Partners and Pregnancy Loss: Perspectives from Co-mothers in the UK

Background Pregnancy loss has been shown to be an emotionally distressing event, with potentially long-lasting psychological consequences (Cumming et al., 2007). Research has also found that pregnancy loss can have a significant psychological impact on partners (Due et al.,2017). However, research with partners has overwhelmingly focused on fathers in heterosexual relationships and so is limited in its application to LGBTQ+ partners. Research seeking to explore co-mothers (non-gestational female same-sex partners) experiences of pregnancy loss is limited, with only one North American empirical study focussing on this (Wojnar, 2010). Aims The present study aims to explore how co-mothers in the UK experience pregnancy loss. By locating this research within the UK specifically, it is hoped that this research can begin to build an understanding of how UK healthcare and social systems interact with and impact upon co-mothers’ experiences of pregnancy loss. Methodology This qualitative study used individual, semi-structured interviews. Five co-mothers from across the UK took part in the study. The resultant data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results Four main themes and eleven related subthemes were developed from the data. The main themes were: The Journey Through Loss; Conception And Loss As Intertwined; The Impact Of The NHS On Pregnancy Loss; and Co-Mothers As Invisible And Unknown. The findings provide an insight into co-mothers’ experiences of pregnancy loss. Co-mothers described pregnancy loss as an emotionally complex and destabilising event. The possibility of both mothers being pregnant, or trying to become pregnant at the same time, added both extra complications and benefits to their experiences of loss. The couples’ journey to conception was integral to understanding the ways in which pregnancy loss impacted co-mothers. For co-mothers, pregnancy loss also encompassed a loss of carefully constructed plans, imagined futures and monetary loss, all of which added extra burdens to the already grieving couple. All co-mothers described negative experiences with the NHS, alongside some positive experiences. Co-mothers related some of these experiences to general poor-quality care, and some to direct discrimination

Reusable rocket engine turbopump condition monitoring

Significant improvements in engine readiness with attendant reductions in maintenance costs and turnaround times can be achieved with an engine condition monitoring system (CMS). The CMS provides real time health status of critical engine components, without disassembly, through component monitoring with advanced sensor technologies. Three technologies were selected to monitor the rotor bearings and turbine blades: the isotope wear detector and fiber optic deflectometer (bearings), and the fiber optic pyrometer (blades). Signal processing algorithms were evaluated and ranked for their utility in providing useful component health data to unskilled maintenance personnel. Design modifications to current configuration Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) high pressure turbopumps and the MK48-F turbopump were developed to incorporate the sensors

Understanding the Recovery Process in Psychosis

Conceptualizing recovery in the context of severe and persisting mental health conditions is a complex issue. In recent years, there has been a call to re-focus research from understanding the concept of recovery to improving understanding of the process of recovery. There is a paucity of knowledge about the core processes involved in recovery from psychosis. Objective: The authors aimed to gain insight into possible processes involved in recovery through analyzing data generated from a large qualitative study investigating employment barriers and support needs of people living with psychosis. Research Design and Methods: Participants were 137 individuals drawn from six key stakeholder groups. Data obtained from focus groups (14) and individual interviews (34) were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: The main recovery processes identified were: learning effective coping strategies; recognizing personal potential; identifying and realizing personal goals; participation in social and occupational roles; positive risk-taking; and reclaiming personal identity. Discussion: The results of this study have implications for treatment as well as the daily support needs of people recovering from psychosis

Letter to Editor: The Eternal Gap Between Ideals and Behavior

The inconsistencies between attitudes and behavior illuminated by the Braithwaite survey (lJSAP 3(1):42, 1982) are not confined to the general public; they are also rife within the animal welfare movement

History of Animal Experimentation Control in the U.K.

Legislative control of the use of animals in experiments in the U.K. lies in the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876. Animal Welfare groups and individuals in Britain have pressed for reform of this law since its inception 105 years ago. The British government has recently agreed to bring this legislation up to date. Any new or amended legislation could have far-reaching implications for laboratory animal welfare and the scientific community and is therefore of considerable importance both in this country and overseas. No proper appreciation of the problem would be possible without referencing the historical background. The Act of 1876 did not go far enough to satisfy all those humanitarian

Letter to Editor: Animal Suffering: Ethical Dimensions

The author comments that the report (in IJSAP 3(3):254) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) meeting has a misleading description of her exchange with Professor Dollery. The relevant text in the BAAS proceedings of the meeting is quoted

Functional connectivity studies of patients with auditory verbal hallucinations

Functional connectivity (FC) studies of brain mechanisms leading to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are reviewed. Initial FC studies utilized fMRI data collected during performance of various tasks, which suggested frontotemporal disconnection and/or source-monitoring disturbances. Later FC studies have utilized resting (no-task) fMRI data. These studies have produced a mixed picture of disconnection and hyperconnectivity involving different pathways associated with AVHs. Results of our most recent FC study of AVHs are reviewed in detail. This study suggests that the core mechanism producing AVHs involves not a single pathway, but a more complex functional loop. Components of this loop include Wernicke's area and its right homologue, the left inferior frontal cortex, and the putamen. It is noteworthy that the putamen appears to play a critical role in the generation of spontaneous language, and in determining whether auditory stimuli are registered consciously as percepts. Excessive functional coordination linking this region with the Wernicke's seed region in patients with schizophrenia could, therefore, generate an overabundance of potentially conscious language representations. In our model, intact FC in the other two legs of corticostriatal loop (Wernicke's with left IFG, and left IFG with putamen) appeared to allow hyperconnectivity linking the putamen and Wernicke's area (common to schizophrenia overall) to be expressed as conscious hallucinations of speech. Recommendations for future studies are discussed, including inclusion of multiple methodologies applied to the same subjects in order to compare and contrast different mechanistic hypotheses, utilizing EEG to better parse time-course of neural synchronization leading to AVHs, and ascertaining experiential subtypes of AVHs that may reflect distinct mechanisms

Interactive Music Generation with Positional Constraints using Anticipation-RNNs

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNS) are now widely used on sequence generation tasks due to their ability to learn long-range dependencies and to generate sequences of arbitrary length. However, their left-to-right generation procedure only allows a limited control from a potential user which makes them unsuitable for interactive and creative usages such as interactive music generation. This paper introduces a novel architecture called Anticipation-RNN which possesses the assets of the RNN-based generative models while allowing to enforce user-defined positional constraints. We demonstrate its efficiency on the task of generating melodies satisfying positional constraints in the style of the soprano parts of the J.S. Bach chorale harmonizations. Sampling using the Anticipation-RNN is of the same order of complexity than sampling from the traditional RNN model. This fast and interactive generation of musical sequences opens ways to devise real-time systems that could be used for creative purposes.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure