Serious and fatal injuries to infants with discrepant parental explanations: Some assessment and case management issues

The objective of this study was to examine the challenges faced by child protection systems in assessment and case management where babies and infants have received serious and fatal physical injuries in the context of discrepant parent/carer explanations. Thirty-eight case files or review records of children under the age of 2 with serious or fatal physical injuries were examined. Qualitative methods were employed to identify issues relating to types of parent/carer explanations, factors of concern in addition to the injuries and child protection system responses to the families. Findings indicate that the initial safety response by child protection systems to babies with serious injuries with discrepant explanations can be inadequate. Assessment of further risks could be inconsistent, especially in cases where there are few other factors of concern apart from the injury. There is a need for the development in the UK of more systematic decision-making processes to achieve more consistent standards of assessment and case management of high-risk infants and to minimize false-negative and 'More systematic decision-making processes to achieve more consistent standards of assessment and case management' O ur combined experience in child protection practice, management, evaluation and research over more than two decades highlights that there is a particular group of cases that present significant challenges to child protection system

Evaporation, seepage and water quality management in storage dams: a review of research methods

One of the most significant sources of water wastage in Australia is loss from small storage dams, either by seepage or evaporation. Over much of Australia, evaporative demand routinely exceeds precipitation. This paper outlines first, methodologies and measurement techniques to quantify the rate of evaporative loss from fresh water storages. These encompass high-accuracy water balance monitoring; determination of the validity of alternative estimation equations, in particular the FAO56 Penman- Monteith ETo methodology; and the commencement of CFD modeling to determine a 'dam factor' in relation to practical atmospheric measurement techniques. Second, because the application of chemical monolayers is the only feasible alternative to the high cost of physically covering the storages to retard evaporation, the use of cetyl alcohol-based monolayers is reviewed, and preliminary research on their degradation by photolytic action, by wind break-up and by microbial degradation reported. Similarly, preliminary research on monolayer visualisation techniques for field application is reported; and potential enhancement of monolayers by other chemicals and attendant water quality issues are considered

The MAPS Adaptive Secondary Mirror: First Light, Laboratory Work, and Achievements

The MMT Adaptive Optics exoPlanet Characterization System (MAPS) is a comprehensive update to the first generation MMT adaptive optics system (MMTAO), designed to produce a facility class suite of instruments whose purpose is to image nearby exoplanets. The system's adaptive secondary mirror (ASM), although comprised in part of legacy components from the MMTAO ASM, represents a major leap forward in engineering, structure and function. The subject of this paper is the design, operation, achievements and technical issues of the MAPS adaptive secondary mirror. We discuss laboratory preparation for on-sky engineering runs, the results of those runs and the issues we discovered, what we learned about those issues in a follow-up period of laboratory work, and the steps we are taking to mitigate them.Comment: 22 pages, 22 images, 2 tables, submitted to SPIE Proceedings (Unconventional Imaging, Sensing and Adaptive Optics 2023 Conference

Glycoproteomic Analysis of the Aortic Extracellular Matrix in Marfan Patients.

OBJECTIVE: Marfan syndrome (MFS) is caused by mutations in FBN1 (fibrillin-1), an extracellular matrix (ECM) component, which is modified post-translationally by glycosylation. This study aimed to characterize the glycoproteome of the aortic ECM from patients with MFS and relate it to aortopathy. Approach and Results: ECM extracts of aneurysmal ascending aortic tissue from patients with and without MFS were enriched for glycopeptides. Direct N-glycopeptide analysis by mass spectrometry identified 141 glycoforms from 47 glycosites within 35 glycoproteins in the human aortic ECM. Notably, MFAP4 (microfibril-associated glycoprotein 4) showed increased and more diverse N-glycosylation in patients with MFS compared with control patients. MFAP4 mRNA levels were markedly higher in MFS aortic tissue. MFAP4 protein levels were also increased at the predilection (convexity) site for ascending aorta aneurysm in bicuspid aortic valve patients, preceding aortic dilatation. In human aortic smooth muscle cells, MFAP4 mRNA expression was induced by TGF (transforming growth factor)-β1 whereas siRNA knockdown of MFAP4 decreased FBN1 but increased elastin expression. These ECM changes were accompanied by differential gene expression and protein abundance of proteases from ADAMTS (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs) family and their proteoglycan substrates, respectively. Finally, high plasma MFAP4 concentrations in patients with MFS were associated with a lower thoracic descending aorta distensibility and greater incidence of type B aortic dissection during 68 months follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Our glycoproteomics analysis revealed that MFAP4 glycosylation is enhanced, as well as its expression during the advanced, aneurysmal stages of MFS compared with control aneurysms from patients without MFS

Reactive Ion Plating. A Novel Deposition Technique For Improved Optical Coatings

Reactive Ion Plating Deposition (RIPD) is a plasma-enhanced thermal evaporation (physical vapor deposition, PVD) technique. A high current (50-60 A), low voltage (50 - 80 V) arc produced in a hot filament argon plasma source is burning into the crucible of a modified electron beam evaporator. The arc discharge ionizes the residual gas atmosphere in the coating chamber (O2 at about 10-4 to 10-3 mbar) as well as some of the evaporant. This creates an intense plasma in contact with the substrates. The substrates (dielectric optical elements) are mounted on an insulated holder (rotary dome). Because of receiving more electrons out of the plasma than ions, they obtain a negative self-bias of 5 to 50 V. This bias attracts and accelerates the positive ions out of the plasma (oxygen and evaporant species). The electrostatic nature of the attraction causes the accelerated ions impinge normal onto the surface of the substrate and the growing film. The resulting films are very dense, smooth, hard, and adherent to the substrate. They have also higher refractive index and laser-induced damage threshold than comparable oxide films deposited by standard electron beam evaporation. Here we report recent results obtained with single layer TiO2 and multilayer TiO2/SiO2, ZrO2/SiO2, and Ta2O5 coatings, which illustrate the improvements achieved with RIPD

What really happened? Child protection case management of infants with serious injuries and discrepant parental explanations

Includes bibliographical referencesAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m02/32386 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo