24,878 research outputs found
Literature circles, gender and reading for enjoyment
The research was commissioned through Information and Analytical Services Division, which is responsible for providing analytical services within the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED). Their work is part of a multidisciplinary unit (consisting of researchers, economists and statistics staff) and the staff undertakes and funds economic analysis and social research in the fields of: school education; children, young people and social work: architecture; and tourism, culture and sport
The development of direct payments in the UK: implications for social justice
Direct payments have been heralded by the disability movement as an important means to
achieving independent living and hence greater social justice for disabled people through
enhanced recognition as well as financial redistribution. Drawing on data from the ESRC
funded project Disabled People and Direct Payments: A UK Comparative Perspective,
this paper presents an analysis of policy and official statistics on use of direct payments
across the UK. It is argued that the potential of direct payments has only partly been
realised as a result of very low and uneven uptake within and between different parts
of the UK. This is accounted for in part by resistance from some Labour-controlled local
authorities, which regard direct payments as a threat to public sector jobs. In addition,
access to direct payments has been uneven across impairment groups. However, from a
very low base there has been a rapid expansion in the use of direct payments over the
past three years. The extent to which direct payments are able to facilitate the ultimate
goal of independent living for disabled people requires careful monitoring
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The <i>AKARI</i> deep fields: early results from multi-wavelength follow-up campaigns
We present early results from our multi-wavelength follow-up campaigns of the AKARI Deep Fields at the North and South Ecliptic Poles. We summarize our campaigns in this poster paper, and present three early outcomes. (a) Our AAOmega optical spectroscopy of the Deep Field South at the AAT has observed over 550 different targets, and our preliminary local luminosity function at 90 ?m from the first four hours of data is in good agreement with the predictions from Serjeant & Harrison (2005). (b) Our GMRT 610 MHz imaging in the Deep Field North has reached ?30 ?Jy RMS, making this among the deepest images at this frequency. Our 610 MHz source counts at >200 ?Jy are the deepest ever derived at this frequency. (c) Comparing our GMRT data with our 1.4 GHz WSRT data, we have found two examples of radio-loud AGN that may have more than one epoch of activity
A New Component in the Radio Continua of PNe
A byproduct of experiments designed to map the CMB is the recent detection of a new component of foreground galactic emission. The anomalous foreground at 10–30 GHz, unexplained by traditional emission mechanisms, correlates with 100 mum dust emission, and is thus presumably due to dust.Is the anomalous foreground ubiquitous in the Galaxy? I will present evidence obtained with the CBI and SIMBA+SEST supporting the existence of the new component in the ISM at large, and in specific objects, in the form of a 31 GHz excess over free-free emission in PNe
The Cluster Distribution as a Test of Dark Matter Models. IV: Topology and Geometry
We study the geometry and topology of the large-scale structure traced by
galaxy clusters in numerical simulations of a box of side 320 Mpc, and
compare them with available data on real clusters. The simulations we use are
generated by the Zel'dovich approximation, using the same methods as we have
used in the first three papers in this series. We consider the following models
to see if there are measurable differences in the topology and geometry of the
superclustering they produce: (i) the standard CDM model (SCDM); (ii) a CDM
model with (OCDM); (iii) a CDM model with a `tilted' power
spectrum having (TCDM); (iv) a CDM model with a very low Hubble
constant, (LOWH); (v) a model with mixed CDM and HDM (CHDM); (vi) a
flat low-density CDM model with and a non-zero cosmological
term (CDM). We analyse these models using a variety of
statistical tests based on the analysis of: (i) the Euler-Poincar\'{e}
characteristic; (ii) percolation properties; (iii) the Minimal Spanning Tree
construction. Taking all these tests together we find that the best fitting
model is CDM and, indeed, the others do not appear to be consistent
with the data. Our results demonstrate that despite their biased and extremely
sparse sampling of the cosmological density field, it is possible to use
clusters to probe subtle statistical diagnostics of models which go far beyond
the low-order correlation functions usually applied to study superclustering.Comment: 17 pages, 7 postscript figures, uses mn.sty, MNRAS in pres
Oblivion: Mitigating Privacy Leaks by Controlling the Discoverability of Online Information
Search engines are the prevalently used tools to collect information about
individuals on the Internet. Search results typically comprise a variety of
sources that contain personal information -- either intentionally released by
the person herself, or unintentionally leaked or published by third parties,
often with detrimental effects on the individual's privacy. To grant
individuals the ability to regain control over their disseminated personal
information, the European Court of Justice recently ruled that EU citizens have
a right to be forgotten in the sense that indexing systems, must offer them
technical means to request removal of links from search results that point to
sources violating their data protection rights. As of now, these technical
means consist of a web form that requires a user to manually identify all
relevant links upfront and to insert them into the web form, followed by a
manual evaluation by employees of the indexing system to assess if the request
is eligible and lawful.
We propose a universal framework Oblivion to support the automation of the
right to be forgotten in a scalable, provable and privacy-preserving manner.
First, Oblivion enables a user to automatically find and tag her disseminated
personal information using natural language processing and image recognition
techniques and file a request in a privacy-preserving manner. Second, Oblivion
provides indexing systems with an automated and provable eligibility mechanism,
asserting that the author of a request is indeed affected by an online
resource. The automated ligibility proof ensures censorship-resistance so that
only legitimately affected individuals can request the removal of corresponding
links from search results. We have conducted comprehensive evaluations, showing
that Oblivion is capable of handling 278 removal requests per second, and is
hence suitable for large-scale deployment
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