The corporatisation and financialisation of social reproduction: care homes and childcare in the UK

The ownership and financial strategies of companies providing care for children or older people have become an increasingly salient concern, in both research and policy, because of their implications for the quality and availability of care services, as well as working conditions. However, analysis has tended to be sector specific. This article provides the first comparison of ownership, business models and workforces across childcare and adult social care in the UK. It reveals growing convergence in terms of the dominance of large companies and their financial strategies, which can reward investors while undermining access to care and worsening working conditions for large, low-paid workforces. We conceptualise these developments in terms of corporatisation and the related process of financialisation. They are, we argue, underpinned by the political economy of low wages for care work, which we explain using feminist social reproduction theory – highlighting the devaluation of feminised and racialised caring labour. The article identifies the need for further research to account for differences between the sectors, to map the geographies and political economies of care, and to compare these processes internationally

Implementation of the Quantum Fourier Transform

The quantum Fourier transform (QFT) has been implemented on a three bit nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum computer, providing a first step towards the realization of Shor's factoring and other quantum algorithms. Implementation of the QFT is presented with fidelity measures, and state tomography. Experimentally realizing the QFT is a clear demonstration of NMR's ability to control quantum systems.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Global Projections of Household Numbers Using Age Determined Ratios

A new method based upon age determined population ratios is described and used to estimate household population intensities (households per person). Using an additive and a bounded model household projections are given to 2050 for the world and to 2030 for seven fertility transition subgroups (cohorts) of the countries of the world. Based upon United Nations 2002 Revision data, from an estimated 1.56 billion households at 2000, household growth to 2030 is projected to be an additional 1.1 billion households, whether population increase is 1.3 billion persons under the United Nations low fertility variant or 2.7 billion persons under the high fertility variant. At that date over one third of all households are projected to be Chinese or Indian. By 2050 it is projected that there will be 3.3 billion households with a 95 per cent confidence interval on modelling error only of ± 0.5 billion. This compares with 3.2 billion in the Habitat: Global Report on Human Settlements 1996. The apparent similarity of total household growth under various scenarios conceals a wide range in the growth of household intensities across fertility transition cohorts. It is suggested that models, projections and error be reviewed biennially and that household and population projections be produced jointly.Household projections, world, age ratios, fertility

Soldier Boy

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-ps/3037/thumbnail.jp

Dramatic robustness of a multiple delay dispersed interferometer to spectrograph errors: how mixing delays reduces or cancels wavelength drift

We describe demonstrations of remarkable robustness to instrumental noises by using a multiple delay externally dispersed interferometer (EDI) on stellar observations at the Hale telescope. Previous observatory EDI demonstrations used a single delay. The EDI (also called “TEDI”) boosted the 2,700 resolution of the native TripleSpec NIR spectrograph (950-2450 nm) by as much as 10x to 27,000, using 7 overlapping delays up to 3 cm. We observed superb rejection of fixed pattern noises due to bad pixels, since the fringing signal responds only to changes in multiple exposures synchronous to the applied delay dithering. Remarkably, we observed a ~20x reduction of reaction in the output spectrum to PSF shifts of the native spectrograph along the dispersion direction, using our standard processing. This allowed high resolution observations under conditions of severe and irregular PSF drift otherwise not possible without the interferometer. Furthermore, we recently discovered an improved method of weighting and mixing data between pairs of delays that can theoretically further reduce the net reaction to PSF drift to zero. We demonstrate a 350x reduction in reaction to a native PSF shift using a simple simulation. This technique could similarly reduce radial velocity noise for future EDI’s that use two delays overlapped in delay space (or a single delay overlapping the native peak). Finally, we show an extremely high dynamic range EDI measurement of our ThAr lamp compared to a literature ThAr spectrum, observing weak features (~0.001x height of nearest strong line) that occur between the major lines. Because of individuality of each reference lamp, accurate knowledge of its spectrum between the (unfortunately) sparse major lines is important for precision radial velocimetry

A systems approach to the engineering workforce

The engineering function, work force and associations should be viewed as a system, for an adequate understanding of the complex interactions involved, for development of coherent policies and for achieving optimal overall performance. Such an approach embraces professional, para-professional and other categories, and requires a coherent system of qualifications, education, occupational identifiers and role definitions. For engineering education, it facilitates effective design of educational programs for each category and educational articulation between them. For industry and society, it fosters work force effectiveness and harmony. The paper provides the basis for systematising the complex of elements that make up the engineering system.<br /

Cosmological versus Intrinsic: The Correlation between Intensity and the Peak of the nu F_nu Spectrum of Gamma Ray Bursts

We present results of correlation studies, examining the association between the peak of the nu F_nu spectrum of gamma ray bursts, E_p, with the burst's energy fluence and photon peak flux. We discuss methods to account for data truncation in E_p and fluence or flux when performing the correlation analyses. However, because bursts near the detector threshold are not usually able to provide reliable spectral parameters, we focus on results for the brightest bursts in which we can better understand the selection effects relevant to E_p and burst strength. We find that there is a strong correlation between total fluence and E_p. We discuss these results in terms of both cosmological and intrinsic effects. In particular, we show that for realistic distributions of the burst parameters, cosmological expansion alone cannot account for the correlation between E_p and total fluence; the observed correlation is likely a result of an intrinsic relation between the burst rest-frame peak energy and the total radiated energy. We investigate this latter scenario in the context of synchrotron radiation from external and internal shock models of GRBs. We find that the internal shock model is consistent with our interpretation of the correlation, while the external shock model cannot easily explain this intrinsic relation between peak energy and burst radiated energy.Comment: 23 pages, including 8 postscript figures. Submitted to Ap