Recovery-as-policy as a form of neoliberal state making

In this paper I provide an analysis of the implementation of “recovery” as a policy object and commitment in the UK. This can be situated as part of the New Labour government’s (1997-2010) reform of the NHS during the 2000s. Through a textual analysis of policy and legislation from this time I draw out a tension between contemporary ideals of choice and autonomy in healthcare and the specificities of a mental healthcare system in which psychiatrists are legislatively empowered to treat patients without their consent. In the UK, evidence continues to show that the most economically and socially disadvantaged members of British society are most likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act 2007. This paper provides an intersectional analysis of the ways in which policy, legislation and psychiatrization enact particular subjects as ‘failed’ citizens. Following Tyler (2010; 2013), I argue that these practices of exclusion and detainment are constituent elements of neoliberal state-making, which are discriminatory and unjust

Temporalities of mental health recovery

Since the 1990s, the concept of ‘recovery in/from serious mental health problems’ has been iterated internationally as the new paradigm in mental health policy and practice. A constitutive element of recovery discourse is a struggle over what defines a ‘good’ life-in-time; yet temporalities of recovery remain under-investigated. This article offers an empirical exploration of recovery enacted in an NHS ‘arts for mental health’ service called Create. I present an analysis of several intersecting temporalities at play within Create through the lens of one service-user’s story. The temporal orderings of the situated aesthetic care practices at Create encapsulate competing articulations of recovery, hope and aspiration. These different temporalities enact different subjectivities, revealing recovery to be a set of socio-political struggles over what lives are deemed liveable in the context of global neo-liberal capitalism

Sing Me A Sweet Low Song of Night

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/6769/thumbnail.jp

Low-Complexity Reliability-Based Equalization and Detection for OTFS-NOMA

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation has recently emerged as a potential 6G candidate waveform which provides improved performance in high-mobility scenarios. In this paper we investigate the combination of OTFS with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). Existing equalization and detection methods for OTFS-NOMA, such as minimum-mean-squared error with successive interference cancellation (MMSE-SIC), suffer from poor performance. Additionally, existing iterative methods for single-user OTFS based on low-complexity iterative least-squares solvers are not directly applicable to the NOMA scenario due to the presence of multi-user interference (MUI). Motivated by this, in this paper we propose a low-complexity method for equalization and detection for OTFS-NOMA. The proposed method uses a novel reliability zone (RZ) detection scheme which estimates the reliable symbols of the users and then uses interference cancellation to remove MUI. The thresholds for the RZ detector are optimized in a greedy manner to further improve detection performance. In order to optimize these thresholds, we modify the least squares with QR-factorization (LSQR) algorithm used for channel equalization to compute the the post-equalization mean-squared error (MSE), and track the evolution of this MSE throughout the iterative detection process. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed equalization and detection technique to the existing MMSE-SIC benchmark in terms of symbol error rate (SER).Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2211.0738

Truncated Turbo Equalizer with SIC for OTFS

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) is a promising candidate waveform for the next generation wireless communication systems. OTFS places data in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain, which simplifies channel estimation in highmobility scenarios. However, due to the 2-D convolution effect of the time-varying channel in the DD domain, equalization is still a challenge for OTFS. Existing equalizers for OTFS are either highly complex or they do not consider intercarrier interference present in high-mobility scenarios. Hence, in this paper, we propose a novel two-stage detection technique for coded OTFS systems. Our proposed detector brings orders of magnitude computational complexity reduction compared to existing methods. At the first stage, it truncates the channel by considering only the significant coefficients along the Doppler dimension and performs turbo equalization. To reduce the computational load of the turbo equalizer, our proposed method deploys the modified LSQR (mLSQR) algorithm. At the second stage, with only two successive interference cancellation (SIC) iterations, our proposed detector removes the residual interference caused by channel truncation. To evaluate the performance of our proposed truncated turbo equalizer with SIC (TTE-SIC), we set the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) equalizer without channel truncation as a benchmark. Our simulation results show that the proposed TTE-SIC technique achieves about the same bit error rate (BER) performance as the benchmark

