Dynamic decoherence control of a solid-state nuclear quadrupole qubit

We report on the application of a dynamic decoherence control pulse sequence on a nuclear quadrupole transition in $Pr^{3+}:Y_2SiO_5$ . Process tomography is used to analyse the effect of the pulse sequence. The pulse sequence was found to increase the decoherence time of the transition to over 30 seconds. Although the decoherence time was significantly increased, the population terms were found to rapidly decay on the application of the pulse sequence. The increase of this decay rate is attributed to inhomogeneity in the ensemble. Methods to circumvent this limit are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Children’s experiences of domestic violence and abuse: siblings’ accounts of relational coping

This article explores how young people see their relationships, particularly their sibling relationships, in families affected by domestic violence, and how relationality emerges in their accounts as a resource to build an agentic sense of self. The ‘voice’ of children is largely absent from domestic violence literature, which typically portrays them as passive, damaged and relationally incompetent. Children’s own understandings of their relational worlds are often overlooked, and consequently existing models of children’s social interactions give inadequate accounts of their meaning-making-in-context. Drawn from a larger study of children’s experiences of domestic violence and abuse, this paper uses two case studies of sibling relationships to explore young people’s use of relational resources, for coping with violence in the home. The paper explores how relationality and coping intertwine in young people’s accounts, and disrupts the taken for granted assumption that children’s ‘premature caring’ or ‘parentification’ is (only) pathological in children’s responses to domestic violence. This has implications for understanding young people’s experiences in the present, and supporting their capacity for relationship building in the future

Building Conscious Awareness through Reflective Practice in Education: A Literature Review

The paper explores current recommendations for supervision in education and considers strategies for effective reflective practice for staff and young people in primary and secondary school education. It also identifies barriers to successful reflective practice in education through the review of current literature. A review of the published literature was made using a Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS), and a search of the International Journal of Education was also carried out. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the final number of articles included in the synthesis was 35. The articles related to reflective practice and supervision in primary and secondary school settings. A thematic analysis was carried out, and themes were identified. The initial thematic map highlighted four themes: factors inhibiting reflective practice, current experience of reflective practice in education, promoting reflective practice, and a relational approach. The review of the initial thematic map identified five themes: recognising constraints for teachers, adopting a whole-school strengths-based model, the importance of relationships in reflective practice, current experience of supervision in education, and tools to build conscious awareness. Supervision is discussed as a tool for reflective practice, following a supportive framework rather than performance management, to promote teacher wellbeing

Beyond ‘witnessing’: children’s experiences of coercive control in domestic violence and abuse

Children’s experiences and voices are underrepresented in academic literature and professional practice around domestic violence and abuse. The project ‘Understanding Agency and Resistance Strategies’ addresses this absence, through direct engagement with children. We present an analysis from interviews with 21 children in the United Kingdom (12 girls and 9 boys, aged 8-18 years), about their experiences of domestic violence and abuse, and their responses to this violence. These interviews were analysed using interpretive interactionism. Three themes from this analysis are presented: a) ‘Children’s experiences of abusive control’, which explores children’s awareness of controlling behaviour by the adult perpetrator, their experience of that control, and its impact on them; b) ‘Constraint’, which explores how children experience the constraint associated with coercive control in situations of domestic violence, and c) ‘Children as agents’ which explores children’s strategies for managing controlling behaviour in their home and in family relationships. The paper argues that, in situations where violence and abuse occurs between adult intimate partners, children are significantly impacted, and can be reasonably described as victims of abusive control. Recognising children as direct victims of domestic violence and abuse would produce significant changes in the way professionals respond to them, by 1) recognising children’s experience of the impact of domestic violence and abuse; 2) recognising children’s agency, undermining the perception of them as passive ‘witnesses’ or ‘collateral damage’ in adult abusive encounters; and 3) strengthening professional responses to them as direct victims, not as passive witnesses to violence

Translanguaging business: Unpredictability and precarity in superdiverse inner city Leeds

