Are codes of ethics promoting religious literacy for social work practice?

As codes of ethics play at least a symbolic, if not educational, role in highlighting and informing professional priorities, 16 codes of ethics for social work practice were examined for references to religion and belief and analysed against the four domains of Dinham’s religious literacy framework. Although religion and belief are mentioned in all but two of the documents, approximately half the surveyed codes only mention religion and belief in respect of either knowledge or skills. Some recognise the need for social workers to be aware of their own biases, but very few recognise the need to explain what is meant by religion and belief, despite these terms being in flux. While codes of ethics can contribute to the development of religious literacy among social workers, this requires social workers who already have some religious literacy to actively participate when codes of ethics are being revised

A 3D Ray-tracing Model for UHF RFID

In this work, a 3-dimensional (3D) ray-tracing model is proposed. The model is specifically tailored for RFID applications by taking into account some of its unique characteristics. The proposed model can give accurate power predictions and is suitable for indoor RFID systems operating with low fade margins. The model has been verified by comparison with Method of Moments (MoM) and practical measurements. It is shown to achieve a high accuracy with significantly less computational complexity than MoM. An example application of the model is presented comparing the performance of two antennas with similar beam patterns but different axial ratio. The predicted tag detection rates (63% and 50%) are in good agreement with the experimental data (65% and 55%), showing the accuracy of the model and its improvement over previous models which are not able to handle axial ratio as accurately.This work was supported by EPSRC EP /S-19405/1 Channel Optimised Distributed Passive Sensor Networks

Microwave detection of buried mines using non-contact, synthetic near-field focusing

Existing ground penetrating radars (GPR) are limited in their 3-D resolution. For the detection of buried land-mines, their performance is also seriously restricted by `clutter'. Previous work by the authors has concentrated on removing these limitations by employing multi-static synthetic focusing from a 2-D real aperture. This contribution presents this novel concept, describes the proposed implementation, examines the influence of clutter and of various ground features on the system's performance, and discusses such practicalities as digitisation and time-sharing of a single transmitter and receiver. Experimental results from a variety of scenarios are presented

Spaceborne radar observations: A guide for Magellan radar-image analysis

Geologic analyses of spaceborne radar images of Earth are reviewed and summarized with respect to detecting, mapping, and interpreting impact craters, volcanic landforms, eolian and subsurface features, and tectonic landforms. Interpretations are illustrated mostly with Seasat synthetic aperture radar and shuttle-imaging-radar images. Analogies are drawn for the potential interpretation of radar images of Venus, with emphasis on the effects of variation in Magellan look angle with Venusian latitude. In each landform category, differences in feature perception and interpretive capability are related to variations in imaging geometry, spatial resolution, and wavelength of the imaging radar systems. Impact craters and other radially symmetrical features may show apparent bilateral symmetry parallel to the illumination vector at low look angles. The styles of eruption and the emplacement of major and minor volcanic constructs can be interpreted from morphological features observed in images. Radar responses that are governed by small-scale surface roughness may serve to distinguish flow types, but do not provide unambiguous information. Imaging of sand dunes is rigorously constrained by specific angular relations between the illumination vector and the orientation and angle of repose of the dune faces, but is independent of radar wavelength. With a single look angle, conditions that enable shallow subsurface imaging to occur do not provide the information necessary to determine whether the radar has recorded surface or subsurface features. The topographic linearity of many tectonic landforms is enhanced on images at regional and local scales, but the detection of structural detail is a strong function of illumination direction. Nontopographic tectonic lineaments may appear in response to contrasts in small-surface roughness or dielectric constant. The breakpoint for rough surfaces will vary by about 25 percent through the Magellan viewing geometries from low to high Venusian latitudes. Examples of anomalies and system artifacts that can affect image interpretation are described

A UHF RFID Reader Antenna with Tunable Axial Ratio and Fixed Beamwidth

A novel ultra-high-frequency (UHF) RFID reader antenna is proposed. The antenna has a unique property as being able to change its axial ratio (AR) without affecting its gain, beamwidth or impedance matching performance, enabling the isolated study of the effect of different axial ratios in RFID tag reading.This work was supported by EPSRC EP /S-19405/1 Channel Optimised Distributed Passive Sensor Networks

