Pion mass effects on axion emission from neutron stars through NN bremsstrahlung processes

The rates of axion emission by nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung are calculated with the inclusion of the full momentum contribution from a nuclear one pion exchange (OPE) potential. The contributions of the neutron-neutron (nn), proton-proton (pp) and neutron-proton (np) processes in both the nondegenerate and degenerate limits are explicitly given. We find that the finite momentum corrections to the emissivities are quantitatively significant for the non-degenerate regime and temperature-dependent, and should affect the existing axion mass bounds. The trend of these nuclear effects is to diminish the emissivities

Critical issues in rape investigation: a UK perspective

This article examines a recent history of criminal justice reform to responses to the investigation of rape offences. Beginning with a selective overview of the professional development of detectives and criticisms relating to investigation of „low status‟ crimes this article points to the challenges in the professionalization of detectives in the context of investigative responses to marginalised victims. The paper goes on to outline police responses and evaluations of initiatives aimed at improving effectiveness before summarising the complexities and vulnerabilities faced by victims and how these experiences impact upon the likelihood of successful prosecution. Finally the paper summaries the main analysis and indentifies the key challenges to the criminal justice sector in improving responses to rape victims

Critical issues in rape investigation: an overview of reform in England and Wales

This article examines a recent history of criminal justice reform to responses to the investigation of rape offences. Beginning with a selective overview of the professional development of detectives and criticisms relating to investigation of „low status‟ crimes this article points to the challenges in the professionalization of detectives in the context of investigative responses to marginalised victims. The paper goes on to outline police responses and evaluations of initiatives aimed at improving effectiveness before summarising the complexities and vulnerabilities faced by victims and how these experiences impact upon the likelihood of successful prosecution. Finally the paper summaries the main analysis and indentifies the key challenges to the criminal justice sector in improving responses to rape victims

It blocks out the problem and becomes the addiction: the intersections between problem substance use and domestic and sexual violence experienced by young women in two London Boroughs

AVA’s Stella Project has been improving services for adult women affected by overlapping domestic violence and problematic substance use for several years. Through the organisations’ training and development work with practitioners, they were increasingly being asked to advise agencies about how these issues affected younger women. Whilst this was an issue which was increasingly being identified by practitioners, the UK evidence base regarding how to effectively support these young women was weak. In 2010, AVA successfully sought funding from the John Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust for a research and development project to address this gap in the evidence base. Following an open invitation to tender, AVA commissioned Middlesex University to conduct the research phase of the project and to evaluate the Stella Project’s intervention with agencies working with young women affected by domestic and sexual violence and problematic substance use. The project’s scope allowed for the Stella Project to support two London boroughs to develop their response to these young women, and AVA invited all London boroughs to submit an Expression of Interest to be involved. From 14 interested boroughs, AVA selected the London Borough of Enfield (LBE) and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC), based on strategic commitment to the project, the existence of relevant agencies to participate in the project, and differences between the boroughs from which to make an interesting comparison. In both boroughs, the Domestic Violence Co-ordinator and the Drug and Alcohol Action Team Manager nominated four relevant agencies to participate in the project. Within each borough, agencies were selected to represent both the violence against women and girls (VAWG) and substance misuse sectors, and to cover the full age range of young women whose needs the project would address (14 to 24 years). In both boroughs, this resulted in representation from the Independent Domestic Violence Advocacy services, the young people’s substance misuse services and the Drug Intervention Programmes (DIPs), and in Enfield, the Youth Offending Service

Working in partnership to support the women: the Stella Project Mental Health Initiative interim evaluation report

Services commissioned to support women with mental health problems, problematic substance use and experiences of domestic and sexual violence often work in isolation, despite the intersectionality of these issues. Frontline practitioners do not always have the training, assessment tools and referral pathways to address all three issues when they occur. Operational and monitoring frameworks do not always make the links between the issues which result in women falling through the gaps in service provision. The aim of the Stella Project Mental Health Initiative (SPMHI), therefore, is to empower services across the three sectors of substance use, mental health and violence against women to develop this work through knowledge transfer, policy development support and promoting strong partnerships and monitoring mechanisms. In assessing the efficacy of the SPMHI, an evaluation was commissioned which will collect data before and after the intervention takes place. Before we consider the scope and findings of that evaluation, it is necessary to first outline the nature of the SPMHI. There are several components, encompassing an action research based intervention, practice guidance development and the creation of online learning tools: Policy and procedure development, training and partnership working. The SPMHI will work with selected agencies working in the fields of violence against women, substance use and mental health in three regions of the UK to develop an integrated response to survivors of gender based violence and who are experiencing problematic substance use and psychological distress. This will focus on providing: - Support to agencies to develop their policies and procedures (including risk assessments and care plans), referral pathways and multi-sector partnerships - Training to equip staff with skills and confidence to work with the complex issues and; - Support to embed issues in local authority and PCT strategic policies. Good practice guidance. Following completion of the action research, good practice guidance will be developed and widely disseminated across the UK through our extensive networks. We also propose to run a series of inter-active and innovative workshops which focus on equipping practitioners with the skills and understanding to implement the good practice guidance. Online training course. A web-based interactive training course will be developed to address the overlapping issues. This could be accessed by any practitioner across the UK for free. The Stella Project selected three sites across the United Kingdom: Bristol, Nottinghamshire and the London Borough of Hounslow in the summer of 2010. Frontline agencies were invited to submit expressions of interest to the identified strategic leads in their site, who were responsible for selecting participating agencies (a total of seventeen agencies (who together provide a total of twenty services) across the three sites). The selection was based on the capacity and commitment of each agency to engage with the work. This work is fully funded by a three-year grant from the Department of Health

