Retaining young Catholics in the church: assessing the importance of parental example

Drawing on data from a survey conducted among 9,810 young people in England, Scotland, and Wales, this study examines parental and peer influence on church attendance among 2146 13- to 15-year-old students who identified themselves as Catholics. The data suggested that young Catholics who practise their Catholic identity by attending church do so largely because their parents are Catholic churchgoers. Moreover, young Catholic churchgoers are most likely to keep going if both mother and father are Catholic churchgoers. Among this age group of young Catholics both peer support and attending a church school are also significant, but account for little additional variance after taking parental church-going into account. The implication from these findings for a Catholic Church strategy for ministry among children and young people within England, Scotland and Wales is that it may be wise to invest in the education and formation of Catholic parents

How long has NICE taken to produce Technology Appraisal guidance? A retrospective study to estimate predictors of time to guidance.

OBJECTIVES: To assess how long the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's (NICE) Technology Appraisal Programme has taken to produce guidance and to determine independent predictors of time to guidance. DESIGN: Retrospective time to event (survival) analysis. SETTING: Technology Appraisal guidance produced by NICE. DATASOURCE: All appraisals referred to NICE by February 2010 were included, except those referred prior to 2001 and a number that were suspended. OUTCOME MEASURE: Duration from the start of an appraisal (when the scope document was released) until publication of guidance. RESULTS: Single Technology Appraisals (STAs) were published significantly faster than Multiple Technology Appraisals (MTAs) with median durations of 48.0 (IQR; 44.3-75.4) and 74.0 (IQR; 60.9-114.0) weeks, respectively (p <0.0001). Median time to publication exceeded published process timelines, even after adjusting for appeals. Results from the modelling suggest that STAs published guidance significantly faster than MTAs after adjusting for other covariates (by 36.2 weeks (95% CI -46.05 to -26.42 weeks)) and that appeals against provisional guidance significantly increased the time to publication (by 42.83 weeks (95% CI 35.50 to 50.17 weeks)). There was no evidence that STAs of cancer-related technologies took longer to complete compared with STAs of other technologies after adjusting for potentially confounding variables and only weak evidence suggesting that the time to produce guidance is increasing each year (by 1.40 weeks (95% CI -0.35 to 2.94 weeks)). CONCLUSIONS: The results from this study suggest that the STA process has resulted in significantly faster guidance compared with the MTA process irrespective of the topic, but that these gains are lost if appeals are made against provisional guidance. While NICE processes continue to evolve over time, a trade-off might be that decisions take longer but at present there is no evidence of a significant increase in duration

Christian ethos secondary schools in England and Wales: a common voice or wide diversity?

This study argues that it is the collective worldview of the students which is crucial in reflecting and shaping the ethos of schools. In order to understand the potential distinctiveness of Christian ethos schools two analyses were undertaken. The collective worldview of 2,942 students attending ten Christian ethos schools was compared with the collective worldview of 13,861 students attending 71 schools without a religious character. Then the collective worldview of 194 students attending an Anglican school that prioritised the Church’s ‘domestic’ function in education was compared with the collective worldview of 302 students attending an Anglican school that prioritised the Church’s ‘general’ function in education. The major difference occurs not between Christian ethos schools and schools without a religious character, but between Anglican schools that voice their interpretation of the Church’s mission in education differently

The metric space of geodesic laminations on a surface: I

We consider the space of geodesic laminations on a surface, endowed with the Hausdorff metric d_H and with a variation of this metric called the d_log metric. We compute and/or estimate the Hausdorff dimensions of these two metrics. We also relate these two metrics to another metric which is combinatorially defined in terms of train tracks.Comment: Published by Geometry and Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol8/paper13.abs.htm

Ion temperature gradient instability at sub-Larmor radius scales with non-zero ballooning angle

Linear gyro-kinetic stability calculations predict unstable toroidal Ion Temperature Gradient modes with normalised poloidal wave vectors well above one ($k_\theta \rho_i > 1$) for standard parameters and with adiabatic electrons. These modes have a maximum amplitude at a poloidal angle $\theta$ that is shifted away from the low field side ($\theta \ne 0$). The physical mechanism is clarified through the use of a fluid model. It is shown that the shift of the mode away from the low field side ($\theta \ne 0$) reduces the effective drift frequency, and allows for the instability to develop. Numerical tests using the gyro-kinetic model confirm this physical mechanism. It is furthermore shown that modes with $\theta \ne 0$ can be important also for $k_\theta \rho_i < 1$ close to the threshold of the ITG. In fact, modes with $\theta \ne 0$ can exist for normalised temperature gradient lengths below the threshold of the ITG obtained for $\theta = 0$

