Reintegration services for long-term dangerous offenders : a case study and discussion

Successfully reintegrating long-term prisoners back into the community often presents significant challenges for service providers. Ex-prisoners typically experience high levels of social stigma; present with multiple needs; and can struggle to find meaningful employment, stable accommodation, and to maintain supportive relationships. There have, however, been relatively few published evaluations of the outcomes achieved by postrelease services on managing the risk of reoffending and, as such, it is difficult for service providers to meet these multiple and complex levels of need in ways that might be considered to be evidence based. In this article we describe a specialized prerelease support, reentry, and reintegration service that is offered to long-term prisoners, many of whom have been legally labelled as ‘‘dangerous.’’ The current model of service delivery is reviewed and discussed in the context of current theories of offender rehabilitation and reintegration. These are then used to discuss the way in which services for this group of offenders might best be conceptualized.

Implications of short and long term critical flux experiments for laboratory-scale MBR operations

This paper evaluates the critical flux obtained by different techniques including tests with different flux step lengths (20 and 40 min and 7 days) and modes of operation (continuous and intermittent) under low and high MLSS concentrations. The paper also analyses a couple of long-term tests (flow rate of 40 and 20 L/day) to obtain the time required to reach the critical flux experimentally and compares those values with the results obtained numerically from a mathematical model. It was found that intermittent mode with membrane relaxation was useful in controlling the fouling of membrane and in restoring the membrane from fouling at lower MLSS.

The long-term predictive validity of the consumers' need for uniqueness scale

This research examines the long-term ability of the consumers’ need for uniqueness measure to predict consumers’ valued possessions, shopping behaviors, and experiences. Consumers’ need for uniqueness reflects individual differences in counterconformity motivation (i.e., the pursuit of differentness relative to others) that is manifest in consumer responses. This research reports on 2 longitudinal assessments of the scale's predictive validity using data collected at 4 stages from a consumer mail-survey sample. One year following initial responses to the trait measure, respondents participated in a second survey in which they photographed and rank ordered their valued possessions. In a third survey, the photographs served as cues to obtain responses to ratings of possession benefits and to questions regarding acquisition of the possession. Overall, the results support a number of hypotheses regarding the relation of consumers’ need for uniqueness to salient possession benefits, types of goods comprising consumers’ valued possessions, and shopping behaviors associated with acquiring valued possessions. Two years following initial responses to the trait measure, members of the consumer mail panel completed a fourth survey, indicating their participation in various uniqueness-enhancing consumer activities. Results support the stability and predictive validity of the measure over the 2-year period. Because the design of possessions and endorsed uniqueness-enhancing activities considered in the consumer mail panel studies varied across individuals, an additional study was conducted that demonstrated the scale's ability to predict individuals’ counterconformity responses to the same choice situation.

Diabetes MILES - Australia (Management and Impact for Long-Term Empowerment and Success) : methods and sample characteristics of a national survey of the psychological aspects of living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in Australian adults

Background Successful management of diabetes requires attention to the behavioural, psychological and social aspects of this progressive condition. The Diabetes MILES (Management and Impact for Long-term Empowerment and Success) Study is an international collaborative. Diabetes MILES-Australia, the first Diabetes MILES initiative to be undertaken, was a national survey of adults living with type 1 or type 2 diabetes in Australia. The aim of this study was to gather data that will provide insights into how Australians manage their diabetes, the support they receive and the impact of diabetes on their lives, as well as to use the data to validate new diabetes outcome measures.

Methods The survey was designed to include a core set of self-report measures, as well as modules specific to diabetes type or management regimens. Other measures or items were included in only half of the surveys. Cognitive debriefing interviews with 20 participants ensured the survey content was relevant and easily understood. In July 2011, the survey was posted to 15,000 adults (aged 18-70 years) with type 1 or type 2 diabetes selected randomly from the National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS) database. An online version of the survey was advertised nationally. A total of 3,338 eligible Australians took part; most (70.4%) completed the postal survey. Respondents of both diabetes types and genders, and of all ages, were adequately represented in both the postal and online survey sub-samples. More people with type 2 diabetes than type 1 diabetes took part in Diabetes MILES-Australia (58.8% versus 41.2%). Most respondents spoke English as their main language, were married/in a de facto relationship, had at least a high school education, were occupied in paid work, had an annual household income > $AUS40,000, and lived in metropolitan areas.

Discussion A potential limitation of the study is the under-representation of respondents from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin). Diabetes MILES-Australia represents a major achievement in the study of diabetes in Australia, where for the first time, the focus is on psychosocial and behavioural aspects of this condition at a national level.

