An investigation into the routes to inpatient care at the Pantang Hospital in Ghana via the criminal justice system

Objectives: To develop knowledge of routes by which patients are admitted to Pantang hospital via the courts or police and to explore the factors that prevent discharge, rehabilitation or transfer to prison of these patients.Setting: Pantang Psychiatric Hospital, Accra, Ghana, West AfricaDesign: A cross-sectional exploratory qualitative study.Participants: Adult patients with a psychiatric diagnosis who had been admitted to hospital following involvement with the criminal justice system and their families; and stakeholders (participants who had experience working with mentally disordered offenders).Methods: A descriptive and ethnographic survey of patients plus interviews with key stakeholders in mental health and criminal justice. Data were analysed using hybrid thematic analysis.Results: Patients arrived at Pantang Psychiatric Hospital following referral by the arresting police authorities, through court referral, or directly from prisons. All participants reported lack of understanding of the mental health and criminal justice systems, and interface between the two. Most patients and family members reported they feared the stigmaof mental illness and patients’ criminal charges would interrupt the patients’ successful reintegration into the community.Conclusion: This study revealed that forensic mental health patients in the Pantang Hospital entered through one of three ways; direct entry through the community-based policing system; on order through the court system; and referrals directly from the prison system. Inadequate staffing and other resources resulted in delays in completing thenecessary psychiatric assessments.Keywords: Inpatient psychiatric care, forensic mental health, stigma, Ghana, psychiatryFunding: The study was funded locally and by a grant received from the Faculty of Forensic Psychiatry, Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK

Examination of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 in a mixed-gender young-adolescent sample

Author version made available in accordance with publisher copyright policy.Thin-ideal (or media) internalization is an important eating disorder risk factor that has become a central target of many prevention programs. However, evidence for its valid assessment in young, mixed-gender, adolescent samples is limited, and the current study is the first published to explore the psychometric properties of the 30-item Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3: Thompson, van den Berg, Roehrig, Guarda, & Heinberg, 2004) in a non-adult community sample. Two samples of Grade 8 students (M age = 13.68 years, SD = .39), totalling 680 girls (N =332) and boys (N =348) completed the SATAQ-3 and other measures, whereas a smaller sample (N = 123) of Grade 10 females (M age = 15.01 years, SD = .41) served as a comparison group for supplementary analyses. Principal component analyses (PCA) with data from Sample One (N=201) revealed four factors with eigenvalues >1.0, similar to the original authors structure but where some cross-loading occurred between the Pressures and Internalization – General scales. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted with data from Sample Two (N=479) on the factor solution found in the PCA. The model did not fit well, leading to further revisions based on removal of cross-loading items and CFA modification indices, resulting in a 19-item, 4 factor solution with acceptable fit. Examinations of validity and reliability were generally acceptable. The overall findings suggest an abbreviated version of the SATAQ-3 might be more appropriate than the original version with young-adolescent, mixed gender audiences. Further examinations of the psychometric properties of the SATAQ-3 with this demographic are indicated

Fully integrated digital microfluidics platform for automated immunoassay; a versatile tool for rapid, specific detection of a wide range of pathogens

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.With the tangible threat posed by the release of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents, detection of airborne pathogens is a critical military and security concern. Recent air sampling techniques developed for biocollection take advantage of Electrowetting on Dielectric (EWOD) to recover material, producing highly concentrated droplet samples. Bespoke EWOD-based digital microfluidics platforms are very well suited to take full advantage of the microlitre concentrated droplet resulting from this recovery process. In this paper we present a free-standing, fully automated DMF platform for immunoassay. Using this system, we demonstrate the automated detection of four classes of CBW agent simulant biomolecules and organisms each representing credible threat agents. Taking advantage of the full magnetic separation process with antibody-bound microbeads, rapid and complete separation of specific target antigen can be achieved with minimal washing steps allowing for very rapid detection. Here, we report clear detection of four categories of antigens achieved with assay completion times of between six and ten minutes. Detection of HSA, Bacillus atrophaeus (BG spores), MS2 bacteriophage and Escherichia coli are demonstrated with estimated limit of detection of respectively 30 ng ml -1, 4 × 10 4 cfu ml -1, 10 6 pfu ml -1 and 2 × 10 7 cfu ml -1. The fully-integrated portable platform described in this paper is highly compatible with the next generation of electrowetting-coupled air samplers and thus shows strong potential toward future in-field deployable biodetection systems and could have key implication in life-changing sectors such as healthcare, environment or food security.Peer reviewe

