Punitive benefit sanctions, welfare conditionality and the social abuse of unemployed people in Britain: transforming claimants into offenders?

A defining feature of U.K. welfare reform since 2010 has been the concerted move towards greater compulsion and sanctioning, which has been interpreted by some social policy scholars as punitive and cruel. In this article, we borrow concepts from criminology and sociology to develop new interpretations of welfare conditionality. Based on data from a major Economic and Social Research Council‐funded qualitative longitudinal study (2014–2019), we document the suffering that unemployed claimants experienced because of harsh conditionality. We find that punitive welfare conditionality often caused symbolic and material suffering and sometimes had life‐threatening effects. We argue that a wide range of suffering induced by welfare conditionality can be understood as ‘social abuse’, including the demoralisation of the futile job‐search treadwheel and the self‐administered surveillance of the Universal Jobmatch panopticon. We identify a range of active claimant responses to state perpetrated harm, including acquiescence, adaptation, resistance, and disengagement. We conclude that punitive post‐2010 unemployment correction can be seen as a reinvention of failed historic forms of punishment for offenders

Quantum Illumination and Quantum Radar: A Brief Overview

Quantum illumination (QI) and quantum radar have emerged as potentially groundbreaking technologies, leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics to revolutionise the field of remote sensing and target detection. The protocol, particularly in the context of quantum radar, has been subject to a great deal of aspirational conjecture as well as criticism with respect to its realistic potential. In this review, we present a broad overview of the field of quantum target detection focusing on QI and its potential as an underlying scheme for a quantum radar operating at microwave frequencies. We provide context for the field by considering its historical development and fundamental principles. Our aim is to provide a balanced discussion on the state of theoretical and experimental progress towards realising a working QI-based quantum radar, and draw conclusions about its current outlook and future directions

Continuous variable measurement device independent quantum conferencing with post-selection

A continuous variable (CV), measurement device independent (MDI) quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol is analyzed, enabling three parties to connect for quantum conferencing. We utilise a generalised Bell detection at an untrusted relay and a postselection procedure, in which distant parties reconcile on the signs of the displacements of the quadratures of their prepared coherent states. We derive the rate of the protocol under a collective pure-loss attack, demonstrating improved rate-distance performance compared to the equivalent non-post-selected protocol. In the symmetric configuration in which all the parties lie the same distance from the relay, we find a positive key rate over 6 km. Such postselection techniques can be used to improve the rate of multi-party quantum conferencing protocols at longer distances at the cost of reduced performance at shorter distances

The Diagnosis of Urinary Tract infection in Young children (DUTY): a diagnostic prospective observational study to derive and validate a clinical algorithm for the diagnosis of urinary tract infection in children presenting to primary care with an acute illness