Beam Scanning UHF RFID Reader Antenna with High Gain and Wide Axial Ratio Beamwidth

A novel ultra-high-frequency (UHF) RFID reader antenna is proposed, designed and measured. The proposed antenna is capable of 2-dimensional (2D) beam-scanning from 0º to 360º in the azimuth plane, and 0º to 40º in the zenith plane. The minima of the antenna's axial ratio (AR) follows its gain maxima during beam-scanning, resulting in an equivalent 3 dB AR beamwidth of over 136º for every phi cut. Moreover, the antenna's AR can be easily modified without affecting other parameters. It is shown experimentally that the antenna's 2D beam-scanning ability and the improved AR performance lead to better tag-reading results, improving the percentage of missing tags by up to 21.6% compared to a standard antenna which has a degraded AR and only supports 1D beam-scanning. In addition, the antenna needs no matching network and has a -10 dB return loss bandwidth from 860 MHz to 880 MHz.This work was supported by EPSRC EP /S-19405/1 Channel Optimised Distributed Passive Sensor Network

Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet: A Validation of Transmission Spectroscopy and Atmospheric Retrieval Methodologies for Terrestrial Exoplanets

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable the search for and characterization of terrestrial exoplanet atmospheres in the habitable zone via transmission spectroscopy. However, relatively little work has been done to use solar system data, where ground truth is known, to validate spectroscopic retrieval codes intended for exoplanet studies, particularly in the limit of high resolution and high signal-to-noise (S/N). In this work, we perform such a validation by analyzing a high S/N empirical transmission spectrum of Earth using a new terrestrial exoplanet atmospheric retrieval model with heritage in Solar System remote sensing and gaseous exoplanet retrievals. We fit the Earth's 2-14 um transmission spectrum in low resolution (R=250 at 5 um) and high resolution (R=100,000 at 5 um) under a variety of assumptions about the 1D vertical atmospheric structure. In the limit of noiseless transmission spectra, we find excellent agreement between model and data (deviations < 10%) that enable the robust detection of H2O, CO2, O3, CH4, N2, N2O, NO2, HNO3, CFC-11, and CFC-12 thereby providing compelling support for the detection of habitability, biosignature, and technosignature gases in the atmosphere of the planet using an exoplanet-analog transmission spectrum. Our retrievals at high spectral resolution show a marked sensitivity to the thermal structure of the atmosphere, trace gas abundances, density-dependent effects, such as collision-induced absorption and refraction, and even hint at 3D spatial effects. However, we used synthetic observations of TRAPPIST-1e to verify that the use of simple 1D vertically homogeneous atmospheric models will likely suffice for JWST observations of terrestrial exoplanets transiting M dwarfs.Comment: 37 pages, 14 figures, 9 tables. Accepted for publication in PS

Simulation of the transport of halogen species from the equatorial and mid-latitude stratosphere to the polar stratosphere in a two-dimensional model

The bulk of O sub 3 destruction in the Antarctic stratosphere takes place in the lower stratosphere between 15 and 25 km. Both O sub 3 and the halogen reservoir species have their origins in the higher altitude region (20 to 30 km) in the equatorial and mid-latitude stratosphere. Using the Caltech-JPL two-dimensional residual circulation model, researchers investigate the growth of stratospheric halogen due to the increase of CFCl sub 3 and CF sub 2 Cl sub 2

Extreme alpha-clustering in the 18O nucleus

The structure of the 18O nucleus at excitation energies above the alpha decay threshold was studied using 14C+alpha resonance elastic scattering. A number of states with large alpha reduced widths have been observed, indicating that the alpha-cluster degree of freedom plays an important role in this N not equal Z nucleus. However, the alpha-cluster structure of this nucleus is very different from the relatively simple pattern of strong alpha-cluster quasi-rotational bands in the neighboring 16O and 20Ne nuclei. A 0+ state with an alpha reduced width exceeding the single particle limit was identified at an excitation energy of 9.9+/-0.3 MeV. We discuss evidence that states of this kind are common in light nuclei and give possible explanations of this feature.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Resubmission with minor changes for clarity, including removal of one figur