Depression as a moderator of benefit from Media Smart: a school-based eating disorder prevention program

© 2013. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Objective: To investigate if baseline depression moderated response to Media Smart, an 8-lesson school-based program previously found to achieve a long-term risk reduction effect in young adolescents. Method: 540 Grade 8 students (M age = 13.62 years, SD = .37) from 4 schools participated with 11 classes receiving the Media Smart program (126 girls; 107 boys) and 13 comparison classes receiving their normal lessons (147 girls; 160 boys). Shape and weight concern, media internalization, body dissatisfaction, dieting, ineffectiveness, and perceived pressure were the outcome variables. Results: Moderation was indicated by significant interaction effects for group (Media Smart; Control) X moderator (high depression; low depression) X time (post-program; 6-month follow-up; 2.5-year follow-up), with baseline entered as a covariate. Such effects were found for shape and weight concern, media internalization, body dissatisfaction, ineffectiveness and perceived pressure. Post-hoc testing found high depression Media Smart participants scored significantly lower than their control counterparts at post-program on shape and weight concern, media internalization and dieting, whereas low depression Media Smart participants scored significantly lower on shape and weight concern at 2.5-year follow-up. Discussion: Media Smart achieved a reduction in eating disorder risk factors for high-depression participants and a reduced rate of growth in risk factor scores for low-depression participants

An investigation of temperament endophenotype candidates for early emergence of the core cognitive component of eating disorders

This study was designed to investigate potential temperament endophenotypes for clinically significant importance of shape and weight. Seven temperament risk factors for eating disorders and the Eating Disorder Examination were assessed in 699 female twins aged 12–15 years. Each variable was evaluated against the following endophenotype criteria : associated with illness in the general population ; found in non-affected family members at a higher rate than in the general population ; and, heritable. All seven variables were significantly associated with clinically significant importance of shape and weight, while thin-ideal internalization, ineffectiveness, body dissatisfaction and sensitivity to punishment were found at significantly elevated levels in non-affected twins, when controlling for sister’s temperament score. These four variables had genetic correlations with importance of shape and weight, ranging from 0.48 to 0.95. Future research should evaluate the stability of the identified endophenotypes and their utility for predicting significant growth in importance of shape and weight, and also whether different endophenotypes emerge when the importance of weight and shape reaches its peak in adolescents, around 15 to 16 years of age

Nutrient management on intensive dairy farms in the southwest of Ireland

End of Project ReportIntensive grass-based dairy farming relies on high inputs of nutrients that are now regulated under SI 378, 2006 (Good Agricultural Practice for Protection of Waters). This project studied nutrient management practices on twenty-one intensive dairy farms in the south-west of Ireland between 2003 and 2006. Mean stocking rate was 202 kg organic-N/ha deposited by grazing livestock. Overall fertiliser-N use on the farms decreased from 266 to 223 kg N/ha/yr during the study, with the rate of fertiliser-N in the first application each year decreasing from 49 to 33 kg N/ha, while the rate of fertiliser-N applied for first cut silage production also fell from 106 to 96 kg N/ha. These decreases were partly achieved by applying more slurry in springtime and by the introduction of white clover on five of the farms. While the limits on fertiliser-N use under SI 378 were exceeded on ten farms in 2003, the limits were exceeded on only two farms in 2006. Fertiliser-P usage declined from 12.0 to 10.2 kg P/ha/yr, and complied with the limits of SI 378 on thirteen of the farms in 2006. Mean Morgan’s extractable soil P concentration (STP) exceeded 10 mg/l on five farms, while the mean concentration exceeded 8 mg/l on ten farms. Phosphorus management, therefore, was close to that required by SI 378 on most farms. Slurry storage capacity met or exceeded the minimum requirements of SI 378 on eight farms; substantial investment in slurry storage facilities was necessary on thirteen farms. The mean N surplus on the farms declined from 277 to 232 kg N/ha/yr during the study due to a decline in total N input from 335 to 288 kg N/ha/yr over the same period. The mean efficiency of N-use increased from 17.9 to 20.2 %. The large variation in rates of fertiliser-N applied on farms with similar stocking rates suggests potential for further improvements in N use efficiency on some farms. Decreases in nutrient input levels can be partly attributed to increased farmer awareness, due to advice and record keeping from this study and the introduction of SI 378, and the increasing cost of nutrient inputs relative to output prices. In terms of fertiliser N and P use and soil P concentrations, complying with the limits in SI 378 does not require major changes in nutrient management practices on the majority of these intensive dairy farms

