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BACKGROUND: Chronic pain is a common cause of health-related incapacity for work in the UK. Individualised Placement and Support (IPS) is a systematic approach to rehabilitation with emphasis on early funded work placement. It is effective in helping people with severe mental illness to gain employment but has not been tested for chronic pain. OBJECTIVE: To inform the design of a definitive randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of IPS for people unemployed due to chronic pain. METHODS: A mixed methods feasibility study comprising qualitative interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders, alongside a pilot trial. STUDY PARTICIPANTS: Health care professionals from primary care (PCPs), Employment Support Workers (ESWs), employers, clients who participated in an IPS programme, individuals aged 18-64 years with chronic pain unemployed for at least three months. INTERVENTION: An IPS programme integrated with a personalised, responsive pain management plan, backed up by communication with the GP and rapid access to community-based pain services. OUTCOME(S): Stakeholder views about a trial and methods of recruitment. The feasibility and acceptability of the IPS intervention, study processes (including methods to recruit participants from primary care, training and support needs of the ESWs to integrate with pain services, acceptability of randomisation, Treatment As Usual (TAU) comparator) and scoping of outcome measures for a definitive trial. RESULTS: All stakeholders viewed a trial as feasible and important and saw the relevance of employment interventions in this group. Using all suggested methods, recruitment was feasible through primary care but slow and resource-intensive. Recruitment through pain services was more efficient. Fifty people with chronic pain were recruited (37 from primary care and 13 from pain services). Randomisation was acceptable: 22 were allocated to IPS and 28 to TAU. TAU was found acceptable. Retention of TAU participants was acceptable throughout 12-months. However, follow-up of IPS recipients using postal questionnaires proved challenging, especially when the participant started paid work, and new approaches would be needed for a trial. Clients, ESWs, PCPs and employers contributed to manualisation of the intervention. HARMS: No adverse events were reported. CONCLUSION: A definitive trial is not feasible if recruitment is through primary care until employment status is collected systematically or linkage of employment and healthcare databases is possible. The trial may be possible through pain services but clients may differ. Retention of participants proved challenging and methods for achieving this would need to be developed. The intervention has been manualised.

Peptides and proteins containing disulfide bonds can be produced in Escherichia coli by targeting the oxidizing periplasm, co-expressing isomerases or chaperons, refolding from inclusion bodies, or by using redox-engineered E. coli strains. Thus far, protein expression in glutathione reductase and thioredoxin reductase deficient (Dgor DtrxB) E. coli strains has required a complex medium. However, a chemically defined medium suitable for large-scale production would be preferable for industrial applications. Recently, we developed a minimal medium supplemented with iron (M9i) for high-density cultivation using E. coli Rosetta gami B(DE3)pLysS cells. Here we show that M9i is suitable for the production of insect metalloproteinase inhibitor (IMPI), which contains five disulfide bonds, in the same E. coli strain. We demonstrated the scalability of the new fed-batch process by combining the scale-up criteria of constant dissolved oxygen (DO) and matching volumetric power inputs (P/V) at the borders of the stirrer cascade. Process intensification was achieved by investigating production feed rates and different induction times. We improved product titers by ~200-fold compared to the standard process in complex medium while maintaining the activity of the IMPI protein. Our results show for the first time that it is possible to produce active proteins containing multiple disulfide bonds in a Dgor DtrxB E. coli strain using M9i medium. The success of scale-up and process intensification shows that the industrial production of complex recombinant proteins in such strains using chemically defined M9i minimal medium is feasible.

This paper reports on selected findings from a study on pre-sentence reports (PSRs) in the Republic of Ireland, entitled Individualising Justice: Pre-Sentence Reports in the Republic of Ireland (Maguire and Carr, 2017). The research was commissioned by the Probation Service and was a small-scale, in-depth study exploring the role of PSRs in sentencing, with a particular emphasis on understanding the process of communication involved from the perspectives of Probation Officers who create the reports and judges who request and receive them. This paper draws on the findings from the research to explore specific aspects of the use of PSRs. It begins by highlighting certain features of the Irish context and then provides a brief overview of the methodological approach before presenting a summary of selected findings, including those relating to the purpose of reports and variation in their use. We explore some of the key themes arising from the research, including consistency, temporality and contingency. We conclude by noting the potential positives of pausing a process, but highlight the need for greater consistency to ensure equitable access across the country.

This study reports the outcomes of providing training and regular clinical supervision in basic cognitive-behavioural formulation and intervention techniques for frontline homelessness workers. Results indicated that confidence increased and negative beliefs decreased at the end of the training, and continued to decrease as a result of the supervision package. Burnout significantly decreased after the training and supervision package.

SSCI-VIDE+ING+YSC; International audience; A detailed understanding of reaction mechanisms and kinetics is required in order to develop and optimize catalysts and catalytic processes. While steady-state investigations are known to give a global view of the catalytic system, transient studies are invaluable since they can provide more comprehensive insight into elementary steps. For almost forty years temporal analysis of products (TAP) has been successfully utilized for transient studies of gas phase heterogeneous reactions, and there have been a number of advances in instrumentation and numerical modeling methods in that time. Since TAP is a complex methodology it is often viewed as a niche specialty. With the purpose to make TAP more relevant and approachable to a wider segment of the catalytic research community, part of the intention of this work is to highlight the significant contributions TAP has made to elucidating mechanistic and kinetic aspects of complex, multistep heterogeneous reactions. With this in mind, an outlook is also disclosed for the technique in terms of what is needed to revitalize the field and make it more applicable to the recent advances in catalyst characterization (e.g. operando modes).

Comparative research related to any aspect of the process of breach in either the pre-trial, sentencing or release phases is relatively rare. Comparative studies of decision making in the specific context of breach process are particularly lacking. One reason for the dearth of research in this area is the many challenges presented by comparative research across different jurisdictions. This article focuses on the development of a vignette methodology to explore the decision-making aspect of the breach process from a comparative perspective across a number of different European jurisdictions. The vignettes are designed to explore the decision-making aspects of two different types of breach process – the process of breach that follows on from a breach of conditions of early release from prison and the process that follows a breach of conditions attached to the completion of an unpaid work order. The article begins by contextualizing the research in debates about the relationship between compliance, legitimacy and rising prison populations. It critically examines the nature of vignette methodology and then discusses the specific challenges of using vignettes in comparative research as well as the development, piloting and evaluation of the decision-making vignettes in focus. We conclude by discussing some of the challenges we faced and particularly our challenge in terms of the development of the methodology – enhancing the comparability of the findings.