978 research outputs found
Dependence, independence or inter-dependence? Revisiting the concepts of 'care' and 'dependency'
Research and theory on 'dependency' and 'care-giving' have to date proceeded along largely separate lines, with little sense that they are exploring and explaining different aspects of the same phenomenon. Research on 'care', initially linked to feminism during the early 1980s, has revealed and exposed to public gaze what was hitherto assumed to be a 'natural' female activity. Conversely, disability activists and writers who have promoted a social model of disability have seen the language of and the policy focus upon 'care' as oppressive and objectifying. 'Dependency' is an equally contested concept: sociologists have scrutinised the social construction of dependency, politicians have ascribed negative connotations of passivity, while medical and social policy discourse employs the term in a positivist sense as a measure of physical need for professional intervention. Autonomy and independence, in contrast, are promoted as universal and largely unproblematic goals. These contrasting perspectives have led social theory, research and policies to separate and segregate the worlds of 'carers' from those for whom they 'care'. Drawing on the work of Kittay and others, this paper explores the ways in which sociological perspectives can develop new understanding of the social contexts of 'care' and 'dependence'
Individual Budgets : Lessons from Early Users' Experiences
Within the context of modernization, there has been a trend towards 'cash-for-care' schemes designed to bring choice and control closer to the service user. In England, Individual Budgets (IBs) are being piloted, with the aim of promoting personalized support for disabled people and other users of social care services. This paper reports on the experiences and outcomes of early IB users two to three months after first being offered an IB. The users included adults with physical/sensory impairments, learning difficulties, mental health problems and older people. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with nine service users and five proxies. The findings suggest that IBs have the potential to be innovative and life-enhancing. However, achieving this potential in practice depends on a range of other factors, including changes in the routine practices and organizational culture of adult social care services and ensuring users have access to appropriate documentation and support. Any conclusions drawn from the experiences of these early IB users must be treated with caution. The findings nevertheless indicate some of the issues that will need to be addressed as IBs are implemented more widely to replace conventional forms of adult social care provision
Multistability and nonsmooth bifurcations in the quasiperiodically forced circle map
It is well-known that the dynamics of the Arnold circle map is phase-locked
in regions of the parameter space called Arnold tongues. If the map is
invertible, the only possible dynamics is either quasiperiodic motion, or
phase-locked behavior with a unique attracting periodic orbit. Under the
influence of quasiperiodic forcing the dynamics of the map changes
dramatically. Inside the Arnold tongues open regions of multistability exist,
and the parameter dependency of the dynamics becomes rather complex. This paper
discusses the bifurcation structure inside the Arnold tongue with zero rotation
number and includes a study of nonsmooth bifurcations that happen for large
nonlinearity in the region with strange nonchaotic attractors.Comment: 25 pages, 22 colored figures in reduced quality, submitted to Int. J.
