‘Making the best of things’: relatives' experiences of decisions about care-home entry

Despite the growing awareness of the significance of helping a relative to relocate to a care home as a key phase in the care-giving career, relatively few British studies have explored this experience in depth. Informed by a constructivist perspective, this study sought a better understanding of nursing home placements from the viewpoint of relatives. Data were collected in 37 semi-structured interviews involving 48 people who had assisted a close relative to move into a nursing home. Analysis revealed three perceived phases to the transition: ‘making the best of it’, ‘making the move’ and ‘making it better’. The relatives' experiences through these phases had five perceived elements, all of which were continua, from absent to very strong, reflecting the extent to which they were felt. They were: operating ‘under pressure’ or not; ‘in the know’ or ‘working in the dark’; ‘working together’ or ‘working alone’; ‘in control of events’ or not, and ‘supported’ or ‘unsupported’ both practically and emotionally. This paper reports findings about the first phase of the transition, ‘making the best of it’, and documents the experiences of decision-making about nursing home placements. It is argued that health and social care practitioners have enormous potential to influence whether or not helping a relative to move into a nursing home is perceived as a positive choice

On the Interaction of Monetary and Fiscal Policy

In this paper we review some fundamental issues that have been identified by macroeconomists in discussing the co-ordination of monetary and fiscal policy. As Sargent and Wallace (1981) graphically illustrated, the consolidated public sector present-value budget constraint means that monetary and fiscal policy are ultimately joint decisions. However, as we show in a quantitative general equilibrium model, even when fiscal solvency is not an issue, monetary and fiscal policy may still need to be co-ordinated

Inflation Targeting, Transparency and Interest Rate Volatility: Ditching 'Monetary Mystique' in the UK

Monetary authorities often seem reluctant to discuss the conduct of monetary policy. There is a concern that greater openness in monetary policy-making may lead to volatility in financial markets, and specifically in interest rates. To date there is very little direct empirical evidence; however, recent changes in the monetary policy framework in the UK provide an opportunity to gain some insight on this issue. First, the authors present a model of monetary policy showing that the volatility that would otherwise occur to aggregate prices is transmitted to the rate of interest in a tightly specified nominal regime. Under some circumstances, information flows may add to volatility; if volatility is harmful, then central bankers may be right to be reticent. However, the evidence suggests that even though volatility has risen in the recent past, there is no evidence that this volatility is directly attributable to increased information flows per se

Lake Attitash Management Plan; 2010

Management Plan and Comprehensive Lake Inventory of Lake Attitash in Amesbury/ Merrimac, M

A point mass in an isotropic universe: III. The region R≤2mR\leq 2m

McVittie's solution of Einstein's field equations, representing a point mass embedded into an isotropic universe, possesses a scalar curvature singularity at proper radius $R=2m$. The singularity is space-like and precedes, in the expanding case, all other events in the space-time. It is shown here that this singularity is gravitationally weak, and the possible structure of the region $R\leq 2m$ is investigated. A characterization of this solution which does not involve asymptotics is given.Comment: Revtex, 11pp. To appear in Class.Quant.Grav. Paper II appeared as Class. Quant. Grav. 16 (1999) 122

Interest Rate Bounds and Fiscal Policy

When the monetary authority controls the short-term interest rate we find that under a regime of permanent (and even persistent but temporary) deficits that a strict upper bound on the feasible interest rate sequence is present. More generally, the satisfaction of the fiscal authority’s present value budget constraint in the presence of a deficit sequence, means that monetary and fiscal decisions cannot be independent. This is an important caveat to the results in McCallum (1984).Intertemporal macro; monetary policy and fiscal policy interactions.

The Sun, stellar-population models, and the age estimation of high-redshift galaxies

Given sufficiently deep optical spectroscopy, the age estimation of high-redshif t ($z > 1$) galaxies has been claimed to be a relatively robust process (e.g. Dunlop et al. 1996) due to the fact that, for ages $< 5$Gyr, the near-ultraviolet light of a stellar population is expected to be dominated by `well-understood' main-sequence (MS) stars. Recently, however, the reliability of this process has been called into question by Yi et al (2000), who claim to have developed models in which the spectrum produced by the main sequence reddens much more rapidly than in the models of Jimenez et al (2000a), leading to much younger age estimates for the reddest known high-redshift ellipticals. In support of their revised age estimates, Yi et al cite the fact that their models can reproduce the spectrum of the Sun at an age of 5 Gyr, whereas the solar spectrum is not reproduced by the Jimenez et al models until $\simeq 10$ Gyr. Here we confirm this discrepancy, but point out that this is in fact a {\it strength} of the Jimenez et al models and indicative of some flaw in the models of Yi et al (which, in effect, imply that the Sun will turn into a red giant any minute now). We have also explored the models of Worthey (1994) (which are known to differ greatly from those of Jimenez et al in the treatment of post-MS evolution) and find that the main-sequence component of Worthey's models also cannot reproduce the solar spectrum until an age of 9-10 Gyr. We conclude that either the models of Yi et al are not as main-sequence dominated at 4-5 Gyr as claimed, or that the stellar evolutionary timescale in these models is in error by a factor possibly as high as two. (abridged)Comment: Submitted to MNRAS, final versio

Electron collision cross sections in metal vapors Semiannual report

Electron collision cross section in metal vapors - measurement of Townsend alpha coefficient in cesium-helium mixture

Optimal and Robust Quantum Metrology Using Interaction-Based Readouts

Useful quantum metrology requires nonclassical states with a high particle number and (close to) the optimal exploitation of the state's quantum correlations. Unfortunately, the single-particle detection resolution demanded by conventional protocols, such as spin squeezing via one-axis twisting, places severe limits on the particle number. Additionally, the challenge of finding optimal measurements (that saturate the quantum Cram{\'e}r-Rao bound) for an arbitrary nonclassical state limits most metrological protocols to only moderate levels of quantum enhancement. "Interaction-based readout" protocols have been shown to allow optimal interferometry \emph{or} to provide robustness against detection noise at the expense of optimality. In this Letter, we prove that one has great flexibility in constructing an optimal protocol, thereby allowing it to also be robust to detection noise. This requires the full probability distribution of outcomes in an optimal measurement basis, which is typically easily accessible and can be determined from specific criteria we provide. Additionally, we quantify the robustness of several classes of interaction-based readouts under realistic experimental constraints. We determine that optimal \emph{and} robust quantum metrology is achievable in current spin-squeezing experiments.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure