Examining the perceptions and attitudes of staff working in community based children's homes: are their needs being met?

There remains considerable ambiguity and negativity around the purpose and effectiveness of children’s homes. High levels of unqualified staff, low status and poor pay and conditions have continued to be the norm within residential child care. In light of this situation it is appropriate to ask why staff are viewed as a key ingredient in the service provision. It is particularly significant given the views of staff and the tasks they undertake have not been widely researched. This article provides a summary of findings from a doctoral study that attempted to address this deficit by examining the context of children’s homes, especially those social processes and interactions that shape key tasks

Accretion flow behaviour during the evolution of the Quasi Periodic Oscillation Frequency of XTE J1550-564 in 1998 outburst

Low and intermediate frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are thought to be due to oscillations of Comptonizing regions or hot regions embedded in Keplerian discs. Observational evidence of evolutions of QPOs would therefore be very important as they throw lights on the dynamics of the hotter region. Our aim is to find systems in which there is a well-defined correlation among the frequencies of the QPOs over a range of time so as to understand the physical picture. In this paper, we concentrate on the archival data of XTE J1550-564 obtained during 1998 outburst, and study the systematic drifts during the rising phase from the 1998 September 7 to the 1998 September 19, when the QPO frequency increased monotonically from 81mHz to 13.1Hz. Immediately after that, QPO frequency started to decrease and on the 1998 September 26, the QPO frequency became 2.62Hz. After that, its value remained almost constant. This frequency drift can be modelled satisfactorily with a propagatory oscillating shock solution where the post-shock region behaves as the Comptonized region. Comparing with the nature of a more recent 2005 outburst of another black hole candidate GRO 1655-40, where QPOs disappeared at the end of the rising phase, we conjecture that this so-called `outburst' may not be a full-fledged outburst.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Fluctuation Cumulant Behavior for the Field-Pulse Induced Magnetisation-Reversal Transition in Ising Models

The universality class of the dynamic magnetisation-reversal transition, induced by a competing field pulse, in an Ising model on a square lattice, below its static ordering temperature, is studied here using Monte Carlo simulations. Fourth order cumulant of the order parameter distribution is studied for different system sizes around the phase boundary region. The crossing point of the cumulant (for different system sizes) gives the transition point and the value of the cumulant at the transition point indicates the universality class of the transition. The cumulant value at the crossing point for low temperature and pulse width range is observed to be significantly less than that for the static transition in the same two-dimensional Ising model. The finite size scaling behaviour in this range also indicates a higher correlation length exponent value. For higher temperature and pulse width range, the transition seems to fall in a mean-field like universality class.Comment: 5 pages, 8 eps figures, thoroughly revised manuscript with new figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. E (2003

Steady shocks around black holes produced by sub-keplerian flows with negative energy

We discuss a special case of formation of axisymmetric shocks in the accretion flow of ideal gas onto a Schwarzschild black hole: when the total energy of the flow is negative. The result of our analysis enlarges the parameter space for which these steady shocks are exhibited in the accretion of gas rotating around relativistic stellar objects. Since keplerian disks have negative total energy, we guess that, in this energy range, the production of the shock phenomenon might be easier than in the case of positive energy. So our outcome reinforces the view that sub-keplerian flows of matter may significantly affect the physics of the high energy radiation emission from black hole candidates. We give a simple procedure to obtain analytically the position of the shocks. The comparison of the analytical results with the data of 1D and 2D axisymmetric numerical simulations confirms that the shocks form and are stable.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted by MNRAS on 10 November 200

Proteinopathy, oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction: cross talk in alzheimer’s disease and parkinson’s disease

Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease are two common neurodegenerative diseases of the elderly people that have devastating effects in terms of morbidity and mortality. The predominant form of the disease in either case is sporadic with uncertain etiology. The clinical features of Parkinson's disease are primarily motor deficits, while the patients of Alzheimer's disease present with dementia and cognitive impairment. Though neuronal death is a common element in both the disorders, the postmortem histopathology of the brain is very characteristic in each case and different from each other. In terms of molecular pathogenesis, however, both the diseases have a significant commonality, and proteinopathy (abnormal accumulation of misfolded proteins), mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are the cardinal features in either case. These three damage mechanisms work in concert, reinforcing each other to drive the pathology in the aging brain for both the diseases; very interestingly, the nature of interactions among these three damage mechanisms is very similar in both the diseases, and this review attempts to highlight these aspects. In the case of Alzheimer's disease, the peptide amyloid beta (A beta) is responsible for the proteinopathy, while alpha-synuclein plays a similar role in Parkinson's disease. The expression levels of these two proteins and their aggregation processes are modulated by reactive oxygen radicals and transition metal ions in a similar manner. In turn, these proteins - as oligomers or in aggregated forms - cause mitochondrial impairment by apparently following similar mechanisms. Understanding the common nature of these interactions may, therefore, help us to identify putative neuroprotective strategies that would be beneficial in both the clinical conditions