of Bifurcation and Chaos, a supplementary website
(http://www.mpipks-dresden.mpg.de/eprint/jwiersig/0004003/) is provide
The Individual Budgets Pilot Projects: Impact and Outcomes for Carers
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Developing the evidence base for adult social care practice: The NIHR School for Social Care Research
In a foreword to 'Shaping the Future of Care Together', Prime Minister Gordon Brown says that a care and support system reflecting the needs of our times and meeting our rising aspirations is achievable, but 'only if we are prepared to rise to the challenge of radical reform'. A number of initiatives will be needed to meet the challenge of improving social care for the growing older population. Before the unveiling of the green paper, The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) announced that it has provided 15m pounds over a five-year period to establish the NIHR School for Social Care Research. The School's primary aim is to conduct or commission research that will help to improve adult social care practice in England. The School is seeking ideas for research topics, outline proposals for new studies and expert advice in developing research methods
‘Happy Families?’: Single Mothers, the Press and the Politicians
FOR THOSE OF US who have been following how lone parents are represented in media and political debates over the last few years, the shift was all too apparent. By Spring 1997, the political scapegoating of single mothers as being responsible for tearing apart the moral fabric of society had become less frequent; tabloid headlines which screamed ‘family breakdown’, ‘scroungers' and ‘welfare benefit crisis' appeared less often; and many politicians had started to project themselves as, at the least, concerned about the welfare of lone parents and their children. Surprising really, that is, until we remember the backdrop—the UK General Election and 1.3 million UK lone parent voters. By April 1997, a growing backlash against the more extreme and pathologising accusations against single mothers had rendered explicit vilification unacceptable. To pull votes a different sort of language had to come into play—one which didn't risk turning off the electorate but would still allow a freezing or cutting of welfare spending on lone parent families. Since it was now politically inexpedient to engage in vitriolic attack, there emerged a new discourse—one which reappropriated and redefined lone parents as chief targets of government aid. Close scrutiny of the texts circulating from 1992 to the time of the General Election offers insights of how policy agendas, political rhetoric and news interweave to construct a definition of lone parents which bears little resemblance to how they may see themselves
Synchronization of many nano-mechanical resonators coupled via a common cavity field
Using amplitude equations, we show that groups of identical nano-mechanical
resonators, interacting with a common mode of a cavity microwave field,
synchronize to form a single mechanical mode which couples to the cavity with a
strength dependent on the square sum of the individual mechanical-microwave
couplings. Classically this system is dominated by periodic behaviour which,
when analyzed using amplitude equations, can be shown to exhibit
multi-stability. In contrast groups of sufficiently dissimilar nano-mechanical
oscillators may lose synchronization and oscillate out of phase at
significantly higher amplitudes. Further the method by which synchronization is
lost resembles that for large amplitude forcing which is not of the Kuramoto
form.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figure
Quantum entanglement between a nonlinear nanomechanical resonator and a microwave field
We consider a theoretical model for a nonlinear nanomechanical resonator
coupled to a superconducting microwave resonator. The nanomechanical resonator
is driven parametrically at twice its resonance frequency, while the
superconducting microwave resonator is driven with two tones that differ in
frequency by an amount equal to the parametric driving frequency. We show that
the semi-classical approximation of this system has an interesting fixed point
bifurcation structure. In the semi-classical dynamics a transition from stable
fixed points to limit cycles is observed as one moves from positive to negative
detuning. We show that signatures of this bifurcation structure are also
present in the full dissipative quantum system and further show that it leads
to mixed state entanglement between the nanomechanical resonator and the
microwave cavity in the dissipative quantum system that is a maximum close to
the semi-classical bifurcation. Quantum signatures of the semi-classical
limit-cycles are presented.Comment: 36 pages, 18 figure
Entanglement and bifurcations in Jahn-Teller models
We compare and contrast the entanglement in the ground state of two
Jahn-Teller models. The system models the coupling of a
two-level electronic system, or qubit, to a single oscillator mode, while the
models the qubit coupled to two independent, degenerate
oscillator modes. In the absence of a transverse magnetic field applied to the
qubit, both systems exhibit a degenerate ground state. Whereas there always
exists a completely separable ground state in the system, the
ground states of the model always exhibit entanglement. For
the case we aim to clarify results from previous work, alluding
to a link between the ground state entanglement characteristics and a
bifurcation of a fixed point in the classical analogue. In the
case we make use of an ansatz for the ground state. We
compare this ansatz to exact numerical calculations and use it to investigate
how the entanglement is shared between the three system degrees of freedom.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, comments welcome; 2 references adde
Three-dimensional coherent X-ray diffraction imaging of a ceramic nanofoam: determination of structural deformation mechanisms
Ultra-low density polymers, metals, and ceramic nanofoams are valued for
their high strength-to-weight ratio, high surface area and insulating
properties ascribed to their structural geometry. We obtain the labrynthine
internal structure of a tantalum oxide nanofoam by X-ray diffractive imaging.
Finite element analysis from the structure reveals mechanical properties
consistent with bulk samples and with a diffusion limited cluster aggregation
model, while excess mass on the nodes discounts the dangling fragments
hypothesis of percolation theory.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 30 reference
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