Falling Incapacity Benefit claims in a former industrial city: policy impacts or labour market improvement?

This article provides an in-depth study of Incapacity Benefit (IB) claims in a major city and of the factors behind their changing level. It relates to the regime prior to the introduction of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) in 2008. Glasgow has had one of the highest levels of IB in Britain with a peak of almost one fifth of the working age population on IB or Severe Disablement Allowance (SDA). However, over the past decade the number of IB claimants in Glasgow, as in other high claiming areas, has fallen at a faster rate than elsewhere, and Glasgow now has twice the national proportion of working-age people on IB/SDA rather than its peak of three times. The rise in IB in Glasgow can be attributed primarily to deindustrialisation; between 1971 and 1991, over 100,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the city. Policy response was belated. Lack of local statistics on IB led to a lengthy delay in official recognition of the scale of the issue, and targeted programmes to divert or return IB claimants to work did not begin on any scale until around 2004. Evidence presented in the article suggests that the reduction in claims, which has mainly occurred since about 2003, has been due more to a strengthening labour market than to national policy changes or local programmes. This gives strong support to the view that excess IB claims are a form of disguised unemployment. Further detailed evaluation of ongoing programmes is required to develop the evidence base for this complex area. However, the study casts some doubt on the need for the post-2006 round of IB reforms in high-claim areas, since rapid decline in the number of claimants was already occurring in these areas. The article also indicates the importance of close joint working between national and local agencies, and further development of local level statistics on IB claimants

The Stellar Parameters and Evolutionary State of the Primary in the d'-Symbiotic System StH\alpha190

We report on a high-resolution, spectroscopic stellar parameter and abundance analysis of a d' symbiotic star: the yellow component of StH\alpha190. This star has recently been discovered, and confirmed here, to be a rapidly rotating (vsini=100 km/s) subgiant, or giant, that exhibits radial-velocity variations of probably at least 40 km/s, indicating the presence of a companion (a white dwarf star). It is found that the cool stellar component has Teff=5300K and log g=3.0. The iron and calcium abundances are close to solar, however, barium is overabundant, relative to Fe and Ca, by about +0.5 dex. The barium enhancement reflects mass-transfer of s-process enriched material when the current white dwarf was an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star. The past and future evolution of this binary system depends critically on its current orbital period, which is not yet known. Concerted and frequent radial-velocity measurements are needed to provide crucial physical constraints to this d' symbiotic system.Comment: 9 pages, 1 table, 3 figures. In press to Astrophysical Journal Letter

Ground-state cooling of a trapped ion Using long-wavelength radiation

We demonstrate ground-state cooling of a trapped ion using radio-frequency (rf) radiation. This is a powerful tool for the implementation of quantum operations, where rf or microwave radiation instead of lasers is used for motional quantum state engineering. We measure a mean phonon number of n¯=0.13(4) after sideband cooling, corresponding to a ground-state occupation probability of 88(7)%. After preparing in the vibrational ground state, we demonstrate motional state engineering by driving Rabi oscillations between the |n=0⟩ and |n=1⟩ Fock states. We also use the ability to ground-state cool to accurately measure the motional heating rate and report a reduction by almost 2 orders of magnitude compared with our previously measured result, which we attribute to carefully eliminating sources of electrical noise in the system

Development of novel multiplex microsatellite polymerase chain reactions to enable high-throughput population genetic studies of Schistosoma haematobium

© 2015 Webster et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article

The New Deal: jeopardised by the geography of unemployment?

The New Deal is the Labour government's flagship programme to "end the tragic waste of youth and long-term unemployment" by getting people off welfare benefits and into work. This paper argues that the principal weakness of the New Deal is that it seeks to influence the character of labour supply (i.e. the motivation and skills of the unemployed) while neglecting the state of labour demand, which varies greatly between places. The uneven geography of unemployment in the UK is likely to have a crucial bearing on the programme's impact and effectiveness, but this has been largely ignored in its development. The paper outlines some of the practical consequences of this imbalance and suggests how it could be rectified for the programme to be more effective

Tracking the Orbital and Super-orbital Periods of SMC X-1

The High Mass X-ray Binary (HMXB) SMC X-1 demonstrates an orbital variation of 3.89 days and a super-orbital variation with an average length of 55 days. As we show here, however, the length of the super-orbital cycle varies by almost a factor of two, even across adjacent cycles. To study both the orbital and super-orbital variation we utilize lightcurves from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer All Sky Monitor (RXTE-ASM). We employ the orbital ephemeris from Wojdowski et al. (1998) to obtain the average orbital profile, and we show that this profile exhibits complex modulation during non-eclipse phases. Additionally, a very interesting ``bounceback'' in X-ray count rate is seen during mid-orbital eclipse phases, with a softening of the emission during these periods. This bounceback has not been previously identified in pointed observations. We then define a super-orbital ephemeris (the phase of the super-orbital cycle as a function of date) based on the ASM lightcurve and analyze the trend and distribution of super-orbital cycle lengths. SMC X-1 exhibits a bimodal distribution of these lengths, similar to what has been observed in other systems (e.g., Her X-1), but with more dramatic changes in cycle length. There is some hint, but not conclusive evidence, for a dependence of the super-orbital cycle length upon the underlying orbital period, as has been observed previously for Her X-1 and Cyg X-2. Using our super-orbital ephemeris we are also able to create an average super-orbital profile over the 71 observed cycles, for which we witness overall hardening of the spectrum during low count rate times. We combine the orbital and super-orbital ephemerides to study the correlation between the orbital and super-orbital variations in the system.Comment: 10 pages, using emulateapj style. To be published in the Astrophysical Journa

Destination Online Communication: Why Less is Sometimes More. A Study of Online Communications of English Destinations

This research investigates the relationship between Web site design and the Web site end-user experience of a vast number of English tourism destinations, both local and regional ones. Following recent research in the field, this paper evaluates destinations' online communication based on the implemented Web site features and on the effectiveness of the communication itself, borrowing its research methodology from different domains. After content and functionality analysis, a user-experience, scenario-based investigation has been carried out, which demonstrated that complex Web sites do not always serve end-users' needs properly; in other words, Web site complexity is not directly related with good user experience. This research may help destination managers to foster their online communication if they have fewer content and functionalities but are better focused and clearly user-oriented. © 2014 Taylor & Francis

Influence of static Jahn-Teller distortion on the magnetic excitation spectrum of PrO2: A synchrotron x-ray and neutron inelastic scattering study

A synchrotron x-ray diffraction study of the crystallographic structure of PrO2 in the Jahn-Teller distorted phase is reported. The distortion of the oxygen sublattice, which was previously ambiguous, is shown to be a chiral structure in which neighbouring oxygen chains have opposite chiralities. A temperature dependent study of the magnetic excitation spectrum, probed by neutron inelastic scattering, is also reported. Changes in the energies and relative intensities of the crystal field transitions provide an insight into the interplay between the static and dynamic Jahn-Teller effects.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure