Entitlements, capabilities and crisis in the United Kingdom

This paper examines if Amartya Sen’s entitlements and capabilities theories can be transferred in their application from Low Income Countries (LIC) to High Income Countries (HIC), specifically in Cumbria, northern England. Originally used to understand the causes of famine, these theories have previously been used in several different geographical contexts to broadly understand poverty and inequality but almost entirely in LICs. This paper applies the theories to a United Kingdom context in an attempt to understand the causes of poverty and inequality amongst people experiencing ‘livelihood crisis’. The research uses data from two non-governmental social welfare projects to examine the causes of crisis and the remedial effects of the intervention. Our findings indicate that these theories can help to explain how people find themselves in crisis in Cumbria. On a broader level, they can also be used to explain poverty, inequality and disadvantage in communities in the UK. The authors put forward that entitlements and capabilities theories provide a useful framework to advance the policy and political debate on the causes of poverty by providing a straightforward language and broad application. Entitlement and capabilities theories can also assist social welfare programmes in framing their aims and objectives and through improved understanding about the causes of inequality, will be better able to help people out of disadvantage by strengthening entitlements and building capabilities, without the necessity of large-scale investment

Outstanding problems in the phenomenology of hard diffractive scattering

This paper is a summary of the discussion within the Diffractive and Low-x Physics Working Group at the 1999 Durham Collider Workshop of the interpretation of the Tevatron and HERA measurements of inclusive hard diffraction.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Talks and discussions from the UK Phenomenology Workshop on Collider Physics, Durham, September 199

Questioning scrutiny:The effect of Prime Minister’s Questions on citizen efficacy and trust in parliament

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Legislative Studies on 2020-12-11, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13572334.2020.1850010. Deposited by shareyourpaper.org and openaccessbutton.org. We've taken reasonable steps to ensure this content doesn't violate copyright. However, if you think it does you can request a takedown by emailing [email protected]

Stories of Hell and Healing: Internet Users’ Construction of Benzodiazepine Distress and Withdrawal

Abstract Benzodiazepines are a group of drugs used mainly as sedatives, hypnotics, antiepileptics, and muscle relaxants. Consumption is recommended for 2 to 4 weeks only, due to fast onset of dependency and potentially distressing withdrawal symptoms. Few peer-review studies have drawn on the user experiences and language to appreciate firsthand experiences of benzodiazepine withdrawal or discontinuation syndrome. We looked extensively at patient stories of benzodiazepine withdrawal and recovery on Internet support sites and YouTube. Our analysis indicated that users employ rich metaphors to portray the psychologically disturbing and protracted nature of their suffering. We identified seven major themes: hell and isolation, anxiety and depression, alienation, physical distress, anger and remorse, waves and windows, and healing and renewal. By posting success stories, ex-users make known that “healing” can be a long, unpredictable process, but distress does lessen, and recovery can happen

The number of beams in IMRT - theoretical investigations and implications for single-arc IMRT

The first purpose of this paper is to shed some new light on the old question of selecting the number of beams in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The second purpose is to illuminate the related issue of discrete static beam angles vs. rotational techniques, which has recently re-surfaced due to the advancement of volumetric arc therapy (VMAT). A specific objective is to find analytical expressions that allow one to address the points raised above. To make the problem mathematically tractable, it is assumed that the depth dose is flat and that the lateral dose profile can be approximated by polynomials, specifically Chebyshev polynomials of the first kind, of finite degree. The application of methods known from image reconstruction then allows one to answer the first question above as follows: The required number of beams is determined by the maximum degree of the polynomials used in the approximation of the beam profiles, which is a measure of the dose variability. There is nothing to be gained by using more beams. In realistic cases, in which the variability of the lateral dose profile is restricted in several ways, the required number of beams is of the order of 10 to 20. The consequence of delivering the beams with a `leaf sweep' technique during continuous rotation of the gantry, as in VMAT, is also derived in analytical form. The main effect is that the beams fan out, but the effect near the axis of rotation is small. This result can serve as a theoretical justification of VMAT. Overall the analytical derivations in this paper, albeit based on strong simplifications, provide new insights into, and a deeper understanding of, the beam angle problem in IMRT