518 research outputs found

    A proposal for a scalable universal bosonic simulator using individually trapped ions

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    We describe a possible architecture to implement a universal bosonic simulator (UBS) using trapped ions. Single ions are confined in individual traps, and their motional states represent the bosonic modes. Single-mode linear operators, nonlinear phase-shifts, and linear beam splitters can be realized by precisely controlling the trapping potentials. All the processes in a bosonic simulation, except the initialization and the readout, can be conducted beyond the Lamb-Dicke regime. Aspects of our proposal can also be applied to split adiabatically a pair of ions in a single trap

    Blue remembered skills : mental health awareness training for police officers

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    The Bradley Report (Bradley, 2009) has raised a number of important questions regarding the treatment of individuals who are experiencing mental health problems and find themselves in the criminal justice system. One of the key recommendations is that professional staff working across criminal justice organisations should receive increased training in this area. This paper explores the experiences of two professionals, a mental health nurse and a social worker, involved in providing training for police officers. It goes on to consider the most effective models of training for police officers

    Quantum science and metrology with mixed-species ion chains

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    This chapter reviews recent developments in the use of mixed-species ion chains in quantum information science, frequency metrology and spectroscopy. A growing number of experiments have demonstrated new methods in this area, opening up new possibilities for quantum state generation, quantum control of previously inaccessible ions, and the ability to maintain quantum control over extended periods. I describe these methods, providing details of the techniques which are required in order to work with such systems. In addition, I present perspectives on possible future uses of quantum logic spectroscopy techniques, which have the potential to extend precision control of atomic ions to a large range of atomic and molecular species.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, revtex4. Review article for Adv. At. Mol. Phys.. Final fully-formatted version will appear in print. Comments welcom

    The outsourcing of social care in Britain : what does it mean for voluntary sector workers?

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    While recent decades have witnessed a growth in the outsourcing of public services in Britain, the post-1997 UK Labour governments have sought to put in place mechanisms aimed at encouraging long-term collaborative contracting relationships marked by less reliance on cost-based competition. This article explores empirically how far these mechanisms have achieved their aims and thereby acted to protect the employment conditions of staff, and links this exploration to debates concerning the employment implications of organizational reforms within public sectors internationally. It concludes that in terms of bringing income security to the voluntary sector and stability to employment terms and conditions these efforts have been unsuccessful, and consequently casts doubts on more optimistic interpretations of the employment effects of organizational restructuring in the British public sector

    An analysis of the psychosocial backgrounds of Youths (13–18) Who-Pose-Sexual-Risk to children

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    © 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. Summary: Social workers had expressed concern to their Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) about male Youths (13–18)-Who-Pose-Sexual-Risk (YWPSR) to children, leading to this study of 36 social-history protocols, completed by the youths’ social workers, that identified the presence of research-based factors of YWPSR who then go on to become adult child sex offenders. To ensure total confidentiality, no actual case-record data were available to the authors, ensuring the LSCB, social workers and their clients remain totally anonymous. While a small sample poses methodological difficulties, the authors believe the data is worthy of consideration as a pilot study for a larger project that might highlight the potential areas for early intervention. Findings: Key findings were: 29 (80%) of 36 YWPSR were < 14 when first showing inappropriate sexual behaviour, whilst 25% were known to have been sexually abused themselves, mostly < 11 years and 47% were either currently or had been, Looked-After-Children, with 42% having been Excluded-from-School of who 36% had learning difficulties. Their level of disturbance is shown by 11% having made a suicide attempt and they being formally charges for sex offences against children, which was significantly higher than that found in the adult general population. Finally 66% suffered from low self-esteem, were socially isolated and had poor peer relationships; reflected in the high level of problems at school. Application: Such young people pose a challenge for all concerned and an evidence-based debate is required to explore how to prevent further unacceptable behaviour and thereby protect vulnerable children

    Negotiating identities: ethnicity and social relations in a young offenders' institution

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    This article explores the situated nature of male prisoner identities in the late modern British context, using the contrasting theoretical frames of Sykes's (1958) indigenous model and Jacobs' (1979) importation model of prisoner subcultures and social relations. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in an ethnically, religiously and nationally diverse young offenders institution, consideration is given to how prisoners manage and negotiate difference, exploring the contours of racialization and racism which can operate in ambiguous and contradictory ways. Sociological understandings of identity, ethnicity, racialization and racism are used to inform a more empirically grounded theoretical criminology

    Exploring the use of rapport in professional information‐gathering contexts by systematically mapping the evidence base

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    A growing body of research illustrates consensus between researchers and practitioners that developing rapport facilitates cooperation and disclosure in a range of professional information gathering contexts. In such contexts, rapport behaviors are often intentionally used in an attempt to facilitate a positive interaction with another adult, which may or may not result in genuine mutual rapport. To examine how rapport has been manipulated and measured in professional contexts we systematically mapped the relevant evidence-base in this field. For each of the 35 studies that met our inclusion criteria, behaviors associated with building rapport were coded in relation to whether they were verbal, non-verbal, or para-verbal. Methods to measure rapport were also coded and recorded, as were different types of disclosure. A Searchable Systematic Map was produced to catalogue key study characteristics. Discussion focuses on the underlying intention of the rapport behaviors that featured most frequently across studies

    'Who do "they" cheer for?' Cricket, diaspora, hybridity and divided loyalties amongst British Asians

