Glasgow and the Great War: a study of health and wealth in an industrial city

A study of the impact of the the First World War on the civilian population of Glasgow with reference to poverty, living standards and health. The study also considers the impact and responses to the influenza epidemic of 1918/19. Glasgow experienced significant industrial expansion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which brought wealth to the city but also structural social problems, such as poor housing, widespread poverty, and low life expectancy. During the First World War, Glasgow’s industrial base was redirected towards the manufacture of war materials. This led to a buoyant labour market with opportunities for regular and well-paid work in the war industries. This study of Glasgow seeks to provide a new perspective on the impact of the war on the well-being of the civilian population of a regional industrial city. It will be argued that the war had, overall, a positive impact on social conditions. However, not all benefited from these positive changes. The principal beneficiaries were unskilled and casual workers, both male and female, who found work in the war industries thus improving the social conditions for a third of the families in Glasgow. This was contingent on wives and older children, as well as main wage earners, being able to undertake war-work. A further third of families in Glasgow suffered increasing hardship during the war. These were families reliant on fixed incomes, such as soldiers’ dependants, whose income was progressively eroded by price inflation. The remaining third of families, skilled workers on time rates and the middle classes, either maintained their standard of living or suffered some erosion with little change in their health. It will be concluded that the overall improvement in health in Glasgow during the war resulted from the marked improvement in the standard of living, and health, among the poorest families who could secure work in the war industries. The war economy benefited the areas of greatest deprivation and lowest life expectancy and halved the health penalty of being poor

Relativistic photography with a wide aperture

We discuss new effects related to relativistic aberration, which is the apparent distortion of objects moving at relativistic speeds relative to an idealized camera. Our analysis assumes that the camera lens is capable of stigmatic imaging of objects at rest with respect to the camera, and that each point on the shutter surface is transparent for one instant, but different points are not necessarily transparent synchronously. We pay special attention to the placement of the shutter. First, we find that a wide aperture requires the shutter to be placed in the detector plane to enable stigmatic images. Second, a Lorentz-transformation window [Proc. SPIE 9193, 91931K (2014) [CrossRef] ] can correct for relativistic distortion. We illustrate our results, which are significant for future spaceships, with raytracing simulations

Joint Transmit Signal and Beamforming Design for Integrated Sensing and Power Transfer Systems

Integrating different functionalities, conventionally implemented as dedicated systems, into a single platform allows utilising the available resources more efficiently. We consider an integrated sensing and power transfer (ISAPT) system and propose the joint optimisation of the rectangular pulse-shaped transmit signal and the beamforming vector to combine sensing and wireless power transfer (WPT) functionalities efficiently. In contrast to prior works, we adopt an accurate non-linear circuit-based energy harvesting (EH) model. We formulate and solve a non-convex optimisation problem for a general number of EH receivers to maximise a weighted sum of the average harvested powers at the EH receivers while ensuring the received echo signal reflected by a sensing target (ST) has sufficient power for estimating the range to the ST with a prescribed accuracy within the considered coverage region. The average harvested power is shown to monotonically increase with the pulse duration when the average transmit power budget is sufficiently large. We discuss the trade-off between sensing performance and power transfer for the considered ISAPT system. The proposed approach significantly outperforms a heuristic baseline scheme based on a linear EH model, which linearly combines energy beamforming with the beamsteering vector in the direction to the ST as its transmit strategy.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, six page version of this paper has been submitted to IEEE ICC 202

What difference does it make? Findings of an impact study of service user and carer involvement on social work students’ subsequent practice

This paper reports on a study which followed up a group of social work students to explore whether service user involvement in their education made any difference to their practice and whether there were different models or types of involvement which had a more significant impact than others. The findings showed that the impact was individual to each student. It was often specific encounters or ‘light bulb moments’ which led to increased awareness or insight into their own practice particularly when encountering similar situations or when pressures of practice led to them losing sight of service user perspectives. The paper shares these findings and considers the learning for educators in developing models of involvement which enhance impact on subsequent practice

A Mentor’s PATH:Evaluating how service users can be involved as mentors for social work students on observational practice placements

This paper will explore the experience of service user involvement in social work education, examining the challenges of involving ‘seldom heard’ service user voices. Over a six month period, a group of four people with learning disabilities were supported and enabled to take on an assessment role as Mentors for four first year BA(Hons) Social Work students at the University of the West of Scotland. The article will focus on an evaluation of this pilot project and will outline the partnership work between the university and placement agency in planning, preparing, and supporting the mentors to carry out their role in supporting students on placement and assessing their communication skills, value base and readiness to practise. Central to the planning process was the use of PATH – a person centred planning tool. The evaluation will detail the crucial role played by the support staff in the placement agency, without whom this project would not have been possible.The evaluation was carried out using a mixed methods approach and embraced the principles and values of participatory action research. The evaluation provides insight into the experiences of the mentors, the students and support staff, and demonstrates that with the right support in place, and with commitment to thorough planning and preparation, seldom heard service users can be meaningfully involved in social work education

A Mentor’s PATH: Evaluating how service users can be involved as mentors for social work students on observational practice placements

This paper will explore the experience of service user involvement in social work education, examining the challenges of involving ‘seldom heard’ service user voices. Over a six month period, a group of four people with learning disabilities were supported and enabled to take on an assessment role as Mentors for four first year BA(Hons) Social Work students at the University of the West of Scotland. The article will focus on an evaluation of this pilot project and will outline the partnership work between the university and placement agency in planning, preparing, and supporting the mentors to carry out their role in supporting students on placement and assessing their communication skills, value base and readiness to practise. Central to the planning process was the use of PATH – a person centred planning tool. The evaluation will detail the crucial role played by the support staff in the placement agency, without whom this project would not have been possible.The evaluation was carried out using a mixed methods approach and embraced the principles and values of participatory action research. The evaluation provides insight into the experiences of the mentors, the students and support staff, and demonstrates that with the right support in place, and with commitment to thorough planning and preparation, seldom heard service users can be meaningfully involved in social work education