Understanding the difference, makes the difference: perceptions of Black and Minoritised ethnic occupational therapists on mentoring

Introduction Black and Minoritised Ethnicity (BME) occupational therapists face lower career progression opportunities and mentoring is one possible intervention that may offer support. BME persons may have different expectations and experiences from their mentor, and research exploring their perceptions of mentoring is important. In Occupational Therapy there is a growing awareness of the need to be true to the values of social justice. The aim of this research is to learn about BME occupational therapists’ experiences and perceptions of mentoring for career progression. Methods Four online focus groups involving 19 participants from the UK were held, discussions were facilitated by researchers using a topic guide. Participants responses were analysed, and codes were brought together to create Themes including career progression and role models, mentoring relationship, similarity with the mentor and outcomes from mentoring. Results The study highlighted that trust is integral to effective mentoring relationships and BME occupational therapists want mentors who they can trust with their experiences and stories. Compatibility between mentors and mentees in terms of personality, values, and working styles is crucial for effective mentoring relationships. Providing opportunities for networking, acknowledging good work and giving permission were all seen as outcomes from good mentoring. The absence of BME role models and ingroup bias were also reported as issues to be addressed. Conclusion This study explores the perception of mentorship as a mechanism for career advancement in occupational therapists from BME backgrounds, with these results transferable to other health and care professional groups. We recommend the creation of a mentoring charter for BME healthcare workers in the United Kingdom to ensure that those from BME backgrounds feel supported, mentored, and provided with equitable access to resources, including adequate mentoring and networking opportunitie

Multi-parameter approach to R-parity violating SUSY couplings

We introduce and implement a new, extended approach to placing bounds on trilinear R-parity violating couplings. We focus on a limited set of leptonic and semi-leptonic processes involving neutrinos, combining multidimensional plotting and cross-checking constraints from different experiments. This allows us to explore new regions of parameter space and to relax a number of bounds given in the literature. We look for qualitatively different results compared to those obtained previously using the assumption that a single coupling dominates the R-parity violating contributions to a process (SCD). By combining results from several experiments, we identify regions in parameter space where two or more parameters approach their maximally allowed values. In the same vein, we show a circumstance where consistency between independent bounds on the same combinations of trilinear coupling parameters implies mass constraints among slepton or squark masses. Though our new bounds are in most cases weaker than the SCD bounds, the largest deviations we find on individual parameters are factors of two, thus indicating that a conservative, order of magnitude bound on an individual coupling is reliably estimated by making the SCD assumption.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Typos fixed, two references added and references updated. Eq. (41) removed, Eq. (40) and text modified. Published versio

On Birthing Dancing Stars: The Need for Bounded Chaos in Information Interaction

While computers causing chaos is acommon social trope, nearly the entirety of the history of computing is dedicated to generating order. Typical interactive information retrieval tasks ask computers to support the traversal and exploration of large, complex information spaces. The implicit assumption is that they are to support users in simplifying the complexity (i.e. in creating order from chaos). But for some types of task, particularly those that involve the creative application or synthesis of knowledge or the creation of new knowledge, this assumption may be incorrect. It is increasingly evident that perfect order—and the systems we create with it—support highly-structured information tasks well, but provide poor support for less-structured tasks.We need digital information environments that help create a little more chaos from order to spark creative thinking and knowledge creation. This paper argues for the need for information systems that offerwhat we term ‘bounded chaos’, and offers research directions that may support the creation of such interface

