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This study evaluated the impact of a novel social prescribing service designed specifically for the Armed Forces Community (AFC) and its influence on service users’ wellbeing.
Background:
Social prescribing connects individuals with non-clinical, community-based support to address loneliness, long-term conditions, and mental health. Despite advances in social prescriber training, a gap remains in resources for working with the AFC, who present distinct wellbeing needs. A two-year project, funded by the NHS Armed Forces Health and the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust, sought to enhance provision by equipping Social Prescriber Link Workers with specialist skills.
Methods:
A sequential mixed-method design was adopted. Quantitatively, changes in wellbeing for 259 AFC service users were measured using the Short Warwick and Edinburgh Wellbeing Scale before and after consultations with Armed Forces Social Prescriber Link Workers (AFCSPLWs). Qualitatively, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with AFCSPLWs, general social prescribers, General Practitioners, and AFCSPLW line managers to explore experiences of service delivery.
Findings:
Wellbeing scores significantly increased from initial (mean = 15.3) to final consultations (mean = 18.79), indicating positive effects; however, scores remained lower than national averages, reflecting the complex needs within the AFC population. Thematic analysis identified four themes: Armed Forces Experience and Perspective, Challenges and Barriers, Service Delivery and Effectiveness, and Skill Development and Attributes. Subthemes highlighted AFC-specific challenges, the practical complexity of the AFCSPLW role, and the importance of cultural competence. Advocacy, navigation, and relationship-building emerged as central mechanisms, with AFCSPLWs acting as vital connectors across primary care, third-sector services, and professional networks.
Building upon recent research on the motif of Sappho’s leap from the Rock of Leucas in ancient iconography and texts, this article explores its background in greater depth, raising new issues and proposing new solutions. The first section locates the iconographic project of the so-called Porta Maggiore ‘Basilica’ in its historical context, through the comparison with another coeval and contiguous building in Rome. The second section focuses on the issue of the relationship between the story of Sappho’s unhappy love for Phaon and the corpus of Sapphic poems, arguing that the theme is unlikely to have been represented in the standard edition of the poetess and offering an explanation for the origin of the tradition of alternative Sapphos. The third section identifies the third text of the famous Sappho’s Cologne papyrus as a post-classical poem in the voice of Sappho, where the poetess takes leave from Phaon and faces a journey toward the Underworld while holding in her hand Orpheus’ lyre. Finally, I argue that this poem provides an important missing link that can help understanding the background of the representation of the poetess in the Porta Maggiore ‘Basilica’.
We prove new large sieve inequalities for the Fourier coefficients $\rho _{j\mathfrak {a}}(n)$ of exceptional Maass forms of a given level, weighted by sequences $(a_n)$ with sparse Fourier transforms – including two key types of sequences that arise in the dispersion method. These give the first savings in the exceptional spectrum for the critical case of sequences as long as the level, and lead to improved bounds for various multilinear forms of Kloosterman sums. As an application, we show that the greatest prime factor of $n^2+1$ is infinitely often greater than $n^{1.3}$, improving Merikoski’s previous threshold of $n^{1.279}$. We also announce applications to the exponents of distribution of primes and smooth numbers in arithmetic progressions.
In settings of deep poverty and inequality, implementing policies that balance urgent needs with long-term development is crucial. What strategies are used to build public support for long-term oriented policies? Evidence shows that both left- and right-wing governments have played a role in the expansion of social policy. This article explores the context and meanings that governments with different ideologies assign to distributive policies, focusing on how these policies are communicated. In particular, I argue that ideology significantly shapes the framing presidents use when discussing and announcing social policies. Left-leaning governments emphasize social inclusion while right-leaning governments stress the productivity-enhancing aspects of these policies. Using text analysis techniques, including à la carte embeddings (ALC) this study analyzes presidential communications from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The findings show how ideology drives communication strategies, revealing that in more polarized societies, presidents distinguish themselves more consistently through how they construct and communicate these policies.
Neuroimaging studies have consistently revealed neuroanatomical abnormalities in individuals with bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia (SZ). However, it remains unknown whether and to what extent disorder-selective gray matter variations occur in these prominent psychiatric disorders. This study conducted a meta-analysis of 25 years of published voxel-based morphometry (VBM) research to assess the presence of selective and robust neuroanatomical substrates of gray matter variation in BD, MDD, and SZ.
Methods
Peer-reviewed experiments encompassing subjects with target disorders were systematically searched in the MEDLINE database. Additionally, peer-reviewed data on 30 other psychiatric disorders and 65 neurological diseases were obtained from the BrainMap database. Experiments reporting whole-brain group comparisons between patients and healthy controls were included if they identified significant reductions in gray matter morphometry.
Results
The data were analyzed using the Bayes fACtor mOdeliNg algorithm. A total of 1,021 VBM experiments were included, comprising 29,540 patients and 28,177 healthy controls. Primary analyses of psychiatric data revealed strong evidence of gray matter reduction in the right middle temporal gyrus for BD and the posterior dorsal anterior cingulate cortex for SZ (P ≥ 95% selectivity). The robustness of these findings was confirmed using the fail-safe method tailored to the neuroimaging meta-analytic environment. No selective findings were observed in additional analyses that included neurological diseases.
Conclusions
Taken together, these findings offer a framework that underscores the significance of diagnosis-selective neural substrates in psychopathology, a new perspective that could inform distinct pathophysiological processes and assist in diagnosis and treatment.
This study aims to improve the welfare and management of recreational horses by identifying how different management styles affect horse health and behaviour. We examined the management styles of recreational horse owners in the UK and Ireland, focusing on social interaction (friends), access to suitable forage (forage), and unrestricted movement (freedom). We collected 1,501 survey responses, distributed via social media, and summarised the characteristics and management choices of the respondents. Using the Divisive ANAlysis cluster package in R, three distinct management styles were identified. The largest differences between clusters were in turn-out, individual stabling, and access to forage. The Horse Centred Management Cluster (HCMC) (n = 956) were more likely to provide their horses with 24-h turn-out and access to a forage source, and interaction with two or more horses. The Combined Management Cluster (CMC) (n = 434) showed a combination of management decisions that differed from the HCMC, including horses being kept in an individual stable for longer periods and being provided with shorter turn-out periods (nine or more hours). The Owner Centred Management Cluster (OCMC) (n = 111) provided a more restrictive management style with a much reduced turn-out time (typically 0–6 h), often with no contact with other horses, and less access to a forage source (0–10 h). We explored associations between management factors (friends, forage, and freedom) and horse welfare-related outputs via owner responses to health and behaviour questions, where behaviour was considered to reflect mental state. The HCMC horses were significantly less likely to exhibit gastrointestinal issues, lameness issues, handling problems, or antisocial behaviours compared to both other groups. This study highlights how management impacts the health and behaviour of recreational horses and can contribute to the development of guidance on improved management and welfare for recreational horses.
States are increasingly resorting to international cooperative agreements to deter migrants and refugees from irregularly arriving at their borders. Although scholars have shown how these cooperative deterrence policies are undermining important refugee and human rights protections, making migration journeys more dangerous, and securitizing and criminalizing people on the move, what has not been adequately examined is how these cooperative arrangements can bring about normative changes that produce indifference to the suffering of refugees and migrants. This article examines the psychosocial dynamics of cooperative deterrence policies to show how the social processes of authorization, routinization, evasion of responsibility, and dehumanization weaken moral restraints and opportunities for moral contemplation. Governments are using these social processes to implement, legitimize, and promote harmful policies; evade legal responsibility; and obscure the moral implications of their policies. This article sheds new light on the psychosocial effects of cooperative deterrence, the dark side of international cooperation, and the role that indifference plays in maintaining and legitimizing migration deterrence polices.
Both Canada and the European Union feature multiple overlapping legal systems, each with independent sovereignty claims and distinctive cultural traditions. Courts in both settings have therefore been forced to reckon with ‘constitutional pluralism’.
In Canada, the contested relationship between Indigenous and settler legal orders has been mediated largely through s35, which recognizes Aboriginal rights, and s25 which shields them from the Canadian Charter. The resulting jurisprudence has focused on protecting cultural difference by creating limited spaces of autonomy within the Canadian state but has largely neglected questions of sovereignty.
In Europe, the relationship between European Union and member-state law has been mediated through an emergent judicial dialog which allows each court to maintain its sovereignty claim by making its acceptance of the other’s authority conditional. The resulting jurisprudence focuses on sovereignty without dealing as closely with questions of difference.
