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The use of drug detection (sniffer) dogs in psychiatric settings divides opinion among clinicians and service users alike. This paper provides an overview of the use of these dogs within a Medium Secure Unit (MSU). The approach described seeks to challenge preconceptions and suggests that dog searching should be one component of a wider therapeutic approach to working with patients with co‐existing mental health and substance misuse problems.

The paper reflects on ten years' experience of using drug detection dogs in MSUs.

A model is presented to promote a more therapeutic and recovery‐orientated use of dogs. This incorporates: using readily accessible dogs; carrying out proactive, rather than reactive, searches; operating in an informal and relaxed manner; being motivated by the information gained rather than the drugs found; responding differently to suppliers/dealers and users; and aiming to build therapeutic relationships with patients.

A scale is presented which categorises the severity of substance misuse within a service. Drug dogs can be used therapeutically on psychiatric wards to promote a drug‐free environment, but this practice should form part of a wider strategy to promote recovery. Investment in proactive searching may produce reductions in substance misuse.

The paper will be of value to clinicians and service/security managers involved in the management of substance misuse on inpatient wards (particularly MSUs) where there is a drive to integrate drug detection dogs within a recovery‐oriented framework.

Leave is an important part of life for both patients and clinicians in secure mental health and learning disability settings. Patients breaching leave conditions (i.e. absconding or failing to return) represent a small percentage of leave episodes; however when incidents occur there can be far reaching negative outcomes for potential victims, the patient and the service. The purpose of this paper is to devise a risk assessment specifically for leave decision making based on the literature available.

Using the approach followed in the violence risk assessment field, a literature review was carried out of papers relating to absconding. The results were used to develop the leave/abscond risk assessment (LARA).

There are a number of problems with the available literature: there is a dearth of research, definitions for absconding are varied (often including escape) making comparisons difficult and much of the literature focuses on psychiatric acute wards making it difficult to translate into secure environments. Characteristics of absconders vary and are not idiosyncratic enough from which to develop a risk assessment. Socio‐environmental factors are perhaps more important and so the LARA was devised around assessment of these.

The limitations of this paper are clear: a risk assessment tool is proposed that has not been evaluated or validated in any way. The authors feel that the process warrants publication and invite readers to use the tool for clinical and/or research purposes.

The LARA is proposed as a specific leave‐decision‐making risk assessment tool for teams working in secure environments.

Therapy is reflexive but not synonymous with therapists' accounting practices. It is displayed and engenders dominance but it is not an institutional rhetoric or a mechanism of social control. Six properties of therapeutic work are enumerated — reflexiveness, interpretativeness, interventionalism, domination, habituation tendencies and selectivity. All apart from reflexiveness are subject to differences of form and extension in different therapeutic communities. These variations in therapeutic work and communities can be empirically mapped. Such a conception of therapeutic work may have applications to therapeutic work outside the therapeutic communities and any other institutional setting. Two data extracts empirically ground the discussion.

Existing shape‐based fuzzy clustering algorithms are all designed to explicitly segment regular geometrically shaped objects in an image, with the consequence that this restricts their capability to separate arbitrarily shaped objects. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new detection and separation of generic‐shaped object algorithm.

With the aim of separating arbitrary‐shaped objects in an image, this paper presents a new detection and separation of generic‐shaped objects (FKG) algorithm that analytically integrates arbitrary shape information into a fuzzy clustering framework, by introducing a shape constraint that preserves the original object shape during iterative scaling.

Both qualitative and numerical empirical results analysis corroborate the improved object segmentation performance achieved by the FKG strategy upon different image types and disparately shaped objects.

The proposed FKG algorithm can be highly used in applications where object segmentation is necessary. Likewise, this algorithm can be applied in Moving Picture Experts Group‐4 for real object segmentation that is already applied in synthetic object segmentation.

Esso protect with Denso. Denso anticorrosion treatments from Winn & Coales (Denso) Ltd are being applied to over 17 miles of jetty pipeline at Esso Petroleum's Fawley Refinery in the multi‐million pound project, Jetty Lines Phase II. This represents the second stage of a comprehensive three phase programme to upgrade the jetty lines. Its design incorporates the latest thinking in stress analysis and the latest developments in pipeline technology.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight gendered media constructions which discourage women's acceptability as political leaders and trivialise or ignore their contribution.

Media analysis of UK newspapers, government web sites, worldwide web relating to the UK 2010 government election, women MPs and in particular representations of Harriet Harman and Theresa May.

Media constructions of UK women political leaders are gendered and powerful in messaging women's (un)acceptability as leaders against embedded stereotypes. Being invisible via tokenism and yet spotlighted on the basis of their gender, media constructions trivialize their contribution, thus detracting from their credibility as leaders.

UK‐based study grounded in opportune “snapshot” media analysis during election and resultant formation of UK coalition Government. Focus on two women political leaders, results may not be generalisable.

Raises awareness of the numerical minority status of UK women political leaders, the invisibility‐visibility contradiction and the power of the media to construct women leaders against gender stereotypes. Call for continued challenge to gendered leader stereotypes and women's representation in UK political leadership.

Highlights power of media to perpetuate gender stereotypes of UK women political leaders.