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Development of a trial application to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of adult dRug scrEening and brief interventionS in key hEalth, social care and justice setTings: The RESET PROJECT
No full textBackground
In England and Wales, alcohol-related crime is estimated to cost society £27.4 billion and drugs £20 billion annually. Effective interventions therefore have the potential to reduce the costs relating to substance use and increase individual social welfare.
Brief drug use interventions are a secondary prevention activity, which are aimed at those individuals who are using substances in a pattern that is likely to be harmful to health and/or well-being. At present there is limited evidence regarding the effects and most of the work has been carried out outside the UK. We examined the evidence to develop a trial to test effectiveness of brief drug interventions.
Methods
We carried out two systematic reviews of the literature and examined effectiveness, barriers and facilitators, screening tools and active ingredients of interventions. We also carried out qualitative work to examine this issue.
Results
The quantitative review included 46 papers (mostly from the USA) and the qualitative review included 14. We ascertained that the ASSIST screening tool was the best tool to use for screening . We carried out interviews with practitioners, policy makers and individuals who have had experience of mental health, criminal justice and family services which were identified as the services we should work with for a definitive trial. Key issues community members perceived included the need to address trauma, the efficacy of interventions, how stigma and societal views affect individuals, the importance of support from various institutions, and how community involvement and personal responsibility play a role in the recovery process.Stakeholders emphasised the need for interventions to be brief yet personalised, underlining the importance of trust and effective evaluation.
Conclusions
We used the findings from the reviews and qualitative work to develop a robust pilot trial application
Ambient temperature isolation of a monatomic boron(0) complex
Get PDFThe first bottleable example of a neutral Group 13 atom bound only by neutral donor ligands (L) has been fully characterized by spectroscopic methods and its structure determined by a single-crystal X-ray diffraction study. A two-coordinate paramagnetic L2B0 complex can readily be accessed through a facile reduction reaction and is stabilized by π-accepting cyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbene (CAAC) ligands. Further reduction of (CAAC)2B leads to the isolation of a stable diamagnetic boride anion. In turn, oxidation leads to the putative formation of a transient two-coordinate cationic borylene, which has been trapped to form a stable boron(I) complex. Density functional theory calculations support the formulation of (CAAC)2B as a boron(0) complex stabilized by strong multiple bonding
Accounting and biopolitics for a new society: Italian colonialism in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya and Somalia (1922-1941)
Get PDFIntervention in Africa by the Italian Fascists was not justified only by economic motives but sought to re-engineer the Indigenous population and settlers in the creation of a new society shaped by Fascist ideology. Accounting tools in the form of budgets, censuses and reports from the colonies of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya and Somalia between 1922 and 1941 were essential means to gather information which would inform policies that would control the way in which both the Indigenous population and Italian settlers conducted themselves. Ultimately this was meant to change their motives and actions to create the conditions that would lead to significant political and economic gains for the colonising power. Informed by the work of Arendt and Foucault on biopolitics and totalitarianism, this study investigates the way in which Fascist accounting in the colonies, rather than being solely a means to promote the efficient expropriation of local resources, was to be used to build a new generation of strong, ruthless Italians and develop a highly racialised society. In unseen ways the biopolitical properties of accounting can allow interventions in the lives of individuals which can modify an individual’s lifestyle and priorities and even promote discrimination and racism that enable control
Where Care Converges: Uncovering Shared Experiences of Parents and Service Providers for Adults With Intellectual Disabilities in Times of Austerity
Get PDFBackground: Since the introduction of austerity measures in 2008, funding for care, welfare, services and support systems in the United Kingdom has been reduced. There is little research that explores the experiences of parents of adults with intellectual disabilities and service providers regarding care, relationships and social networks in times of austerity.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 10 parents of adults with intellectual disabilities and nine managers and leaders of relevant services. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify key themes across their experiences.
Results: Experiences suggested four shared key themes in relation to the effects of austerity: distanced relationships; Care Act assessments being used to make cuts; deteriorating health and wellbeing; and participants feeling forced to become fighters.
