Factors that influence women\u27s disclosures of substance use during pregnancy : a qualitative study of ten midwives and ten pregnant women

The present study was designed to examine the factors that motivate or act as barriers to disclosure of substance use by pregnant women. Participants included 10 midwives and 10 pregnant women who attended two ante-natal clinics at an Australian maternity hospital. One clinic specialized in women who were substance users and one clinic was specifically for young women (under 19 years of age). Midwives and pregnant women were interviewed in-depth about disclosure of substance use. Interview transcripts were analyzed, and the results revealed six main themes: practice style, assessment of substance use, practice environment and privacy, child protection issues, health of the baby, and continuity of care. The findings are discussed in relation to recommendations for best practice in midwifery care when working with pregnant women who use substances.<br /

Paragraph structure and translation: the theory and practice of paragraph and other high level structures in English and Russian narrative and the effect of the translation process upon these structures

Although a substantial amount of research exists on translation and on text structure, there are comparatively few works in which both subjects are combined; and to our knowledge, the effect of translation upon paragraph structure had never been thoroughly investigated. This study is an investigation of the alterations to the paragraph structure of the source text introduced by translators when translating from Russian into English and from English into Russian. In Chapter 1 we discuss linguistic and extralinguistic theories of relevance to translation, including the areas of pragmatics, norms and semiotic polysystem theory, and survey a range of theories of paragraph structure. In Chapter 2 a corpus of 8 English source texts together with the corresponding Russian translations, and 8 Russian source texts together with the corresponding English translations, is analysed for alterations to paragraph structure occurring in translation affecting either speech or narrative structure. Possible linguistic reasons for these alterations are examined in Chapter 3: the paragraph structure of the English and Russian source texts is compared for differences which could account for the alterations; and the paragraph structure of both is compared with non-translated texts in English and Russian. A high degree of similarity is found in the proportions of paragraph features across all groups, except in the area of paragraph length. It was found that a combination of factors are regularly present at alterations to paragraph structure occurring in translation, including one-sentence paragraphs, paragraphs the length of which did not conform to the source text norm, and other features of paragraph construction. This supports the hypothesis that the translator tended to alter paragraphs in conformity with the norms of the source text. In Chapter 4 we consider a higher level of factors which may promote or inhibit the the freedom of the translator to introduce alterations, such as the political and cultural climate in which the translation takes place, and the organization and production of translations

Deciding on crime? : rational vs. non-rational elements in offender decision making

This study examines the applicability of Rational Choice Theories of offending to offenders' actual offending experiences. The Rational Choice theoretical perspective is premised on the idea of the offender as a reasoning, decision-making individual who weighs up potential costs and benefits of a crime to achieve maximum utility. This approach to crime has been influential as part of the dominant ethos of the contemporary Criminal Justice system in England and Wales, and indeed the justice systems of most Western societies. This study relates the Rational Choice Theories of crime to individual offender experiences to investigate if such a process as a decision making calculus can be said to exist within the experience of offending individuals and if so, to explore any factors identified as affecting these decisions. Previous literature in the application of Rational Choice Theory to crime is reviewed, in particular the previous research that entailed interviews or direct observation of individuals concerning what happens when he or she is about to commit a crime. However the number of relevant studies undertaken with a sample of actual offenders rather than a student or other non offending population is small. Previous studies of this kind have tended to focus on a particular offence type, utilising for example all burglar or all shoplifter samples, and therefore results and conclusions reached by these studies can be difficult to generalise to other offence types, though there is some overlap in findings. Within the present study, in depth interviews were conduced with 46 offenders with a range of offending experiences. In this way, the study aimed to assess the applicability of the Rational Choice Theories to a range of offending decisions, bringing together different offences from shoplifting to violent assault. Women were deliberately oversampled relative to the percentage of women in the offending population in order to ensure a balanced viewpoint on decision making. In using a diverse sample group it was proposed that the concepts and ideas emerging from the diverse group could contribute to further development of the Rational Choice approach to crime. To support this theoretical development interview narrative was analysed using techniques adapted from Grounded Theory in order to identify the themes and concepts introduced by the offending individuals in relation to their experiences. In addition to the interviews, focus groups were conducted with a separate cohort of offenders and a cohort of experienced members of Probation Service staff in order to examine the prevalence of the themes emerging from the interviews. Offender narrative was also checked against an independent overview of the offending incident in question to establish the level of accuracy in terms of the observable facts of the offence. The results of this research suggest that there is some evidence that some offenders engage in a decision making processes prior to an offence, though evidence of rationality can be seen to vary both within and between individuals and within and between offence types. Where a decision making calculus was observed, several themes emerged from the narrative, including the bias towards focusing thought on potential positive outcomes, the relative lesser weighting of potential negative outcomes in the thought process, and the relative importance of informal sanctions over formal sanctions. The impact of alcohol and drugs was another emerging theme, with offenders describing their substance use as both an inhibiter, and enabler to their thinking processes. Further, an overarching theme to emerge was the evidence for two goal-regulation type processes identified by the offenders as the main motivator of their behaviour. The first of these is the desire to achieve a want or need through the commission of an offence, which tended to be associated with acquisitive category offences (shoplifting, burglary etc) and the second being to avoid or gain relief from an unpleasant affective state or situation, which tended to be associated with affective or expressive offences. However, despite these process -offence type associations there were once again variances observed within individuals and within offence types. That is, an individual could be seen as offending based on both goal types at different times, and even offence types that appear similar can be a result of different goal seeking processes. Suggestions are made as to how the findings and conclusions of this study fit with, and allow development of existing Rational Choice approaches to crime, and advocate the use of the developed Rational Choice Approach as a tool for the study of individual thinking in the period surrounding an offence. A 'Decision Structure' model based on this developed Rational Choice approach is described, with emphasis on the personal, social and motivational factors present at the time of the offence, providing a framework for exploring the offending decision. Implications of this 'Decision Structure' model on the study of offending and on working with offenders are suggested, and ideas for further studies are presented