Cosmological quintessence accretion onto primordial black holes : conditions for their growth to the supermassive scale

In this work we revisit the growth of small primordial black holes (PBHs) immersed in a quintessential field and/or radiation to the supermassive black hole (SMBHs) scale. We show the difficulties of scenarios in which such huge growth is possible. For that purpose we evaluated analytical solutions of the differential equations (describing mass evolution) and point out the strong fine tuning for that conclusions. The timescale for growth in a model with a constant quintessence flux is calculated and we show that it is much bigger than the Hubble time.The fractional gain of the mass is further evaluated in other forms, including quintessence and/or radiation. We calculate the cosmological density $\Omega$ due to quintessence necessary to grow BHs to the supermassive range and show it to be much bigger than one. We also describe the set of complete equations analyzing the evolution of the BH+quintessence universe, showing some interesting effects such the quenching of the BH mass growth due to the evolution of the background energy. Additional constraints obtained by using the Holographic Bound are also described. The general equilibrium conditions for evaporating/accreting black holes evolving in a quintessence/radiation universe are discussed in the Appendix.Comment: 21 pp., 2 Figures, To appear in IJMP

Color-flavor locked strange matter

We analyze how the CFL states in dense matter work in the direction of enhancing the parameter space for absolutely stable phases (strange matter). We find that the "CFL strange matter" phase can be the true ground state of hadronic matter for a much wider range of the parameters of the model (the gap of the QCD Cooper pairs $\Delta$, the strange quark mass $m_s$ and the Bag Constant $B$) than the state without any pairing, and derive a full equation of state and an accurate analytic approximation to the lowest order in $\Delta$ and $m_{s}$ which may be directly used for applications. The effects of pairing on the equation of state are found to be small (as previously expected) but not negligible and may be relevant for astrophysics.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Age composition, growth, and reproduction of koi carp (Cyprinus carpio L.) in the lower Waikato, New Zealand

A total of 566 koi carp (Cyprinus carpio) from the lower Waikato region were aged from scales and opercular bones, and growth was modelled with the von Bertalanffy growth function. There was no difference in growth rate between male and female carp. Growth of koi carp between zero and 3 years of age was lower than that of common carp in Europe and Australia. However, after 5 years of age the growth of koi carp was higher than that of common carp in Europe, but still below that of carp in Australia. Males rarely lived in excess of 8 years, whereas females lived to 12 years. Mean total fecundity calculated from 44 running-ripe females was 299 000 oocytes (±195 600 SD) (range 29 800–771 000). Relative fecundity ranged from 19 300 to 216 000 oocytes kg–1 total body weight, with a mean of 97 200 (±35 000 SD) oocytes kg–1. Feral koi carp in the Waikato are capable of multiple spawnings within their lifetimes. Within a spawning season, Waikato populations of feral koi carp contained females that spawned once, and females that had the potential to have spawned repeatedly. Female gonadosomatic index (GSI) varied with season and was negatively related to water temperature

Before the project everything seemed a little bit woolly - now we are definitely clearer in terms of pathways for women. Evaluating the Stella Project Mental Health Initiative: executive summary

Services commissioned to support women with mental health problems, problematic substance use and experiences of domestic violence (DV) and sexual violence (SV) often work independently, despite the intersectionality of these issues. Frontline practitioners do not always have the training, assessment tools or referral pathways to address all three issues when they co-occur. Operational and monitoring frameworks do not always make the links between the issues which result in women falling through gaps in service provision. Therefore, the aim of the Stella Project Mental Health Initiative (SPMHI) was to empower service providers across the three sectors of substance use, mental health and violence against women to develop this work through knowledge transfer, policy development support and promoting strong partnerships and monitoring mechanisms. In assessing the efficacy of the SPMHI, an evaluation was commissioned which has collected data before and after the intervention took place