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Prison Service Delivery Beyond Lockdown: Lessons Learned from People in Prison and Staff in the Offender Personality Disorders Pathway During COVID-19
No full textThe Offender Personality Disorder Pathway (OPDP) in England and Wales supports individuals in prison with complex interpersonal and emotional regulation needs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this population faced heightened vulnerability, while prison officers encountered health risks, staffing shortages, and increased psychological strain. To explore how people living and working in prison coped under these conditions, 24 people in prison and 10 officers involved in OPDP services across English prisons participated in semi-structured interviews between 2021 and 2023. Using reflexive thematic analysis we generated four themes: (a) From Cohesion to Disconnection; (b) Bridging Divides: Finding Empathy in Crisis; (c) Contrasting Reflections: Growth and Strain; and (d) Support Gaps in Time of Crisis. The pandemic intensified existing challenges, but relational practices in the OPDP helped buffer its worst effects. Findings underscore the importance of trauma-informed communication, reflective leadership, and staff training to sustain relational safety and resilience during future system-wide crises in prison
Local food and the nomadic ethical placemaking of the rural idyll: Towards a non-anthropocentric ‘rural of the future’
Get PDFThe rural idyll is a geographical imagination envisioning a utopian escape from urban modernity and industrial values. However, this imaginary typically serves anthropocentric, neoliberal market logics, which landscape the rural as other. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) may navigate this tension when committing to the ethico-political relocalisation of food systems. Drawing on Braidotti's nomadic ethics, this study develops a non-anthropocentric (new materialist and posthuman) understanding of the rural idyll, grounded in the narratives of local food consumers participating in AFNs in the Italian region of Marche. Based on 20 in-depth interviews, this research explores how participants' narratives can express a life-affirming desire that (re)configures the rural idyll as a not-yet-sustained condition of more-than-human rural spatial assemblages, providing a counter-point to the negative realities presently landscaping non-human nature as other. Findings show that these narratives contribute to the nomadic ethical placemaking of a non-anthropocentric rural idyll – a virtuality foregrounding a ‘rural of the future’ committed to fostering human and non-human intra-actions based on the ontological dissolution of the human subject in rural space. This process repositions non-human life discourse as ethico-politically central in agri-food practices and fosters a non-linear, inclusive reinterpretation of local food autochthony. Thus, this study contributes to food geographies and rural studies by showing how AFN-driven local food consumption can help overturn anthropocentric rural landscaping by positioning a non-anthropocentric idyllic image of non-human nature as a harbinger of alternative patterns of becoming, thereby opening up a novel, nomadic ethical understanding of placemaking possible rural futures
Ultra-low dark current self-powered 0.36–1.7 μm broadband photodetector with tungsten oxide as interface modification layer
No full textUse of the GTT@home Oral Glucose Tolerance Test Kit in Gestational Diabetes Mellitus: Performance Evaluation Study
No full textBackground:The 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) remains the optimal diagnostic test for use in pregnancy but needs to be performed in the clinical setting. The GTT@home OGTT device offers the potential to enable patients to perform the test at home using capillary blood samples.Objective:This study aimed to determine the accuracy of the GTT@home device compared to the routine National Health Service laboratory reference method using blood samples during an OGTT from pregnant women at high risk of developing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM).Methods:A total of 65 women (aged >18 y), at high risk for GDM (per the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines) were recruited for this performance evaluation. Following an overnight fast, participants went for a 75-g OGTT. Fasting and 2-hour capillary glucose levels were measured using the GTT@home device with corresponding venous samples measured in the laboratory.Results:The complete data for analysis was available for 61/65 devices. The overall bias for the GTT@home device was +0.16 mmol/L. Correlation analysis of the clinical performance of the two methods using a surveillance error grid showed 79.8% of results in the lowest, 16.9% in the “slight, lower” and 2.4% in the “slight, higher” risk categories. Only 0.8% were “moderate, lower” risk, and none were in any higher risk categories. There was agreement in the classification in 54/61 cases. The GTT@home device under-classified 2 cases and over-classified 5 cases.Conclusions:The GTT@home device worked well in a controlled, antenatal clinical setting. Differences in classification observed were generally due to small differences in glucose values close to the diagnostic cut-offs. The GTT@home device shows promise for home testing of glucose tolerance in pregnant women
Evolutionary correlates and consequences of sociality in feliform carnivorans