The importance of long-term follow-up in child and adolescent obesity prevention interventions

Pediatric overweight and obesity continues to be a major public health concern. Once established it is diffi cult to treat; therefore well-designed and evaluated prevention interventions are vitally important. There is considerable evidence to suggest that obesity prevention initiatives can change children ’ s behaviours and weight status over the short- or mediumterm; however, there is far less evidence on which to judge the impact over the longer term. In response to the rise in short- and medium-term obesity prevention studies for children and adolescents over recent years, the Prevention Stream of the Australasian Child and Adolescent Obesity Research Network highlight fi ve points as to why the dearth of obesity prevention studies with long-term follow-up should be urgently addressed. Furthermore, recommendations to strengthen the evidence base and outline key implications for research design in this area and the support required for long-term follow-up studies are detailed.

Long-term species, sexual and individual variations in foraging strategies of fur seals revealed by stable isotopes in whiskers

Background: Individual variations in the use of the species niche are an important component of diversity in trophic interactions. A challenge in testing consistency of individual foraging strategy is the repeated collection of information on the same individuals.

Methodology/Principal Findings: The foraging strategies of sympatric fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella and A. tropicalis) were examined using the stable isotope signature of serially sampled whiskers. Most whiskers exhibited synchronous delta C-13 and delta N-15 oscillations that correspond to the seal annual movements over the long term (up to 8 years). delta C-13 and delta N-15 values were spread over large ranges, with differences between species, sexes and individuals. The main segregating mechanism operates at the spatial scale. Most seals favored foraging in subantarctic waters (where the Crozet Islands are located) where they fed on myctophids. However, A. gazella dispersed in the Antarctic Zone and A. tropicalis more in the subtropics. Gender differences in annual time budget shape the seal movements. Males that do not perform any parental care exhibited large isotopic oscillations reflecting broad annual migrations, while isotopic values of females confined to a limited foraging range during lactation exhibited smaller changes. Limited inter-individual isotopic variations occurred in female seals and in male A. tropicalis. In contrast, male A. gazella showed large inter-individual variations, with some males migrating repeatedly to high-Antarctic waters where they fed on krill, thus meaning that individual specialization occurred over years.

Conclusions/Significance: Whisker isotopic signature yields unique long-term information on individual behaviour that integrates the spatial, trophic and temporal dimensions of the ecological niche. The method allows depicting the entire realized niche of the species, including some of its less well-known components such as age-, sex-, individual- and migration-related changes. It highlights intrapopulation heterogeneity in foraging strategies that could have important implications for likely demographic responses to environmental variability.

The long-term performance of cementitious composites reinforced with coir fibre

Effective prediction of the long-term performance of natural fibre-reinforced cementitious materials is vital for their application. In this study, coir fibres of two different average lengths were combined with cementitious materials and chemical agents to form coir fibre-reinforced cementitious composites (CFRCCs). The composites long-term performance was assessed and compared with two different accelerated ageing processes, i.e. a cement-saturated water ageing, and alternate freeze-thaw ageing. The flexural properties were compared with the properties of the reference mortar. Overall, the flexural strength of 400 days naturally aged CFRCC specimens was weaker than that of the reference mortar. The toughness and ductility of the fibre-reinforced specimens, however, improved. The cement-saturated water ageing method gave a precise prediction of the flexural strength development of 400-day-old specimens, and the freeze-thaw ageing method worked very well for the toughness performance estimation of CFRCCs.

Conservation cornerstones : capitalising on the endeavours of long-term monitoring projects

Ecological monitoring is widely used to measure change through time in ecosystems. The current extinction crisis has resulted in a wealth of monitoring programs focussed on tracking the status of threatened species, and the perceived importance of monitoring has seen it become the cornerstone of many biodiversity conservation programs. However, many monitoring programs fail to produce useful outcomes due to inherent flaws. Here we use a monitoring program from south-eastern Australia as a case study to illustrate the potential of such endeavours. The threatened carnivorous marsupial, the brush-tailed phascogale (Phascogale tapoatafa), has been monitored at various locations between 2000 and 2010. We present strong evidence for a decline in relative abundance during this period, and also describe relationships with environmental variables. These results provide insights likely to be valuable in guiding future management of the species. In the absence of the monitoring program, informed management would not be possible. While early detection of population declines is important, knowledge of the processes driving such declines is required for effective intervention. We argue that monitoring programs will be most effective as a tool for enhanced conservation management if they test specific hypotheses relating to changes in population trajectories. Greater emphasis should be placed on rigorous statistical analysis of monitoring datasets in order to capitalise on the resources devoted to monitoring activities. Many datasets are likely to exist for which careful analysis of results would have benefits for determining management directions.