Clinical formulation was introduced in its present form a little over 30 years ago and is, in essence, a concise summary of the origins and nature of a person's problems, together with opinion on what may go wrong in the future and what steps should be taken to improve matters. In our article we discuss how, in recent times, the task of preparing a clinical formulation has rightly become a multidisciplinary exercise involving the whole clinical team and, even more important, that nowadays the patient – the subject of the clinical formulation – together with their carers should also be actively involved in the process and feel some ownership of the conclusions and decisions. In addition, we compare these developments in clinical formulation with similar developments, arising for the same reasons, in clinical teaching and education.

The cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis, is a major pest species on companion animals thus of significant importance to the animal health industry. The aim of this study was to develop sampling and storage protocols and identify stable reference genes for gene expression studies to fully utilize the growing body of molecular knowledge of C. felis. RNA integrity was assessed in adult and larvae samples, which were either pierced or not pierced and stored in RNAlater at ambient temperature. RNA quality was maintained best in pierced samples, with negligible degradation evident after 10 days. RNA quality from non-pierced samples was poor within 3 days. Ten candidate reference genes were evaluated for their stability across four group comparisons (developmental stages, genders, feeding statuses and insecticide-treatment statuses). Glyceraldehyde 3 phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), 60S ribosomal protein L19 (RPL19) and elongation factor-1α (Ef) were ranked highly in all stability comparisons, thus are recommended as reference genes under similar conditions. Employing just two of these three stable reference genes was sufficient for accurate normalization. Our results make a significant contribution to the future of gene expression studies in C. felis, describing validated sample preparation procedures and reference genes for use in this common pest.

Risk assessment and management is an integral part of modern clinical practice. In this article we discuss best practice in the assessment and management of risk of harm to others. Unstructured clinical judgement methods have been used for many years, but it is only more recently that actuarial and structured clinical judgement methods have been introduced. These methods are discussed and compared. We describe a process that could be followed by a clinical team and give an illustrative case example. Last, we reflect on aspects of current practice and consider the possible direction of developments in the field.

The Risk Management Authority (RMA), Scotland's new body which oversees the conduct of assessments of convicted offenders placed on risk assessment orders, recently held its first annual lecture. This was given by Scotland's new Solicitor General, who observed that risk assessment orders are likely to be reserved for ‘extraordinary crimes committed by extraordinary people’. The first risk assessment orders have been made by Scottish courts and the risk assessors' reports are awaited with interest, not least in England, which has taken a different approach to dangerous offenders (Darjee & Crichton, 2002). It seems timely to review the more novel aspects of the Scottish system and the issues they raise for forensic psychiatry.

Optical melting was used to determine the stabilities of 11 small RNA oligomers of defined secondary structure as a function of magnesium ion concentration. The oligomers included helices composed of Watson–Crick base pairs, GA tandem base pairs, GU tandem base pairs, and loop E motifs (both eubacterial and eukaryotic). The effect of magnesium ion concentration on stability was interpreted in terms of two simple models. The first assumes an uptake of metal ion upon duplex formation. The second assumes nonspecific electrostatic attraction of metal ions to the RNA oligomer. For all oligomers, except the eubacterial loop E, the data could best be interpreted as nonspecific binding of metal ions to the RNAs. The effect of magnesium ions on the stability of the eubacterial loop E was distinct from that seen with the other oligomers in two ways. First, the extent of stabilization by magnesium ions (as measured by either change in melting temperature or free energy) was three times greater than that observed for the other helical oligomers. Second, the presence of magnesium ions produces a doubling of the enthalpy for the melting transition. These results indicate that magnesium ion stabilizes the eubacterial loop E sequence by chelating the RNA specifically. Further, these results on a rather small system shed light on the large enthalpy changes observed upon thermal unfolding of large RNAs like group I introns. It is suggested that parts of those large enthalpy changes observed in the folding of RNAs may be assigned to variations in the hydration states and types of coordinating atoms in some specifically bound magnesium ions and to an increase in the observed cooperativity of the folding transition due to the binding of those magnesium ions coupling the two stems together. Brownian dynamic simulations, carried out to visualize the metal ion binding sites, reveal rather delocalized ionic densities in all oligomers, except for the eubacterial loop E, in which precisely located ion densities were previously calculated.

The association between, and stability of, clinical diagnosis and diagnosis derived from the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R; Lord, Rutter, & Le Couteur, 1994) was examined in a sample of prospectively identified children with childhood autism and other pervasive developmental disorders assessed at the age of 20 months and 42 months. Clinical diagnosis of autism was stable, with all children diagnosed with childhood autism at age 20 months receiving a diagnosis of childhood autism or a related pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) at age 42 months. Clinical diagnosis of childhood autism was also reasonably sensitive, with all children who went on to receive a clinical diagnosis of childhood autism at 42 months being identified as having autism or PDD at 20 months. However, clinical diagnosis for PDD and Asperger's syndrome lacked sensitivity at 20 months, with several children who subsequently received these diagnoses at 42 months receiving diagnoses of language disorder or general developmental delay, as well as in two cases being considered clinically normal, at the earlier timepoint. The ADI-R was found to have good specificity but poor sensitivity at detecting childhood autism at 20 months; however, the stability of diagnosis from 20 to 42 months was good. In addition, the ADI-R at age 20 months was not sensitive to the detection of related PDDs or Asperger's syndrome. The continuity and discontinuity between behavioural abnormalities identified at both timepoints in the three domains of impairment in autism was examined, both in children who met final clinical criteria for an autistic spectrum disorder, and for children with language disorder who did not, as well as for a small sample of typically developing children.

In the ordinary application of the time-lag method to the measurement of the diffusion coefficient of a gas passing through a plane sheet of an inert solid, the gas is pressurized on one side of the sheet and evacuated on the other. After decay of transients, the cumulative amount, Q(t), of gas diffused through the sheet in time, t, assumes the “time-lag” form, Q(t) = A(t - L). Measurements of the slope, A, and the intercept, L, can be used to determine the diffusion coefficient and the solubility of the gas in the solid. We have rederived this law for the case of a solid which is actively evolving this same gas at an arbitrary rate and have used it to predict the rate of outgasing of the solid upon standing. Practical applications of the theory include radioactive decay of minerals, rejection of plasticizers by plastics, and the decomposition of solid rocket propellants.

A complete classification is given of harmonic morphisms to a surface and conformal foliations by geodesics, with or without isolated singularities, of a simply-connected space form. The method is to associate to any such a holomorphic map from a Riemann surface into the space of geodesics of the space form. Properties such as nonintersecting fibres (or leaves) are translated into conditions on the holomorphic mapping which show it must have a simple form corresponding to a standard example.

Sulfometuron, when applied as a foliar and/or soil application, prevented regrowth of bahiagrass. Sulfometuron application did not reduce regrowth of centipedegrass regardless of method of application. Sulfometuron was absorbed by the roots and foliage of centipedegrass and bahiagrass. Symplasmic translocation of the herbicide was evident in both species. Translocation of foliar-applied sulfometuron increased from approximately 1% at 48 h after application to 23% at 72 h in bahiagrass. Metabolism of sulfometuron was greater in centipedegrass (69% of foliar-applied, 10% of root-applied) at 72 h after application than in bahiagrass (30% of foliar-applied and 4% of root-applied). Tolerance of centipedegrass to sulfometuron appeared to be related to a high degree of herbicide metabolism in this species.