On seed island generation and the non-linear self-consistent interaction of the tearing mode with electromagnetic gyro-kinetic turbulence

The multi-scale interaction of self-consistently driven magnetic islands with electromagnetic turbulence is studied within the three dimensional, toroidal gyro-kinetic framework. It can be seen that, even in the presence of electromagnetic turbulence the linear structure of the mode is retained. Turbulent fluctuations do not destroy the growing island early in its development, which then maintains a coherent form as it grows. The island is seeded by the electromagnetic turbulence fluctuations, which provide an initial island structure through nonlinear interactions and which grows at a rate significantly faster than the linear tearing growth rate. These island structures saturate at a width that is approximately $\rho_{i}$ in size. In the presence of turbulence the island then grows at the linear rate even though the island is significantly wider than the resonant layer width, a regime where the island is expected to grow at a significantly reduced non-linear rate. A large degree of stochastisation around the separatrix, and an almost complete break down of the X-point is seen. This significantly reduces the effective island width.Comment: Joint Varenna - Lausanne International Worksho

Christian ethos secondary schools in England and Wales : a common voice or wide diversity?

This study argues that it is the collective worldview of the students which is crucial in reflecting and shaping the ethos of schools. In order to understand the potential distinctiveness of Christian ethos schools two analyses were undertaken. The collective worldview of 2,942 students attending ten Christian ethos schools was compared with the collective worldview of 13,861 students attending 71 schools without a religious character. Then the collective worldview of 194 students attending an Anglican school that prioritised the Church’s ‘domestic’ function in education was compared with the collective worldview of 302 students attending an Anglican school that prioritised the Church’s ‘general’ function in education. The major difference occurs not between Christian ethos schools and schools without a religious character, but between Anglican schools that voice their interpretation of the Church’s mission in education differently

Turbulent transport in rotating tokamak plasmas

Small scale turbulence in a magnetically confined fusion plasma drives energy and particle transport which determine the confinement. The plasma in a tokamak experiment has a toroidal rotation which may be driven externally, but can also arise spontaneously from turbulent momentum transport. This thesis investigates the interaction between turbulence and rotation via nonlinear numerical simulations, which use the gyrokinetic description in the frame that corotates with the plasma. A local gyrokinetic code is extended to include both the centrifugal force, and the stabilising effect of sheared equilibrium flow. Sheared flow perpendicular to the magnetic field suppresses the turbulence, and also breaks a symmetry of the local model. The resulting asymmetry creates a turbulent residual stress which can counteract diffusive momentum transport and contribute to spontaneous rotation. The competition between symmetry breaking and turbulence suppression results in a maximum in the nondiffusive momentum flux at intermediate shearing rates. Whilst this component of the momentum transport is driven by the sheared flow, it is also found to be suppressed by the shearing more strongly than the thermal transport. The direction of the residual stress reverses for negative magnetic shear, but also persists at zero magnetic shear. The parallel component of the centrifugal force traps particles on the outboard side of the plasma, which destabilises trapped particle driven modes. The perpendicular component of the centrifugal force appears as a centrifugal drift which modifies the phase relation between density and electric field perturbations, and is stabilising for both electron and ion driven instabilities. For ion temperature gradient dominated turbulence, an increased fraction of slow trapped electrons enhances the convective particle pinch, suggesting increased density peaking for strongly rotating plasmas. Heavy impurities feel the centrifugal force more strongly, therefore the effects of rotation are significant for impurities even when the bulk ion Mach number is low. For ion driven modes, rotation results in a strong impurity convection inward, whilst a more moderate convection outward is found for electron driven modes.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEngineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE)GBUnited Kingdo

Interplay between toroidal rotation and flow shear in turbulence stabilisation

International audienceThe interplay between toroidal rotation u, parallel flow shear u ′ and perpendicular flow shear γE in the stabilisation of tokamak turbulence is investigated in non-linear flux-tube gyrokinetic simulations. The simulations are performed for a reference L-mode DIII-D plasma (the so-called shortfall case) at r/a = 0.8, varying the flow parameters around their nominal values. Depending on the respective signs of u, u ′ and γE, turbulence is found to be enhanced, reduced or unchanged. When the coupling is favorable, the overall effect on the non-linear heat fluxes can be very large, even at moderate flow values. The ion heat flux is for instance decreased by a factor of three when the direction of the parallel flow shear is reversed with respect to its nominal value. Even more surprising, keeping u ′ and γE at their nominal values, the ion heat flux decreases by more than 50% when the toroidal flow is reversed. The relevance of this mechanism in the experiments which depends on the ability to decouple u, u ′ and γE is discussed. The interplay between u and u ′ observed in the non-linear simulations qualitatively follows the linear stability results and is interpreted in the frame of a simple fluid model