Levels and Variations of Violation in Rape.

This chapter investigates the variations in crime scene behaviour revealed in a sample of victim statements in cases of stranger sexual assault. Building on previous findings by Canter and Heritage (1990), and Canter (1994), it was hypothesised that there existed a scale of differing levels of violation by the offender. This scale, based upon actions in the offence, ranged from personal violation, through to physical violation and finally, at the most extreme level, sexual violation. Offences could also be differentiated at the personal and physical levels in terms of hostile, controlling, stealing or involving thematic emphases to the criminal’s actions. To test these hypotheses, crime scene data from the first detected offences of 112 British rapists were analysed using a multi-dimensional scaling procedure to explore the relationships amongst crime scene actions. The results provided empirical support for the four action themes as different expressions of various intensities of violation. The implications that these findings have for the investigation of stranger sexual assault and treatment of victims are discussed

Northumbria University Institutional Case Study: Meaningful Student Engagement Programme, Higher Education Academy

“Student engagement is concerned with the interaction between the time, effort and other relevant resources invested by both students and their institutions intended to optimise the student experience and enhance the learning outcomes and development of students and the performance, and reputation of the institution”.1 The Higher Education Academy’s Meaningful Student Engagement Programme aims to help universities enhance the engagement of disabled students in the design and delivery of learning and teaching. Northumbria University was one of ten institutions selected to participate in this programme. The focus at Northumbria was on inclusive assessment and this was achieved through the SEA (Student Engagement with Assessment) Project. Commencing in January 2011, the overall aim of the project was to create a roadmap for the university to move towards more alternative and inclusive assessment methods and practice. Working in partnership with students, current and inclusive assessment practices have been explored. This has led to a number of pilots with staff, students and the students union looking at different aspects of inclusive assessment. This case study reports on the main findings from this project

Inbreeding depression in red deer calves

BACKGROUND Understanding the fitness consequences of inbreeding is of major importance for evolutionary and conservation biology. However, there are few studies using pedigree-based estimates of inbreeding or investigating the influence of environment and age variation on inbreeding depression in natural populations. Here we investigated the consequences of variation in inbreeding coefficient for three juvenile traits, birth date, birth weight and first year survival, in a wild population of red deer, considering both calf and mother's inbreeding coefficient. We also tested whether inbreeding depression varied with environmental conditions and maternal age. RESULTS We detected non-zero inbreeding coefficients for 22% of individuals with both parents and at least one grandparent known (increasing to 42% if the dataset was restricted to those with four known grandparents). Inbreeding depression was evident for birth weight and first year survival but not for birth date: the first year survival of offspring with an inbreeding coefficient of 0.25 was reduced by 77% compared to offspring with an inbreeding coefficient of zero. However, it was independent of measures of environmental variation and maternal age. The effect of inbreeding on birth weight appeared to be driven by highly inbred individuals (F = 0.25). On the other hand first year survival showed strong inbreeding depression that was not solely driven by individuals with the highest inbreeding coefficients, corresponding to an estimate of 4.35 lethal equivalents. CONCLUSIONS These results represent a rare demonstration of inbreeding depression using pedigree-based estimates in a wild mammal population and highlight the potential strength of effects on key components of fitness.This research was supported by a NERC grant to LEBK, JMP and THCB, NERC and BBSRC fellowships to DHN and a Royal Society fellowship to LEBK

Propositional Idea Density in written descriptions of health: Potential clinical applications

In order to assess the effect of word finding difficulties for the spontaneous discourse of people with aphasia, a number of different measures of informativeness have been developed for clinical application (Doyle, Goda, & Spencer, 1995; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993; Oelschlaeger & Thorne, 1999; Wright, Silverman, & Newhoff, 2003). The main challenges for the assessment of discourse (written or spoken) relate to issues of validity and reliability (AUTHOR DELETED). There is a need for valid and authentic sampling which is personally relevant to individuals and additionally, able to be repeated for the same individual on successive occasions, and comparable to other individuals. The use of a consistent elicitation task that could be widely used for adult populations would be beneficial to both allow comparisons of the same individual over time and also across individuals

Sugar intake and dental decay : results from a national survey of children in Scotland

Peer reviewedPreprin

Phylogenomic analysis of gastroenteritis-associated Clostridium perfringens in England and Wales over a 7-year period indicates distribution of clonal toxigenic strains in multiple outbreaks and extensive involvement of enterotoxin-encoding (CPE) plasmids

Clostridium perfringens is a major enteric pathogen known to cause gastroenteritis in human adults. Although major outbreak cases are frequently reported, only limited whole-genome sequencing (WGS) based studies have been performed to understand the genomic epidemiology and virulence gene content of outbreak-associated C. perfringens strains. We performed phylogenomic analysis on 109 C. perfringens isolates (human and food) obtained from disease cases in England and Wales between 2011 and 2017. Initial findings highlighted the enhanced discriminatory power of WGS in profiling outbreak C. perfringens strains, when compared to the current Public Health England referencing laboratory technique of fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis. Further analysis identified that isogenic C. perfringens strains were associated with nine distinct care-home-associated outbreaks over the course of a 5-year interval, indicating a potential common source linked to these outbreaks or transmission over time and space. As expected, the enterotoxin cpe gene was encoded in all but 4 isolates (96.3 %; 105/109), with virulence plasmids encoding cpe (particularly pCPF5603 and pCPF4969 plasmids) extensively distributed (82.6 %; 90/109). Genes encoding accessory virulence factors, such as beta-2 toxin, were commonly detected (46.7 %; 51/109), and genes encoding phage proteins were also frequently identified. Overall, this large-scale genomic study of gastroenteritis-associated C. perfringens suggested that three major cpe-encoding (toxinotype F) genotypes underlie these outbreaks: strains carrying (1) pCPF5603 plasmid, (2) pCPF4969 plasmid and (3) chromosomal-cpe strains. Our findings substantially expanded our knowledge on type F C. perfringens involved in human-associated gastroenteritis, with further studies required to fully probe the dissemination and regional reservoirs of this enteric pathogen, which may help devise effective prevention strategies to reduce the food-poisoning disease burden in vulnerable patients, such as the elderly

Enhanced optical manipulation of cells using anti-reflection coated microparticles

The authors thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grants EP/J01771X/1 and EP/M000869/1, the University of St Andrews, the BRAINS 600th anniversary appeal and Dr. Killick for funding.We demonstrate the use of anti-reflection (AR) coated microparticles for the enhanced optical manipulation of cells. Specifically, we incubate both CHO-K1 and HL60 cell lines with AR coated titania microparticles and subsequently performed drag force measurements using optical trapping. Direct comparisons were performed between native, polystyrene microparticle and AR microparticle tagged cells. The optical trapping efficiency was recorded by measuring the Q value in a drag force experiment. CHO-K1 cells incubated with AR microparticles show an increase in the Q value of nearly 220% versus native cells. With the inclusion of AR microparticles, cell velocities exceeding 50um/s were recorded for only 33mW of laser trapping power. Cell viability was confirmed with fluorescent dyes and cells expressing a fluorescent ubiquitination-based cell cycle protein (FUCCI) which verified no disruption to the cell cycle in the presence of AR microparticles.Peer reviewe