The two contexts therefore represent divergent approaches to shared conceptual and practical problems. To my knowledge, however, no scholarship has seriously compared the two. The following article takes a modest step towards filling this lacuna, introducing European thinkers to Canadian constitutional pluralism and vice versa before reflecting on some of the ways further comparative research can add depth to existing comparative literature, deepen our understanding of constitutional pluralism as a theory and, in particular, raise important questions about constitutional pluralism’s relationship to liberalism.
The constitutive idea centres on the proposition that, as a matter of social fact, law and wider social life each make up and, over time, dynamically shape, the other. This paper argues that we can draw upon designerly ways to make that the constitutive idea more available to scholars, as well as to the wider world. It first highlights the empirical, conceptual and normative dimensions of the constitutive idea. Next it introduces designerly ways, and some examples of how they have already been used at the intersections of legal and economic life. Finally, it identifies three specific problems (one empirical, one conceptual and one normative) arising out of scholarship that attends to the constitutive idea, and explains how we might adapt existing designerly practices to address them.
Adolescent girls affected by displacement face substantial mental-health risks. The Sibling Support for Adolescent Girls in Emergencies (SSAGE) is a 12-week, gender-transformative, family-based program designed to improve adolescent girls’ mental health in humanitarian settings. This mixed-methods pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) assessed SSAGE’s feasibility, acceptability and potential effects among 186 Venezuelan migrant and Colombian returnee families in Colombia. Adolescent girls aged 13–19 years, their male siblings and caregivers participated in parallel sessions on gender dynamics, communication and relationships. Implementation outcomes drew on the Mental Health Implementation Science Tools (acceptability and feasibility subscales), attendance records and qualitative interviews. Analyses followed an intent-to-treat approach using adjusted linear and logistic regression models. Quantitative analyses did not identify measurable changes in adolescent girls’ mental health outcomes at endline; however, attendance was modest, with only ~10% of families meeting the predefined protocol threshold. Implementation findings revealed strong participant satisfaction and high acceptability of SSAGE content and mentor relationships. Engagement was constrained by economic hardship, transportation and venue barriers, and some caregivers’ acute emotional distress, which likely limited feasibility and potential impact. SSAGE shows promise as a gender-transformative, family-based approach, but successful delivery in urban migrant settings will require tailored and refined implementation strategies.
While the joint modeling of item responses and response times (RTs) has received considerable attention, most existing approaches remain limited to dichotomous items and are not applicable to assessments involving polytomous or mixed-format items. To address this limitation, this article proposes a novel joint modeling framework for graded item responses and RTs. Specifically, we develop a conditional RT model given item responses and integrate it with a marginal response model based on Samejima’s graded response model, yielding a conditional joint model for graded item responses and RTs. The model is then embedded within a two-level hierarchical framework to account for the relationship between ability and speed at the population level. A key methodological contribution is the development of a stochastic approximation EM (SAEM) algorithm for estimating the proposed model, which efficiently computes its marginal maximum likelihood estimates. Simulation studies demonstrate the accurate parameter recovery of the SAEM algorithm and indicate that the proposed model outperforms the hierarchical model assuming conditional independence across various testing conditions. Finally, an empirical analysis using data from the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment illustrates the effectiveness of the graded response–response time model in large-scale assessments.
This article proposes a reframing of the ethics of human intelligence collection (HUMINT). Intelligence officers (IOs) engaged in HUMINT routinely transgress ordinary ethical norms: to serve their nation-state, they lie, manipulate, deceive, and instrumentalize others not only in professional settings (“doing HUMINT”) but also in private life (“living HUMINT”). The currently dominant framework for HUMINT ethics, derived from the just war tradition, does not adequately address key challenges—particularly at the individual level. I therefore argue for a reframing grounded in the lived experience of HUMINT, aimed at real dilemmas faced by conscientious IOs. The proposal has two components: first, expanding the space for individual moral responsibility across all levels of intelligence decision-making; and second, emphasizing peace as a minimal common telos to guide ethical deliberation by both IOs and their agencies. The reframing, I conclude, can enhance the efficiency and accountability of intelligence agencies while providing IOs with a more robust framework to guide their actions.
