves or who have operated alongside prisoners as professionals in custodial settings. It is argued that such scholars face similar dilemmas to others in terms of emotionalism, but suggests that their emotions are of a different nature. While an “insider” perspective cannot lay claim to scientific “objectivity,” the article argues that the existence of emotion does not invalidate an “insider” criminologist’s views. Rather, the passion engendered by the experience of incarceration can add color, context, and contour to data collection, findings, and analysis and may therefore be regarded as an essential thread in the tapestry of criminological inquiry

Comparison of bacterioneuston and bacterioplankton dynamics during a phytoplankton bloom in a fjord mesocosm

The bacterioneuston is the community of Bacteria present in surface microlayers, the thin surface film that forms the interface between aquatic environments and the atmosphere. In this study we compared bacterial cell abundance and bacterial community structure of the bacterioneuston and the bacterioplankton (from the subsurface water column) during a phytoplankton bloom mesocosm experiment. Bacterial cell abundance, determined by flow cytometry, followed a typical bacterioplankton response to a phytoplankton bloom, with Synechococcus and high nucleic acid (HNA) bacterial cell numbers initially falling, probably due to selective protist grazing. Subsequently HNA and low nucleic acid (LNA) bacterial cells increased in abundance but Synechococcus did not. There was no significant difference between bacterioneuston and bacterioplankton cell abundances during the experiment. Conversely, distinct and consistent differences between the bacterioneuston and the bacterioplankton community structure were observed. This was monitored simultaneously by Bacteria 16S rRNA gene terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). The conserved patterns of community structure observed in all of the mesocosms indicate that the bacterioneuston is distinctive and non-random

Prison as Seen by Convict Criminologists

Most criminologists tend to base their view of prison on ideological assumptions gathered from secondary sources, with at best limited entry to the prison world. They nearly always get it wrong, as they systematically exclude the perspectives and real life experiences of their human subjects. These academic researchers have contributed to poor public policy that promotes the violent repression of prisoners in the USA and other countries. In response, Convict Criminologists are ex‐convicts working as criminology and criminal justice professors, along with “non‐con” associates, that insist that as a means for societies to develop humane, effective, and cost efficient prisons, we must develop ways to incorporate the voice of prisoners in our theorizing about, policy recommendations for, and management of the prison

Genetic variation in genes interacting with BRCA1/2 and risk of breast cancer in Cypriot population.

Inability to correctly repair DNA damage is known to play a role in the development of breast cancer. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of DNA repair genes have been identified, which modify the DNA repair capacity, which in turn may affect the risk of developing breast cancer. To assess whether alterations in DNA repair genes contribute to breast cancer, we genotyped 62 SNPs in 29 genes in 1,109 Cypriot women with breast cancer and 1,177 age-matched healthy controls. Five SNPs were associated with breast cancer. SNPs rs13312840 and rs769416 in the NBS1 gene were associated with a decrease in breast cancer risk (OR TT vs. TC/CC = 0.58; 95% CI, 0.37-0.92; P = 0.019 and OR GG vs. GT/TT = 0.23, 95% CI 0.06-0.85, P = 0.017, respectively). The variant allele of MRE11A rs556477 was also associated with a reduced risk of developing the disease (OR AA vs. AG/GG = 0.76; 95% CI, 0.64-0.91; P = 0.0022). MUS81 rs545500 and PBOV1 rs6927706 SNPs were associated with an increased risk of developing breast cancer (OR GG vs. GC/CC = 1.21, 95% CI, 1.02-1.45; P = 0.031; OR AA vs. AG/GG = 1.53, 95% CI, 1.07-2.18; P = 0.019, respectively). Finally, haplotype-based tests identified significant associations between specific haplotypes in MRE11A and NBS1 genes and breast cancer risk. Further large-scale studies are needed to confirm these results

A GABAergic projection from the centromedial nuclei of the amygdala to ventromedial prefrontal cortex modulates reward behavior

The neural circuitry underlying mammalian reward behaviors involves several distinct nuclei throughout the brain. It is widely accepted that the midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons are critical for the reward-related behaviors. Recent studies have shown that the centromedial nucleus of the amygdala (CeMA) has a distinct role in regulating reward-related behaviors. However, the CeMA and ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) interaction in reward regulation remains poorly understood. Here, we identify and dissect a GABAergic projection that originates in the CeMA and terminates in the vmPFC (VGat-Cre(CeMA-vmPFC)) using viral-vector-mediated, cell-type-specific optogenetic techniques in mice. Pathway-specific optogenetic activation of the VGat-Cre(CeMA-vmPFC) circuit in awake, behaving animals produced a positive, reward-like phenotype in real-time place preference and increased locomotor activity in open-field testing. In sucrose operant conditioning, the photoactivation of these terminals increased nose-poking effort with no effect on licking behavior and robustly facilitated the extinction of operant behavior. However, photoactivation of these terminals did not induce self-stimulation in the absence of an external reward. The results described here suggest that the VGat-Cre(CeMA-vmPFC) projection acts to modulate existing reward-related behaviors. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Many studies have shown that the interactions between the centromedial nucleus of the amygdala (CeMA) and ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) have critical roles for emotional regulation. However, most studies have associated this circuit with fear and anxiety behaviors and emphasized top-down processing from vmPFC to CeMA. Here, we provide new evidence for bottom-up CeMA to vmPFC influence on reward-related behaviors. Although previous work implicated the CeMA in incentive salience, our results isolate the investigation to a specific CeMA GABAergic projection to the vmPFC. This long-range GABAergic interaction between amygdala and frontal cortex adds a new dimension to the complex regulation of reward-related behaviors

Efficient depletion of host DNA contamination in malaria clinical sequencing.

The cost of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) is decreasing rapidly as next-generation sequencing technology continues to advance, and the prospect of making WGS available for public health applications is becoming a reality. So far, a number of studies have demonstrated the use of WGS as an epidemiological tool for typing and controlling outbreaks of microbial pathogens. Success of these applications is hugely dependent on efficient generation of clean genetic material that is free from host DNA contamination for rapid preparation of sequencing libraries. The presence of large amounts of host DNA severely affects the efficiency of characterizing pathogens using WGS and is therefore a serious impediment to clinical and epidemiological sequencing for health care and public health applications. We have developed a simple enzymatic treatment method that takes advantage of the methylation of human DNA to selectively deplete host contamination from clinical samples prior to sequencing. Using malaria clinical samples with over 80% human host DNA contamination, we show that the enzymatic treatment enriches Plasmodium falciparum DNA up to ∼9-fold and generates high-quality, nonbiased sequence reads covering >98% of 86,158 catalogued typeable single-nucleotide polymorphism loci

Non-linear changes in modelled terrestrial ecosystems subjected to perturbations

Perturbed ecosystems may undergo rapid and non-linear changes, resulting in ‘regime shifts’ to an entirely different ecological state. The need to understand the extent, nature, magnitude and reversibility of these changes is urgent given the profound effects that humans are having on the natural world. General ecosystem models, which simulate the dynamics of ecosystems based on a mechanistic representation of ecological processes, provide one novel way to project ecosystem changes across all scales and trophic levels, and to forecast impact thresholds beyond which irreversible changes may occur. We model ecosystem changes in four terrestrial biomes subjected to human removal of plant biomass, such as occurs through agricultural land-use change. We find that irreversible, non-linear responses commonly occur where removal of vegetation exceeds 80% (a level that occurs across nearly 10% of the Earth’s land surface), especially for organisms at higher trophic levels and in less productive ecosystems. Very large, irreversible changes to ecosystem structure are expected at levels of vegetation removal akin to those in the most intensively used real-world ecosystems. Our results suggest that the projected twenty-first century rapid increases in agricultural land conversion may lead to widespread trophic cascades and in some cases irreversible changes to ecosystem structure