Gambling in Great Britain:a response to Rogers

A recent issue of Practice: Social Work in Action featured a paper by Rogers that examined whether the issue of problem gambling was a suitable case for social work. Rogers’ overview was (in various places) out of date, highly selective, contradictory, presented unsupported claims and somewhat misleading. Rogers’ paper is to be commended for putting the issue of problem gambling on the social work agenda. However, social workers need up-to-date information and contextually situated information if they are to make informed decisions in helping problem gamblers

Strong interference effects in the resonant Auger decay of atoms induced by intense X-Ray fields

The theory of resonant Auger decay of atoms in a high intensity coherent X-ray pulse is presented. The theory includes the coupling between the ground state and the resonance due to an intense X-ray pulse, taking into account the decay of the resonance and the direct photoionization of the ground state, both populating the final ionic states coherently. The theory also considers the impact of the direct photoionization of the resonance state itself which typically populates highly-excited ionic states. The combined action of the resonant decay and of the direct ionization of the ground state in the field induces a non-hermitian time-dependent coupling between the ground and the 'dressed' resonance stats. The impact of these competing processes on the total electron yield and on the 2s$^2$2p$^{4}(^1\mathrm{D})$3p $^2$P spectator and 2s$^1$2p$^{6}$ $^2$S participator Auger decay spectra of the Ne 1s$\to$3p resonance is investigated. The role of the direct photoionization of the ground state and of the resonance increases dramatically with the field intensity. This results in strong interference effects with distinct patterns in the electron spectra, different for the participator and spectator final states.Comment: 31 pages, 6 figure

Relating Urban Morphologies To Movement Potentials Over Time: A diachronic study with Space Syntax of Liverpool, UK

In this paper we describe our observations of Liverpool’s (UK) syntactical patterning relating to its urban network growth from 1850s to the present day. Liverpool’s rapid growth and transformation provides a compelling case study of network configurations as they relate to movement potentials over time. We argue that syntactical analysis of movement potentials provides a tool for evidencing urban historical socio-spatial patterning. Urban patterning might be shaped variously by historical factors such as socio-economic inequalities, labour divisions, ethnicities or religious denominations. We have attempted to demonstrate how movement potentials have persisted normatively along structural path-dependencies that underpin these patterns. We based our study on samples of three prominent centralities of Princes Avenue, Scotland Road and Canning Place, across four periods: 1850s, 1890s, 1950s and contemporary. We prepared Depthmap data samples using an arrayed visualization format, which allowed us to make comparative observations of movement potentials as they converge and intersect across various urban scales. This has allowed us to generate ‘internal’ perspectives on configurations over time, to suggest some possible effects of city-scale morphologies on local spatial dynamics

Optimal Eavesdropping in Quantum Cryptography. II. Quantum Circuit

It is shown that the optimum strategy of the eavesdropper, as described in the preceding paper, can be expressed in terms of a quantum circuit in a way which makes it obvious why certain parameters take on particular values, and why obtaining information in one basis gives rise to noise in the conjugate basis.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, Latex, the second part of quant-ph/970103

EPR, Bell, and Quantum Locality

Maudlin has claimed that no local theory can reproduce the predictions of standard quantum mechanics that violate Bell's inequality for Bohm's version (two spin-half particles in a singlet state) of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen problem. It is argued that, on the contrary, standard quantum mechanics itself is a counterexample to Maudlin's claim, because it is local in the appropriate sense (measurements at one place do not influence what occurs elsewhere there) when formulated using consistent principles in place of the inconsistent appeals to "measurement" found in current textbooks. This argument sheds light on the claim of Blaylock that counterfactual definiteness is an essential ingredient in derivations of Bell's inequality.Comment: Minor revisions to previous versio

The Prevalence of Workaholism: A Survey Study in a Nationally Representative Sample of Norwegian Employees

Workaholism has become an increasingly popular area for empirical study. However, most studies examining the prevalence of workaholism have used non-representative samples and measures with poorly defined cut-off scores. To overcome these methodological limitations, a nationally representative survey among employees in Norway (N = 1,124) was conducted. Questions relating to gender, age, marital status, caretaker responsibility for children, percentage of full-time equivalent, and educational level were asked. Workaholism was assessed by the use of a psychometrically validated instrument (i.e., Bergen Work Addiction Scale). Personality was assessed using the Mini-International Personality Item Pool. Results showed that the prevalence of workaholism was 8.3% (95% CI = 6.7–9.9%). An adjusted logistic regression analysis showed that workaholism was negatively related to age and positively related to the personality dimensions agreeableness, neuroticism, and intellect/imagination. Implications for these findings are discussed

Complex X-ray spectral variability in Mkn 421 observed with XMM-Newton

The bright blazar Mkn 421 has been observed four times for uninterrupted durations of ~ 9 - 13 hr during the performance verification and calibration phases of the XMM-Newton mission. The source was strongly variable in all epochs, with variability amplitudes that generally increased to higher energy bands. Although the detailed relationship between soft (0.1 - 0.75 keV) and hard (2 - 10 keV) band differed from one epoch to the next, in no case was there any evidence for a measurable interband lag, with robust upper limits of $| \tau | < 0.08$ hr in the best-correlated light curves. This is in conflict with previous claims of both hard and soft lags of ~1 hr in this and other blazars. However, previous observations suffered a repeated 1.6 hr feature induced by the low-Earth orbital period, a feature that is not present in the uninterrupted XMM-Newton data. The new upper limit on $|\tau|$ leads to a lower limit on the magnetic field strength and Doppler factor of B \delta^{1/3} \gs 4.7 G, mildly out of line with the predictions from a variety of homogeneous synchrotron self-Compton emission models in the literature of $B \delta^{1/3} = 0.2 - 0.8$ G. Time-dependent spectral fitting was performed on all epochs, and no detectable spectral hysteresis was seen. We note however that the source exhibited significantly different spectral evolutionary behavior from one epoch to the next, with the strongest correlations in the first and last and an actual divergance between soft and hard X-ray bands in the third. This indicates that the range of spectral variability behavior in Mkn 421 is not fully described in these short snippets; significantly longer uninterrupted light curves are required, and can be obtained with XMM-Newton.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, accepted for ApJ, scheduled for August 1, 200