When Political Will Is Not Enough: Jails, Communities, and Persons With Mental Health Disorders

This article describes a project that generated the recommendations of a panel of experts regarding the jail as a venue for the delivery of behavioral health care services. The project was a component of the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge initiative, which seeks to address over-incarceration by changing the way jails are conceptualized and used. The recommendations were grounded largely in the sequential intercept model that rests on two core principles: minimize the inappropriate penetration of persons with mental illness into the criminal justice system and recognize that the community is the unit of analysis to address criminal justice–mental health problems successfully. Other topics presented in the context of the initiative included bringing the community to scale, jail diversion, the limits of jail responsibility, and the Affordable Care Act’s role in providing insurance coverage for detainees

Numerical Modeling of Propellant Boil-Off in a Cryogenic Storage Tank

A numerical model to predict boil-off of stored propellant in large spherical cryogenic tanks has been developed. Accurate prediction of tank boil-off rates for different thermal insulation systems was the goal of this collaboration effort. The Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program, integrating flow analysis and conjugate heat transfer for solving complex fluid system problems, was used to create the model. Calculation of tank boil-off rate requires simultaneous simulation of heat transfer processes among liquid propellant, vapor ullage space, and tank structure. The reference tank for the boil-off model was the 850,000 gallon liquid hydrogen tank at Launch Complex 39B (LC- 39B) at Kennedy Space Center, which is under study for future infrastructure improvements to support the Constellation program. The methodology employed in the numerical model was validated using a sub-scale model and tank. Experimental test data from a 1/15th scale version of the LC-39B tank using both liquid hydrogen and liquid nitrogen were used to anchor the analytical predictions of the sub-scale model. Favorable correlations between sub-scale model and experimental test data have provided confidence in full-scale tank boil-off predictions. These methods are now being used in the preliminary design for other cases including future launch vehicle

Random Walks Along the Streets and Canals in Compact Cities: Spectral analysis, Dynamical Modularity, Information, and Statistical Mechanics

Different models of random walks on the dual graphs of compact urban structures are considered. Analysis of access times between streets helps to detect the city modularity. The statistical mechanics approach to the ensembles of lazy random walkers is developed. The complexity of city modularity can be measured by an information-like parameter which plays the role of an individual fingerprint of {\it Genius loci}. Global structural properties of a city can be characterized by the thermodynamical parameters calculated in the random walks problem.Comment: 44 pages, 22 figures, 2 table

Did female prisoners with mental disorders receive psychiatric treatment before imprisonment?

© 2015 Mundt et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.BackgroundThroughout the world, high prevalence rates of mental disorders have been found in prison populations, especially in females. It has been suggested that these populations do not access psychiatric treatment. The aim of this study was to establish rates of psychiatric in- and outpatient treatments prior to imprisonment in female prisoners and to explore reasons for discontinuation of such treatments.Methods150 consecutively admitted female prisoners were interviewed in Berlin, Germany. Socio-demographic characteristics, mental disorders, and previous psychiatric in- and outpatient treatments were assessed by trained researchers. Open questions were used to explore reasons for ending previous psychiatric treatment.ResultsA vast majority of 99 prisoners (66%; 95% CI: 58¿73) of the total sample reported that they had previously been in psychiatric treatment, 80 (53%; 95 CI: 45¿61) in inpatient treatment, 62 (41%; 95 CI: 34¿49) in outpatient treatment and 42 (29%; 21¿39) in both in- and outpatient treatments. All prisoners with psychosis and 72% of the ones with any lifetime mental health disorder had been in previous treatment. The number of inpatient treatments and imprisonments were positively correlated (rho¿=¿0.27; p¿<¿0.01). Inpatient treatment was described as successfully completed by 56% (N¿=¿41) of those having given reasons for ending such treatment, whilst various reasons were reported for prematurely ending outpatient treatments.ConclusionThe data do not support the notion of a general `mental health treatment gap¿ in female prisoners. Although inpatient care is often successfully completed, repeated inpatient treatments are not linked with fewer imprisonments. Improved transition from inpatient to outpatient treatment and services that engage female prisoners to sustained outpatient treatments are needed

