Treatment and control: a qualitative study of older mentally ill offenders' perceptions on their detention and care trajectory

The life of older mentally ill offenders (OMIOs) is often characterized by successive periods of detention in correctional facilities, admissions to psychiatric services, and unsuccessful attempts to live independently. Through in-depth interviews, eight personal stories from OMIOs under supervision of the commission of social defence in Ghent (Belgium) were analyzed in the phenomenological research tradition. The results of the study reveal that OMIOs had more positive and less negative experiences in prison settings when compared with other institutional care settings. Independent living, unsurprisingly, is favored the most. This may be due to the fact that the latter option fosters personal competence, feelings of being useful, personal choices, and contact with the outside world. Even in later lifetime, a combined approach of risk assessment with improvement of well-being remains valuable to stimulate offender rehabilitation. Therefore, more research into concepts that could be used to support OMIOs needs further consideration

Copper Status of Free Ranging Cattle: What’s Hidden Behind? A Pilot Study at the Gilgel Gibe Catchment, Ethiopia

Copper (Cu) deficiency is known to be a major risk for cattle health and production. The widespread problem is due to low absorption rates in the rumen, low Cu concentrations in the natural diet and the presence of dietary Cu antagonists, such as S, Mo and Fe (Suttle 2010). Cattle in the tropics are even more prone to shortage of this mineral, given that the animals are often extensively kept and largely dependent on natural pasture for mineral supply (McDowell and Arthington, 2005). More specifically, in Ethiopia, Cu deficiency was previously described in zebu (Bos indicus) cattle by several authors (e.g. Dermauw et al.). Similar to other minerals, Cu is part of the soil-plant-animal chain, with many factors influencing Cu concentrations at every level. In our study, the overall goal was to investigate the possible influence of certain environment and management factors on dietary concentrations of Cu and antagonists and Cu status in free ranging cattle

Characterisation of magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, a raw material in cell therapy

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Model for random packing of polydisperse frictionless spheres

International audienceWe propose a statistical model for the random packing of frictionless polydisperse spheres in which the complexity of the global packing is distilled into a local stochastic process. We simplify the problem by considering the "granocentric" point of view of a single particle in the bulk, thereby reducing random packing to the assembly of nearest neighbours, followed by a random choice of contacts among them. The model is based on only two parameters, the available solid angle around each particle and the ratio of contacts to neighbors, which are both directly obtainable from experiments or simulations. As a result, the model analytically predicts the microscopic distributions of nearest neighbours and contacts, the local density fluctuations as well as the global density of the packing. We find that this granocentric view captures the essential properties of the polydisperse emulsion packing. This model suggests a general principle of organization for random packing and provides a statistical tool for quantifying the effect of the particle size distribution on the geometry of random packing in a variety of contexts of industrial relevance

Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g., individual, family, country, children) have impacted on anxiety levels of families and their children with NDCs developed over time. METHODS: We used data from a global survey assessing the experience of 8043 families and their children with NDCs (mean of age (m) = 13.18 years, 37% female) and their typically developing siblings (m = 12.9 years, 45% female) in combination with data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the University of Oxford, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, to create a multilevel data set. Using stepwise multilevel modelling, we generated child-, family- and country-related factors that may have contributed to the anxiety levels of children with NDCs, their siblings if they had any, and their parents. All data were reported by parents. RESULTS: Our results suggest that parental anxiety was best explained by family-related factors such as concerns about COVID-19 and illness. Children’s anxiety was best explained by child-related factors such as children’s concerns about loss of routine, family conflict, and safety in general, as well as concerns about COVID-19. In addition, anxiety levels were linked to the presence of pre-existing anxiety conditions for both children with NDCs and their parents. CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows that across the globe there was a raise in anxiety levels for both parents and their children with NDCs because of COVID-19 and that country-level factors had little or no impact on explaining differences in this increase, once family and child factors were considered. Our findings also highlight that certain groups of children with NDCs were at higher risk for anxiety than others and had specific concerns. Together, these results show that anxiety of families and their children with NDCs during the COVID-19 pandemic were predicted by very specific concerns and worries which inform the development of future toolkits and policy. Future studies should investigate how country factors can play a protective role during future crises

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Study of the B−→Λc+Λˉc−K−B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-} decay

The decay $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ is studied in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment. In the $\Lambda_{c}^+ K^{-}$ system, the $\Xi_{c}(2930)^{0}$ state observed at the BaBar and Belle experiments is resolved into two narrower states, $\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}$ and $\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}$, whose masses and widths are measured to be $$m(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = 2924.5 \pm 0.4 \pm 1.1 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ m(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = 2938.5 \pm 0.9 \pm 2.3 \,\mathrm{MeV}, \\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2923)^{0}) = \phantom{000}4.8 \pm 0.9 \pm 1.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},\\ \Gamma(\Xi_{c}(2939)^{0}) = \phantom{00}11.0 \pm 1.9 \pm 7.5 \,\mathrm{MeV},$$ where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic. The results are consistent with a previous LHCb measurement using a prompt $\Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ sample. Evidence of a new $\Xi_{c}(2880)^{0}$ state is found with a local significance of $3.8\,\sigma$, whose mass and width are measured to be $2881.8 \pm 3.1 \pm 8.5\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and $12.4 \pm 5.3 \pm 5.8 \,\mathrm{MeV}$, respectively. In addition, evidence of a new decay mode $\Xi_{c}(2790)^{0} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} K^{-}$ is found with a significance of $3.7\,\sigma$. The relative branching fraction of $B^{-} \to \Lambda_{c}^{+} \bar{\Lambda}_{c}^{-} K^{-}$ with respect to the $B^{-} \to D^{+} D^{-} K^{-}$ decay is measured to be $2.36 \pm 0.11 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.25$, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic and the third originates from the branching fractions of charm hadron decays.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-028.html (LHCb public pages

Measurement of the ratios of branching fractions R(D∗)\mathcal{R}(D^{*}) and R(D0)\mathcal{R}(D^{0})

The ratios of branching fractions $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})\equiv\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(\bar{B}\to D^{*}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})\equiv\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\tau^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\tau})/\mathcal{B}(B^{-}\to D^{0}\mu^{-}\bar{\nu}_{\mu})$ are measured, assuming isospin symmetry, using a sample of proton-proton collision data corresponding to 3.0 fb${ }^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded by the LHCb experiment during 2011 and 2012. The tau lepton is identified in the decay mode $\tau^{-}\to\mu^{-}\nu_{\tau}\bar{\nu}_{\mu}$. The measured values are $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.281\pm0.018\pm0.024$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{0})=0.441\pm0.060\pm0.066$, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The correlation between these measurements is $\rho=-0.43$. Results are consistent with the current average of these quantities and are at a combined 1.9 standard deviations from the predictions based on lepton flavor universality in the Standard Model.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-039.html (LHCb public pages