Spears or ploughshares : multiple indicators of activity related stress and social status in four Early Medieval populations from the North East of England

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

In-migration and economic activity in rural areas of Wales

Rural areas are changing – a population turnaround was first identified in the 1970’s (Beale 1975). Since that time more and more research has uncovered the numbers and types of people moving into rural areas (Boyle 1995, Boyle and Halfacree 1998, Bolton and Chalkley 1998) and the impact of this migration (Bell 1994 Cloke and Goodwin 1992). Keeble and Tyler (1995) began to address the economic capacity of in-migrants highlighting that many rural businesses are owned by in-migrants. Stockdale, Short and Findlay (1999) identified that on average for each self-employed in-migrant 2.4 jobs are created. In recent years the policy focus on rural areas has centred on endogenous development, Stockdale (2006) argues in-migrants are essential for this approach to be successful.This research has combined literature from migration studies, with entrepreneurship literature, to examine the economic activity choices of in-migrants; with a particular focus on self-employment. Migration studies focus on where people choose to migrate to and the impact they then have on the area. Entrepreneurship literature focuses on the types of people who chose to become self-employed and the impact of various factors on their decision making. This research has utilised concepts from both literature sources to examine lifetime migrant’s economic activity in rural areas (defined under the ONS rural – urban classification).Powys and Gwynedd are two local authority areas in rural Wales that have interesting economic and migration patterns. They were selected as study areas as they represent areas of varying degrees of inward migration, self-employment, accessibility to major transport networks and levels of Welsh speaking. This research charts the economic activity of households across these local authorities in order to understand what impact individual, household and area level influences have on in-migrants economic activity. A postal survey of 597 households in the case study areas was used to explore the research questions; ‘what are the differences in the current economic activity of migrants and non-migrants in rural labour markets in Wales; and why do these differences exist?’The conclusions of this research make three key contributions to knowledge: 1.In-migrants and non-migrants in the case study areas selected have broadly similar levels of economic activity rates. There are no statistically significant differences in economic activity choices between the two groups.2.Some in-migrants (at similar levels to non-migrants) become self-employed and start a business. These businesses are often different to that of non-migrants, they tend to be largely based from home and prefer to employ family members. 3.Many in-migrants do not move into rural areas with the intention of becoming self-employed this is mobilised often up to a decade after the move.The findings of this research play a key role in understanding why in-migrants make the economic activity choices they do in rural areas. – Through a combination of push and pull factors that centre on the individual (age, nationality, employment history), the household (household structure, tenure) and the area (labour market, levels of Welsh speaking) in-migrants make economic activity choices that for some, result in self-employment. The businesses created by in-migrants differ slightly from that of non-migrant owned businesses. In-migrant owned businesses are most likely to be based from or closer to home than non-migrants. They often employ family member and tend to be younger than non-migrant owned businesses. They do not appear more likely to create jobs than non-migrant owned businesses. This is an important finding given the importance of in-migrant owned rural businesses in much recent rural debate (Bosworth 2008, Bosworth 2010, Stockdale 2006)

Learning to \u27be\u27 a university student: First in family students negotiating membership of the university community

An integral part of the higher education (HE) journey is the act of \u27becoming\u27 a student, however students who are first in their families (FiF) to attend university have had limited exposure to the HE environment. Innovatively for research with this cohort, this paper draws on situated learning theory to examine how learning to become a university student occurs through participation within the university community of practice. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with FiF learners at the end of their degrees, i.e. successful students, the analysis describes students\u27 movement from initial participation at the periphery of the university community to fuller participation. This paper offers practical insights into how we might support and engage this cohort to improve student retention

Recognising and Reconceptualising Ability: Reflections on Disability and Employability

Not applicable

Pregnancy Medicaid Expansions and Fertility: Differentiating between the Intensive and Extensive Margins

The theoretical and empirical links between public health insurance access and fertility in the United States remain unclear. Utilizing a demographic cell-based estimation approach with panel data (1987-1997), we revisit the large-scale Medicaid expansions to pregnant women during the 1980s to estimate the heterogeneous impacts of public health insurance access on childbirth. While the decision to become a parent (i.e., the extensive margin) appears to be unaffected by increased access to Medicaid, we find that increased access to public health insurance positively influenced the number of high parity births (i.e., the intensive margin) for select groups of women. In particular, we find a robust, positive birth effect for unmarried women with a high school education, a result which is consistent across the two racial groups examined in our analysis: African American and white women. This result suggests that investigating effects along both the intensive and extensive margin is important for scholars who study the natalist effects of social welfare policies, and our evidence provides a more nuanced understanding of the influence of public health insurance on fertility