A point of connection?:Wellbeing, the veteran identity and older adults

Maintaining good wellbeing in older age is seen to have a positive effect on health, including cognitive and physiological functioning. This paper explores experiences of wellbeing in a particular older adult community: those who have served in the military. It aims to identify the specific challenges that ex-service personnel may have, reporting findings from a qualitative study focused on how older veterans told stories of military service and what these stories revealed about wellbeing. We used a qualitative approach; data are drawn from 30 individual interviews, and from engagement with veterans in workshops. Analysis was conducted using a data-driven constant comparison approach. Three themes are presented: how loneliness affects older adult veterans; how they draw on fictive kinship; and the role of military visual culture. Although participants had diverse experiences of military service, they felt that being a veteran connected them to a community that went beyond association with specific experiences. Using narratives of military experience to connect, both in telling stories and by stories being listened to, was vital. As veterans, older adults were able to access each other as a resource for listening and sharing. However, it was also exclusionary: civilians, because they lacked military service experience, could not empathise and be used as a resource

Interference and Rate Analysis of Multinumerology NOMA

5G communication systems and beyond are envisioned to support an extremely diverse set of use cases with different performance requirements. These different requirements necessitate the use of different numerologies for increased flexibility. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can potentially attain this flexibility by superimposing user signals while offering improved spectral efficiency (SE). However, users with different numerologies have different symbol durations. When combined with NOMA, this changes the nature of the interference the users impose on each other. This paper investigates a multinumerology NOMA (MN-NOMA) scheme using successive interference cancellation (SIC) as an enabler for coexistence of users with with different numerologies. Analytical expressions for the inter-numerology interference (INI) experienced by each user at the receiver are derived, where mean-squared error (MSE) is the metric used to quantity INI. Using the MSE expressions, we analytically derive achievable rates for each user in the MN-NOMA system. These expressions are then evaluated and used to compare the SE performance of MN-NOMA with that of its single-numerology counterpart. The proposed scheme can achieve the desired flexibility in supporting diverse use cases in future wireless networks. The scheme also gains the SE benefits of NOMA compared to both multinumerology and single numerology orthogonal multiple access (OMA) schemes

Messengers of Stress:Towards a cortisol sociology

In 2008, Timmermans and Haas called for a sociology of disease to develop and challenge the sociology of health and illness. A sociology of disease, they argued, would take seriously the biological and physiological processes of disease in theorising health and illness. Building on two decades of Science and Technology Studies and feminist work on biological actors such as hormones and genes, we propose a cortisol sociology to push further at this argument. As a ‘messenger of stress,’ cortisol is key to understanding human and non-human health as a biosocial phenomenon. We argue that sociologists should engage with cortisol through critical yet open-minded reading of the relevant science and critical triangulation studies, and by tracking cortisol’s movements from science into public worlds of biosensing and self-monitoring

Positive behavioural support for adults with intellectual disabilities and behaviour that challenges: an initial exploration of the economic case

Background: Since the closure of long-stay hospitals, positive behavioural support and person centred approaches have been recognised and encouraged to support people with intellectual disabilities in the community. Method and materials: A small before-after study was conducted to explore the economic case for a positive behavioural support service for five adults with intellectual disabilities and behaviour that challenges in a small local authority in England. Evidence from a Delphi exercise was used as comparator. Results: The service was effective in improving the outcomes (behaviours that challenge, activity engagement, community participation) at a total cost of services of £2,296 per week. By maintaining persons with less severe challenges in the community (£9 to £164 per week) and those with more severe behavioural needs in less service-intensive residential accommodations (£1,213 to £3,696 per week), the service may potentially reduce public services cost in the long term. Conclusions: The positive behavioural support service may have the potential to improve outcomes and lower cost of care in the long term