Managing the Moral Implications of Advice in Informal Interaction

What does advice giving look like among family members? Most conversation analytic research on advice has been in institutional settings, which constrain what speakers can do. Here we analyze advice in the apparently freer environment of telephone calls between mothers and their young adult daughters. We concentrate on how the advice is received. Our analysis shows that the position of “advice recipient” is a potentially unwelcome identity to occupy because it implies one knows less than the advice giver and indeed that one may be somehow at fault. Advice can be resisted, but choosing to do so seems to depend on what the interactional costs would be. We discuss the implications for studying advice and promoting advice acceptance as well as the way relationality more generally can be constituted in talk

Ethnic parity in labour market outcomes for benefit claimants

A significant gap exists in the UK between the employment rate for Ethnic Minorities and that for Whites. From a policy perspective, it is important to know whether this gap is due to differences in the characteristics of White and Ethnic Minority groups (which reduce the employability of Ethnic Minority groups relative to Whites) or whether it results from some form of discriminatory behaviour in the labour market. In this paper, we use administrative data to estimate ethnic differences in employment and benefit receipt amongst individuals who began claiming a Jobcentre Plus benefit in 2003. In contrast to much of the previous UK literature, we use a number of different quantitative techniques to estimate this gap, and show that in a lot of cases the estimates obtained are very sensitive to the techniques used. We argue that for the questions we are interested in and the data we have, propensity score matching methods are the most robust approach to estimating ethnic parity. We compare this preferred approach with estimates derived using alternative approaches commonly used in the literature (generally regression-based techniques) to determine the extent to which more straightforward methods are able to replicate those produced by matching. In many cases, it turns out not to be possible to calculate satisfactory quantitative estimates even with matching techniques: the characteristics of Whites and Ethnic Minorities are simply too different before the Jobcentre Plus intervention to reliably estimate the parameters of interest. Moreover, for a number of the groups, results seem to be very sensitive to the methodology used. This calls into question previous results based on simple regression techniques, which are likely to hide the fact that observationally different ethnic groups are de facto being compared on the basis of parametric extrapolations. Two groups for which it was possible to calculate reasonably reliable results are incapacity benefit (IB) and income support (IS). For these groups we find that large and significant raw penalties almost always disappear once we appropriately control for pre-inflow background and labour market characteristics. There is also a good degree of consistency across methodologies

Sub-femtosecond electron bunches created by direct laser acceleration in a laser wakefield accelerator with ionization injection

In this work, we will show through three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that direct laser acceleration in laser a wakefield accelerator can generate sub-femtosecond electron bunches. Two simulations were done with two laser pulse durations, such that the shortest laser pulse occupies only a fraction of the first bubble, whereas the longer pulse fills the entire first bubble. In the latter case, as the trapped electrons moved forward and interacted with the high intensity region of the laser pulse, micro-bunching occurred naturally, producing 0.5 fs electron bunches. This is not observed in the short pulse simulation.Comment: AAC 201

Effects of systematic errors on the mixing ratios of trace gases obtained from occulation spectra

The influence of systematic errors in the parameters of the models describing the geometry and the atmosphere on the profiles of trace gases retrieved from simulated solar occultation spectra, collected at satellite altitudes, is investigated. Because of smearing effects and other uncertainties, it may be preferable to calibrate the spectra internally by measuring absorption lines of an atmospheric gas such as CO2 whose vertical distribution is assumed rather than to relay on externally supplied information

Detection of Leishmania infantum by PCR, serology and cellular immune response in a cohort study of Brazilian dogs

The sensitivity and specificity of PCR, serology (ELISA) and lymphoproliferative response to Leishmania antigen for the detection of Leishmania infantum infection were evaluated in a cohort of 126 dogs exposed to natural infection in Brazil. For PCR, Leishmania DNA from bone-marrow was amplified with both minicircle and ribosomal primers. The infection status and time of infection of each dog were estimated from longitudinal data. The sensitivity of PCR in parasite-positive samples was 98%. However, the overall sensitivity of PCR in post-infection samples, from dogs with confirmed infection, was only 68%. The sensitivity of PCR varied during the course of infection, being highest (78–88%) 0–135 days post-infection and declining to around 50% after 300 days. The sensitivity of PCR also varied between dogs, and was highest in sick dogs. The sensitivity of serology was similar in parasite-positive (84%), PCR-positive (86%) and post-infection (88%) samples. The sensitivity of serology varied during the course of infection, being lowest at the time of infection and high (93–100%) thereafter. Problems in determining the specificity of serology are discussed. The sensitivity and specificity of cellular responsiveness were low. These data suggest that PCR is most useful in detecting active or symptomatic infection, and that serology can be a more sensitive technique for the detection of all infected dogs

The limitations of speech control: perceptions of provision of speech-driven environmental controls

This study set out to collect data from assistive technology professionals about their provision of speech-driven environmental control systems. This study is part of a larger study looking at developing a new speech-driven environmental control system

Meaning and Impact of Board and Staff Diversity in the Philanthropic Field: Findings from a National Study

The report's premise is that the staffs and boards of philanthropic institutions have not kept pace with the general population in terms of diversity, and that if responsiveness and diversity are linked, then foundations must attend to their internal diversity if they wish to offer a more credible outreach to diverse communities. It seeks to find answers to the following questions: What is the empirical reality that grounds these conjectures? Can we quantify the changes in foundation staffing? How well represented are different identity groups within the field, and how do members of these diverse groups fare in their career advancement? How do different types of foundations address inclusiveness, and what are examples of practices that lead to successful implementation of staff and board diversity? The report is the result of a multi-stage research project that combined surveys, interviews, and focus groups to reach more than 600 grantmakers nationwide

The constrained modified KP hierarchy and the generalized Miura transformations

In this letter, we consider the second Hamiltonian structure of the constrained modified KP hierarchy. After mapping the Lax operator to a pure differential operator the second structure becomes the sum of the second and the third Gelfand-Dickey brackets defined by this differential operator. We simplify this Hamiltonian structure by factorizing the Lax operator into linear terms.Comment: 8 pages, latex, no figure