Telling tales: life writing from the inner-city and a critical reflection on the ethics of non-fiction storytelling.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.This thesis comprises a creative component entitled They won't come for us here, and a reflective component which examines the ethics of non-fiction storytelling. They won't come for us here is a compilation of life-writing and memoir produced and recorded during a three and a half year period spent living in the South African inner-city of Pietermaritzburg. It is a collection of lyric essays, and free-verse poetry, that investigates and narrates the lives of inner-city inhabitants, whilst reflectively interrogating the life of the narrator. The compilation adopts a chronological approach, telling peoples’ stories as the narrator meets them. This chronology is then interspersed with reflective records from the narrator’s childhood in apartheid South Africa, records which attempt to explain and self-interrogate the perceived prejudiced and classist response of a white, middle-class narrator to a mixed-race, mixed-class inner-city. The creation of They won’t come for us here raised a number of ethical issues common to non-fiction storytelling, issues most commonly divided into the categories of privacy protection and creative license. To engage with these issues effectively the reflective component focuses on analysing the ethical decision-making of a selection of creative non-fiction writers. These writers include American essayists, such as David Sedaris and Joan Didion, and South African literary journalists, such as Antjie Krog and Jonny Steinberg. The ethical choices that confront creative non-fiction writers range from the challenge of the unequal power balance experienced by immersion journalists to the challenge of recreation by imagination or memory experienced by most memoirists. After analysing the discussions and choices around the ethical decisions of a selection of creative non-fiction-fiction writers, the reflective component develops three frameworks that could support writers as they analyse their work: the framework of emotional truth versus factual truth, the framework of artistic clarity versus ethical clarity, and the framework of obligation to subject, topic and reader. Finally, these frameworks are used to analyse They won't come for us here, reflectively questioning the ethical decisions that were made in the creation of this document, decisions that range from those common to all forms of immersion storytelling to those common to the South African context, in which, predominantly, white voices record black stories.Examiner's copy of thesis

Agile: From Software to Mission System

The Resource Prospector (RP) is an in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology demonstration mission, designed to search for volatiles at the Lunar South Pole. This is NASA's first near real time tele-operated rover on the Moon. The primary objective is to search for volatiles at one of the Lunar Poles. The combination of short mission duration, a solar powered rover, and the requirement to explore shadowed regions makes for an operationally challenging mission. To maximize efficiency and flexibility in Mission System design and thus to improve the performance and reliability of the resulting Mission System, we are tailoring Agile principles that we have used effectively in ground data system software development and applying those principles to the design of elements of the mission operations system

