21st century social work: reducing re-offending - key practice skills

This literature review was commissioned by the Scottish Executive’s Social Work Services Inspectorate in order to support the work of the 21st Century Social Work Review Group. Discussions in relation to the future arrangements for criminal justice social work raised issues about which disciplines might best encompass the requisite skills for reducing re-offending in the community. Rather than starting with what is known or understood about the skills of those professionals currently involved in such interventions, this study sought to start with the research evidence on effective work with offenders to reduce re-offending and then work its way back to the skills required to promote this outcome

Porous squeeze-film flow

The squeeze-film flow of a thin layer of Newtonian fluid filling the gap between a flat impermeable surface moving under a prescribed constant load and a flat thin porous bed coating a stationary flat impermeable surface is considered. Unlike in the classical case of an impermeable bed, in which an infinite time is required for the two surfaces to touch, for a porous bed contact occurs in a finite contact time. Using a lubrication approximation an implicit expression for the fluid layer thickness and an explicit expression for the contact time are obtained and analysed. In addition, the fluid particle paths are calculated, and the penetration depths of fluid particles into the porous bed are determined. In particular, the behaviour in the asymptotic limit of small permeability, in which the contact time is large but finite, is investigated. Finally, the results are interpreted in the context of lubrication in the human knee joint, and some conclusions are drawn about the contact time of the cartilage-coated femoral condyles and tibial plateau and the penetration of nutrients into the cartilage

Squeeze-Film Flow in the Presence of a Thin Porous Bed, with Application to the Human Knee Joint

Motivated by the desire for a better understanding of the lubrication of the human knee joint, the squeeze-film flow of a thin layer of Newtonian fluid (representing the synovial fluid) filling the gap between a flat impermeable surface (representing the femoral condyles) and a flat thin porous bed (representing the articular cartilage) coating a stationary flat impermeable surface (representing the tibial plateau) is considered. As the impermeable surface approaches the porous bed under a prescribed constant load all of the fluid is squeezed out of the gap in a finite contact time. In the context of the knee, the size of this contact time suggests that when a person stands still for a short period of time their knees may be fluid lubricated, but that when they stand still for a longer period of time contact between the cartilage-coated surfaces may occur. The fluid particle paths are calculated, and the penetration depths of fluid particles into the porous bed are determined. In the context of the knee, these penetration depths provide a measure of how far into the cartilage nutrients are carried by the synovial fluid, and suggest that when a person stands still nutrients initially in the fluid layer penetrate only a relatively small distance into the cartilage. However, the model also suggests that the cumulative effect of repeated loading and unloading of the knees during physical activity such as walking or running may be sufficient to carry nutrients deep into the cartilage

Water and energy footprint of irrigated agriculture in the Mediterranean region

Irrigated agriculture constitutes the largest consumer of freshwater in the Mediterranean region and provides a major source of income and employment for rural livelihoods. However, increasing droughts and water scarcity have highlighted concerns regarding the environmental sustainability of agriculture in the region. An integrated assessment combining a gridded water balance model with a geodatabase and GIS has been developed and used to assess the water demand and energy footprint of irrigated production in the region. Modelled outputs were linked with crop yield and water resources data to estimate water (m3 kg−1) and energy (CO2 kg−1) productivity and identify vulnerable areas or 'hotspots'. For a selected key crops in the region, irrigation accounts for 61 km3 yr−1 of water abstraction and 1.78 Gt CO2 emissions yr−1, with most emissions from sunflower (73 kg CO2/t) and cotton (60 kg CO2/t) production. Wheat is a major strategic crop in the region and was estimated to have a water productivity of 1000 t Mm−3 and emissions of 31 kg CO2/t. Irrigation modernization would save around 8 km3 of water but would correspondingly increase CO2 emissions by around +135%. Shifting from rain-fed to irrigated production would increase irrigation demand to 166 km3 yr−1 (+137%) whilst CO2 emissions would rise by +270%. The study has major policy implications for understanding the water–energy–food nexus in the region and the trade-offs between strategies to save water, reduce CO2 emissions and/or intensify food production

Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy Window Functions Revisited

The primary results of most observations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy are estimates of the angular power spectrum averaged through some broad band, called band-powers. These estimates are in turn what are used to produce constraints on cosmological parameters due to all CMB observations. Essential to this estimation of cosmological parameters is the calculation of the expected band-power for a given experiment, given a theoretical power spectrum. Here we derive the "band power" window function which should be used for this calculation, and point out that it is not equivalent to the window function used to calculate the variance. This important distinction has been absent from much of the literature: the variance window function is often used as the band-power window function. We discuss the validity of this assumed equivalence, the role of window functions for experiments that constrain the power in {\it multiple} bands, and summarize a prescription for reporting experimental results. The analysis methods detailed here are applied in a companion paper to three years of data from the Medium Scale Anisotropy Measurement.Comment: 5 pages, 1 included .eps figure, PRD in press---final published versio

Phonon Coherence and New Set of Sidebands in Phonon-Assisted Photoluminescence

We investigate excitonic polaron states comprising a local exciton and phonons in the longitudinal optical (LO) mode by solving the Schr\"{o}dinger equation. We derive an exact expression for the ground state (GS), which includes multi-phonon components with coefficients satisfying the Huang-Rhys factors. The recombination of GS and excited polaron states gives one set of sidebands in photoluminescence (PL): the multi-phonon components in the GS produce the Stokes lines and the zero-phonon components in the excited states produce the anti-Stokes lines. By introducing the mixing of the LO mode and environal phonon modes, the exciton will also couple with the latter, and the resultant polaron states result in another set of phonon sidebands. This set has a zero-phonon line higher and wider than that of the first set due to the tremendous number of the environal modes. The energy spacing between the zero-phonon lines of the first and second sets is proved to be the binding energy of the GS state. The common exciton origin of these two sets can be further verified by a characteristic Fano lineshape induced by the coherence in the mixing of the LO and the environal modes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures 1 figure (fig. 1) replaced 1 figure (fig. 2) remove