3,177 research outputs found
Women?s health in mid-life: life course social roles and agencyas quality
Data from a prospective British birth cohort study showed that women who were childless, lone mothers or full-timehomemakers between the ages of 26 and 54 were more likely to report poor health at age 54 than women who occupiedmultiple roles between these ages. To explain this finding we developed and tested a theory of role quality based on theconcept of agency by drawing on Giddens? theory of structuration and Doyal and Gough?s theory of human needs.According to our theory, the patriarchal structuration (drawing on Giddens? term) of work and family roles provides bothlimitation and opportunity for the expression of agency. Doyal and Gough?s theory of human needs was then used toidentify the restriction of agency as a possible influence on health. This theory of role quality was operationalised using ameasure of work (paid and unpaid) quality at age 36 and a measure of work and family stress between ages 48 and 54. Therelatively poor subjective health in mid-life of lone mothers was explained by work and family stress and adult social class.In contrast, the poor health in mid-life of long-term homemakers and childless women was less easily explained.Homemaker?s excess risk of reporting poor health at age 54 remained strong and significant even after adjusting for rolequality and socioeconomic indicators, and childless women were at an increased risk of reporting poor health despite thesocial advantage inherent in attaining educational qualifications and occupying professional or managerial occupations.This study highlights the need to develop measures of role quality specifically designed to capture agency aspects of socialroles
The 1960 and 1964 Jacksonville Riots
As the 1950 ended and a new decade began, leaders of the civil rights movement grew impatient. Nearly six year had passed since the United State Supreme Court had laid the foundation for ending segregation. Nevertheless, for African Americans little had changed. Blacks continued to languish at the bottom of American society, systematically denied the legal protection afforded to even America\u27s newest immigrants. Forced to endure second-rate educational and social services, southern blacks increased the pressure on policy makers
The Fourteenth Amendment: The Great Equalizer of the American People
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was ratified on July 28, 1868, demonstrated the change in attitude, which hit many Americans after the chaotic Civil War. It was Americaâs first attempt to legally challenge White supremacist ideas by creating a truly equal multiracial society. With its emphasis on equal protection and equal justice, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to be the great equalizer of American people, legally changing African American men into White men so that they could enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities of United States citizenship. However, determining the meaning of equality uncovered the racism which characterized Americans. Even though the Fourteenth Amendment changed the law, it could not change White Americans who refused to accept African American equality. The dichotomy in American racial ideas was summed up by two Democratic slogans. First, âThe Union as It Is, the Constitution as It Wasâ represented many Americanâs desire to return to a prewar constitutional status quo with Whites in a favored position. The other slogan captured in the 1866 Cincinnati Enquirer, âSlavery is dead, . . . the negro is not, there is the misfortuneâ underscored the real problem. Abolishing slavery did not solve Americaâs race problem. The Civil War changed American racial laws, but it did not change American racial attitudes. It was not until the Warren Courtâs decision in Brown v. Board of Education that the courts finally instituted Fourteenth Amendment principles and attempted to legally create racial equality, as well as color blindness when dispensing justice and carrying out social policy
Responding to research evidence in Parliament: a case study on selective education policy
This research focusses on how members of the UK Parliament engaged with evidence in relation to the policy decision leading to the Selective Schools Expansion Fund, a policy designed to enable the existing 163 English Grammar Schools to apply for additional funds to expand their intake. Although a small case study, the narrow focus provides a fertile setting for analysis of the relationship between research evidence, Parliamentary debates, and policy decisions. The article provides contextual background in relation to the dominant political partiesâ (Conservative and Labour) education policy manifesto statements and a discussion on the nature and understanding of evidence. Particular attention is given to how evidence can be used to support claims and the importance of justified warrants. Using NVivo software, we identified the thematic content of 11 Parliamentary debates and analysed the findings using descriptive statistics, which we tested with a playful, carnivalesque extrapolation of the data. Argumentative analysis shows that within the debates a number of rhetorical tools are used to avoid empirical evidence, including the deployment of a âmoral sidestepâ which discourse analysis reveals in this case to be the repeated communication that grammar schools are âgoodâ. In this way, Ofsted ratings are conflated with moral goodness, leading to a disproportionate diversion of school funding in their favour. This case study exposes strengths and weaknesses of Parliamentary debate, which might be relevant to educational researchers who focus on evidence-based policy and to the policy makers and other stakeholders who engage with the evidence such researchers offer
When Grandma Sings The Songs She Loved At The End Of A Perfect Day
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/2666/thumbnail.jp
Strategies for enhancing quantum entanglement by local photon subtraction
Subtracting photons from a two-mode squeezed state is a well-known method to
increase entanglement. We analyse different strategies of local photon
subtraction from a two-mode squeezed state in terms of entanglement gain and
success probability. We develop a general framework that incorporates
imperfections and losses in all stages of the process: before, during, and
after subtraction. By combining all three effects into a single efficiency
parameter, we provide analytical and numerical results for subtraction
strategies using photon-number-resolving and threshold detectors. We compare
the entanglement gain afforded by symmetric and asymmetric subtraction
scenarios across the two modes. For a given amount of loss, we identify an
optimised set of parameters, such as initial squeezing and subtraction beam
splitter transmissivity, that maximise the entanglement gain rate. We identify
regimes for which asymmetric subtraction of different Fock states on the two
modes outperforms symmetric strategies. In the lossless limit, subtracting a
single photon from one mode always produces the highest entanglement gain rate.
In the lossy case, the optimal strategy depends strongly on the losses on each
mode individually, such that there is no general optimal strategy. Rather,
taking losses on each mode as the only input parameters, we can identify the
optimal subtraction strategy and required beam splitter transmissivities and
initial squeezing parameter. Finally, we discuss the implications of our
results for the distillation of continuous-variable quantum entanglement.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures. Updated version for publicatio
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