1,229 research outputs found
Diversion of offenders with mental disorders: Mental health courts
At present, if people with mental disorders appear before the criminal courts in Ireland, unless they are unfit for trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, the system governing their case will be the general one which applies to all criminal cases. In recent decades, a number of other common law jurisdictions have begun to set up mental health courts as a means of diverting some people with mental disorders from the criminal justice system and into more appropriate treatment. This article begins with a review of the background to mental health courts, focusing on the concept of diversion from the criminal justice system and the role of Therapeutic Jurisprudence theory as an inspiration for the establishment of mental health courts. The main features of mental health courts are identified and the features of those in existence in the United States are contrasted with those in Canada and England and Wales. Some of the main arguments against the use of these courts will be discussed, including the contentions that defendants participation may not be truly voluntary and that their due process rights are not adequately protected. The question of whether a mental health court should be established in Ireland is considered
Integrating Mindfulness and Character Strengths for Improved Well-Being, Stress, and Relationships: : A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice
The integration of mindfulness and character strengths is an emerging area of research and practice. The evidence-based, 8-week program, Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) represents a unique approach in that the starting point and focus is on what is best in human beings – their character strengths. These qualities are then leveraged to improve one’s meditation practice or area of mindful living (referred to as “strong mindfulness”) and in turn, mindfulness is used as a lens for deepening awareness and use of strengths (referred to as “mindful strengths use”). While early controlled studies find MBSP to elicit well-being and reduce stress, and find it to be superior to popular mindfulness programs for different outcomes, we are not aware of any published qualitative analyses examining the MBSP participant’s experience. This study offers insights from a large international sample and extends the empirical data on MBSP, including the novel finding of benefit for building positive relationships, as well as confirming other findings such as the most common obstacles people confront in mindfulness practices. Additional areas discussed using qualitative and quantitative findings include the most beneficial mindfulness/character strengths practices, the use of inward and outward-oriented practices, cognizance of the integration of mindfulness and character strengths, and self-reported positive outcomes, including substantial benefits to stress and problem management and boosts to meaning, purpose, engagement, accomplishment, and sense of self
Quantitative Easing and the Hot Potato Effect: Evidence from Euro Area Banks
We use bank-level data to examine the behaviour of reserves in the euro area banking system over the course of the ECB QE programme. Previous research on QE has often assumed banks passively absorb the additional reserves generated by asset purchases. However, with a negative deposit rate in place throughout our sample, euro area banks have had a disincentive to hold excess reserves and thus could wish to treat them as a “hot potato” that is preferably passed on to other banks. We find evidence for this hot potato effect, reporting substantial month-to-month churn in bank reserves as well as evidence that banks are pushing reserves off their balance sheets through debt security purchases. As such, this hot potato effect seems likely to have had an effect on European bond yields that is distinct from the portfolio rebalancing effect that has been the primary emphasis of the existing QE literature
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Repeatable Reverse Engineering for the Greater Good with PANDA
We present PANDA, an open-source tool that has
been purpose-built to support whole system reverse engineering.
It is built upon the QEMU whole system emulator, and so analyses
have access to all code executing in the guest and all data.
PANDA adds the ability to record and replay executions, enabling
iterative, deep, whole system analyses. Further, the replay log files
are compact and shareable, allowing for repeatable experiments.
A nine billion instruction boot of FreeBSD, e.g., is represented
by only a few hundred MB. Further, PANDA leverages QEMU's
support of thirteen different CPU architectures to make analyses
of those diverse instruction sets possible within the LLVM IR. In
this way, PANDA can have a single dynamic taint analysis, for
example, that precisely supports many CPUs. PANDA analyses
are written in a simple plugin architecture which includes a
mechanism to share functionality between plugins, increasing
analysis code re-use and simplifying complex analysis development.
We demonstrate PANDA's effectiveness via a number of
use cases, including enabling an old but legitimate version of
Starcraft to run despite a lost CD key, in-depth diagnosis of an
Internet Explorer crash, and uncovering the censorship activities
and mechanisms of a Chinese IM client
Nature tourism and Irish film
This article provides a historical overview and reading of seminal Irish film from the perspective of nature tourism. Within Irish cultural studies, tourism is frequently equated with an overly romantic image of the island, which has been used to sell the country abroad. However, using notions like the tourist gaze and taking on board influential debates around space/place, one can posit a more progressive environmental vision of nature and landscape in our readings of film
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Therapeutic Intervention for Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome (CP/CPPS): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Background: Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) has been treated with several different interventions with limited success. This meta-analysis aims to review all trials reporting on therapeutic intervention for CP/CPPS using the National Institutes of Health-Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (NIH-CPSI). Methods We searched Medline, PubMed, the Cochrane Pain, Palliative & Supportive Care Trials, the Cochrane Register of Controlled Trials, CINAHL, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the NIDDK website between 1947 and December 31, 2011 without language or study type restrictions. All RCTs for CP/CPPS lasting at least 6 weeks, with a minimum of 10 participants per arm, and using the NIH-CPSI score, the criterion standard for CP/CPPS, as an outcome measure were included. Data was extracted from each study by two independent reviewers. Gillbraith and I-squared plots were used for heterogeneity testing and Eggers and Peters methods for publication bias. Quality was assessed using a component approach and meta-regression was used to analyze sources of heterogeneity. Results: Mepartricin, percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation (PTNS), and triple therapy comprised of doxazosin + ibuprofen + thiocolchicoside (DIT) resulted in clinically and statistically significant reduction in NIH-CPSI total score. The same agents and aerobic exercise resulted in clinically and statistically significant NIH-CPSI pain domain score reduction. Acupuncture, DIT, and PTNS were found to produce statistically and clinically significant reductions in the NIH-CPSI voiding domain. A statistically significant placebo effect was found for all outcomes and time analysis showed that efficacy of all treatments increased over time. Alpha-blockers, antibiotics, and combinations of the two failed to show statistically or clinically significant NIH-CPSI reductions. Conclusion: Results from this meta-analysis reflect our current inability to effectively manage CP/CPPS. Clinicians and researchers must consider placebo effect and treatment efficacy over time and design studies creatively so we can more fully elucidate the etiology and role of therapeutic intervention in CP/CPPS.
