Working with prisoners who self-harm: a qualitative study on stress, denial of weakness, and encouraging resilience in a sample of correctional staff

Background: Rates of self‐harm are high among prisoners. Most research focuses on the vulnerable prisoner, and there is little on the impact of these behaviours on staff. Aims: To investigate staff perceptions of self‐harming behaviours by prisoners, including their views on its causes, manifestation, prevention in institutions, and impact on them. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 administrative and 21 therapeutic prison staff who are responsible in various ways for prisoners who self‐harm. Their narratives were explored using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results: Despite prison staff being experienced with prisoners' self‐harming behaviours, including severe acts of self‐harm, they were apt to reject any negative impact on their own mental health or well‐being. This denial of negative impact was accompanied by perceptions of the inmate's actions being manipulative and attention seeking. Prison staff also perceived institutional responses to self‐harming behaviours by prisoners as being mixed, ambiguous, or showing preference for relying on existing suicide protocols rather than task‐specific guidance. Conclusions: Although staff gave explanations of prisoner self‐harm in terms of “manipulative behaviour”, prisoners' self‐harm is, in fact, complex, challenging, and often severe. This staff perception may reflect denial of impact of often distressing behaviours on them personally and their own coping mechanisms. This could be feeding in to a perceived lack of clear and effective institutional responses to the self‐harm, so further research is needed to determine how staff could broaden their views, and respond more effectively to prisoners. Psychologically informed group work and/or reflective practice are among the candidates for such help for staff

Guest Encapsulation within Surface-Adsorbed Self-Assembled Cages

Coordination cages encapsulate a wide variety of guests in the solution state. This ability renders them useful for applications such as catalysis and the sequestration of precious materials. A simple and general method for the immobilization of coordination cages on alumina is reported. Cage loadings are quantified via adsorption isotherms and guest displacement assays demonstrate that the adsorbed cages retain the ability to encapsulate and separate guest and non-guest molecules. Finally, a system of two cages, adsorbed on to different regions of alumina, stabilizes and separates a pair of Diels-Alder reagents. The addition of a single competitive guest results in the controlled release of the reagents, thus triggering their reaction. This method of coordination cage immobilization on solid phases is envisaged to be applicable to the extensive library of reported cages, enabling new applications based upon selective solid-phase molecular encapsulation

Vortical and Wave Modes in 3D Rotating Stratified Flows: Random Large Scale Forcing

Utilizing an eigenfunction decomposition, we study the growth and spectra of energy in the vortical and wave modes of a 3D rotating stratified fluid as a function of $\epsilon = f/N$. Working in regimes characterized by moderate Burger numbers, i.e. $Bu = 1/\epsilon^2 < 1$ or $Bu \ge 1$, our results indicate profound change in the character of vortical and wave mode interactions with respect to $Bu = 1$. As with the reference state of $\epsilon=1$, for $\epsilon < 1$ the wave mode energy saturates quite quickly and the ensuing forward cascade continues to act as an efficient means of dissipating ageostrophic energy. Further, these saturated spectra steepen as $\epsilon$ decreases: we see a shift from $k^{-1}$ to $k^{-5/3}$ scaling for $k_f < k < k_d$ (where $k_f$ and $k_d$ are the forcing and dissipation scales, respectively). On the other hand, when $\epsilon > 1$ the wave mode energy never saturates and comes to dominate the total energy in the system. In fact, in a sense the wave modes behave in an asymmetric manner about $\epsilon = 1$. With regard to the vortical modes, for $\epsilon \le 1$, the signatures of 3D quasigeostrophy are clearly evident. Specifically, we see a $k^{-3}$ scaling for $k_f < k < k_d$ and, in accord with an inverse transfer of energy, the vortical mode energy never saturates but rather increases for all $k < k_f$. In contrast, for $\epsilon > 1$ and increasing, the vortical modes contain a progressively smaller fraction of the total energy indicating that the 3D quasigeostrophic subsystem plays an energetically smaller role in the overall dynamics.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figs. (abbreviated abstract

Complete analysis of the B-cell response to a protein antigen, from in vivo germinal centre formation to 3-D modelling of affinity maturation

Somatic hypermutation of immunoglobulin variable region genes occurs within germinal centres (GCs) and is the process responsible for affinity maturation of antibodies during an immune response. Previous studies have focused almost exclusively on the immune response to haptens, which may be unrepresentative of epitopes on protein antigens. In this study, we have exploited a model system that uses transgenic B and CD4&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; T cells specific for hen egg lysozyme (HEL) and a chicken ovalbumin peptide, respectively, to investigate a tightly synchronized immune response to protein antigens of widely differing affinities, thus allowing us to track many facets of the development of an antibody response at the antigen-specific B cell level in an integrated system &lt;i&gt;in&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;vivo&lt;/i&gt;. Somatic hypermutation of immunoglobulin variable genes was analysed in clones of transgenic B cells proliferating in individual GCs in response to HEL or the cross-reactive low-affinity antigen, duck egg lysozyme (DEL). Molecular modelling of the antibody–antigen interface demonstrates that recurring mutations in the antigen-binding site, selected in GCs, enhance interactions of the antibody with DEL. The effects of these mutations on affinity maturation are demonstrated by a shift of transgenic serum antibodies towards higher affinity for DEL in DEL-cOVA immunized mice. The results show that B cells with high affinity antigen receptors can revise their specificity by somatic hypermutation and antigen selection in response to a low-affinity, cross-reactive antigen. These observations shed further light on the nature of the immune response to pathogens and autoimmunity and demonstrate the utility of this novel model for studies of the mechanisms of somatic hypermutation

