5,702 research outputs found
Cumulative Risk and a Call for Action in Environmental Justice Communities
Health disparities, social inequalities, and environmental injustice cumulatively affect individual and community vulnerability and overall health; yet health researchers, social scientists and environmental scientists generally study them separately. Cumulative risk assessment in poor, racially segregated, economically isolated and medically underserved communities needs to account for their multiple layers of vulnerability, including greater susceptibility, greater exposure, less preparedness to cope, and less ability to recover in the face of exposure. Recommendations for evidence-based action in environmental justice communities include: reducing pollution in communities of highest burden; building on community resources; redressing inequality when doing community-based research; and creating a screening framework to identify communities of greatest risk
Dispersal of asylum seekers and processes of social exclusion in England
This thesis investigates the compulsory dispersal of asylum seekers introduced following the Immigration & Asylum Act 1999. This policy was formulated in an environment of mistrust towards asylum seekers had an explicit deterrence
element and was the first time refugees without secure status were dispersed across the UK.
This thesis examines the formal and informal social exclusion inherent in this system and the specific impacts on the ability of asylum seekers to access services and
maintain or create social networks. These were investigated in order to explore the sense of 'belonging', 'inclusion' and longer term effects on the process of resettlement for those awarded refugee status.
The main methods used were qualitative combined with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software to provide a spatial analysis of dispersal. Field research carried out between November 2002 and February 2005 consisted of in-depth interviews, focus groups and participant observation with asylum seekers, refugees and key informants in three dispersal locations. Interviews were also conducted with
policy makers and other key informants in London. A range of published and unpublished secondary sources have been utilised.
A key finding was that multiple forms of social exclusion of asylum seekers exist. These different forms relate to the declining entitlements of asylum seekers as well as the geography, structure and process of the National Asylum Support Service (NASS) system. A significant relationship between dispersalocations and areas of deprivation combined with the tensions of the structure and process of implementing dispersal results in a system that maintains asylum seekers in a state of limbo or liminality. It was found that the system offers limited space available for the
restoration of social trust and virtually no space for the restoration of political or institutional trust.
It is concluded that the primary lens for understanding the experiences of social exclusion of asylum seekers throughout dispersal is policy-imposed liminality and
that resistance to liminality is the way in which asylum seekers begin to acquire a sense of 'belonging' or 'inclusion'
The X-ray Transient XTE J2012+381
We present optical and infrared observations of the soft X-ray transient
(SXT) XTE J2012+381 and identify the optical counterpart with a faint red star
heavily blended with a brighter foreground star. The fainter star is coincident
with the radio counterpart and appears to show weak H alpha emission and to
have faded between observations. The RXTE/ASM lightcurve of XTE J2012+381 is
unusual for an SXT in that after an extended linear decay, it settled into a
plateau state for about 40 days before undergoing a weak mini-outburst. We
discuss the nature of the object and suggest similarities to long orbital
period SXTs.Comment: 5 pages, 7 postscript figures included, uses mn.sty. Accepted for
publication in MNRA
The 1996 outburst of GRO J1655-40: disc irradiation and enhanced mass transfer
We show that the 1996 outburst of the X-ray binary transient system GRO
J1655-40 can be explained by the standard dwarf-nova type disc instability,
followed by an episode of enhanced mass transfer from the secondary if the mass
transfer rate in GRO J1655-40 is within a factor < 10 of the stability limit.
We argue that irradiation of the secondary during the onset of the outburst
driven by the thermal instability in the outer disc can increase the mass
transfer rate above the minimum value required for stable accretion. This will
then produce the period of near-constant X-ray emission seen in this system.
This scenario can also explain the observed anti-correlation between the
optical and X-ray fluxes. It is generally accepted that optical emission in
low-mass X-ray binaries is produced by irradiation of the outer disc by X-rays.
There is also strong circumstantial evidence that in order for the outer disc
to see the irradiating flux, it must be warped. Depending on the warp
propagation mechanism, either a burst of mass from the secondary or viscous
decay are likely to decrease the degree of warping, thereby causing the
decrease in the observed optical flux while the X-ray flux remains constant or
even increases, exactly as observed in GRO J1655-40. Finally, the decrease of
the disc warping and, therefore, irradiation will cause the disc to become
unstable once again, terminating the outburst.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics - in pres
An examination of the molecular mechanisms controlling the tissue accumulation of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) in cattle
End of project reportLong chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) have demonstrable and potential human health benefits in terms of preventing cancer, diabetes, chronic inflammation, obesity and coronary heart disease. Supplementation of cattle diets with a blend of oils rich in n-3 PUFA and linoleic acid have a synergistic effect on the accumulation of ruminal and tissue concentrations of trans vaccenic acid (TVA), the main substrate for ?-9 desaturase which is responsible for de novo tissue synthesis of the cis 9, trans 11 isomer of CLA. This dietary strategy translates into increases in milk concentrations of CLA in dairy cows; however, concentrations in the muscle of beef animals have not always been increased. There is an apparent paradox in that n-3 PUFA supplementation enhances ruminal synthesis of trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), but then inhibits its conversion to CLA possibly through altering the activity of ?-9 desaturase. Recently, the promoter regions of the bovine ?- 9 desaturase gene has been isolated and analysed and has been shown to contain a conserved PUFA response region
Langevin Equation for the Rayleigh model with finite-ranged interactions
Both linear and nonlinear Langevin equations are derived directly from the
Liouville equation for an exactly solvable model consisting of a Brownian
particle of mass interacting with ideal gas molecules of mass via a
quadratic repulsive potential. Explicit microscopic expressions for all kinetic
coefficients appearing in these equations are presented. It is shown that the
range of applicability of the Langevin equation, as well as statistical
properties of random force, may depend not only on the mass ratio but
also by the parameter , involving the average number of molecules in
the interaction zone around the particle. For the case of a short-ranged
potential, when , analysis of the Langevin equations yields previously
obtained results for a hard-wall potential in which only binary collisions are
considered. For the finite-ranged potential, when multiple collisions are
important (), the model describes nontrivial dynamics on time scales
that are on the order of the collision time, a regime that is usually beyond
the scope of more phenomenological models.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Facial emotion processing in schizophrenia : a non-specific neuropsychological deficit?
Original article can be found at : http://journals.cambridge.org/ Copyright Cambridge University PressBackground: Identification of facial emotions has been found to be impaired in schizophrenia but there are uncertainties about the neuropsychological specificity of the finding. Method: Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy controls were given tests requiring identification of facial emotion, judgement of the intensity of emotional expressions without identification, familiar face recognition and the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT). The schizophrenia patients were selected to be relatively intellectually preserved. Results: The patients with schizophrenia showed no deficit in identifying facial emotion, although they were slower than the controls. They were, however, impaired on judging the intensity of emotional expression without identification. They showed impairment in recognizing familiar faces but not on the BFRT. Conclusions: When steps are taken to reduce the effects of general intellectual impairment, there is no deficit in identifying facial emotions in schizophrenia. There may, however, be a deficit in judging emotional intensity. The impairment found in naming familiar faces is consistent with other evidence of semantic memory impairment in the disorder.Peer reviewe
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