The Leeds business case study focuses on Klára, a Czech-speaking community interpreter and her work with advocates providing interpreting services on an hourly-paid basis for a number of organizations. Klára’s business is her interpreting work with advocates who are primarily concerned with assisting Czech and Slovak Roma migrants in Leeds with the problems they face with life in a new country, principally the complex business of claiming benefits. Our work with Klára allows an insight into the lives of these new migrants, living in precarious conditions, on the borderline between low pay employment and benefit claiming. We examine in detail the role of the different languages in these migrants’ interpreter-mediated interactions. We examine translanguaging in four different areas: English/Czech/Slovak interlingual translanguaging, intralingual translanguaging in English, intralingual translanguaging in Czech and Slovak, and interdiscursive translanguaging. Our study extends into Klára’s home life, where we see that Klára works hard to ensure that her children have access to the Czech language. We also examine her electronically-mediated communication, much of which exemplifies the blurring of boundaries between work and social interaction in online communication. The study took place in the Leeds suburb of Harehills. In the process of collecting data with Klára, we gained an insight into the lives of new migrants, living in precarious conditions, on the borderline between low pay employment and benefit claiming. We examine in detail the role of the different languages in these migrants’ interpreter-mediated interactions, using the notion of translanguaging. Klára’s work as a community interpreter means that language is crucially her business. Our study also extends into Klára’s home life, and we see that Klára also makes language her business there, working to ensure that her children have regular and consistent access to the Czech language. This report comprises eight sections overall. Following this introduction we provide background on the Roma in Leeds, the population who Klára has most contact with in her professional life. In Section 3 we discuss the foundational literature relevant to our study: superdiversity and neoliberalism; the employment and also exploitation characteristic in early stage migration; how linguistic ethnography can afford rich insights that it does into the events and practices we observe; a focus on the interpreting event from a literacy studies perspective; the site of interpreting as a contact zone; translanguaging at work and at home; and the use of social media in superdiverse multilingual environments. Section 4 on methodology details our overall approach, gives an overview of data collection, and describes the individual data sets, and how our analysis enables them to work in combination. The two central analysis sections (5 and 6) cover respectively interaction at work and translanguaging in the home, and we include a short section (7) on mediated discourse which straddles the work/life boundary

Exploring the structural relationship between interviewer and self-rated affective symptoms in Huntington’s disease

This study explores the structural relationship between self-report and interview measures of affect in Huntington’s disease. The findings suggest continued use of both to recognize the multidimensionality within a single common consideration of distress

A questionnaire to identify patellofemoral pain in the community: an exploration of measurement properties

Background Community-based studies of patellofemoral pain (PFP) need a questionnaire tool that discriminates between those with and those without the condition. To overcome these issues, we have designed a self-report questionnaire which aims to identify people with PFP in the community. Methods Study designs: comparative study and cross-sectional study. Study population: comparative study: PFP patients, soft-tissue injury patients and adults without knee problems. Cross-sectional study: adults attending a science festival. Intervention: comparative study participants completed the questionnaire at baseline and two weeks later. Cross-sectional study participants completed the questionnaire once. The optimal scoring system and threshold was explored using receiver operating characteristic curves, test-retest reliability using Cohen’s kappa and measurement error using Bland-Altman plots and standard error of measurement. Known-group validity was explored by comparing PFP prevalence between genders and age groups. Results Eighty-four participants were recruited to the comparative study. The receiver operating characteristic curves suggested limiting the questionnaire to the clinical features and knee pain map sections (AUC 0.97 95 % CI 0.94 to 1.00). This combination had high sensitivity and specificity (over 90 %). Measurement error was less than the mean difference between the groups. Test–retest reliability estimates suggest good agreement (N = 51, k = 0.74, 95 % CI 0.52–0.91). The cross-sectional study (N = 110) showed expected differences between genders and age groups but these were not statistically significant. Conclusion A shortened version of the questionnaire, based on clinical features and a knee pain map, has good measurement properties. Further work is needed to validate the questionnaire in community samples