Background: It is not clear which young children presenting acutely unwell to primary care should be investigated for urinary tract infection (UTI) and whether or not dipstick testing should be used to inform antibiotic treatment.Objectives: To develop algorithms to accurately identify pre-school children in whom urine should be obtained; assess whether or not dipstick urinalysis provides additional diagnostic information; and model algorithm cost-effectiveness.Design: Multicentre, prospective diagnostic cohort study.Setting and participants: Children &lt; 5 years old presenting to primary care with an acute illness and/or new urinary symptoms.Methods: One hundred and seven clinical characteristics (index tests) were recorded from the child’s past medical history, symptoms, physical examination signs and urine dipstick test. Prior to dipstick results clinician opinion of UTI likelihood (‘clinical diagnosis’) and urine sampling and treatment intentions (‘clinical judgement’) were recorded. All index tests were measured blind to the reference standard, defined as a pure or predominant uropathogen cultured at ? 105 colony-forming units (CFU)/ml in a single research laboratory. Urine was collected by clean catch (preferred) or nappy pad. Index tests were sequentially evaluated in two groups, stratified by urine collection method: parent-reported symptoms with clinician-reported signs, and urine dipstick results. Diagnostic accuracy was quantified using area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) with 95% confidence interval (CI) and bootstrap-validated AUROC, and compared with the ‘clinician diagnosis’ AUROC. Decision-analytic models were used toidentify optimal urine sampling strategy compared with ‘clinical judgement’.Results: A total of 7163 children were recruited, of whom 50% were female and 49% were &lt; 2 years old. Culture results were available for 5017 (70%); 2740 children provided clean-catch samples, 94% of whom were ? 2 years old, with 2.2% meeting the UTI definition. Among these, ‘clinical diagnosis’ correctly identified 46.6% of positive cultures, with 94.7% specificity and an AUROC of 0.77 (95% CI 0.71 to 0.83). Four symptoms, three signs and three dipstick results were independently associated with UTI with an AUROC (95% CI; bootstrap-validated AUROC) of 0.89 (0.85 to 0.95; validated 0.88) for symptoms and signs, increasing to 0.93 (0.90 to 0.97; validated 0.90) with dipstick results. Nappy pad samples were provided from the other 2277 children, of whom 82% were &lt; 2 years old and 1.3% met the UTI definition.‘Clinical diagnosis’ correctly identified 13.3% positive cultures, with 98.5% specificity and an AUROC of 0.63 (95% CI 0.53 to 0.72). Four symptoms and two dipstick results were independently associated with UTI, with an AUROC of 0.81 (0.72 to 0.90; validated 0.78) for symptoms, increasing to 0.87 (0.80 to 0.94; validated 0.82) with the dipstick findings. A high specificity threshold for the clean-catch model was more accurate and less costly than, and as effective as, clinical judgement. The additional diagnostic utility of dipstick testing was offset by its costs. The cost-effectiveness of the nappy pad model was not clear-cut.Conclusions: Clinicians should prioritise the use of clean-catch sampling as symptoms and signs can cost-effectively improve the identification of UTI in young children where clean catch is possible. Dipstick testing can improve targeting of antibiotic treatment, but at a higher cost than waiting for a laboratory result. Future research is needed to distinguish pathogens from contaminants, assess the impact of the clean-catch algorithm on patient outcomes, and the cost-effectiveness of presumptive versus dipstick versus laboratory-guided antibiotic treatment.Funding: The National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme.<br/

Scalable Authentication and Optimal Flooding in a Quantum Network

The global interest in quantum networks stems from the security guaranteed by the laws of physics. The deployment of quantum networks means facing the challenges of scaling up the physical hardware and, more importantly, of scaling up all other network layers and optimally utilizing network resources. Here, we consider two related protocols and their experimental demonstrations on an eight-user quantum network test bed, and discuss their usefulness with the aid of example use cases. First, we consider an authentication-transfer protocol to manage a fundamental limitation of quantum communication—the need for a preshared key between every pair of users linked together on the quantum network. By temporarily trusting some intermediary nodes for a short period of time (&lt;35 min in our network), we can generate and distribute these initial authentication keys with a very high level of security. Second, when end users quantify their trust in intermediary nodes, our flooding protocol can be used to improve both end-to-end communication speeds and increase security against malicious nodes

Compensation or inhibitory failure? Testing hypotheses of age-related right frontal lobe involvement in verbal memory ability using structural and diffusion MRI

AbstractFunctional neuroimaging studies report increased right prefrontal cortex (PFC) involvement during verbal memory tasks amongst low-scoring older individuals, compared to younger controls and their higher-scoring contemporaries. Some propose that this reflects inefficient use of neural resources through failure of the left PFC to inhibit non-task-related right PFC activity, via the anterior corpus callosum (CC). For others, it indicates partial compensation – that is, the right PFC cannot completely supplement the failing neural network, but contributes positively to performance. We propose that combining structural and diffusion brain MRI can be used to test predictions from these theories which have arisen from fMRI studies. We test these hypotheses in immediate and delayed verbal memory ability amongst 90 healthy older adults of mean age 73 years. Right hippocampus and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) volumes, and fractional anisotropy (FA) in the splenium made unique contributions to verbal memory ability in the whole group. There was no significant effect of anterior callosal white matter integrity on performance. Rather, segmented linear regression indicated that right DLPFC volume was a significantly stronger positive predictor of verbal memory for lower-scorers than higher-scorers, supporting a compensatory explanation for the differential involvement of the right frontal lobe in verbal memory tasks in older age

Phenotypic Characterization of EIF2AK4 Mutation Carriers in a Large Cohort of Patients Diagnosed Clinically With Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.

BACKGROUND: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a rare disease with an emerging genetic basis. Heterozygous mutations in the gene encoding the bone morphogenetic protein receptor type 2 (BMPR2) are the commonest genetic cause of PAH, whereas biallelic mutations in the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2 alpha kinase 4 gene (EIF2AK4) are described in pulmonary veno-occlusive disease/pulmonary capillary hemangiomatosis. Here, we determine the frequency of these mutations and define the genotype-phenotype characteristics in a large cohort of patients diagnosed clinically with PAH. METHODS: Whole-genome sequencing was performed on DNA from patients with idiopathic and heritable PAH and with pulmonary veno-occlusive disease/pulmonary capillary hemangiomatosis recruited to the National Institute of Health Research BioResource-Rare Diseases study. Heterozygous variants in BMPR2 and biallelic EIF2AK4 variants with a minor allele frequency of <1:10 000 in control data sets and predicted to be deleterious (by combined annotation-dependent depletion, PolyPhen-2, and sorting intolerant from tolerant predictions) were identified as potentially causal. Phenotype data from the time of diagnosis were also captured. RESULTS: Eight hundred sixty-four patients with idiopathic or heritable PAH and 16 with pulmonary veno-occlusive disease/pulmonary capillary hemangiomatosis were recruited. Mutations in BMPR2 were identified in 130 patients (14.8%). Biallelic mutations in EIF2AK4 were identified in 5 patients with a clinical diagnosis of pulmonary veno-occlusive disease/pulmonary capillary hemangiomatosis. Furthermore, 9 patients with a clinical diagnosis of PAH carried biallelic EIF2AK4 mutations. These patients had a reduced transfer coefficient for carbon monoxide (Kco; 33% [interquartile range, 30%-35%] predicted) and younger age at diagnosis (29 years; interquartile range, 23-38 years) and more interlobular septal thickening and mediastinal lymphadenopathy on computed tomography of the chest compared with patients with PAH without EIF2AK4 mutations. However, radiological assessment alone could not accurately identify biallelic EIF2AK4 mutation carriers. Patients with PAH with biallelic EIF2AK4 mutations had a shorter survival. CONCLUSIONS: Biallelic EIF2AK4 mutations are found in patients classified clinically as having idiopathic and heritable PAH. These patients cannot be identified reliably by computed tomography, but a low Kco and a young age at diagnosis suggests the underlying molecular diagnosis. Genetic testing can identify these misclassified patients, allowing appropriate management and early referral for lung transplantation

Comprehensive Rare Variant Analysis via Whole-Genome Sequencing to Determine the Molecular Pathology of Inherited Retinal Disease

Inherited retinal disease is a common cause of visual impairment and represents a highly heterogeneous group of conditions. Here, we present findings from a cohort of 722 individuals with inherited retinal disease, who have had whole-genome sequencing (n = 605), whole-exome sequencing (n = 72), or both (n = 45) performed, as part of the NIHR-BioResource Rare Diseases research study. We identified pathogenic variants (single-nucleotide variants, indels, or structural variants) for 404/722 (56%) individuals. Whole-genome sequencing gives unprecedented power to detect three categories of pathogenic variants in particular: structural variants, variants in GC-rich regions, which have significantly improved coverage compared to whole-exome sequencing, and variants in non-coding regulatory regions. In addition to previously reported pathogenic regulatory variants, we have identified a previously unreported pathogenic intronic variant in $\textit{CHM}$ in two males with choroideremia. We have also identified 19 genes not previously known to be associated with inherited retinal disease, which harbor biallelic predicted protein-truncating variants in unsolved cases. Whole-genome sequencing is an increasingly important comprehensive method with which to investigate the genetic causes of inherited retinal disease.This work was supported by The National Institute for Health Research England (NIHR) for the NIHR BioResource – Rare Diseases project (grant number RG65966). The Moorfields Eye Hospital cohort of patients and clinical and imaging data were ascertained and collected with the support of grants from the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital, National Health Service Foundation Trust, and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, Moorfields Eye Hospital Special Trustees, Moorfields Eye Charity, the Foundation Fighting Blindness (USA), and Retinitis Pigmentosa Fighting Blindness. M.M. is a recipient of an FFB Career Development Award. E.M. is supported by UCLH/UCL NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. F.L.R. and D.G. are supported by Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre