Doing policing : an inquiry into the rhetorical and argumentative skills of the police

This thesis examines the spoken and written discourse of uniformed British police officers. Utilising a rhetorical and discursive analysis, the study considers firstly how officers use their considerable powers of discretion to deal informally with crime and criminal incidents. Focusing on a form of discretion that the police refer to as cuffing, two specific discursive practices were identified as being used by police to informally resolve crime: these were the giving of suitable advice and the that's civil device. The second part of the study was concerned with the formal prosecution process and how officers construct prosecution case files. Specifically, how they reformulate and precis evidence in 'domestic' violence cases to assist a Crown prosecutor in making a charging decision. In this normally confidential and non-public discourse, officers rely upon a very narrow range of linguistic devices and speech genres; these are combined with an equally limited array of gendered stereotypes and legal myths, with the result that prosecution cases can be 'subverted' (Sacks 1995) and thus discontinued. In both studies, the doing of policing was consistent with two occupational ideologies that are influential within police operational subcultures: the ideology of pragmatism and the ideology of self-preservation. The findings raise concerns about some of the working practices of the police.Economic Science and Research Counci

Effects of Aging on Patellofemoral Joint Stress During Stair Negotiation on Challenging Surfaces

Introduction: Patellofemoral pain is an incessant lower limb musculoskeletal disorder that may be underreported in older adults. During common locomotor activities, such as when negotiating stairs, older adults (over the age of 65 years) adopt knee biomechanics reported to increase patellofemoral pain. Negotiating stairs with a challenging surface, such as uneven or slick, may place greater demand on the knee and further exacerbate joint biomechanics related to PFJ stress. Yet, it is unknown if older adults exhibit increases in patellofemoral joint (PFJ) stress when negotiating stairs with challenging surfaces. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of age (young and older adults) and surface (normal, slick, and uneven) on the magnitude and temporal waveform of patellofemoral joint stress during stair ascent and descent tasks. Methods: Two cohorts (12 young: ages 18-25 years; 12 older: over 65 years) had knee biomechanics quantified after they ascended and descended 18.5 cm stairs on normal, slick, and uneven surfaces at a self-selected speed. Statistical Analysis: Peak of stance (0-100%) PFJ stress and associated components (including PFJ reaction force and contact area, and knee flexion angle and moment) were submitted to a two-way RM ANOVA to test the main effects of and interaction between age (young vs old) and surface (normal, slick, and uneven). A statistical parametric mapping two-way ANOVA was used to determine main effects of and interaction between age and surface for the PFJ stress waveform. Results: During the stair ascent, older adults exhibited greater PFJ stress from 56 to 84% of stance (p \u3c 0.001), which may be attributed to the greater PFJ stress-time integral (p = 0.004) and later peak PFJ stress (p = 0.024) compared to young adults. Additionally, a significant age by surface interaction was observed for time of peak PFJ stress (p = 0.041) during stair ascent, where older adults exhibited a later peak PFJ stress compared to young adults (p = 0.008), and later peak PFJ stress compared to normal and slick surface (both: p = 0.014). Surface impacted PFJ stress waveform (all: p \u3c 0.001), but not magnitude (p \u3e 0.05) during both stair ascent and descent. During stair ascent on the uneven surface, participants exhibited smaller PFJ stress from 8 to 25% of stance compared to normal surface, but greater PFJ stress from 57 to 90% and 49 to 77% of stance compared to the normal and slick surfaces (all: p \u3c 0.001). On the uneven surface, participants exhibited a greater PFJ stress-time integral (both: p = 0.010) compared to the normal and slick surfaces. During stair descent, on the uneven surface, participants only exhibited greater PFJ stress-time integral (p = 0.017) compared to slick surface, while PFJ stress was smaller from 5 to 18% of stance, but greater stress from 92 to 99% of stance (both: p \u3c 0.001) on the slick compared to the normal surface. Conclusion: Older adults are more likely to exhibit knee biomechanics related to PFJ pain development when navigating stairs. Specifically, the larger, later PFJ stress exhibited by older adults when ascending, but not descending the stairs may increase loading of the joint’s articular cartilage and increase risk of developing PFJ pain. Yet, all participants exhibited alterations in knee biomechanics that may lead to greater PFJ stress when negotiating stairs with slick and uneven surfaces

Antiferromagnetic critical pressure in URu2Si2 under hydrostatic conditions

The onset of antiferromagnetic order in URu2Si2 has been studied via neutron diffraction in a helium pressure medium, which most closely approximates hydrostatic conditions. The antiferromagnetic critical pressure is 0.80 GPa, considerably higher than values previously reported. Complementary electrical resistivity measurements imply that the hidden order-antiferromagnetic bicritical point far exceeds 1.02 GPa. Moreover, the redefined pressure-temperature phase diagram suggests that the superconducting and antiferromagnetic phase boundaries actually meet at a common critical pressure at zero temperature.Comment: 5 pgs, 4 figs; AFM ordered moment revised to 0.5 muB, added and corrected citations and reference

Beryllium Impregnation of Uranium Fuel: Thermal Modeling of Cylindrical Objects for Efficiency Evaluation

To assess the capabilities of Beryllium-impregnated fuel pellets a thermal model was created to visualize the improvements.With active research projects related to nuclear waste immobilization and high conductivity nuclear fuels, a thermal model has been developed to simulate the temperature profile within a heat generating cylinder in order to imitate the behavior of each design. This work is being done so that it may be used in future research projects to represent how heat is being stored or dissipated in a material that has a uniformly distributed heat source from fission or radiation deposition. The model has been built to have a 2-D visual representation of the temperature distribution. A nodal system is employed for this model so that the user chooses the size of the mesh that will develop an accurate reading for their purposes. The model uses fundamental heat transfer equations and heat conduction properties for different metals. The heat transfer equations that will be used are fundamental and used at each point in the mesh developed by the user to ensure accuracy of the calculation. Below is such an example of an equation that will be used to model the temperature distribution in the cylindrical samples. By choosing the thermal properties associated with the material that is being researched, certain parameters are imposed in the equations automatically. This provides an easy method to see changes in the temperature distribution due to the improvements that have been made. Such parameters are the thermal conductivity and the thermal diffusivity along with others such as the material specific heat. The model will incorporate color variations in the display in order to allow larger meshes to be used while not diminishing the appearance of the results. The color variation will be due to a gradient from red to blue to represent hot to cold