Universal credit, Lone mothers and poverty: Some context and challenges for social work with children and families

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in Critical and Radical Social Work. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Carey, M., & Bell, S. (2020). Universal credit, Lone mothers and poverty: Some context and challenges for social work with children and families. Critical and Radical Social Work, 8(2), 189-203 is available online at: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/crsw/2020/00000008/00000002/art00005?crawler=true&mimetype=application/pdf&casa_token=xSpOQcBuSOIAAAAA:pOJOLpaBDKZXEhkNpuuE38_A8THT4ZmXuL5txUmIewtsX5sT6XUPWhIuOxUFamFw_8nlViq-iEJKiAUniversal Credit is a streamlined benefits delivery system initially introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2008. Conditionality-based welfare policies are increasingly international in scale, and are now widely adopted by neoliberal governments on the basis that paid employment offers the most efficacious route out of poverty for citizen-subjects. Numerous studies suggest otherwise, and highlight their negative impact upon the social rights, lived experiences, and attempts to alleviate poverty for service users. This article analyses the reformed benefit system and wider workfare policies effect upon lone mothers, including as a consequence of engagement with an ever more stigmatizing benefit system, and associated risks posed by sanctions or precarious low-paid employment. It highlights some of the consequences for social work with children and families of Universal Credit: including ongoing tensions and challenges created for the profession by the punitive policies of the workfare-orientated centaur state

Health inequalities annual report 2018.

Alcohol, smoking and drug related indicators continue to show some of the largest health inequalities monitored in NI. Inequality gaps for drug related mortality and deaths due to drug misuse widened over the period analysed, with drug related mortality in the most deprived areas five times the rate seen in the least deprived. The alcohol specific mortality gap remained very large with the rate in the most deprived areas almost five times the rate in the least deprived. Despite a rise In alcohol related admission rates across all areas, and a narrowing in the resultant inequality gap, the rate in the most deprived areas was more than four and a half times that seen in the least deprived

An optimal linear solver for the Jacobian system of the extreme type-II Ginzburg--Landau problem

This paper considers the extreme type-II Ginzburg--Landau equations, a nonlinear PDE model for describing the states of a wide range of superconductors. Based on properties of the Jacobian operator and an AMG strategy, a preconditioned Newton--Krylov method is constructed. After a finite-volume-type discretization, numerical experiments are done for representative two- and three-dimensional domains. Strong numerical evidence is provided that the number of Krylov iterations is independent of the dimension $n$ of the solution space, yielding an overall solver complexity of O(n)

Anomalies and Schwinger terms in NCG field theory models

We study the quantization of chiral fermions coupled to generalized Dirac operators arising in NCG Yang-Mills theory. The cocycles describing chiral symmetry breaking are calculated. In particular, we introduce a generalized locality principle for the cocycles. Local cocycles are by definition expressions which can be written as generalized traces of operator commutators. In the case of pseudodifferential operators, these traces lead in fact to integrals of ordinary local de Rham forms. As an application of the general ideas we discuss the case of noncommutative tori. We also develop a gerbe theoretic approach to the chiral anomaly in hamiltonian quantization of NCG field theory.Comment: 30 page

Formation of undulating seafloor bedforms during the Minoan eruption and their implications for eruption dynamics and slope stability at Santorini

The Minoan eruption of Santorini is one of the largest Holocene volcanic events and produced several cubic kilometers of pyroclastic flows emplaced on the submerged flanks of the volcano. Marine geophysical surveys reveal a multitude of undulating seafloor bedforms (USBs) around Santorini. While similar structures are known from other volcanoes worldwide, Santorini offers the unique opportunity to relate USB formation with volcanic processes during one of the best-studied volcanic eruptions worldwide. In this study, we combine high-resolution seismic reflection data with multibeam echosounder bathymetry to reveal the internal architecture of USBs around Santorini and to relate their morphological characteristics to formational processes. The USBs around Santorini were formed during the Minoan eruption and represent the seafloor expression of mass transport deposits. Three types of deposits differ in composition or origin. (1) Depositional USBs, which can only be found to the north of the island, where Minoan eruption ignimbrites reach their maximum thickness and the undulating topography is the result of thrusting within the deposit. (2) USBs related to slope failures of volcaniclastics from the entire Thera Pyroclastic Formation, which can be found east, south, and west of the island. (3) USBs associated with deep-seated deformation, which occurs on the southwestern flank along an area affected by rift tectonics and extends to a depth of more than 200 m below the seafloor. In cases (2) and (3), the USBs are formed upslope by block rotation and downslope by thrusting. Our study indicates that these processes may have contributed to the generation of the devastating Minoan tsunami. Since Santorini is located in one of the most tectonically active regions in the Mediterranean, capable of producing earthquakes with magnitude M7+, our study has important implications for hazard assessment. A strong earthquake located close to the island may have the potential to reactivate slope instabilities posing a previously undetected but potentially significant tsunami hazard

Comparing plasma and faecal measures of steroid hormones in Adelie penguins Pygoscelis adeliae

Physiological measurements of both stress and sex hormones are often used to estimate the consequences of natural or human-induced change in ecological studies of various animals. Different methods of hormone measurement exist, potentially explaining variation in results across studies; methods should be cross-validated to ensure that they correlate. We directly compared faecal and plasma hormone measurements for the first time in a wild free-living species, the Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae). Blood and faecal samples were simultaneously collected from individual penguins for comparison and assayed for testosterone and corticosterone (or their metabolites). Sex differences and variability within each measure, and correlation of values across measures were compared. For both hormones, plasma samples showed greater variation than faecal samples. Males had higher mean corticosterone concentrations than females, but the difference was only statistically significant in faecal samples. Plasma testosterone, but not faecal testosterone, was significantly higher in males than females. Correlation between sample types was poor overall, and weaker in females than in males, perhaps because measures from plasma represent hormones that are both free and bound to globulins, whereas measures from faeces represent only the free portion. Faecal samples also represent a cumulative measure of hormones over time, as opposed to a plasma ‘snapshot’ concentration. Our data indicate that faecal sampling appears more suitable for assessing baseline hormone concentrations, whilst plasma sampling may best define immediate responses to environmental events. Consequently, future studies should ensure that they select the most appropriate matrix and method of hormone measurement to answer their research questions