What Hinders Victims from Reporting Sexual Violence: A Qualitative Study with Police Officers, Prosecutors, and Judges in Hungary

While rape historically remains underreported all over the globe, and criminal justice factors contribute to this problem, we investigate unique circumstances that might influence reporting inclinations by Hungarian victims of sexual violence. Among other possible factors, victim-blaming, institutional desensitization, and a lack of trust in the criminal justice system and in the community are discussed. The in-depth interviews (n = 22) with law enforcement and criminal justice professionals conducted in 2018 in Hungary reveal roots of underreporting in the complexities of the criminal justice system: there is a failure to prioritize victims’ needs—mental care services, physical and privacy protection—and a focus instead on solely providing legal justice. The further deficits that can be found among professionals’ attitudes and behaviors in the courtroom are products of the following: a lack of standardized protocols in addressing the needs of victims; a dearth of technical and evidence-based knowledge and training; a lack of supervision and trauma-informed services to practitioners; high caseloads; a focus on the goal of high conviction rates; not providing open communication toward victims; and a shortage of standardized protocols in dealing with victims

Community Engaged Research Academy at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth: Reflections, Visions, and Plans

The Community Engaged Research (CER) Academy at UMass Dartmouth began in 2015 to develop and support dynamic research efforts, in partnerships with community organizations, agencies, and public services, with the goal of seeking external funding to support substantial CER projects. Its primary aim is to engage research-active faculty who are working, specifically, with community partners in the UMass Dartmouth catchment area. Further, the CER Academy actively seeks to build a community of like-minded scholars in interactive, supportive, and didactic processes. The coordinator of the CER Initiative facilitates modules, with activities designed to mentor CER Academy scholars during and after their participation in the structured curriculum of the CER Academy. Beyond the interactive curriculum with a cohort of CER Scholars, ongoing mentorship continues for as long as CER Scholars want/need support to develop durable community partnerships. Plans going forward include 1) working with community-based professionals in UMass Dartmouth catchment area agencies and organizations to participate in the structured CER Academy with their respective CER Scholars; and 2) to incentivize and recruit, and then to educate and engage, undergraduate students to develop skills and experience in community engaged research in an academic CER Student-Scholar Partnership Program. This poster articulates the development, curriculum, work, and plans of the UMass Dartmouth Community Engaged Research Academy, to disseminate our experience and vision, and to invite collaborations with potential community partners and CER colleagues across the UMass System

UMass Dartmouth Community Engaged Research Academy: Some Methods to Develop Inclusive CER

Breakout Session 1A: The UMass Dartmouth Community Engaged Research Academy has completed two years of CER skills building, mentoring, seed funding, and other resources, with seven supported CER scholars to date. This interactive breakout session draws on the curriculum of the CER Academy to build particular skills, stakeholder analysis and mapping of needs that together chart the path to inclusive and practical CER proposals, and lead to creative, relevant approaches to grant seeking. In a stakeholder analysis, the goal is to identify who is involved in a CER issue, to what extent they are engaged at the start of the process of identifying needs to be addressed in the research, how likely they are to try to address the issue and remain involved as those who have a stake in outcomes, and what might happen post-research findings, leading to impact, implementation, and dissemination. The mapping of basic and perceived human needs (adapted from David Gil’s Unraveling Social Policy) deepens researchers’ understanding of the problems they will address, in a format that serves as a readily accessible communications tool for working with community partners. This training workshop will address stakeholder analysis, mapping basic and perceived human needs, and CER grant seeking through the analysis of a CER disparities issue as a case study. At the end of the workshop, participants will have learned a clearly articulated process for working through these essential steps toward inclusive CER, and to engage, more effectively, with community partners challenged by health disparities

Researcher Trauma in Dangerous Places: Navigating Peril in Physical and Psychological Milieux

Many community-engaged research studies in health and allied health conclude that challenges to individual and public health are mediated by trauma in any of its forms. Researchers who investigate such challenges - e.g., interpersonal violence, sexual abuses and assaults, addictions - may well acquire a traumagenic burden from their research partners, subjects and/or the community milieux in which they conduct their studies, resulting in acute trauma and/or vicarious traumatization (VT). This poster summarizes the content and interactions of a recent workshop on researcher trauma that explored psychodynamics of VT in a translational approach that shows: 1) implications for principal investigators and research staff; 2) education they need about researcher-respondent trauma transmission; and 3) supports that can help to mitigate researcher trauma. We present an interdisciplinary theoretical model to consider how burdens of VT can impact researchers\u27 work, health, and personal lives. How do researchers perceive their work and provisions of care and healing? What are their experiences of the work, and the harm it may promulgate? While VT has been most thoroughly studied amongst psychotherapists who provide individual treatment, a few studies show that VT symptoms and chronicity appear to be quite similar amongst others who work in trauma-saturated environments. Indeed, this workshop advanced our understanding of this and other forms of secondary trauma, and signposted important lessons for the education and practice of researchers engaged, and immersed, in community-engaged health and allied health studies, broadly defined

Vector field statistics for objective center-of-pressure trajectory analysis during gait, with evidence of scalar sensitivity to small coordinate system rotations

