979 research outputs found
The engagement of young people in drug interventions in coercive contexts: findings from a cross-national European study
Background: The engagement of young people has been a neglected area in youth justice and drugs policy and practice. This paper explores the concept of ‘engagement’ in relation to drugs interventions in custodial and community settings in different European countries.
Methods: Interviews were undertaken with young people (aged 14-25 years) in contact with the criminal justice system who use illegal drugs and with practitioners involved in the delivery of interventions for our target group in Denmark, Italy, Poland the UK.
Results: The key techniques to engage young people were described in similar terms across the countries. These included forming relationships based on trust, honesty and empathy, setting goals collaboratively and employing practitioners with lived experience and understanding. The objectives and activities on offer are often constrained by the criminal justice contexts.
Conclusions: Despite the differences between the countries in terms of criminal justice systems and the structure of drug interventions, there were remarkable similarities in the ways young people and practitioners described effective engagement. Strong emphasis on operational engagement to ensure positive relationships between young people and practitioners was important in the design and delivery of interventions. Practitioners working in criminal justice contexts need to have flexibility and autonomy to work creatively to find ways to engage, connect and inspire young people
Building cultures of participation: involving young people in contact with the criminal justice system in the development of drug interventions in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Italy and Poland
This paper explores the participation of young people in contact with criminal justice systems in the development of drugs interventions. Interviews were undertaken with 160 young people (aged 15-25) and 66 practitioners involved in the design, delivery and commissioning of drug interventions. We analyse the key challenges in involving young people in the development of interventions including structural, organisational and individual factors. We argue that these barriers can be overcome by fostering flexible models of participation and identifying the most meaningful and appropriate approaches for involving young people at different stages and in different initiatives which consider socio-cultural contexts
Zipf's law in Multifragmentation
We discuss the meaning of Zipf's law in nuclear multifragmentation. We remark
that Zipf's law is a consequence of a power law fragment size distribution with
exponent . We also recall why the presence of such distribution
is not a reliable signal of a liquid-gas phase transition
Ballistic deposition patterns beneath a growing KPZ interface
We consider a (1+1)-dimensional ballistic deposition process with
next-nearest neighbor interaction, which belongs to the KPZ universality class,
and introduce for this discrete model a variational formulation similar to that
for the randomly forced continuous Burgers equation. This allows to identify
the characteristic structures in the bulk of a growing aggregate ("clusters"
and "crevices") with minimizers and shocks in the Burgers turbulence, and to
introduce a new kind of equipped Airy process for ballistic growth. We dub it
the "hairy Airy process" and investigate its statistics numerically. We also
identify scaling laws that characterize the ballistic deposition patterns in
the bulk: the law of "thinning" of the forest of clusters with increasing
height, the law of transversal fluctuations of cluster boundaries, and the size
distribution of clusters. The corresponding critical exponents are determined
exactly based on the analogy with the Burgers turbulence and simple scaling
considerations.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Minor edits: typo corrected, added explanation
of two acronyms. The text is essentially equivalent to version
A search on Dirac equation
The solutions, in terms of orthogonal polynomials, of Dirac equation with
analytically solvable potentials are investigated within a novel formalism by
transforming the relativistic equation into a Schrodinger like one. Earlier
results are discussed in a unified framework and certain solutions of a large
class of potentials are given.Comment: 9 page
Assessment of prognostic significance of cytoplasmic survivin expression in advanced oesophageal cancer.
Survivin is a member of the family of proteins, which inhibit apoptosis (inhibitor of apoptosis proteins - IAP). Expression of survivin was found in colorectal cancer, neuroblastoma, bladder cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and breast cancer. There is some recent data indicating the correlation of poor prognosis and worse response to chemotherapy in patients with oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) expressing survivin. The aim of the present study was to assess survivin expression in cancerous tissue of patients with advanced OSCC and to test the potential correlation between survivin expression and clinicopathological data. Forty two patients (mean age 58.36+/-8.97 yrs), who were oesophagectomised due to squamous cell carcinoma of the thoracic oesophagus between 1998 and 2000, were retrospectively analysed. Cytoplasmic survivin expression, examined immunohistochemically, was found in 35 (83.33%) cases. No statistically significant correlation between survivin expression in the tumour and patients' gender, TNM stage, or vascular involvement was noted. The mean survival of patients with cytoplasmic survivin expression (17.81+/-5.51 months) was not statistically different to those with negative survivin staining (16+/-6.28 months) as assessed by Mantel-Cox test (p=0.49). Univariate regression analysis revealed UICC staging as the only predictor of survival in the analysed group (
Charged particle production in the Pb+Pb system at 158 GeV/c per nucleon
Charged particle multiplicities from high multiplicity central interactions
of 158 GeV/nucleon Pb ions with Pb target nuclei have been measured in the
central and far forward projectile spectator regions using emulsion chambers.
Multiplicities are significantly lower than predicted by Monte Carlo
simulations. We examine the shape of the pseudorapidity distribution and its
dependence on centrality in detail.Comment: 17 pages text plus 12 figures in postscript 12/23/99 -- Add TeX
version of sourc
Maternal stress during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental outcomes of children during the first 2 years of life
AIM:
A growing body of literature documents associations between maternal stress in pregnancy and child development, but findings across studies are often inconsistent. The aim of this study was to estimate the association between exposure to different kinds of prenatal stress and child psychomotor development.
METHODS:
The study population consisted of 372 mother-child pairs from Polish Mother and Child Cohort. The analysis was restricted to the women who worked at least 1 month during pregnancy period. Maternal psychological stress during pregnancy was assessed based on: the Subjective Work Characteristics Questionnaire, Perceived Stress Scale and Social Readjustment Rating Scale. The level of satisfaction with family functioning and support was evaluated by APGAR Family Scale. Child psychomotor development was assessed at the 12th and 24th months of age by Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development.
RESULTS:
Negative impact on child cognitive development at the age of two was observed for the Perceived Stress Scale (β = -0.8; P = 0.01) and the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (β = -0.4; P = 0.03) after adjusting for the variety of confounders. Occupational stress, as well as satisfaction with family functioning, was not significantly associated with child psychomotor development (P > 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS:
The study supports the findings that prenatal exposure to maternal stress is significantly associated with decreased child cognitive functions. In order to further understand and quantify the effects of prenatal stress on child neurodevelopment further studies are needed. This will be important for developing interventions that provide more assistance to pregnant women, including emotional support or help to manage psychological stress
Interaction of matter-wave gap solitons in optical lattices
We study mobility and interaction of gap solitons in a Bose-Einstein
condensate (BEC) confined by an optical lattice potential. Such localized
wavepackets can exist only in the gaps of the matter-wave band-gap spectrum and
their interaction properties are shown to serve as a measure of discreteness
imposed onto a BEC by the lattice potential. We show that inelastic collisions
of two weakly localized near-the-band-edge gap solitons provide simple and
effective means for generating strongly localized in-gap solitons through
soliton fusion.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
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