Borderline personality disorder from both sides : staff and client perspectives

The difficulties faced by individuals attracting a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are multiple and varied. Whilst the psychological difficulties characteristic of this diagnosis have a significant impact on these clients’ everyday lives, they also contend with others’ attitudes and responses to their diagnosis, which has proved both controversial and stigmatising. Chapter one concentrates on the stigma that surrounds the BPD label by presenting a systematic review of the literature relating to professionals’ attitudes and responses to individuals diagnosed with BPD. This highlights the predominantly negative perceptions of this client group, the strength of countertransference experienced by professionals working with this client group, and the ways in which clinicians respond to this. Chapter two concentrates on the perspectives of clients with BPD by reporting an empirical study investigating the lived experiences of parenting for mothers with BPD. The experiences of six mothers are explored using a phenomenological approach and the themes emerging from their interviews are discussed in detail. The findings are considered in relation to the existing literature and the implications in terms of providing support for mothers with BPD are discussed. Chapter three continues the theme of motherhood by presenting a reflective paper focussing on the analysis of parenting–related dreams experienced by the author during the course of the research. The personal and professional implications of the dream analysis and research completion are considered

Disorder, inhomogeneity and spin dynamics in f-electron non-Fermi liquid systems

Muon spin rotation and relaxation ($\mu$SR) experiments have yielded evidence that structural disorder is an important factor in many f-electron-based non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) systems. Disorder-driven mechanisms for NFL behaviour are suggested by the observed broad and strongly temperature-dependent $\mu$SR (and NMR) linewidths in several NFL compounds and alloys. Local disorder-driven theories (Kondo disorder, Griffiths-McCoy singularity) are, however, not capable of describing the time-field scaling seen in muon spin relaxation experiments, which suggest cooperative and critical spin fluctuations rather than a distribution of local fluctuation rates. A strong empirical correlation is established between electronic disorder and slow spin fluctuations in NFL materialsComment: 24 pages, 15 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Opacity calculation for target physics using the ABAKO/RAPCAL code

Radiative properties of hot dense plasmas remain a subject of current interest since they play an important role in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research, as well as in studies on stellar physics. In particular, the understanding of ICF plasmas requires emissivities and opacities for both hydro-simulations and diagnostics. Nevertheless, the accurate calculation of these properties is still an open question and continuous efforts are being made to develop new models and numerical codes that can facilitate the evaluation of such properties. In this work the set of atomic models ABAKO/RAPCAL is presented, as well as a series of results for carbon and aluminum to show its capability for modeling the population kinetics of plasmas in both LTE and NLTE regimes. Also, the spectroscopic diagnostics of a laser-produced aluminum plasma using ABAKO/RAPCAL is discussed. Additionally, as an interesting application of these codes, fitting analytical formulas for Rosseland and Planck mean opacities for carbon plasmas are reported. These formulas are useful as input data in hydrodynamic simulation of targets where the computation task is so hard that in line computation with sophisticated opacity codes is prohibitive

Exceptional eruptive CO2 emissions from intra-plate alkaline magmatism in the Canary volcanic archipelago

Alkaline mafic magmas forming intra-plate oceanic islands are believed to be strongly enriched in CO2 due to low-degree partial melting of enriched mantle sources. However, until now, such CO2 enhancement has not been verified by measuring CO2 degassing during a subaerial eruption. Here, we provide evidence of highly CO2-rich gas emissions during the 86-day 2021 Tajogaite eruption of Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma Island, in the Canary archipelago. Our results reveal sustained high plume CO2/SO2 ratios, which, when combined with SO2 fluxes, melt inclusion volatile contents and magma production rates at explosive and effusive vents, imply a magmatic CO2 content of 4.5 ± 1.5 wt%. The amount of CO2 released during the 2021 eruptive activity was 28 ± 14 Mt CO2. Extrapolating to the volume of alkaline mafic magmas forming La Palma alone (estimated as 4000 km3 erupted over 11 Ma), we infer a maximum CO2 emission into the ocean and atmosphere of 1016 moles of CO2, equivalent to 20% of the eruptive CO2 emissions from a large igneous province eruption, suggesting that the formation of the Canary volcanic archipelago produced a CO2 emission of similar magnitude as a large igneous province

