Employment and Life-Satisfaction: Insights from Ireland

Mainstream neoclassical economics takes it as given that the consumption of goods and services (output) is positively related to well-being. Work (labour-input) is assumed to be negatively related to well-being at the margin and so is only undertaken in exchange for payment. This view has been challenged for decades in the psychology and sociology literature and results suggests that employment status (especially unemployment) has profound effects on well-being, even at the margin. It is surprising then that several labour force status categories have been under researched in the literature to date. In this paper, using a sample of Irish adults carried out in 2001, we extend the current literature to examine the impacts of additional labour force status categories on life-satisfaction based on International Labour Organisation (ILO) classifications. These include part-time employment, disconnection from the labour force and being disabled, unable to work. Additionally, we expand the analysis of unemployment in the happiness literature and examine if the effects of unemployment and part-time employment on life satisfaction are conditioned by gender. Insights show that being part-time employed has a significant negative effect on life satisfaction, particularly for males. Being unemployed is found to have a significant negative effect on well-being, independent of gender and income, but no such effect is found for the local unemployment rate.

Post-alcoholic hypoglycaemia: a clinical and pathological study

For a number of years a history of sudden onset of coma, followed later by death, was noted amongst Africans at King Edward VIII hospital, Durban. Necropsy, where performed, revealed no cause in many of these patients. In 1957 after cerebrospinal fluid had been examined in some of the cases it was seen that the only abnormality present was a low cerebrospinal sugar. Hypoglycaemia was suspected and blood sugar estimation confirmed it. Further investigation failed to reveal the cause of the hypoglycaemia and in some cases because of a "flat" glucose tolerance curve organic hyperinsulinism was suspected. In one case total pancreatectomy was performed but thorough macroscopical and histological investigation failed to reveal a tumour or hyperplasia, and the patient subsequently suffered from diabetes. In August 1958, I admitted an African female patient, of 26 years, to the ward in coma

Teachers’ Approaches to Research Writing

The amount of curriculum autonomy afforded to many teachers means that their duties often involve creating and designing their own courses. The uniqueness of these courses can mean it is difficult or impractical to collaborate with colleagues, leading to a lack of awareness of the approaches that other teachers take in their courses. However, even when it may not be possible to work together directly, a great deal can be learned from exploring our peers’ knowledge and expertise. All full-time instructors in the English for Liberal Arts (ELA) program at International Christian University teach a Research Writing (RW) course, with shared language learning outcomes yet with differing content based on teachers’ individual area of inquiry. In this paper, I report on the findings from informal discussions I had with 15 ELA teachers about their RW courses and reflect on the implications for my own RW course. This includes a particular focus on our approaches to course content, the writing process, and feedback from both teachers and peers

Emergency Remote Training: Guiding and Supporting Teachers in Preparation for Emergency Remote Teaching

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the planning and deliveryof training provided to help teachers prepare for emergency remote teaching.The broad aims of the training were to help teachers become accustomed to thefunctions of Zoom, an online video communication platform, and to considerhow teaching remotely might impact their teaching practices. The first step inthe training was a checklist of can-do statements which teachers could use forself-directed guidance and self-assessment. A subsequent seven-hoursynchronous training day then allowed for hands-on practice of hosting Zoomlessons and provided a forum for discussions of the implications of the move toemergency remote teaching. In this paper, the effectiveness of the training isalso evaluated using data from participant feedback as well as trainerreflections blended with references to the literature. Overall, despite thetrainer’s inexperience of online training and the lack of adequate preparationtime, the training was a broad success which achieved its intended aims ofpreparing teachers for their initial forays into emergency remote teaching

The importance of continuing professional development: an investigation into the needs of teachers at a Japanese University and an analysis of how continuing professional development meets their needs.

There is wide acknowledgement of the importance of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages industry, yet there is just as much agreement that the current state of CPD is largely inadequate and fails to meet the needs of its primary beneficiaries: teachers. At the heart of this study is an Academic English Discussion programme at a private university in Tokyo. Two factors make this context particularly worthy of study: the strongly unified curriculum that teachers work within, and teachers’ five-year fixed-term contracts. As such, this dissertation first seeks to investigate how these two factors affect the needs of teachers in this context, before analysing how the CPD programme meets the short-, medium-, and long-term needs of its teachers. A mixed methods research approach was employed to explore current teachers’ perceptions of their CPD programme by way of questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, while semi-structured interviews with three former teachers as well as a focus group with the programme management team were also carried out. The findings show that teachers working under a unified curriculum are more at risk of demotivation and burnout, and need individualised professional development to counter this risk. In addition, many teachers on fixed-term contracts suffer from high levels of stress and anxiety with regard to their future, and therefore need to maintain their employability through professional development. With regard to the CPD programme itself, while the training programme is highly effective at meeting the teachers’ short-term needs to carry out their teaching responsibilities, further training could be of benefit to teachers, particularly in terms of building reflective skills. In addition, more could be done to individualise aspects of teachers’ development and help them prepare for their long-term teaching careers

LEO Clock Synchronization with Entangled Light

Precision navigation and timing, very-long-baseline interferometry, next-generation communication, sensing, and tests of fundamental physics all require a highly synchronized network of clocks. With the advance of highly-accurate optical atomic clocks, the precision requirements for synchronization are reaching the limits of classical physics (i.e. the standard quantum limit, SQL). Efficiently overcoming the SQL to reach the fundamental Heisenberg limit can be achieved via the use of squeezed or entangled light. Although approaches to the Heisenberg limit are well understood in theory, a practical implementation, such as in space-based platforms, requires that the advantage outweighs the added costs and complexity. Here, we focus on the question: can entanglement yield a quantum advantage in clock synchronization over lossy satellite-to-satellite channels? We answer in the affirmative, showing that the redundancy afforded by the two-mode nature of entanglement allows recoverability even over asymmetrically lossy channels. We further show this recoverability is an improvement over single-mode squeezing sensing, thereby illustrating a new complexity-performance trade-off for space-based sensing applications.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, comments welcom