Comparing Formulations of Generalized Quantum Mechanics for Reparametrization-Invariant Systems
A class of decoherence schemes is described for implementing the principles
of generalized quantum theory in reparametrization-invariant `hyperbolic'
models such as minisuperspace quantum cosmology. The connection with
sum-over-histories constructions is exhibited and the physical equivalence or
inequivalence of different such schemes is analyzed. The discussion focuses on
comparing constructions based on the Klein-Gordon product with those based on
the induced (a.k.a. Rieffel, Refined Algebraic, Group Averaging, or Spectral
Analysis) inner product. It is shown that the Klein-Gordon and induced products
can be simply related for the models of interest. This fact is then used to
establish isomorphisms between certain decoherence schemes based on these
products.Comment: 21 pages ReVTe
WHOI Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Station (WHOTS): WHOTS-11 2014 mooring Turnaround Cruise Report
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Site (WHOTS),
100 km north of Oahu, Hawaii, is intended to provide long-term, high-quality air-sea fluxes as a
part of the NOAA Climate Observation Program. The WHOTS mooring also serves as a
coordinated part of the Hawaii Ocean Timeseries (HOT) program, contributing to the goals of
observing heat, fresh water and chemical fluxes at a site representative of the oligotrophic North
Pacific Ocean. The approach is to maintain a surface mooring outfitted for meteorological and
oceanographic measurements at a site near 22.75°N, 158°W by successive mooring turnarounds.
These observations will be used to investigate air–sea interaction processes related to climate
variability.
This report documents recovery of the tenth WHOTS mooring (WHOTS-10) and
deployment of the eleventh mooring (WHOTS-11). Both moorings used Surlyn foam buoys as
the surface element and were outfitted with two Air–Sea Interaction Meteorology (ASIMET)
systems. Each ASIMET system measures, records, and transmits via Argos satellite the surface
meteorological variables necessary to compute air–sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum.
The upper 155 m of the moorings were outfitted with oceanographic sensors for the
measurement of temperature, conductivity and velocity in a cooperative effort with R. Lukas of
the University of Hawaii. A pCO2 system and ancillary sensors were installed on the buoys in
cooperation with Chris Sabine at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. A set of
radiometers were installed in cooperation with Sam Laney at WHOI.
The WHOTS mooring turnaround was done on the NOAA ship Hi’ialakai by the Upper
Ocean Processes Group of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The cruise took place
between 15 and 23 July 2014. Operations began with deployment of the WHOTS-11 mooring on
16 July. This was followed by meteorological intercomparisons and CTDs. Recovery of the
WHOTS-10 mooring took place on 20 July. This report describes these cruise operations, as well
as some of the in-port operations and pre-cruise buoy preparations.Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Grant No.
NA140AR4320158 and the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR
Immune evasion in cancer: mechanistic basis and therapeutic strategies
Cancer immune evasion is a major stumbling block in designing effective anticancer therapeutic strategies. Although considerable progress has been made in understanding how cancers evade destructive immunity, measures to counteract tumor escape have not kept pace. There are a number of factors that contribute to tumor persistence despite having a normal host immune system. Immune editing is one of the key aspects why tumors evade surveillance causing the tumors to lie dormant in patients for years through “equilibrium” and “senescence” before re- emerging. In addition, tumors exploit several immunological processes such as targeting the regulatory T cell function or their secretions, antigen presentation, modifying the production of immune suppressive mediators, tolerance and immune deviation. Besides these, tumor heterogeneity and metastasis also play a critical role in tumor growth. A number of potential targets like promoting Th1, NK cell, γδ T cell responses, inhibiting Treg functionality, induction of IL-12, use of drugs including phytochemicals have been designed to counter tumor progression with much success. Some natural agents and phytochemicals merit further study. For example, use of certain key polysaccharide components from mushrooms and plants have shown possess therapeutic impact on tumor-imposed genetic instability, anti-growth signaling, replicative immortality, deregulated metabolism etc. In this review, we will discuss the advances made towards understanding the basis of cancer immune evasion and summarize the efficacy of various therapeutic measures and targets that have been developed or are being investigated to enhance tumor rejection
Factors affecting post-fire crown regeneration in cork oak (Quercus suber L.) trees
Cork oak (Quercus suber) forests are acknowledged
for their biodiversity and economic (mainly cork
production) values. WildWres are one of the main threats
contributing to cork oak decline in the Mediterranean
Basin, and one major question that managers face after Wre
in cork oak stands is whether the burned trees should be
coppiced or not. This decision can be based on the degree
of expected crown regeneration assessed immediately after
Wre. In this study we carried out a post-Wre assessment of
the degree of crown recovery in 858 trees being exploited
for cork production in southern Portugal, 1.5 years after a
wildWre. Using logistic regression, we modelled good or
poor crown recovery probability as a function of tree and
stand variables. The main variables inXuencing the likelihood
of good or poor crown regeneration were bark thickness,
charring height, aspect and tree diameter. We also
developed management models, including simpler but easier
to measure variables, which had a lower predictive
power but can be used to help managers to identify, immediately
after Wre, trees that will likely show good crown
regeneration, and trees that will likely die or show poor
regeneration (and thus, potential candidates for trunk
coppicin
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