For many, leaving prison is followed by poverty and a heavy reliance on family support.

Every year more than half a million prisoners are released back into the community in the US, presenting an array of challenges for those reentering society. In new research which tracks prisoners released from Massachusetts state prisons, Jaclyn Davis and Catherine Sirois find that a large majority of releasees called on their families for support such as money, accommodation and childcare. They also find that many released prisoners experience housing insecurity and difficulties in finding paid employment

Becoming middle class: kinship, personhood, and social mobility in the central Philippines

This thesis is an intimate portrait of kinship, personhood, and social mobility in the central Philippines. Through the story of a sibling set that came of age after the Second World War, their kin, and neighbours, it explores why and how upward mobility was aspired for, its consequences, and the ways in which such an achievement are recalled and narrated. The chapters examine the manifold and, at times, contradictory emotions that surrounded journeys of social mobility, whilst historicising the very selves and relations within which such narratives and emotions become embedded. Central to this account is siblingship, as viewed from later life, and in relation to filiation, the pursuit of personal autonomy through gendered educational and professional fields, and marriage and family formation. Although expectations of solidarity and life-long, and even transgenerational, support saturated ties of siblingship, conflicts between siblings were also deemed unsurprising, especially in adulthood, after marriage, and most especially, after the death of their parents. Whilst solidarity amongst siblings was seen as fundamental to achieving middle-classness, the pursuit of upward mobility in some cases heightened the potential for hierarchy, inequality, gendered differences, and enmity implied by siblingship, whilst mitigating and reversing it in others. Upward mobility had implications too for the succeeding generation, as conflicts and unequal life chances were passed on by parents to their children, sibling set sizes became smaller, and cousins became geographically distant from one another. Rooted in the anthropology of Southeast Asia and the Philippines, this thesis speaks to broader concerns about how kinship and personhood unfold and are transformed over time, how persons and their relations reflect, absorb, and refract broader societal shifts, and how seemingly ordinary, intimate, and private aspects of life have wider reverberations

Understanding the effects of time perspective: A meta-analysis testing a self-regulatory framework

Despite extensive evidence that time perspective is associated with a range of important outcomes across a variety of life domains (e.g., health, education, wealth), the question of why time perspective has such wide-reaching effects remains unknown. The present review proposes that self-regulatory processes can offer insight into why time perspective is linked to outcomes. To test this idea we classified measures of time perspective according to the dimension of time perspective that they reflected (e.g., past, present-hedonistic, future) and measures of self-regulation according to the self-regulatory process (i.e., goal setting, goal monitoring, and goal operating), ability, or outcome that they reflected. A systematic search identified 378 studies, reporting 2,000 tests of the associations between measures of time perspective and self-regulation. Random-effects meta-analyses with robust variance estimation found that a future time perspective had small-to-medium-sized positive associations with goal setting (r+ = 0.25), goal monitoring (r+ = 0.19), goal operating (r+ = 0.24), self-regulatory ability (r+ = 0.35), and outcomes (r+ = 0.18). Present time perspective, including being present-hedonistic and present-fatalistic, was negatively associated with self-regulatory processes, ability, and outcomes (r+ ranged from −0.00 to −0.27). Meta-analytic mediation models found that the relationship between future time perspective and outcomes was mediated by goal monitoring, goal operating, and self-regulatory ability, but not goal setting. As the first test of why time perspective is associated with key outcomes, the findings highlight the central role of self-regulation processes and abilities for understanding why people with certain time perspectives experience better outcomes

The Role of the Qur'an and Sunnah in Oral Health.

The aim of this study was to explore the ways in which the main texts in Islam, Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh), contribute to understandings of oral health. The AHadith provide guidance for oral health-related behaviour but were written at a time when their symbolic meanings were perhaps vastly different to those of today. In gaining more insight into the ways Islamic HRB shape oral health-related practices and outcomes, if at all, we may be better placed to develop a more culturally sensitive and diverse dental public health and oral health promotion which takes into account religious dimensions, mediating factors, HRB and salutogenic mechanisms

Investigation of Intra-tumour Heterogeneity and Host Immune Response in Triple-negative Breast Cancer

Approximately 15% of breast cancer patients have an aggressive subtype termed triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Mortality is due to difficulties in treating and controlling metastatic growth. Earlier predictors are urgently needed for accurate classification of patients into specific risk groups. Here, I investigated the relationship between intra-tumour heterogeneity through a gene signature from circulating tumour cells and the degree of lymphocytic infiltration in TNBC tumours to develop a potential biomarker of aggressive tumour progression. I have found that high intra-tumour heterogeneity was correlated with a high infiltration of B and helper T lymphocytes in primary TNBCs. In addition, highly heterogeneous tumours that have high infiltration of B lymphocytes were associated with good prognostic outcomes. These findings may have significant implications in understanding tumour progression in the breast, while potentially improving therapeutic decision-making in the clinic.M.Sc