Ovine pedomics : the first study of the ovine foot 16S rRNA-based microbiome

We report the first study of the bacterial microbiome of ovine interdigital skin based on 16S rRNA by pyrosequencing and conventional cloning with Sanger-sequencing. Three flocks were selected, one a flock with no signs of footrot or interdigital dermatitis, a second flock with interdigital dermatitis alone and a third flock with both interdigital dermatitis and footrot. The sheep were classified as having either healthy interdigital skin (H), interdigital dermatitis (ID) or virulent footrot (VFR). The ovine interdigital skin bacterial community varied significantly by flock and clinical condition. The diversity and richness of operational taxonomic units was greater in tissue from sheep with ID than H or VFR affected sheep. Actinobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria were the most abundant phyla comprising 25 genera. Peptostreptococcus, Corynebacterium and Staphylococcus were associated with H, ID and VFR respectively. Sequences of Dichelobacter nodosus, the causal agent of ovine footrot, were not amplified due to mismatches in the 16S rRNA universal forward primer (27F). A specific real time PCR assay was used to demonstrate the presence of D. nodosus which was detected in all samples including the flock with no signs of ID or VFR. Sheep with ID had significantly higher numbers of D. nodosus (104-109 cells/g tissue) than those with H or VFR feet

The potential determinants of young people's sense of justice: an international study

This paper uses reports from 13,000 Grade Nine pupils in five countries to examine issues such as whether they were treated fairly at school, trust their teachers and adults in wider society, are willing to sacrifice teacher attention to help others, and support the cultural integration of recent immigrants. Using such reports as ‘outcomes’ in a multi‐stage regression model, it is clear that they are largely unrelated to school‐level pupil mix variables. To some extent, these outcomes are stratified by pupil and family background in the same way for all countries. However, the largest association is with pupil‐reported experience of interactions with their teachers. Teachers appear to be a major influence on young people's sense of justice and the principles they apply in deciding whether something is fair. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which schools and teachers could take advantage of this finding

PVS: a web server for protein sequence variability analysis tuned to facilitate conserved epitope discovery

We have developed PVS (Protein Variability Server), a web-based tool that uses several variability metrics to compute the absolute site variability in multiple protein-sequence alignments (MSAs). The variability is then assigned to a user-selected reference sequence consisting of either the first sequence in the alignment or a consensus sequence. Subsequently, PVS performs tasks that are relevant for structure-function studies, such as plotting and visualizing the variability in a relevant 3D-structure. Neatly, PVS also implements some other tasks that are thought to facilitate the design of epitope discovery-driven vaccines against pathogens where sequence variability largely contributes to immune evasion. Thus, PVS can return the conserved fragments in the MSA—as defined by a user-provided variability threshold—and locate them in a relevant 3D-structure. Furthermore, PVS can return a variability-masked sequence, which can be directly submitted to the RANKPEP server for the prediction of conserved T-cell epitopes. PVS is freely available at: http://imed.med.ucm.es/PVS/

Effect of desferrioxamine B and Suwannee River fulvic acid on Fe(III) release and Cr(III) desorption from goethite

Siderophores are biogenic chelating ligands that facilitate the solubilization of Fe(III) and form stable complexes with a range of contaminant metals and therefore may significantly affect their biogeochemical cycling. Desferrioxamine B (DFOB) is a trihydroxamate siderophore that acts synergistically with fulvic acid and low molecular weight organic ligands to release Fe from Fe(III) oxides. We report the results of batch dissolution experiments in which we determine the rates of Cr(III) desorption and Fe(III) release from Cr(III)-treated synthetic goethite as influenced by DFOB, by fulvic acid, and by the two compounds in combination. We observed that adsorbed Cr(III) at 3% surface coverage significantly reduced Fe(III) release from goethite for all combinations of DFOB and fulvic acid. When DFOB (270 µM) was the only ligand present, dissolved Fe(III) and Cr(III) increased approximately 1000-fold and 16-fold, respectively, as compared to the ligand-free system, a difference we attribute to the slow rate of water exchange of Cr(III). Suwannee River fuvic acid (SRFA) acts synergistically with DFOB by (i) reducing the goethite surface charge leading to increased HDFOB+ surface excess and by (ii) forming aqueous Fe(III)-SRFA species whose Fe(III) is subsequently removed by DFOB to yield aqueous Fe(III)-DFOB complexes. These observations shed new light on the synergistic relationship between DFOB and fulvic acid and reveal the mechanisms of Fe(III) acquisition available to plants and micro-organisms in Cr(III) contaminated environments

A comprehensive 1000 Genomes-based genome-wide association meta-analysis of coronary artery disease

Existing knowledge of genetic variants affecting risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) is largely based on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) analysis of common SNPs. Leveraging phased haplotypes from the 1000 Genomes Project, we report a GWAS meta-analysis of 185 thousand CAD cases and controls, interrogating 6.7 million common (MAF>0.05) as well as 2.7 million low frequency (0.005<MAF<0.05) variants. In addition to confirmation of most known CAD loci, we identified 10 novel loci, eight additive and two recessive, that contain candidate genes that newly implicate biological processes in vessel walls. We observed intra-locus allelic heterogeneity but little evidence of low frequency variants with larger effects and no evidence of synthetic association. Our analysis provides a comprehensive survey of the fine genetic architecture of CAD showing that genetic susceptibility to this common disease is largely determined by common SNPs of small effect siz