Leisingite, ideally Cu(Mg,Cu,Fe,Zn)2Te6+O6·6H2O, is hexagonal, P3 (143), with unit-cell parameters refined from powder data: a = 5.305(1), c = 9.693(6) Å, V = 236.2(2) Å3, c/a = 1.8271, Z = 1. The strongest six reflections of the X-ray powder-diffraction pattern [d in Å (I) (hkl)] are: 9.70 (100) (001), 4.834 (80) (002), 4.604 (60) (100), 2.655 (60) (110), 2.556 (70) (111) and 2.326 (70) (112). The mineral is found on the dumps of the Centennial Eureka mine, Juab County, Utah U.S.A. where it occurs as isolated, or rarely as clusters of, hexagonal-shaped very thin plates or foliated masses in small vugs of crumbly to drusy white to colourless quartz. Associated minerals are jensenite, cesbronite and hematite. Individual crystals are subhedral to euhedral and average less than 0.1 mm in size. Cleavage {001} perfect. Forms are: {001} major; {100}, {110} minute. The mineral is transparent to somewhat translucent, pale yellow to pale orange-yellow, with a pale yellow streak and an uneven fracture. Leisingite is vitreous with a somewhat satiny to frosted appearance, brittle to somewhat flexible and nonfluorescent; H(Mohs) 3–4; D(calc.) 3.41 for the idealized formula; uniaxial negative, ω = 1.803(3), ɛ = 1.581 (calc.). Averaged electron-microprobe analyses yielded CuO 24.71, FeO 6.86, MgO 6.19, ZnO 0.45, TeO3 36.94, H2O (calc.) [21.55], total [96.70] wt.%, leading to the empirical formula based on O = 12. The infrared absorption spectrum shows definite bands for structural H2O with an O-H stretching frequency centered at 3253 cm−1 and a H-O-H flexing frequency centered at 1670 cm−l. The mineral name honours Joseph F. Leising, Reno, Nevada, who helped collect the discovery specimens.

Background: Community care workers’ experience of delivering support to people with dementia is less researched than that of residential workers. The purpose of the study is to explore community-based dementia care workers’ perspectives about their roles and the contextual variables that impact upon their work experiences.

Method: A qualitative design was employed. Twenty-five community dementia care workers (average age 53 years, majority female and employed casually) participated in standardized semi-structured interviews about their job roles, training, employer agenda, organizational support, and intention to stay. A deductive approach to Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was adopted to identify key themes.

Results: Three themes highlighted workers’ experiences. Occupational communion described strong attachment to clients and a desire for greater connection with colleagues. Job demands described the challenges of work, which varied with intensity. Job resources ranged from positive (strong organizational commitment) to negative (poor pay and conditions). Occupational communion was identified as a concept that exists at the interface between social and organization psychology that was perceived to be essential for adaptive coping. Identifying themes informed a conceptual model for designing intervention components aimed at improving workers’ skills, capabilities, and employer supportive functions.

Conclusion: Occupational communion may be particularly relevant for women's caring careers and future research is needed to explore the relevance of this concept for men. To determine reliable change associated with interventions that target occupational communion, further investigation is required in relation to measurement approaches.

Primary carers provide much of the day-to-day care for community-dwelling people living with dementia (PWD). Maintaining that contribution will require a more in-depth understanding of the primary carer role and the support needs that flow from that role. This study explored patterns of formal and informal support utilisation by people caring for a PWD in a rural-regional context. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 rural primary carers of a PWD and thematically analysed. Participant primary carers' almost total commitment to, and absorption in their role and their assumption of ultimate responsibility for the PWD's wellbeing meant that external social context, such as rurality, became less relevant. Carer networks effectively contracted to those key individuals who were central to supporting them in their caring task. External sources of support were tightly managed with strong boundaries around the provision of direct care to the PWD largely excluding all but professional providers. Primary carers are generally categorised along with other family and friends as informal care. However, in assuming primary responsible for the care and wellbeing for the PWD they effectively become the key care provider, suggesting that it would be productive in both research and practice to treat primary carers as key members of a care partnership alongside professional carers, rather than as adjuncts to formal care and/or another client.

Background: Dementia increasingly impacts every health and social care system in the world. Preparing the dementia care workforce is therefore paramount, particularly in light of existing problems of staff retention and turnover. Training interventions will need to increase worker and organizational capacity to deliver effective patient care. It is not clear which training interventions best enhance workers’ capacity. A review of the evidence for dementia care training interventions to enhance worker capacity and facilitate organizational change is presented.

Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted. All selected randomized intervention studies aimed to enhance some aspect of dementia care worker or workforce capacity such as knowledge of dementia, psychological well-being, work performance, and organizational factors such as retention or service delivery in dementia care.

Results: Seventy-four relevant studies were identified, but only six met inclusion criteria for the review. The six studies selected focused on worker and organizational outcomes in dementia care. All interventions were multi-component with dementia education or instructional training most commonly adopted. No interventions were found for the community setting. Variable effects were found for intervention outcomes and methodological concerns are raised.

Conclusion: The rigor of scientific research in training interventions that aim to build capacity of dementia care workers is poor and a strong need exists for evaluation and delivery of such interventions in the community sphere. Wider domains of interest such as worker psychological health and well-being need to be examined further, to understand capacity-building in the dementia care workforce.

Polar bears Ursus maritimus have a circumpolar distribution that is directly tied to the Arctic sea ice. Although they are wide-ranging, polar bears do not belong to a single population but rather are comprised of 19 largely discrete subpopulations, 13 of which are fully or partly under Canadian jurisdiction. These subpopulations are used to manage the sustainable harvest of polar bears in Canada but for conservation purposes the species is currently considered a single biological unit. Long-term climate warming has reduced the availability of sea ice that polar bears require for feeding, movement and reproduction, and continued declines in ice extent and duration are forecast to have significant negative effects on polar bears in some areas. Under the Canadian Species at Risk Act separate legal protection may be given to intraspecific groups (so called designatable units, DUs) that are genetically, geographically and/or biogeographically distinct. We examined the conservation status of polar bears across their Canadian range and compared large-scale ecosystem properties across subpopulations. We found that threats to the conservation of polar bears are not spatially uniform and we identified five DUs that captured broad patterns of polar bear biodiversity. We conclude that the use of DUs provides a biologically-sound framework for the conservation of polar bears.

Background. Formal thought disorder (FTD) has long been regarded as a key sign of schizophrenia but little is known about its origins or aetiology. One suggestion is that it is directly related to disordered language functioning; a second is that it is a reflection of poor neurocognitive functioning. A current model posits that it is related to a combination of executive dysfunction and impaired semantic processing.

Method. To examine these alternative ideas, a heterogeneous group of 30 patients, all carrying a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and 18 non-patient controls completed a series of neurocognitive and psycholinguistic tests, and a clinical review that, inter alia, permitted assessment of thought disorder (TD) using the Thought, Language and Communication Scale (TLC).

Results. Patients generally performed at a lower level on most components of the test battery, but there was little evidence of a relationship between TD and syntactic psycholinguistic function. However, schizophrenic patients manifesting higher levels of TD performed at a lower level on tests sensitive to executive dysfunction and semantic impairments.

Conclusions. The origins of TD seem more closely linked to deficits in executive functioning and semantic processing than to impairments in other language functions or general cognition.

The Fezzan Project is investigating the last 10,000 years of human settlement, landscape evolution and climatic change in the Germa region in southern Libya. The second season in February–March 1998 comprised interdisciplinary research in archaeology and geography, centred around excavation and survey work carried out at the site of Old Germa. To date, three phases of mud brick buildings have been partially explored. In addition, wider geomorphological study and archaeological survey and fieldwalking were carried out elsewhere in the Germa/Twesh oasis and around el-Hatiya. Numerous sites were discovered, including a new hillfort of Zinchecra type and several valley centre ‘villages’ of Garamantian/Roman date. Artefactual studies were carried out on pottery and lithics, animal bones and seeds. Further work on the subterranean irrigation features, the foggaras, have confirmed their pre-Islamic origins.

Our objective was to establish a mechanism for monitoring indicators of the state of health of inner London's mental illness services. Data were collected for a census week around 15 June 1994. Local data collection was coordinated by consultant pyschiatrists working in inner London services. Twelve services participated with a combined catchment population of 2.6 m. They included ten London services which were among the 17 most socially deprived areas of England. Main indicators were admission bed occupancy levels (including an estimate of the total requirement), proportion of patients detained under the Mental Health Act, number of assaults committed by inpatients, number of emergency assessments and CPN caseloads. The mean true bed occupancy (which reflects the number of patients who were receiving, or required, in-patient care on census day) was 130%. To meet all need for acute psychiatric care, including for patients who should have been admitted and those discharged prematurely because beds were full, a further 426 beds would have been required. Fifty per cent of patients were legally detained. Physical assaults were virtually a daily occurrence on the admission units. Average community pyschiatric nurse caseloads were 37, suggesting that the majority were not working intensively with limited caseloads of patients with severe mental illness. These indicators, although imperfect, will allow for some measurement of the impact of local and central initiatives on the poor state of London's mental illness services.