THYMUS-DERIVED LYMPHOCYTES PRODUCE AN IMMUNOLOGICALLY SPECIFIC MACROPHAGEARMING FACTOR

Spleen cells from mice immunized with an allogeneic tumor when cultured with the specific tumor cells release into the supernatant a specific macrophage-arming factor(s) (SMAF) which binds nonspecifically to macrophages from both mice and rats and renders these cytotoxic to the specific tumor cells. SMAF also binds in an immunologically specific way to the target cells. SMAF-treated target cells grow normally in the absence of macrophages but are killed in the presence of normal macrophages. Thymus-derived cells are necessary for the production of SMAF since (a) after treatment with anti-θ serum immune spleen cells fail to release SMAF; (b) spleen cells from immunized T cell-deprived mice (thymectomized as adults followed by whole body irradiation and restored with bone marrow) fail to produce SMAF on stimulation with the specific target cells. While SMAF has the properties of a cytophilic antibody, it does not belong to one of the established classes of immunoglobulin since high activity is found after column separation in a fraction having a molecular weight between 50,000–60,000 daltons

Reasoning with Non-Numeric Linguistic Variables

Where decisions are based on imprecise numeric data and linguistic variables, the development of automated decision aids presents particular difficulties. In such applications, linguistic variables often take their values from a pre-ordered set of vaguely defined linguistic terms. The mathematical structures that arise from the assumption that sets of linguistic terms are pair-wise tolerant are considered. A homomorphism between tolerance spaces, filter bases and fuzzy numbers is shown. A proposal for modeling linguistic terms with an ordered set of fuzzy numbers is introduced. A procedure for structured knowledge acquisition based on the topology of the term sets and the cognitive theory of prototypes is shown to give rise to sparse rule bases. Similarity as a function of “distance” between fuzzy numbers treated as tolerance mappings is used as an inference mechanism in sparse rule bases to give linguistically valued outputs. Measuring the “distance” between fuzzy sets to correspond to intuitive notions of nearness is not straightforward, since the usual metric axioms are not adequate. An alternative way of measuring “distance” between fuzzy numbers is introduced, which reduces to the usual one when applied to crisp numbers

MOPTOP: Multi-colour Optimised Optical Polarimeter

Polarimetric measurements are essential for the study of jetted sources associated with black holes, such as γ-ray bursts and blazars. The relativistic jets launched from regions close to the black hole are threaded with magnetic fields, which produce synchrotron emission, and can be studied with polarimetric measurements. The multi-colour, optimised, optical polarimeter (MOPTOP) is a multi-band imaging instrument designed for use on the Liverpool Telescope. By replacing the rotating polaroid with a half wave plate and beam splitter, the instrument utilises twice as much of the incoming beam of light from the telescope compared to its predecessor, Ringo3. MOPTOP also builds on the successful introduction of dichroic mirrors to perform simultaneous multi-waveband polarimetric and photometric analysis in Ringo3, and enhances the sensitivity of the instrument with sCMOS cameras to use all photons as efficiently as possible

The Hippo pathway regulates axis formation and morphogenesis in Hydra

How did cells of early metazoan organisms first organize themselves to form a body axis? The canonical Wnt pathway has been shown to be sufficient for induction of axis in Cnidaria, a sister group to Bilateria, and is important in bilaterian axis formation. Here, we provide experimental evidence that in cnidaria

Evaluating the merits of using brief measures of PTSD or general mental health measures in two-stage PTSD screening

Psychological screening of large numbers of personnel returning from deployments should be as brief as possible without sacrificing the ability to detect individuals who are experiencing serious psychological difficulties. This study focused on screening for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology in 421 deployed male members of the Australian Army while they were on deployment and again 3 to 6 months after they returned home. The first aim was to evaluate the performance of the Primary Care—Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Screen (PC-PTSD) and a 4-item version of the 17-item Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist (PCL). A second aim was to evaluate the role of the Kessler-10 (K10) in psychological screening. The results indicated that the short form of the PCL was a better substitute for the full PCL than the PC-PTSD. Other results suggested that a more efficient screening process can be achieved using an initial K10 screening followed by more intensive PTSD screening for people identified as high risk. An additional advantage of an initial K10 filter is that other forms of mental illness could also be targeted in the second stage screening