Exploring the Roles of Human Values and Self-Discrepancies in Postnatal Depression in First-Time Mothers

Objectives Postnatal depression is the most prevalent psychopathology experienced within the perinatal period and has been associated with a range of adverse outcomes for both mother and infant. In the present research, we combine two influential theories, Schwartz's theory of human values and Higgins' self-discrepancy theory (SDT), to test new hypotheses about postnatal depression. Methods We recruited 80 first-time mothers who had given birth within the last 6 months and who self-reported experiencing low mood or postnatal depression. Participants anonymously completed measures of postnatal depression, value importance, self-discrepancies, and subjective value fulfillment. Results Contrary to our hypotheses, actual-ought self-discrepancies, but not actual-ideal self-discrepancies, predicted postnatal depression. Interestingly however, self-discrepancies were negatively correlated with value fulfillment. The findings within this study diverge from the relation predicted within SDT and highlight how motherhood may represent a unique circumstance, in which the “ideal self” has evolved to become a self that one feels morally obligated to embody. Further exploratory analyses revealed that depression was predicted by the difference between value fulfillment and value importance in conservation values, but not by differences between value fulfillment and value importance regarding any of the other value types. Discussion We discuss potential impact on discourses around motherhood, alongside clinical implications for practitioners who work with mothers during the perinatal period

Echinoderms have bilateral tendencies

Echinoderms take many forms of symmetry. Pentameral symmetry is the major form and the other forms are derived from it. However, the ancestors of echinoderms, which originated from Cambrian period, were believed to be bilaterians. Echinoderm larvae are bilateral during their early development. During embryonic development of starfish and sea urchins, the position and the developmental sequence of each arm are fixed, implying an auxological anterior/posterior axis. Starfish also possess the Hox gene cluster, which controls symmetrical development. Overall, echinoderms are thought to have a bilateral developmental mechanism and process. In this article, we focused on adult starfish behaviors to corroborate its bilateral tendency. We weighed their central disk and each arm to measure the position of the center of gravity. We then studied their turning-over behavior, crawling behavior and fleeing behavior statistically to obtain the center of frequency of each behavior. By joining the center of gravity and each center of frequency, we obtained three behavioral symmetric planes. These behavioral bilateral tendencies might be related to the A/P axis during the embryonic development of the starfish. It is very likely that the adult starfish is, to some extent, bilaterian because it displays some bilateral propensity and has a definite behavioral symmetric plane. The remainder of bilateral symmetry may have benefited echinoderms during their evolution from the Cambrian period to the present

Ontology of core data mining entities

In this article, we present OntoDM-core, an ontology of core data mining entities. OntoDM-core defines themost essential datamining entities in a three-layered ontological structure comprising of a specification, an implementation and an application layer. It provides a representational framework for the description of mining structured data, and in addition provides taxonomies of datasets, data mining tasks, generalizations, data mining algorithms and constraints, based on the type of data. OntoDM-core is designed to support a wide range of applications/use cases, such as semantic annotation of data mining algorithms, datasets and results; annotation of QSAR studies in the context of drug discovery investigations; and disambiguation of terms in text mining. The ontology has been thoroughly assessed following the practices in ontology engineering, is fully interoperable with many domain resources and is easy to extend

A cross-sectional study of Victorian mobile intensive care ambulance paramedics knowledge of the Valsalva manoeuvre

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Valsalva Manoeuvre (VM) is a primary measure for terminating haemodynamically stable supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) in the emergency care setting. The clinical use and termination success of the VM in the prehospital setting has not been investigated to date. The objective of this study was to determine Melbourne Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance (MICA) Paramedic knowledge of the VM, and to compare this understanding with an evidence-based model of VM performance.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study in the form of a face-to-face interview was used to determine Melbourne MICA Paramedic understanding of VM instruction between January and February, 2008. The results were then compared with an evidence-based model of VM performance to ascertain compliance with the three criteria of position, pressure and duration. Ethics approval was granted.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There were 28 participants (60.9%) who elected a form of supine posturing, some 23 participants (50%) selected the syringe method of pressure generation, with 16 participants (34.8%) selecting the "as long as you can" option for duration. On comparison, one out of 46 MICA Paramedics correctly identified the three evidence-based criteria.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The formal education of Melbourne's MICA Paramedics would benefit from the introduction of an evidence based model of VM performance, which would impact positively on patient care and may improve reversion success in the prehospital setting. The results of this study also demonstrate that an opportunity exists to promote the evidence-based VM criteria across the primary emergency care field.</p