In-migration and economic activity in rural areas of Wales

Rural areas are changing – a population turnaround was first identified in the 1970’s (Beale 1975). Since that time more and more research has uncovered the numbers and types of people moving into rural areas (Boyle 1995, Boyle and Halfacree 1998, Bolton and Chalkley 1998) and the impact of this migration (Bell 1994 Cloke and Goodwin 1992). Keeble and Tyler (1995) began to address the economic capacity of in-migrants highlighting that many rural businesses are owned by in-migrants. Stockdale, Short and Findlay (1999) identified that on average for each self-employed in-migrant 2.4 jobs are created. In recent years the policy focus on rural areas has centred on endogenous development, Stockdale (2006) argues in-migrants are essential for this approach to be successful. This research has combined literature from migration studies, with entrepreneurship literature, to examine the economic activity choices of in-migrants; with a particular focus on self-employment. Migration studies focus on where people choose to migrate to and the impact they then have on the area. Entrepreneurship literature focuses on the types of people who chose to become self-employed and the impact of various factors on their decision making. This research has utilised concepts from both literature sources to examine lifetime migrant’s economic activity in rural areas (defined under the ONS rural – urban classification). Powys and Gwynedd are two local authority areas in rural Wales that have interesting economic and migration patterns. They were selected as study areas as they represent areas of varying degrees of inward migration, self-employment, accessibility to major transport networks and levels of Welsh speaking. This research charts the economic activity of households across these local authorities in order to understand what impact individual, household and area level influences have on in-migrants economic activity. A postal survey of 597 households in the case study areas was used to explore the research questions; ‘what are the differences in the current economic activity of migrants and non-migrants in rural labour markets in Wales; and why do these differences exist?’ The conclusions of this research make three key contributions to knowledge: 1. In-migrants and non-migrants in the case study areas selected have broadly similar levels of economic activity rates. There are no statistically significant differences in economic activity choices between the two groups. 2. Some in-migrants (at similar levels to non-migrants) become self-employed and start a business. These businesses are often different to that of non-migrants, they tend to be largely based from home and prefer to employ family members. 3. Many in-migrants do not move into rural areas with the intention of becoming self-employed this is mobilised often up to a decade after the move. The findings of this research play a key role in understanding why in-migrants make the economic activity choices they do in rural areas. – Through a combination of push and pull factors that centre on the individual (age, nationality, employment history), the household (household structure, tenure) and the area (labour market, levels of Welsh speaking) in-migrants make economic activity choices that for some, result in self-employment. The businesses created by in-migrants differ slightly from that of non-migrant owned businesses. In-migrant owned businesses are most likely to be based from or closer to home than non-migrants. They often employ family member and tend to be younger than non-migrant owned businesses. They do not appear more likely to create jobs than non-migrant owned businesses. This is an important finding given the importance of in-migrant owned rural businesses in much recent rural debate (Bosworth 2008, Bosworth 2010, Stockdale 2006).EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Petrogenesis of Cu-Ni sulphide ores from O’okiep and kliprand, Namaqualand, South Africa : constraints from chalcophile metal contents

The petrogenesis of sulphide ores in the O’okiep district has remained controversial. Based mainly on the concentration of chalcophile metals (PGE, Cu, Ni), it is proposed that the sulphides segregated from a basaltic magma generated during melting of sub-continental lithospheric mantle. Sulphide saturation of the magma was delayed due to relatively high fO2 until crustal contamination occurred during the advanced stages of differentiation. The immiscible sulphide melt was entrained and fractionated in dynamic magma conduits. Sulphides enriched in monosulphide solid solution (mss) component precipitated at depth in the Kliprand area of southern Namaqualand to form the Hondekloof deposits, whereas the O’okiep ores crystallised at shallower levels from highly fractionated residual sulphide liquids enriched in intermediate solid solution (iss). Sulphides of intermediate composition occur at Ezelsfontein. In the context of this model, the O’okiep intrusions could represent the proximal magmatic members of an IOCG suite of deposits, raising the prospect for additional IOCG deposits elsewhere in southern Africa. The model also predicts an enhanced potential at O’okiep for undiscovered Ni sulphide ores at depth

SHα\alphaDE: Survey description and mass-kinematics scaling relations for dwarf galaxies

The Study of H$\alpha$ from Dwarf Emissions (SH$\alpha$DE) is a high spectral resolution (R=13500) H$\alpha$ integral field survey of 69 dwarf galaxies with stellar masses $10^6<M_\star<10^9 \,\rm{M_\odot}$. The survey used FLAMES on the ESO Very Large Telescope. SH$\alpha$DE is designed to study the kinematics and stellar populations of dwarf galaxies using consistent methods applied to massive galaxies and at matching level of detail, connecting these mass ranges in an unbiased way. In this paper we set out the science goals of SH$\alpha$DE, describe the sample properties, outline the data reduction and analysis processes. We investigate the $\log{M_{\star}}-\log{S_{0.5}}$ mass-kinematics scaling relation, which have previously shown potential for combining galaxies of all morphologies in a single scaling relation. We extend the scaling relation from massive galaxies to dwarf galaxies, demonstrating this relation is linear down to a stellar mass of $M_{\star}\sim10^{8.6}\,\rm{M_\odot}$. Below this limit, the kinematics of galaxies inside one effective radius appear to be dominated by the internal velocity dispersion limit of the H$\alpha$-emitting gas, giving a bend in the $\log{M_{\star}}-\log{S_{0.5}}$ relation. Replacing stellar mass with total baryonic mass using gas mass estimate reduces the severity but does not remove the linearity limit of the scaling relation. An extrapolation to estimate the galaxies' dark matter halo masses, yields a $\log{M_{h}}-\log{S_{0.5}}$ scaling relation that is free of any bend, has reduced curvature over the whole mass range, and brings galaxies of all masses and morphologies onto the virial relation.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables; published in MNRA