No full textLiving in social groups has a range of evolutionary and ecological implications for animals. On the one hand, increased local density of conspecifics could intensify competition or make the group as a whole more visible to predators. On the other hand, social groups provide opportunities for cooperation, can potentially increase access to mating opportunities, and enable group-based antipredator mechanisms, such as increased vigilance, group defence, and dilution effects. Here, we set out to investigate the evolutionary predictors and consequences of sociality in feliform carnivorans (cats, mongooses, civets, and relatives) using a phylogenetic comparative approach. We first tested for predictors of sociality and found that sociality was more likely in larger, diurnal species which live in more open habitats, with a less slender body shape and with a more insectivorous diet. This result is consistent with the expectation from previous studies that evolution of social groups entails greater competition and ecologies that facilitate group cohesion, and perhaps are also subject to greater predation pressure. Second, we used ancestral state estimation for sociality and historical biogeographic analyses of habitats to show that sociality evolved eight times in feliforms and typically was associated with ancestral presence in or shift towards more open habitat types. Third, we investigated the consequences of sociality in terms of speciation rates and extinction risks, and found that although social species did not differ in extinction risk compared with solitary species, they did tend to have slightly lower speciation rates. Taken together, our results provide evidence for a series of costs and constraints in the evolution of sociality in mammals (e.g. in terms of competition and higher predation risk) but that these appear to be offset by the benefits provided from group-living sufficiently to avoid the longer term population consequences of higher extinction risk
The philosophical, methodological and empirical problems in OECD’s approach to creativity within PISA 2022
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Children’s educational and recreational engagement with digital technology and its potential learning and developmental outcomes from the perspective of practitioners and parents
Get PDFChildren’s play in contemporary society is influenced by digital devices, both in their homes and educational settings, including preschool children. This thesis explores children's digital play within and outside of educational settings from the perspective of practitioners and parents, addressing gaps in understanding how children’s digital play in different environments and their potential learning and developmental outcomes. Adopting a mixed-method approach, the thesis combines quantitative and qualitative research to provide a holistic understanding of digital play. Quantitative data consisted of 188 parents who attended the online survey, while qualitative data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 11 parents and 12 practitioners.Quantitative data were analysed using chi-square tests, with Gamma used for ordinal relationships and Cramer’s V for measuring the strength of associations between nominal variables. It demonstrated that older children spend more time using computers and reading/writing apps. Boys spent more time playing video games, whereas girls preferred drawing apps. Qualitative data were analysed employing thematic analysis, and Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (EST) was adapted to contextualise digital play. Qualitative data identified the similarities and differences between digital engagement at home and in school. Both parents and practitioners asserted the value of educational and recreational engagement. They reported the impacts of recreational and educational engagement on children’s cognitive, language, creative, social-emotional, and physical development, including problem-solving skills, language acquisition, imagination and social-emotional skills. Educational engagement was more structured and goal-driven, while recreational play allowed more child autonomy. Furthermore, parents and practitioners raised concerns about the negative consequences of excessive screen time and inappropriate content, such as addiction, negative behaviours, speech delay and reduced attention span. Practitioners underscored the importance of parental active mediation and involvement in children’s digital play to mitigate adverse effects.Although the data aim to investigate micro- and meso-systems of children’s digital play, the findings also reveal influences from the exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem, such as school conditions, the effects of cultural norms and the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, understanding digital play through EST offers a multi-dimensional perspective by incorporating parents, practitioners and policymakers, providing valuable implications for educational practice and policy development
Finite strain thermoelasticity and the Third Law of thermodynamics
No full textThis paper shows that commonly used large strain thermoelastic models in which the specific heat coefficient is constant or, at most, changes with temperature, are incompatible with the Third Law of thermodynamics, namely, that “entropy should be zero at the Kelvin state, that is, absolute zero temperature”. In particular, it will be shown that the Third Law implies that the specific heat coefficient must vary with deformation for the coupling between mechanical and thermal effects to take place. In line with this result, a simple analytical constitutive model consistent with the Third Law will be proposed. The model will be based on a multiplicative decomposition of the specific heat into a deformation dependent part and a temperature dependent component. The resulting thermoelastic model complies with the Third Law and, in addition, the necessary convexity conditions that ensure the existence of real wave speeds. It can replicate existing entropic elasticity models for rubber, describe melting and softening behaviour, and converge to the classical relationships for linear thermoelasticity in the small strain regime
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