Registration of Great Northern Common Bean Cultivar ‘Coyne’ with Enhanced Disease Resistance to Common Bacterial Blight and Bean Rust

Great northern common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) ‘Coyne’ (Reg. No. CV-287, PI 655574) was developed by the dry bean breeding program at the University of Nebraska Agricultural Research Division and released in 2008. It was bred specifically for adaptation to Nebraska growing conditions and for enhanced resistance to common bacterial blight (CBB), a major disease of common bean caused by the seed-borne bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. phaseoli (Smith) Dye, and bean common rust Uromyces appendiculatus (Pers.:Pers) Unger. Coyne is a great northern F7:8 line derived from a three-way cross (G95023/Weihing//BelMiNeb-RMR-11). The first cross was made in winter 2003. The F7:8 was tested in advanced yield trials at Scottsbluff and Mitchell, NE, and in growers’ fields in Nebraska. Yield of Coyne was only 47 kg ha–1 lower than ‘Marquis’ in Morrill and Scotts Bluff, NE, counties. Reaction of Coyne to CBB under field conditions was consistent across 3 yr at the West Central Research and Extension Center, North Platte, NE, where fi eld disease ratings of 3.2, 3.5, and 4.4 were recorded in 2005, 2006, and 2007, respectively. Coyne has the Ur-3 and Ur-6 genes for resistance to common bean rust and carries the single dominant hypersensitive I gene that provides resistance to all non-necrotic strains of Bean common mosaic virus. Coyne has bright white seed, blooms 44 d after planting, and is a midseason bean, maturing 91 d after planting

Radionuclides identified at a US Customs Service site

The movement of radionuclides through the U.S. Customs Service port of entry at Blaine, Washington, has been studied using a high-resolution gamma-ray spectrometer and an automated data logging system. Data covering about 10 weeks of operation were obtained and analyzed. The data-acquisition system and the site of the measurement are described. Results are reported and interpreted in light of the known traffic of radioisotopes produced at the Canadian TRIUMF facility and imported into the United States for use in radiopharmaceuticals

A detailed investigation of the onion structure of exchanged coupled magnetic Fe3-dO4@CoFe2O4@Fe3-dO4 nanoparticles

Nanoparticles that combine several magnetic phases offer wide perspectives for cutting edge applications because of the high modularity of their magnetic properties. Besides the addition of the magnetic characteristics intrinsic to each phase, the interface that results from core-shell and, further, from onion structures leads to synergistic properties such as magnetic exchange coupling. Such a phenomenon is of high interest to overcome the superparamagnetic limit of iron oxide nanoparticles which hampers potential applications such as data storage or sensors. In this manuscript, we report on the design of nanoparticles with an onion-like structure which has been scarcely reported yet. These nanoparticles consist of a Fe3-dO4 core covered by a first shell of CoFe2O4 and a second shell of Fe3-dO4, e.g., a Fe3-dO4@CoFe2O4@Fe3-dO4 onion-like structure. They were synthesized through a multistep seed-mediated growth approach which consists consists in performing three successive thermal decomposition of metal complexes in a high-boiling-point solvent (about 300 °C). Although TEM micrographs clearly show the growth of each shell from the iron oxide core, core sizes and shell thicknesses markedly differ from what is suggested by the size increasing. We investigated very precisely the structure of nanoparticles in performing high resolution (scanning) TEM imaging and geometrical phase analysis (GPA). The chemical composition and spatial distribution of atoms were studied by electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) mapping and spectroscopy. The chemical environment and oxidation state of cations were investigated by 57Fe Mössbauer spectrometry, soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). The combination of these techniques allowed us to estimate the increase of Fe2+ content in the iron oxide core of the core@shell structure and the increase of the cobalt ferrite shell thickness in the core@shell@shell one, whereas the iron oxide shell appears to be much thinner than expected. Thus, the modification of the chemical composition as well as the size of the Fe3-dO4 core and the thickness of the cobalt ferrite shell have a high impact on the magnetic properties. Furthermore, the growth of the iron oxide shell also markedly modifies the magnetic properties of the core-shell nanoparticles, thus demonstrating the high potential of onion-like nanoparticles to accurately tune the magnetic properties of nanoparticles according to the desired applications. © 2021 American Chemical Society