Twenty-three women officers’ experiences of policing in England: The same old story or a different story?

Our research project was concerned primarily with using a feminist analysis to explore the lived reality of 23 women police officers in England and Wales. We undertook 23 qualitative interviews with our participants and our research straddles four decades of policing practice, which allowed us to explore changes that were seen to have taken place during this period. First, participants discussed their lived reality, which included banter, bullying and harassment for many. Second, and perhaps more surprisingly, at certain times of unrest, riots or threats, some of our participants were provided with opportunities, for example, during the IRA threat, the riot in Toxteth and the miners’ strike. We suggest that examples from our data capture an early disruption of the ‘ideal’ heroic male police officer that Silvestri examines [Silvestri M (2018) Disrupting the ‘heroic’ male within policing: a case of direct entry. Feminist Criminology 13(3): 309–328] whose removal from their normal role during periods of socio-political disorder allowed women officers to leave the gendered division of labour and undertake the heroic police constable role while the men were busy being ‘heroic’ at the source of threat and unrest. We sought to explore changes such as the uniform as a site of protest for some of our officers who challenged an uncomfortable and unfit uniform in the early days, and explained that there were still problems with the kit and design at times. Our findings illustrated that, on the whole, although massive changes had been made, it was a case of the same old story in terms of sexual harassment and banter for female officers and more was required to address these issues, which fits with reviews and studies in both England and Wales and in Australia. Finally, we noted using participants’ words how much many of these women had enjoyed their role within policing in spite of these challenges

Ground Waves Generated by Pile Driving, and Structural Interaction

Pre-formed steel or concrete pile elements are installed by high energy impact or vibro-driver, which causes outgoing ground waves. In severe cases, adjacent buildings are at risk of damage. Assessment of risk is conventionally by reference to threshold limits of vibration. The global approach considers neither the interactive effects between ground and structure, nor frequency and duration. Here, firstly, the dynamics of a pile head impact and of the transmission of a portion of the energy into the ground were modelled by a combination of finite elements (FE), springs and dashpots. The boundary disturbances were then applied to a second model of the soil as an elastic half space. This outer model was constructed of axisymmetric finite and infinite elements for calibration against on-site measurements. The infinite elements (IE) represented a wider zone, and avoided spurious wave reflections at boundaries. Next, the verified ground disturbances adjacent to the pile were used as input to a three-dimensional FE/IE wedge-shaped model of a ‘slice’ of the axisymmetric system. Various structural forms, of steel frame structures and of brick walls, were added, giving a dynamic soil-structure analysis. Results show the responses of flexible and stiff structures to outgoing waves caused by impact pile driving and vibro-driving

Home Away from Home: Diaspora Tourism and Transnational Attachment of Second-Generation Chinese-Americans

Globalization has allowed contemporary immigrants to live in two worlds and maintain virtual and physical contact with their homeland through leisure and diaspora tourism. This study examined the lived experience of second-generation Chinese-Americans as they traveled to their parents’ country of origin and explored the relationship between their transnational homeland attachment and diaspora tourism experience. Using a phenomenological approach, twenty-six second-generation Chinese-Americans who had the experience of traveling in China were interviewed. Four themes were identified from their travel experience: destination image, authenticity, family history, and homeland attachment. Findings revealed how being a secondgeneration immigrant influenced the way they saw and experienced China as both destination and homeland

Collagen-mimetic peptide-modifiable hydrogels for articular cartilage regeneration

Regenerative medicine strategies for restoring articular cartilage face significant challenges to recreate the complex and dynamic biochemical and biomechanical functions of native tissues. As an approach to recapitulate the complexity of the extracellular matrix, collagen-mimetic proteins offer a modular template to incorporate bioactive and biodegradable moieties into a single construct. We modified a Streptococcal collagen-like 2 protein with hyaluronic acid (HA) or chondroitin sulfate (CS)-binding peptides and then cross-linked with a matrix metalloproteinase 7 (MMP7)-sensitive peptide to form biodegradable hydrogels. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) encapsulated in these hydrogels exhibited improved viability and significantly enhanced chondrogenic differentiation compared to controls that were not functionalized with glycosaminoglycan-binding peptides. Hydrogels functionalized with CS-binding peptides also led to significantly higher MMP7 gene expression and activity while the HA-binding peptides significantly increased chondrogenic differentiation of the hMSCs. Our results highlight the potential of this novel biomaterial to modulate cell-mediated processes and create functional tissue engineered constructs for regenerative medicine applications

Langevin equations with multiplicative noise: resolution of time discretization ambiguities for equilibrium systems

A Langevin equation with multiplicative noise is an equation schematically of the form dq/dt = -F(q) + e(q) xi, where e(q) xi is Gaussian white noise whose amplitude e(q) depends on q itself. Such equations are ambiguous, and depend on the details of one's convention for discretizing time when solving them. I show that these ambiguities are uniquely resolved if the system has a known equilibrium distribution exp[-V(q)/T] and if, at some more fundamental level, the physics of the system is reversible. I also discuss a simple example where this happens, which is the small frequency limit of Newton's equation d^2q/dt^2 + e^2(q) dq/dt = - grad V(q) + e^{-1}(q) xi with noise and a q-dependent damping term. The resolution does not correspond to simply interpreting naive continuum equations in a standard convention, such as Stratanovich or Ito. [One application of Langevin equations with multiplicative noise is to certain effective theories for hot, non-Abelian plasmas.]Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures [further corrections to Appendix A

Electronic in-plane symmetry breaking at field-tuned quantum criticality in CeRhIn5

Electronic nematics are exotic states of matter where electronic interactions break a rotational symmetry of the underlying lattice, in analogy to the directional alignment without translational order in nematic liquid crystals. Intriguingly such phases appear in the copper- and iron-based superconductors, and their role in establishing high-temperature superconductivity remains an open question. Nematicity may take an active part, cooperating or competing with superconductivity, or may appear accidentally in such systems. Here we present experimental evidence for a phase of nematic character in the heavy fermion superconductor CeRhIn5. We observe a field-induced breaking of the electronic tetragonal symmetry of in the vicinity of an antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum phase transition at Hc~50T. This phase appears in out-of-plane fields of H*~28T and is characterized by substantial in-plane resistivity anisotropy. The anisotropy can be aligned by a small in-plane field component, with no apparent connection to the underlying crystal structure. Furthermore no anomalies are observed in the magnetic torque, suggesting the absence of metamagnetic transitions in this field range. These observations are indicative of an electronic nematic character of the high field state in CeRhIn5. The appearance of nematic behavior in a phenotypical heavy fermion superconductor highlights the interrelation of nematicity and unconventional superconductivity, suggesting nematicity to be a commonality in such materials