16,386 research outputs found
European social workers in England: exploring international labour mobility
Social work is generally regarded as an essentially ‘local activity’ but it is increasingly acknowledged that European and international trends have a bearing on development of national services and practices. This extends to the mobility of social workers themselves and England has experienced a steady growth in the recruitment of ‘international social workers’ who were born and qualified elsewhere. This is a generally under-researched area but the authors have drawn on literature in the wider field of labour migration and also secondary data and anecdotal evidence to present some facts and ideas about recruitment as it applies to social workers from European Union (EU) member states in particular. International social workers come to England from a large number and wide range of countries. However, the balance has been shifting between recruitment predominantly from the US and Commonwealth countries to a greater number from EU states. The current characteristics of international (particularly EU) social work recruitment are outlined in this paper and reasons related to both (national) demand and (international) supply are suggested. It is proposed that reasons are related to changes and conditions in the EU; to the national Government’s efforts to curb immigration; and to the particular characteristics of social work employment in England, particularly in child protection work. Some of the implications for European social workers of working in England are explored and it is concluded that there is a need for comparative and transnational research in this field
All for a good cause? The blurred boundaries of volunteering and tourism
Research has provided a wealth of typological models that help classify tourist behaviours. These taxonomies have been developed based on a broad range of increasingly sophisticated criteria associated with social roles, motivations, activity types, socio-demographics, travel experiences, lifestyles, values and personality (Lyons, 2003). Indeed some of the case studies in this book classify particular forms of volunteer tourism. Proponents of typological research argue that it provides a valuable foundation upon which action can be taken. For example, the principles of market segmentation in tourism are based on the premise that particular types of travellers can be categorized and their needs identified and met through the development of niche products
Is the New Resonance Spin 0 or 2? Taking a Step Forward in the Higgs Boson Discovery
The observation of a new boson of mass \sim 125\gev at the CERN LHC may
finally have revealed the existence of a Higgs boson. Now we have the
opportunity to scrutinize its properties, determining its quantum numbers and
couplings to the standard model particles, in order to confirm or not its
discovery. We show that by the end of the 8 TeV run, combining the entire data
sets of ATLAS and CMS, it will be possible to discriminate between the
following discovery alternatives: a scalar or a tensor
particle with minimal couplings to photons, at a statistical
confidence level at least, using only diphotons events. Our results are based
on the calculation of a center-edge asymmetry measure of the reconstructed {\it
sPlot} scattering polar angle of the diphotons. The results based on
asymmetries are shown to be rather robust against systematic uncertainties with
comparable discrimination power to a log likelihood ratio statistic.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. References added, minor typos correcte
Guidelines for the management of the foot health problems associated with rheumatoid arthritis
Background. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as a chronic systemic disease, commonly affects the feet, impacting
negatively on patients' quality of life. Specialist podiatrists have a prime role to play in the assessment and
management of foot and ankle problems within this patient group. However, it has been identified that in many
areas there is no specialist podiatry service, with many patients being managed by non‐specialist podiatrists.
Therefore, the North West Clinical Effectiveness Group for the Foot in Rheumatic Diseases (NWCEG) identified
the need to develop ‘practitioner facing’ guidelines for the management of specific foot health problems associated
with RA.
Methods. Members of a guideline development group from the NWCEG each reviewed the evidence for specific
aspects of the assessment and management of foot problems. Where evidence was lacking, ‘expert opinion’ was
obtained from the members of the NWCEG and added as a consensus on current and best practice. An iterative
approach was employed, with the results being reviewed and revised by all members of the group and external
reviewers before the final guideline document was produced.
Results. The management of specific foot problems (callus, nail pathology, ulceration) and the use of specific
interventions (foot orthoses, footwear, patient education, steroid injection therapy) are detailed and standards in
relation to each are provided. A diagrammatic screening pathway is presented, with the aim of guiding nonspecialist
podiatrists through the complexity of assessing and managing those patients with problems requiring
input from a specialist podiatrist and other members of the rheumatology multidisciplinary team.
Conclusion. This pragmatic approach ensured that the guidelines were relevant and applicable to current practice
as ‘best practice’, based on the available evidence from the literature and consensus expert opinion. These
guidelines provide both specialist and non‐specialist podiatrists with the essential and ‘gold standard’ aspects of
managing people with RA‐related foot problems
G-Brownian Motion as Rough Paths and Differential Equations Driven by G-Brownian Motion
The present paper is devoted to the study of sample paths of G-Brownian
motion and stochastic differential equations (SDEs) driven by G-Brownian motion
from the view of rough path theory. As the starting point, we show that
quasi-surely, sample paths of G-Brownian motion can be enhanced to the second
level in a canonical way so that they become geometric rough paths of roughness
2 < p < 3. This result enables us to introduce the notion of rough differential
equations (RDEs) driven by G-Brownian motion in the pathwise sense under the
general framework of rough paths. Next we establish the fundamental relation
between SDEs and RDEs driven by G-Brownian motion. As an application, we
introduce the notion of SDEs on a differentiable manifold driven by GBrownian
motion and construct solutions from the RDE point of view by using pathwise
localization technique. This is the starting point of introducing G-Brownian
motion on a Riemannian manifold, based on the idea of Eells-Elworthy-Malliavin.
The last part of this paper is devoted to such construction for a wide and
interesting class of G-functions whose invariant group is the orthogonal group.
We also develop the Euler-Maruyama approximation for SDEs driven by G-Brownian
motion of independent interest
- …