Slow viscous flow around a fixed body generates a shape-dependent drag. We explore the drag-minimising shapes of bodies centred between two parallel plates in two-dimensional viscous flow. The channel width introduces a length scale so that the optimal profile is area-dependent. We solve the shape optimisation problem numerically over a wide range of areas. We also compute the optimal elliptical shapes and this identifies how these shapes should be slightly altered to reduce the drag with reductions of up to $3.8\,\%$ attained at high areas. More broadly, we derive two properties of general optimal shapes within the confined flow: the magnitude of the surface vorticity is approximately (but not exactly) constant and the noses have sharp angles that are independent of area. For relatively small bodies, the optimal shape becomes identical to that in an unconfined geometry, but the drag is qualitatively different owing to the influence of confinement; within a channel, it is proportional to the inverse of the logarithm of the body area. At relatively large areas, the optimal body becomes long and its surface is approximately parallel to the channel boundaries, except in the vicinity of the noses. Using a lubrication approximation, we recast the optimisation problem as an Euler–Lagrange equation that is solved to determine the drag-minimising shape, finding that the drag is proportional to the body area in this regime.
This study investigates the effect of sagging correction errors on image quality and geometric coordinate accuracy.
Methods:
This study utilised the Elekta radiotherapy system, ball bearing (BB), Catphan phantom and MultiMet-WL phantom. Ten distinct flex maps (FMs) were acquired by positioning the BB at the accuracy isocentre and introducing shifts of 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 mm in the left, table and up directions, respectively. Cone-beam computed tomography images of the Catphan phantom were acquired using 10 FMs. The images were analysed for modulation transfer function (MTF) values and geometric coordinates. Additionally, the Winston–Lutz (W-L) test was conducted under reference couch positions and with a 0.3 mm couch shift.
Results:
For the Catphan phantom analysis, the standard deviations of MTF10% across FMs were 0.19. The centre-of-gravity coordinates of the insert exhibited shifts of approximately 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 mm when comparing reference images to those acquired with the shifted FMs. The results of the W-L test with a 0.3 mm couch shift showed radiation isocentre deviations exceeding 1 mm compared to the reference couch positions.
Conclusions:
Minor sagging correction calibration errors did not remarkably impact image quality; however, they altered the geometric coordinates of the image isocentre. These calibration errors decreased the accuracy of off-isocentre positioning.
The determinants of nest-site selection and nest success are important for conservation planning for endangered birds. Here we examine factors driving nest-site selection and success for the Mariana Crow Corvus kubaryi, also known as the Åga, across the entire range of the population, by comparing 370 nests that were found during surveys (2014–2021) against random points sampled from all forested areas on the island. Nest-sites were more likely to have high canopy cover than random points, while proximity to human infrastructure (e.g. roads, buildings) did not impact nest-site selection. None of our tested covariates impacted nest success, nor did the land-cover type in which the nests were found. Our results suggest that the Åga is able to nest successfully in close proximity to humans, and that nest success is not negatively affected by current land-use practices. Future research on the low nest success rate (23.9%) would be most fruitfully targeted towards local biotic stressors, such as nest predation or environmental factors, which may exacerbate the unknown inflammatory disease that afflicts many wild nestlings.
Existing research on descriptive representation maintains that political candidates often receive more political support from in-group voters than their out-group competitors. Scholars claim this is due in large part to the assumption that descriptive candidates have a greater inclination to act in ways that benefit their shared identity group. This paper explores the other side of these heightened expectations and asks—How do voters evaluate a descriptive representative whose actions are perceived as being at odds with group expectations? Moreover, how do those evaluations compare to out-group candidates who behave in similarly? Using an experimental test, we examine the costs leveraged against political candidates who meet voters’ expectations and those who do not, and seeing whether the shared identity conditions voters’ evaluations. In doing so, we provide a more holistic view of the ways in which descriptive representation matters to voters.
This article advances a law-and-economics critique of fractional-reserve banking, focusing on the legal taxonomy of bank contracts and the risk externalities of maturity transformation. We argue that the conflation of custody-like deposits with mutuum loans blurs property-rights boundaries and weakens liability discipline. Drawing on Austrian monetary theory, we link fiduciary media and demandable debt to pro-cyclical liquidity, run dynamics and the amplification of systemic risk. We reassess the real-bills doctrine and “demand loans,” showing why they do not neutralise run risk in practice and may obscure solvency–liquidity interactions. We then outline institutional reforms – 100%-reserve custodial deposits and a strict functional separation between custody and intermediation – together with market-based loss allocation. The article concludes with regulatory implications for lender-of-last-resort, deposit insurance, and capital/liquidity regimes consistent with risk reduction and legal coherence.