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    This article explores the relationship between British Asians' sense of nationhood, citizenship, ethnicity and some of their manifestations in relation to sports fandom: specifically in terms of how cricket is used as a means of articulating diasporic British Asian identities. Norman Tebbit's 'cricket test' is at the forefront of this article to tease out the complexities of being British Asian in terms of supporting the English national cricket team. The first part of the article locates Tebbit's 'cricket test' within the wider discourse of multiculturalism. The analysis then moves to focus on the discourse of sports fandom and the concept of 'home team advantage' arguing that sports venues represent significant sites for nationalist and cultural expression due to their connection with national history. The article highlights how supporting 'Anyone but England', thereby rejecting ethnically exclusive notions of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness', continues to be a definer of British Asians' cultural identities. The final section situates these trends within the discourse of hybridity and argues that sporting allegiances are often separate from considerations of national identity and citizenship. Rather than placing British Asians in an either/or situation, viewing British 'Asianness' in hybrid terms enables them to celebrate their traditions and histories, whilst also being proud of their British citizenship. © The Author(s) 2011

    Torture and the UK’s “war on asylum”: medical power and the culture of disbelief

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    When the now ‘iconic’ images of shackled, humiliated and dehumanised detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq were broadcast globally, in the mid-2000s, the relationship between medical power and torture in the “war on terror” was also thrust sharply into focus. Graphic images of coalition troops photographing and posing in front of hooded, naked prisoners forced into a “human pyramid”, and of people made to wear animal collars, indicated a regime in which degradation had a defining role. The photograph of a soldier gloating over the corpse of a man who had died as a result of torture was just one picture of a network of interrogation camps in which detention by coalition forces could be fatal. Yet if there were any expectations that the presence of medical personnel may have checked this violence, these were shattered by the fact that clinicians – in some cases at least – were integral to its practice. «It is now beyond doubt that Armed Forces physicians, psychologists, and medics were active and passive partners in the systematic neglect and abuse of war on terror prisoners», wrote Steven Miles in 2009 (Miles 2009, X). And as he continued, this involved providing interrogators «with medical information to use in setting the nature and degree of physical and psychological abuse during interrogations». It involved monitoring «interrogations to devise ways to break prisoners down or to keep them alive». It involved pathologists holding back death certificates and autopsy reports in order to minimise the number of fatalities or cover up torture-related deaths as deaths by natural causes (Ibid). Procedures including «cramped confinement, dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding» were among the practices that were «at times (…) legally sanctioned due to medical supervision» in the context of the “war on terror”, according to Hoffman (2011, 1535). He continued to suggest that doctors are not just important to «modern torture methods», they are «irreplaceable». In this context, the “war on terror” is no aberration. As the revolutionary psychoanalyst and philosopher Frantz Fanon documented in 1959, for example, certain medical practitioners had an integral role in the military occupation of Algeria, and «There are, for instance, psychiatrists … known to numerous prisoners», he suggested, «who have given electric shock treatments to the accused and have questioned them during the waking phase, which is characterized by a certain confusion, a relaxation of resistance, a disappearance of the person's defences.» (Fanon 1959/1965, 138). Indeed, in his analysis of the Algerian revolution, he discussed how resistance to and struggles over the meanings of medical power were integral to the revolution itself. However, while the role of medical power in the practice of torture has been subjected to sustained critique in the context of the “war on terror”, what follows examines the relationship between medical power and torture in the context of what has been depicted – metaphorically – as another (although to some extents related) “war”: the “war” on asylum. According to the UNHCR (2017, 3), between 5 and 35 per cent of those asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status have survived torture. And focusing on the UK as a case study, this chapter examines the institutional and legal structures prohibiting torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, particularly as they apply to those subject to immigration control in this context. But further, it also examines the ideological and political conditions within which claims by those seeking asylum that they have been subjected to torture prior to arrival can be (and have been) ignored, downplayed and denied. It examines how medical expertise has frequently been undermined in the asylum process when this expertise is utilised to add weight to asylum seekers’ claims to have experienced torture. It examines how there have been attempts to narrow the definition of torture in ways which exclude people from the protections to which torture survivors are entitled. But it also explores the ways in which segments of the medical profession have been complicit in riding roughshod over existing safeguards to prevent further harm to those who have experienced torture, thus potentially compounding its effects. In particular, it examines claims that in certain contexts clinicians have administered dangerous “care” in order to ensure the removal of people from the UK, despite them claiming that they – or their family members – face serious harm and persecution on arrival as a result of this. In a historical discussion of medical involvement in torture, Giovanni Maio (2001, 1609) has noted that from its earliest incarnations one of the features of torture has been its use as an «oppressive instrument used in the preservation of power». Furthermore, whilst methods of torture have certainly «developed», and continue to do so, he argues, this «function» of torture is «especially relevant today». This chapter argues that the (mis)treatment of those in the UK who say they have been tortured, preserves and is bound up with a particular manifestation of state power: the aims, rationale and dictates of immigration control. Its claims are perhaps much more mundane than the forms of direct medical complicity in torture alluded to above. But they are nonetheless important. For it is argued that the acts of omission and commission documented in this chapter expose the tensions between the rights of certain “categories” of migrants to be afforded adequate clinical care on the one hand, and the goals and aims of immigration control itself on the other. This poses profound questions about the functions of clinical care and the ethical duties, responsibilities and obligations of clinicians, it is suggested. But as this chapter also crucially explores, this is a form of power that many within the medical profession have historically challenged, and continue to do so
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