Conclusions: Whilst previous research has considered the adversarial nature of relationships between parents and service providers, this study suggests they can experience shared difficulties under austerity
The Habituation-Dishabituation ERP Responses to Repeated Visual Food Cues
Get PDFExisting research indicates that human salivary responses habituate to repeated food cues. This study examines the neurophysiological dynamics of within-session habituation and dishabituation to high/low-calorie food and non-food images, with Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) measured as participants viewed these images, including distractors. The analysis showed significant habituation (decreased response) and dishabituation (response recovery) in the parietal area, particularly within the 160–290 ms time window. The non-food image exhibited a linear decrease with repetition, and responses recovered when novel stimuli were introduced. High and low calorie images did not show significant linear habituation, maintaining sustained attention and motivation instead. However, both food image types displayed a recovery response during the dishabituation phase. The ERP results also indicated that food images have a slower rate of decline compared to non-food images. In conclusion, our ERP study demonstrated that a habituation-like mechanism influences attention in response to repeated non-food images, while food images had minimal impact. Food images, with their higher reward value, led to prolonged attention and hindered habituation. These reduced neural attentional habituation and a slower rate of habituation to food stimuli could have negative health consequences. Furthermore, the dishabituation effect observed across all images underscores that the habituation phenomena are not simply due to mental fatigue
‘ … then and only then would you be allowed to look to the future’: falling out of the Anthropocene with Jeff VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander
Get PDFThis article offers a detailed close reading of selected key passages from Jeff VanderMeer’s 2021 novel Hummingbird Salamander, focusing on the ways in which this eco-thriller develops and extends VanderMeer’s ongoing concerns about ecology and anthropogenic climate change, which he has articulated across his career – including in his celebrated Southern Reach books. These readings negotiate key feelings and sensations of vertigo, falling, and sinking, which the article analyses and theorises further by exploring VanderMeer’s novel in conjunction with Timothy Morton’s work on dark ecology and non-human solidarity, with additional theoretical frames drawn from the respective works of Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Theodor Adorno, and others. This analysis in turn builds towards a concluding suggestion – drawing, in part, on the respective works of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Sara Ahmed – that considers these key feelings as affective extremes that allow us to encounter ecological awareness as an embodied experience, and thus better grasp the biospheric and planetary scales that may often seem incommensurable for us
The Earth Hologenome Initiative: Data Release 1
No full textBackground: The Earth Hologenome Initiative (EHI) is a global endeavor dedicated to revisit fundamental ecological and evolutionary questions from the systemic host–microbiota perspective, through the standardized generation and analysis of joint animal genomic and associated microbial metagenomic data.
Results: The first data release of the EHI contains 968 shotgun DNA sequencing read files containing 5.2 TB of raw genomic and metagenomic data derived from 21 vertebrate species sampled across 12 countries, as well as 17,666 metagenome-assembled genomes reconstructed from these data.
Conclusions: The dataset can be used to address fundamental questions about host–microbiota interactions and will be available to the research community under the EHI data usage conditions
A survey for variable young stars with small telescopes – X. Comparing stochastic YSO light curves
Get PDFLight curves of young stars exhibit photometric variability over hours to decades and across a wide range of amplitudes. On time-scales beyond a few rotation periods, these light curves are typically stochastic. The variability arises from a combination of accretion rate changes, line-of-sight extinction variations, and evolving spotted stellar surfaces. We aim to develop a methodology to quantitatively compare the full variability statistics of these inhomogeneously sampled light curves with model calculations. To achieve this, we converted the light curves into variability fingerprints. They map the probability of variation by a given amount over a given time-scale. Applying principal component analysis to these fingerprints produces a stable distribution of the first two principal components. We show that this distribution is a continuum without clusters. Adding a model-generated fingerprint to an observational sample does not significantly alter the distribution of the sample, allowing a robust comparison between the model and observed light curves to assess statistical realism. We show that photometric uncertainties, timing, and observing cadence have a minimal impact on model placement within the observational distribution. The main source of variance among highly variable light curves of young stars is the time-scale of the onset of significant variability (above 0.3 mag), with time-scales of one to three months being the most critical. The secondary cause of variance is long-term (above 1.5 yr) dimming or rising trends
Disciplining Geopolitics: Latin America, the Russia-Ukraine War, and Connected Spaces of (Non-)Intervention Between Anti-Imperial Heritage and Schmittian Decay
Get PDFThe term ‘geopolitics’ often raises a great deal of disdain amongst international lawyers. However, in the face of so many seeming erosions of international legal standards, especially as they concern the principle of non-intervention, some form of engagement with geopolitical realities is essential. In assessing the prospects for analysing international law generally, and the non-intervention norm specifically, through the lens of ‘critical geopolitics’, I take as my starting point the paradox of general neutrality amongst Latin American states regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While seemingly out of place given the importance of Latin American contributions to the non-intervention norm, I argue that this disjuncture provides an opportunity to explore how geopolitical frameworks in the form of Carl Schmitt’s Grossraum theory and John Mearsheimer’s Neorealism play important roles in constructing international legal consciousness. In doing so, I aim to show how, despite possessing incentives for remaining neutral on Ukraine, Latin America has historically shared a similar intervention-defined fate to Central Eastern Europe that is likely to increase in the future. Through this process of mapping, I hope to open the door for theorisation on how recognising mutual similarities might form agency-expanding inter-connection between Latin America and Central Eastern Europe as parallel spaces defined by enduring the subjugation of – and mounting resistance to – the interventions of proximate great powers
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