Engaging with immigration policy on the ground: a study of Local Authorities in Scotland

This paper focuses on how policies and practices relating to immigration are developed at the local level. It explores how Local Authorities in Scotland plan for and respond to international migration. The Scottish Government has made it clear that it is keen to attract migrants to Scotland and that it would be more proactive in this if it had the relevant policy levers. However it is Local Authorities that need to respond to inflows of migrants in terms of issues such as service provision or community cohesion. This research was carried out as part of the ESRC Future of the UK and Scotland programme and focussed on 16 Local Authority areas, ranging from cities to remote regions. It raises questions about how the cogent arguments of local policy makers can be better represented in national debates about immigration policy

A dimer-type saddle search algorithm with preconditioning and linesearch

The dimer method is a Hessian-free algorithm for computing saddle points. We augment the method with a linesearch mechanism for automatic step size selection as well as preconditioning capabilities. We prove local linear convergence. A series of numerical tests demonstrate significant performance gains

‘It was always the plan’ : international study as ‘learning to migrate’

International student mobility has mainly been theorised in terms of cultural capital accumulation and its prospective benefits on returning home following graduation. Yet, despite a growing body of work in this area, most research on post-study mobility fails to recognise that the social forces that generate international student mobility also contribute to lifetime mobility plans. Moreover, these forces produce at least four types of post-study destination, of which returning ‘home’ is only one option. Our findings challenge the idea that a circular trajectory is necessarily the ‘desired’ norm. In line with wider migration theory, we suggest that return may even be seen as failure. Instead we advance the idea that cultural and social capital acquired through international studies is cultivated for onward mobility and may be specifically channelled towards goals such as an international career. We contribute a geographically nuanced conceptual frame for understanding the relation between international student mobility and lifetime mobility aspirations. By building on studies that highlight the role of family and social networks in international student mobility, we illustrate how influential familial and social institutions – both in the place of origin and newly encountered abroad – underpin and complicate students’ motivations, mobility aspirations and life planning pre- and post-study. We argue for a fluidity of life plans and conclude by discussing how geographies of origin matter within students’ lifetime mobility plans.PostprintPeer reviewe

Rescaling migration studies : migration policy-making and implementation at the local government level

This research was conducted by researchers in the Centre for Population Centre, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant number RES-625-28-0001.How ‘the state’ perceives and responds to migration is gaining increasing attention. This analysis seeks to encourage debate on scales of governance in migration studies through a focus on policy-making and implementation on the part of local government officials in Scotland. Contributions include the elucidation of how immigrants are differentiated by individual local state actors and how this relates to the wider practices of local government towards them, and a typology conceptualising the heterogeneity of local state responses to immigration. This analytic emphasis on local state perceptions of, and responses to, migration and migrants hopes to inspire more nuanced and policy relevant understandings of ‘the state’ in migration research.PostprintPeer reviewe

In what sense ‘distinctive’? The search for distinction amongst cross-border student migrants in the UK

This paper offers a geographical analysis of the concept of ‘distinction’ in relation to student mobility within the UK. The analysis in this paper is based primarily on interviews with Scottish students who have chosen to study in England, and English students who have done likewise in Scotland. The paper problematises the concept of ‘distinction’ in the stratified higher education system of the UK. The paper’s originality lies in showing how global forces affect these intra-state student flows and how ‘distinction’ as a driver of mobility is signified. The research offers a starting point in understanding the glocalisation of student mobility.PostprintPeer reviewe

Fees, flows and imaginaries: exploring the destination choices arising from intra-national student mobility

Are intra-national student flows driven by the same forces as international student mobility? This paper addresses this question by analysing cross-border student mobility in the UK. The paper identifies four principles that one might expect to drive the destination choices of students from Scotland enrolling in English universities. Following a statistical analysis of student destination choices, it is argued that cross-border moves from Scotland to England are stimulated by some of the same global forces as international student mobility (such as a desire to accumulate cultural capital), but in terms of destination choice the imaginaries held by Scottish students of ‘good’ places to study in England to accumulate cultural capital are constructed differently from the imaginaries of international students

A universal preconditioner for simulating condensed phase materials.

We introduce a universal sparse preconditioner that accelerates geometry optimisation and saddle point search tasks that are common in the atomic scale simulation of materials. Our preconditioner is based on the neighbourhood structure and we demonstrate the gain in computational efficiency in a wide range of materials that include metals, insulators, and molecular solids. The simple structure of the preconditioner means that the gains can be realised in practice not only when using expensive electronic structure models but also for fast empirical potentials. Even for relatively small systems of a few hundred atoms, we observe speedups of a factor of two or more, and the gain grows with system size. An open source Python implementation within the Atomic Simulation Environment is available, offering interfaces to a wide range of atomistic codes

Detection of ctDNA in plasma of patients with clinically localised prostate cancer is associated with rapid disease progression.

BACKGROUND DNA originating from degenerate tumour cells can be detected in the circulation in many tumour types, where it can be used as a marker of disease burden as well as to monitor treatment response. Although circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) measurement has prognostic/predictive value in metastatic prostate cancer, its utility in localised disease is unknown. METHODS We performed whole-genome sequencing of tumour-normal pairs in eight patients with clinically localised disease undergoing prostatectomy, identifying high confidence genomic aberrations. A bespoke DNA capture and amplification panel against the highest prevalence, highest confidence aberrations for each individual was designed and used to interrogate ctDNA isolated from plasma prospectively obtained pre- and post- (24 h and 6 weeks) surgery. In a separate cohort (n = 189), we identified the presence of ctDNA TP53 mutations in preoperative plasma in a retrospective cohort and determined its association with biochemical- and metastasis-free survival. RESULTS Tumour variants in ctDNA were positively identified pre-treatment in two of eight patients, which in both cases remained detectable postoperatively. Patients with tumour variants in ctDNA had extremely rapid disease recurrence and progression compared to those where variants could not be detected. In terms of aberrations targeted, single nucleotide and structural variants outperformed indels and copy number aberrations. Detection of ctDNA TP53 mutations was associated with a significantly shorter metastasis-free survival (6.2 vs. 9.5 years (HR 2.4; 95% CIs 1.2-4.8, p = 0.014). CONCLUSIONS CtDNA is uncommonly detected in localised prostate cancer, but its presence portends more rapidly progressive disease

International study for an international career: a survey of the motivations and aspirations of international students in the UK

There are currently 435,000 international students studying in UK Universities. This paper investigates the forces driving student mobility and the relationship between student migration and future mobility plans. The research, based on a survey of over 3000 international students and interviews with senior staff in International Offices at ten UK Universities confirms the importance of understanding international student mobility as part of wider mobility trajectories