Extension of the sun-synchronous Orbit

Through careful consideration of the orbit perturbation force due to the oblate nature of the primary body a secular variation of the ascending node angle of a near-polar orbit can be induced without expulsion of propellant. Resultantly, the orbit perturbations can be used to maintain the orbit plane in, for example, a near-perpendicular (or at any other angle) alignment to the Sun-line throughout the full year of the primary body; such orbits are normally termed Sun-synchronous orbits [1, 2]. Sun-synchronous orbits about the Earth are typically near-circular Low-Earth Orbits (LEOs), with an altitude of less than 1500 km. It is normal to design a LEO such that the orbit period is synchronised with the rotation of the Earth‟s surface over a given period, such that a repeating ground-track is established. A repeating ground-track, together with the near-constant illumination conditions of the ground-track when observed from a Sun-synchronous orbit, enables repeat observations of a target over an extended period under similar illumination conditions [1, 2]. For this reason, Sun-synchronous orbits are extensively used by Earth Observation (EO) platforms, including currently the Environmental Satellite (ENVISAT), the second European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-2) and many more. By definition, a given Sun-synchronous orbit is a finite resource similar to a geostationary orbit. A typical characterising parameter of a Sun-synchronous orbit is the Mean Local Solar Time (MLST) at descending node, with a value of 1030 hours typical. Note that ERS-1 and ERS-2 used a MLST at descending node of 1030 hours ± 5 minutes, while ENVISAT uses a 1000 hours ± 5 minutes MLST at descending node [3]. Following selection of the MLST at descending node and for a given desired repeat ground-track, the orbit period and hence the semi-major axis are fixed, thereafter assuming a circular orbit is desired it is found that only a single orbit inclination will enable a Sun-synchronous orbit [2]. As such, only a few spacecraft can populate a given repeat ground-track Sun-synchronous orbit without compromise, for example on the MLST at descending node. Indeed a notable feature of on-going studies by the ENVISAT Post launch Support Office is the desire to ensure sufficient propellant remains at end-of-mission for re-orbiting to a graveyard orbit to ensure the orbital slot is available for future missions [4]. An extension to the Sun-synchronous orbit is considered using an undefined, non-orientation constrained, low-thrust propulsion system. Initially the low-thrust propulsion system will be considered for the free selection of orbit inclination and altitude while maintaining the Sun-synchronous condition. Subsequently the maintenance of a given Sun-synchronous repeat-ground track will be considered, using the low-thrust propulsion system to enable the free selection of orbit altitude. An analytical expression will be developed to describe these extensions prior to then validating the analytical expressions within a numerical simulation of a spacecraft orbit. Finally, an analysis will be presented on transfer and injection trajectories to these orbits

Electric-field noise from carbon-adatom diffusion on a Au(110) surface: first-principles calculations and experiments

The decoherence of trapped-ion quantum gates due to heating of their motional modes is a fundamental science and engineering problem. This heating is attributed to electric-field noise arising from the trap-electrode surfaces. In this work, we investigate the source of this noise by focusing on the diffusion of carbon-containing adsorbates on the surface of Au(110). We show by density functional theory, based on detailed scanning probe microscopy, how the carbon adatom diffusion on the gold surface changes the energy landscape, and how the adatom dipole moment varies with the diffusive motion. A simple model for the diffusion noise, which varies quadratically with the variation of the dipole moment, qualitatively reproduces the measured noise spectrum, and the estimate of the noise spectral density is in accord with measured values.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

The Mean and Scatter of the Velocity Dispersion-Optical Richness Relation for maxBCG Galaxy Clusters

The distribution of galaxies in position and velocity around the centers of galaxy clusters encodes important information about cluster mass and structure. Using the maxBCG galaxy cluster catalog identified from imaging data obtained in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we study the BCG-galaxy velocity correlation function. By modeling its non-Gaussianity, we measure the mean and scatter in velocity dispersion at fixed richness. The mean velocity dispersion increases from 202+/-10 km/s for small groups to more than 854+/-102 km/s for large clusters. We show the scatter to be at most 40.5+/-3.5%, declining to 14.9+/-9.4% in the richest bins. We test our methods in the C4 cluster catalog, a spectroscopic cluster catalog produced from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR2 spectroscopic sample, and in mock galaxy catalogs constructed from N-body simulations. Our methods are robust, measuring the scatter to well within one-sigma of the true value, and the mean to within 10%, in the mock catalogs. By convolving the scatter in velocity dispersion at fixed richness with the observed richness space density function, we measure the velocity dispersion function of the maxBCG galaxy clusters. Although velocity dispersion and richness do not form a true mass-observable relation, the relationship between velocity dispersion and mass is theoretically well characterized and has low scatter. Thus our results provide a key link between theory and observations up to the velocity bias between dark matter and galaxies.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, published in Ap