Effect of Changing Gloves Before Placental Extraction on Incidence of Postcesarean Endometritis

Objective: We sought to determine if changing the surgeon's gloves after delivery of the infant and prior to manual placental removal decreases the incidence of postcesarean endometritis

Protein droplet actuation on superhydrophobic surfaces: A new approach toward anti-biofouling electrowetting systems

© 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.Among Lab-on-a-chip techniques, Digital microfluidics (DMF), allowing the precise actuation of discrete droplets, is a highly promising, flexible, biochemical assay platform for biomedical and bio-detection applications. However the durability of DMF systems remains a challenge due to biofouling of the droplet-actuating surface when high concentrations of biomolecules are employed. To address this issue, the use of superhydrophobic materials as the actuating surface in DMF devices is examined. The change in contact angle by electrowetting of deionised water and ovalbumin protein samples is characterised on different surfaces (hydrophobic and superhydrophobic). Ovalbumin droplets at 1 mg ml-1 concentration display better electrowetting reversibility on Neverwet®, a commercial superhydrophobic material, than on Cytop®, a typical DMF hydrophobic material. Biofouling rate, characterised by roll-off angle measurement of ovalbumin loaded droplets and further confirmed by measurements of the mean fluorescence intensity of labelled fibrinogen, appears greatly reduced on Neverwet®. Transportation of protein laden droplets (fibrinogen at concentration 0.1 mg ml-1 and ovalbumin at concentration 1 mg ml-1 and 10 mg ml-1) is successfully demonstrated using electrowetting actuation on both single-plate and parallel-plate configurations with performance comparable to that of DI water actuation. In addition, although droplet splitting requires further attention, merging and efficient mixing are demonstrated.Peer reviewe

A longitudinal investigation of the impact of disordered eating on young women's quality of life

"This article may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record." Author manuscript made available here in accordance with Publisher copyright policy.OBJECTIVE: The extent to which subclinical levels of disordered eating affect quality of life (QOL) was assessed. METHOD: Four waves of self-report data from Survey 2 (S2) to 5 (S5) of a national longitudinal survey of young Australian women (N = 9,688) were used to assess the impact of any level of disordered eating at S2 on QOL over the following 9 years, and to evaluate any moderating effects of social support and of depression. RESULTS: At baseline, 23% of the women exhibited some level of disordered eating, and they scored significantly lower on both the physical and the mental component scores of the SF-36 at every survey; differences in mental health were still clinically meaningful at S5. Social support and depressive symptoms each acted as a moderator of the mental component scores. Women with both disordered eating and low social support, or disordered eating and depression, had the worst initial scores; although they improved the most over time, they still had the lowest scores at S5. Higher social support at baseline resulted in women with disordered eating being largely indistinguishable from women without disordered eating who had low social support. Lower levels of depression resulted in women with disordered eating having a significantly better QOL than women with high levels of depression, regardless of eating status. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to examine the long-term impact of subclinical levels of disordered eating on QOL, and it suggests that even apparently minor levels of symptomatology are associated with significant and far-reaching deficits in well-being

The First In Situ Encounter of Gigantura chuni (Giganturidae: Giganturoidei: Aulopiformes: Cyclosquamata: Teleostei), with a Preliminary Investigation of Pair-Bonding

The Gulf of Mexico Scientific and Environmental ROV Partnership using Existing iNdustrial Technology (Gulf SERPENT) Project utilizes industrial work-class ROVs based at oceanic oil and gas facilities for scientific research and exploration. During Gulf SERPENT operations, an ROV documented the first in situ observations of Gigantura chuni at a depth of approximately 900 m in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The fish were identified to genus by the length of the caudal fin ventral lobe relative to standard length, reflectance from crystalline guanine, and relative mouth size to the head length. The width-length ratios suggest G. chuni as the species (approximately 1:5 for adult G. chuni vs. 1:10 for adult G. indica). The videos provided the second known in situ observation of giganturids and the first of G. chuni. The first video clearly shows two individuals in close proximity, with both oriented vertically in the water column; a second video clip shows a single individual at a slightly shallower depth, and also oriented vertically in the water column. An odds ratio comparison for collections of G. chuni and G. indica from the DEEPEND program to fitted theoretical distributions was used to preliminarily analyze the probability of encountering various numbers of individuals in a single-sample effort. Groups of two individuals, and in particular even number groupings, were encountered during the DEEPEND program sampling more often than would be expected based on theoretical distributions for both G. chuni and G. indica suggesting pair-bonding may be a likely reproductive strategy complementing synchronous hermaphroditism in giganturids