Center of pressure (COP) trajectories summarize the complex mechanical interaction between the foot and a contacted surface. Each trajectory itself is also complex, comprising hundreds of instantaneous vectors over the duration of stance phase. To simplify statistical analysis often a small number of scalars are extracted from each COP trajectory. The purpose of this paper was to demonstrate how a more objective approach to COP analysis can avoid particular sensitivities of scalar extraction analysis. A previously published dataset describing the effects of walking speed on plantar pressure (PP) distributions was re-analyzed. After spatially and temporally normalizing the data, speed effects were assessed using a vector-field paired Hotelling's T-2 test. Results showed that, as walking speed increased, the COP moved increasingly posterior at heel contact, and increasingly laterally and anteriorly between similar to 60 and 85% stance, in agreement with previous independent studies. Nevertheless, two extracted scalars disagreed with these results. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis found that a relatively small coordinate system rotation of 5.5 degrees reversed the mediolateral null hypothesis rejection decision. Considering that the foot may adopt arbitrary postures in the horizontal plane, these sensitivity results suggest that non-negligible uncertainty may exist in mediolateral COP effects. As compared with COP scalar extraction, two key advantages of the vector-field approach are: (i) coordinate system independence, (ii) continuous statistical data reflecting the temporal extents of COP trajectory changes.ArticleGAIT & POSTURE. 40(1):255-258 (2014)journal articl

Milling plant and soil material in plastic tubes over-estimates carbon and under-estimates nitrogen concentrations

Peer reviewedPostprin

Vegetation response to invasive Tamarix control in southwestern U.S. rivers: a collaborative study including 416 sites

Most studies assessing vegetation response following control of invasive Tamarix trees along southwestern U.S. rivers have been small in scale (e.g., river reach), or at a regional scale but with poor spatial-temporal replication, and most have not included testing the effects of a now widely used biological control. We monitored plant composition following Tamarix control along hydrologic, soil, and climatic gradients in 244 treated and 172 reference sites across six U.S. states. This represents the largest comprehensive assessment to date on the vegetation response to the four most common Tamarix control treatments. Biocontrol by a defoliating beetle (treatment 1) reduced the abundance of Tamarix less than active removal by mechanically using hand and chain-saws (2), heavy machinery (3) or burning (4). Tamarix abundance also decreased with lower temperatures, higher precipitation, and follow-up treatments for Tamarix resprouting. Native cover generally increased over time in active Tamarix removal sites, however, the increases observed were small and was not consistently increased by active revegetation. Overall, native cover was correlated to permanent stream flow, lower grazing pressure, lower soil salinity and temperatures, and higher precipitation. Species diversity also increased where Tamarix was removed. However, Tamarix treatments, especially those generating the highest disturbance (burning and heavy machinery), also often promoted secondary invasions of exotic forbs. The abundance of hydrophytic species was much lower in treated than in reference sites, suggesting that management of southwestern U.S. rivers has focused too much on weed control, overlooking restoration of fluvial processes that provide habitat for hydrophytic and floodplain vegetation. These results can help inform future management of Tamarix-infested rivers to restore hydrogeomorphic processes, increase native biodiversity and reduce abundance of noxious species

Meta-research evaluating redundancy and use of systematic reviews when planning new studies in health research:a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Several studies have documented the production of wasteful research, defined as research of no scientific importance and/or not meeting societal needs. We argue that this redundancy in research may to a large degree be due to the lack of a systematic evaluation of the best available evidence and/or of studies assessing societal needs. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this scoping review is to (A) identify meta-research studies evaluating if redundancy is present within biomedical research, and if so, assessing the prevalence of such redundancy, and (B) to identify meta-research studies evaluating if researchers had been trying to minimise or avoid redundancy. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Meta-research studies (empirical studies) were eligible if they evaluated whether redundancy was present and to what degree; whether health researchers referred to all earlier similar studies when justifying and designing a new study and/or when placing new results in the context of earlier similar trials; and whether health researchers systematically and transparently considered end users’ perspectives when justifying and designing a new study. SOURCES OF EVIDENCE: The initial overall search was conducted in MEDLINE, Embase via Ovid, CINAHL, Web of Science, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, and the Cochrane Methodology Register from inception to June 2015. A 2nd search included MEDLINE and Embase via Ovid and covered January 2015 to 26 May 2021. No publication date or language restrictions were applied. CHARTING METHODS: Charting methods included description of the included studies, bibliometric mapping, and presentation of possible research gaps in the identified meta-research. RESULTS: We identified 69 meta-research studies. Thirty-four (49%) of these evaluated the prevalence of redundancy and 42 (61%) studies evaluated the prevalence of a systematic and transparent use of earlier similar studies when justifying and designing new studies, and/or when placing new results in context, with seven (10%) studies addressing both aspects. Only one (1%) study assessed if the perspectives of end users had been used to inform the justification and design of a new study. Among the included meta-research studies evaluating whether redundancy was present, only two of nine health domains (medical areas) and only two of 10 research topics (different methodological types) were represented. Similarly, among the included meta-research studies evaluating whether researchers had been trying to minimise or avoid redundancy, only one of nine health domains and only one of 10 research topics were represented. CONCLUSIONS THAT RELATE TO THE REVIEW QUESTIONS AND OBJECTIVES: Even with 69 included meta-research studies, there was a lack of information for most health domains and research topics. However, as most included studies were evaluating across different domains, there is a clear indication of a high prevalence of redundancy and a low prevalence of trying to minimise or avoid redundancy. In addition, only one meta-research study evaluated whether the perspectives of end users were used to inform the justification and design of a new study. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: Protocol registered at Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/3rdua/ (15 June 2021). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13643-022-02096-y

Record Maximum Oscillation Frequency in C-face Epitaxial Graphene Transistors

The maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) quantifies the practical upper bound for useful circuit operation. We report here an fmax of 70 GHz in transistors using epitaxial graphene grown on the C-face of SiC. This is a significant improvement over Si-face epitaxial graphene used in the prior high frequency transistor studies, exemplifying the superior electronics potential of C-face epitaxial graphene. Careful transistor design using a high {\kappa} dielectric T-gate and self-aligned contacts, further contributed to the record-breaking fmax