'White knuckle care work' : violence, gender and new public management in the voluntary sector

Drawing on comparative data from Canada and Scotland, this article explores reasons why violence is tolerated in non-profit care settings. This article will provide insights into how workers' orientations to work, the desire to care and the intrinsic rewards from working in a non-profit context interact with the organization of work and managerially constructed workplace norms and cultures (Burawoy, 1979) to offset the tensions in an environment characterized by scarce resources and poor working conditions. This article will also outline how the same environment of scarce resources causes strains in management's efforts to establish such cultures. Working with highly excluded service users with problems that do not respond to easy interventions, workers find themselves working at the edge of their endurance, hanging on by their fingernails, and beginning to participate in various forms of resistance; suggesting that even among the most highly committed, 'white knuckle care' may be unsustainable

Constrained by managerialism : caring as participation in the voluntary social services

The data in this study show that care is a connective process, underlying and motivating participation and as a force that compels involvement in the lives of others, care is at least a micro-participative process. Care or affinity not only persisted in the face of opposition, but it was also used by workers as a counter discourse and set of practices with which to resist the erosion of worker participation and open up less autonomized practices and ways of connecting with fellow staff, clients and the communities they served. The data suggest that while managerialism and taylorised practice models may remove or reduce opportunities for worker participation, care is a theme or storyline that gave workers other ways to understand their work and why they did it, as well as ways they were prepared to resist managerial priorities and directives, including the erosion of various kinds of direct and indirect participation. The degree of resistance possible, even in the highly technocratic worksite in Australia, shows that cracks and fissures exist within managerialism

Using Virtual Observatory techniques to search for Adaptive Optics suitable AGN

Until recently, it has been possible only for nearby galaxies to study the scaling relations between central black hole and host galaxy in detail. Because of the small number densities at low redshift, (luminous) AGN are underrepresented in such detailed studies. The advent of adaptive optics (AO) at large telescopes helps overcoming this hurdle, allowing to reach small linear scales over a wide range in redshift. Finding AO-suitable targets, i.e., AGN having a nearby reference star, and carrying out an initial multiwavelength classification is an excellent use case for the Virtual Observatory. We present our Virtual-Observatory approach to select an AO-suitable catalog of X-ray-emitting AGN at redshifts 0.1<z<1.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to "EURO-VO AIDA workshop: Multiwavelength astronomy and Virtual Observatory", ESAC, Spain, 1-3 Dec. 200

Sub-milliarcsecond precision spectro-astrometry of Be stars

The origin of the disks around Be stars is still not known. Further progress requires a proper parametrization of their structure, both spatially and kinematically. This is challenging as the disks are very small. Here we assess whether a novel method is capable of providing these data. We obtained spectro astrometry around the Pa beta line of two bright Be stars, alpha Col and zeta Tau, to search for disk signatures. The data, with a pixel to pixel precision of the centroid position of 0.3..0.4 milliarcsecond is the most accurate such data to date. Artefacts at the 0.85 mas level are present in the data, but these are readily identified as they were non-repeatable in our redundant datasets. This does illustrate the need of taking multiple data to avoid spurious detections. The data are compared with simple model simulations of the spectro astrometric signatures due to rotating disks around Be stars. The upper limits we find for the disk radii correspond to disk sizes of a few dozen stellar radii if they rotate Keplerian. This is very close to observationally measured and theoretically expected disk sizes, and this paper therefore demonstrates that spectro-astrometry, of which we present the first such attempt, has the potential to resolve the disks around Be stars.Comment: 6 pages, A&A accepte

Evidence for spin liquid ground state in SrDy2_2O4_4 frustrated magnet probed by muSR

Muon spin relaxation ($\mu$SR) measurements were carried out on SrDy$_2$O$_4$, a frustrated magnet featuring short range magnetic correlations at low temperatures. Zero-field muon spin depolarization measurements demonstrate that fast magnetic fluctuations are present from $T=300$ K down to 20 mK. The coexistence of short range magnetic correlations and fluctuations at $T=20$ mK indicates that SrDy$_2$O$_4$ features a spin liquid ground state. Large longitudinal fields affect weakly the muon spin depolarization, also suggesting the presence of fast fluctuations. For a longitudinal field of $\mu_0H=2$ T, a non-relaxing asymmetry contribution appears below $T=6$ K, indicating considerable slowing down of the magnetic fluctuations as field-induced magnetically-ordered phases are approached.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to be published as a proceeding of HFM2016 in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS

Magnetic quantum critical point and superconductivity in UPt3 doped with Pd

Transverse-field muon spin relaxation measurements have been carried out on the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3 doped with small amounts of Pd. We find that the critical Pd concentration for the emergence of the large-moment antiferromagnetic phase is ~0.6 at.%Pd. At the same Pd content, superconductivity is completely suppressed. The existence of a magnetic quantum critical point in the phase diagram, which coincides with the critical point for superconductivity, provides evidence for ferromagnetic spin-fluctuation mediated odd-parity superconductivity, which competes with antiferromagnetic order.Comment: 4 pages (includes 3 figures); postscript fil

Magnetic quantum critical point and superconductivity in UPt3 doped with Pd

Transverse-field muon spin relaxation measurements have been carried out on the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3 doped with small amounts of Pd. We find that the critical Pd concentration for the emergence of the large-moment antiferromagnetic phase is ~0.6 at.%Pd. At the same Pd content, superconductivity is completely suppressed. The existence of a magnetic quantum critical point in the phase diagram, which coincides with the critical point for superconductivity, provides evidence for ferromagnetic spin-fluctuation mediated odd-parity superconductivity, which competes with antiferromagnetic order.Comment: 4 pages (includes 3 figures); postscript fil

A tail-like assembly at the portal vertex in intact herpes simplex type-1 virions

Herpes viruses are prevalent and well characterized human pathogens. Despite extensive study, much remains to be learned about the structure of the genome packaging and release machinery in the capsids of these large and complex double-stranded DNA viruses. However, such machinery is well characterized in tailed bacteriophage, which share a common evolutionary origin with herpesvirus. In tailed bacteriophage, the genome exits from the virus particle through a portal and is transferred into the host cell by a complex apparatus (i.e. the tail) located at the portal vertex. Here we use electron cryo-tomography of human herpes simplex type-1 (HSV-1) virions to reveal a previously unsuspected feature at the portal vertex, which extends across the HSV-1 tegument layer to form a connection between the capsid and the viral membrane. The location of this assembly suggests that it plays a role in genome release into the nucleus and is also important for virion architecture