22,967 research outputs found
Public spending on education in the UK: prepared for the Education and Skills Select Committee
This note is based on analysis prepared by Alissa Goodman and Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies at the request of the House of Commons Education and Skills Select Committee, for their inquiry into Public Expenditure on Education and Skills being carried out during June and July 2006.
The note discusses some key issues that have arisen in education spending in the last year. We begin by examining the significance of the Chancellor's statements in Budget 2006 - both regarding school capital expenditure and the pledge to increase funding per pupil in the state sector to that currently seen in the private sector. We then move on to what the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2007 is likely to mean for education, given commitments in other areas of government spending. An Appendix contains some information about overall trends in public spending on education in the UK, and the international context
Poverty and inequality in the UK: 2007
This Briefing Note provides an update on trends in living standards, income inequality and poverty. It uses the same approach to measuring income and poverty as the government employs in its Households Below Average Income (HBAI) publication. The analysis is based on the latest HBAI figures (published on 27 March 2007), providing information about incomes up to the year 2005-06. The measure of income used is net household weekly income, which has been adjusted to take account of family size ('equivalised'). The income amounts provided below are expressed as the equivalent for a couple with no children, and all changes given are in real terms (i.e. after adjusting for inflation). For the first time in recent years, data are available for the whole of the United Kingdom, not just Great Britain, but data for Northern Ireland are only available from 2002-03. Some comparisons over time are provided for Great Britain only, but others will compare statistics for GB before 2002-03 with those for the UK afterwards.
PLEASE NOTE: On 23 April 2007, the Department for Work and Pensions announced that an error had occurred when producing the latest Households Below Average Income publication. This Briefing Note was based on the same dataset and therefore suffers from similar errors. In response to revisions announced by the DWP in May 2007, we have now updated our findings in a revised press release and have produced a revised summary
Poverty and inequality in Britain: 2006
This Commentary provides an update on trends in poverty and inequality in Great Britain, based on the latest official government statistics. It uses the same approach to measuring incomes and poverty in Great Britain as the government employs in its Households Below Average Income (HBAI) publication
Examining the mortality effects of the Irish National Smoking Ban.
Secondhand smoke causes disease and death in those exposed, with cardiovascular and respiratory problems as the most likely outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the mortality effects of the Irish national smoking ban of 2004
The "True" Column Density Distribution in Star-Forming Molecular Clouds
We use the COMPLETE Survey's observations of the Perseus star-forming region
to assess and intercompare three methods for measuring column density in
molecular clouds: extinction mapping (NIR); thermal emission mapping (FIR); and
mapping the intensity of CO isotopologues. The structures shown by all three
tracers are morphologically similar, but important differences exist.
Dust-based measures give similar, log-normal, distributions for the full
Perseus region, once careful calibration corrections are made. We also compare
dust- and gas-based column density distributions for physically-meaningful
sub-regions of Perseus, and we find significant variations in the distributions
for those regions. Even though we have used 12CO data to estimate excitation
temperatures, and we have corrected for opacity, the 13CO maps seem unable to
give column distributions that consistently resemble those from dust measures.
We have edited out the effects of the shell around the B-star HD 278942. In
that shell's interior and in the parts where it overlaps the molecular cloud,
there appears to be a dearth of 13CO, likely due either to 13CO not yet having
had time to form in this young structure, and/or destruction of 13CO in the
molecular cloud. We conclude that the use of either dust or gas measures of
column density without extreme attention to calibration and artifacts is more
perilous than even experts might normally admit. And, the use of 13CO to trace
total column density in detail, even after proper calibration, is unavoidably
limited in utility due to threshold, depletion, and opacity effects. If one's
main aim is to map column density, then dust extinction seems the best probe.
Linear fits amongst column density tracers are given, quantifying the inherent
uncertainties in using one tracer (when compared with others). [abridged]Comment: Accepted in ApJ. 13 pages, 6 color figures. It includes small changes
to improve clarity. For a version with high-resolution figures see
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/papers/Goodman_ColumnDensity.pd
Excess mortality during heat waves in Ireland
Ireland is not known for having extreme high temperatures, with values above 30C uncommon. Ireland has significant excess winter mortality compared to summer. The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of nation-wide heat waves on the total, cardiovascular and respiratory relationship, for the period 1981–2003, to determine if there are any periods of excess summer mortality
Proton and neutron correlations in B
We investigate positive-parity states of B with the calculation of
antisymmetrized molecular dynamics focusing on pair correlations. We
discuss effects of the spin-orbit interaction on energy spectra and
correlations of the , , and states. The
state has almost no energy gain of the spin-orbit interaction, whereas
the state gains the spin-orbit interaction energy largely to come down
to the ground state. We interpret a part of the two-body spin-orbit interaction
in the adopted effective interactions as a contribution of the genuine
force, and find it to be essential for the level ordering of the and
states in B. We also apply a model to discuss
effects of the spin-orbit interaction on and pairs around the
2 core. In the spin-aligned state, the spin-orbit
interaction affects the pair attractively and keeps the pair close
to the core, whereas, in the state, it gives a minor effect to the
pair. In the state, the pair is somewhat
dissociated by the spin-orbit interaction.Comment: 12 pages 9 figure
Evaluation of effectiveness of various devices for attenuation of trailing vortices based on model tests in a large towing basin
The effectiveness of various candidate aircraft-wing devices for attenuation of trailing vortices generated by large aircraft is evaluated on basis of results of experiments conducted with a 0.03-scale model of a Boeing 747 transport aircraft using a technique developed at the HYDRONAUTICS Ship Model Basin. Emphasis is on the effects produced by these devices in the far-field (up to 8 kilometers downstream of full-scale generating aircraft) where the unaltered vortex-wakes could still be hazardous to small following aircraft. The evaluation is based primarily on quantitative measurements of the respective vortex velocity distributions made by means of hot-film probe traverses in a transverse plane at selected stations downstream. The effects of these altered wakes on rolling moment induced on a small following aircraft are also studied using a modified lifting-surface theory with a synthesized Gates Learjet as a typical example. Lift and drag measurements concurrently obtained in the model tests are used to appraise the effects of each device investigated on the performance characteristics of the generating aircraft
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