Targeted interventions for patellofemoral pain syndrome (TIPPS): classification of clinical subgroups

Introduction Patellofemoral pain (PFP) can cause significant pain leading to limitations in societal participation and physical activity. An international expert group has highlighted the need for a classification system to allow targeted intervention for patients with PFP; we have developed a work programme systematically investigating this. We have proposed six potential subgroups: hip abductor weakness, quadriceps weakness, patellar hypermobility, patellar hypomobility, pronated foot posture and lower limb biarticular muscle tightness. We could not uncover any evidence of the relative frequency with which patients with PFP fell into these subgroups or whether these subgroups were mutually exclusive. The aim of this study is to provide information on the clinical utility of our classification system. Methods and analysis 150 participants will be recruited over 18 months in four National Health Services (NHS) physiotherapy departments in England. Inclusion criteria: adults 18–40 years with PFP for longer than 3 months, PFP in at least two predesignated functional activities and PFP elicited by clinical examination. Exclusion criteria: prior or forthcoming lower limb surgery; comorbid illness or health condition; and lower limb training or pregnancy. We will record medical history, demographic details, pain, quality of life, psychomotor movement awareness and knee temperature. We will assess hip abductor and quadriceps weakness, patellar hypermobility and hypomobility, foot posture and lower limb biarticular muscle tightness. The primary analytic approach will be descriptive. We shall present numbers and percentages of participants who meet the criteria for membership of (1) each of the subgroups, (2) none of the subgroups and (3) multiple subgroups. Exact (binomial) 95% CIs for these percentages will also be presented. Ethics and dissemination This study has been approved by National Research Ethics Service (NRES) Committee North West—Greater Manchester North (11/NW/0814) and University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) Built, Sport, Health (BuSH) Ethics Committee (BuSH 025). An abstract has been accepted for the third International Patellofemoral Pain Research Retreat, Vancouver, September 2013

Heritage With No Fixed Abode: Transforming Cultural Heritage for Migrant Communities in Inner-City Leeds

This paper reports on the second phase of the AHRC-funded Translation and Translanguaging (TLang) project, on the theme of Heritage. The Key Participant for the Heritage theme in Leeds is Monika, a young Slovak Roma woman living and working in inner-city Leeds. Monika and her brother Ivan each aspire to setting up cultural spaces for the Roma people in their area. The activities they hope to initiate will safeguard and transmit to others that which is important to them – their heritage – including music, food, dance. As yet, there is no such space for the Roma in Leeds, and in this respect they are attempting to make something happen where there is currently nothing. We follow Monika in particular, as she attempts to bring her ideas into being. With the support of others, Monika tries to transform her available cultural capital into something that will preserve and consolidate heritage but will also earn her a living. This she does by starting to set up a social enterprise. Among other activities this entails the completion of a business plan. We follow her as the plan moves through stages of transformation, and in the process see her dreams and aspirations become both tangible and at the same time constrained. In the later parts of the paper we examine familiar tokens of cultural heritage, food and music, that play a part in the daily lives of Monika and her family, but which (in the case of food) Ivan is attempting to transform from cultural to economic capital, to make something that provides a living

Field dependence of the vortex core size in a multi-band superconductor

The magnetic field dependence of the vortex core size in the multi-band superconductor NbSe2 has been determined from muon spin rotation measurements. The spatially extended nature of the quasiparticle core states associated with the smaller gap leads to a rapid field-induced shrinkage of the core size at low fields, while the more tightly bound nature of the states associated with the larger gap leads to a field-independent core size for fields greater than 4 kOe. A simple model is proposed for the density of delocalized core states that establishes a direct relationship between the field-induced reduction of the vortex core size and the corresponding enhancement of the electronic thermal conductivity. We show that this model accurately describes both NbSe2 and the single-band superconductor V3Si.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter