Recent “homeless diversion programs” may actually exacerbate chronic homelessness

Even before the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, cities had become increasingly concerned about how to deal with their growing homelessness problem. In recent years, the anti-homelessness policies of the police have begun to lose favor, with a greater emphasis given to ‘homeless diversion programs’ that place homeless people into counselling and other rehabilitation services. In new research that concentrates on Los Angeles’ ‘Skid Row’ district, Forrest Stuart argues that such programs actually increase harm to homeless people by widening the criminal justice system to non-criminal behavior. He writes that officers view the use of arrests and citations as a viable way of channelling the homeless into rehabilitative social services, but that this causes homeless individuals to pull even further into the shadows of society

Investing in Alternatives: Three Logics of Criminal System Replacement

What logics underlie the call to “defund the police,” and how do those logics matter in policy debate? In the wake of widespread protests after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other victims of police violence during the summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement’s call to “defund the police” captured the national imagination. Several municipal governments promised to cut funding and contracts for their respective police departments, with mixed results. Because we expect police defunding and reinvestment to remain a central movement demand, this Article explores the demand’s discursive and normative terrain. It does so by describing and critically engaging three logics of criminal system alternatives that we have observed in activists’ demands and organizing efforts. Specifically, we theorize investments in social welfare, safety production, and racial reparation as deeply connected but distinct logics that might guide decisions about where and how money should be spent as part of defund initiatives, and we discuss some implications of each for transformational change within and beyond policing

Arguments for the physical nature of the triggered ion-acoustic waves observed on the Parker Solar Probe

Triggered ion-acoustic waves are a pair of coupled waves observed in the previously unexplored plasma regime near the Sun. They may be capable of producing important effects on the solar wind. Because this wave mode has not been observed or studied previously and it is not fully understood, the issue of whether it has a natural origin or is an instrumental artifact can be raised. This paper discusses this issue by examining 13 features of the data such as whether the triggered ion-acoustic waves are electrostatic, whether they are both narrow-band, whether they satisfy the requirement that the electric field is parallel to the k-vector, whether the phase difference between the electric field and the density fluctuations is 90 degrees, whether the two waves have the same phase velocity as they must if they are coupled, whether the phase velocity is that of an ion-acoustic wave, whether they are associated with other parameters such as electron heating, whether the electric field instrument otherwise performed as expected, etc. The conclusion reached from these analyses is that triggered ion-acoustic waves are highly likely to have a natural origin although the possibility that they are artifacts unrelated to processes occurring in the natural plasma cannot be eliminated. This inability to absolutely rule out artifacts as the source of a measured result is a characteristic of all measurements.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2211.1441

Particle-In-Cell Simulations of Sunward and Anti-sunward Whistler Waves in the Solar Wind

Spacecraft observations showed that electron heat conduction in the solar wind is probably regulated by whistler waves, whose origin and efficiency in electron heat flux suppression is actively investigated. In this paper, we present Particle-In-Cell simulations of a combined whistler heat flux and temperature anisotropy instability that can operate in the solar wind. The simulations are performed in a uniform plasma and initialized with core and halo electron populations typical of the solar wind. We demonstrate that the instability produces whistler waves propagating both along (anti-sunward) and opposite (sunward) to the electron heat flux. The saturated amplitudes of both sunward and anti-sunward whistler waves are strongly correlated with their {\it initial} linear growth rates, $B_{w}/B_0\sim (\gamma/\omega_{ce})^{\nu}$, where for typical electron betas we have $0.6\lesssim \nu\lesssim 0.9$. The correlations of whistler wave amplitudes and spectral widths with plasma parameters (electron beta and temperature anisotropy) revealed in the simulations are consistent with those observed in the solar wind. The efficiency of electron heat flux suppression is positively correlated with the saturated amplitude of sunward whistler waves. The electron heat flux can be suppressed by 10--60% provided that the saturated amplitude of sunward whistler waves exceeds about 1% of background magnetic field. Other experimental applications of the presented results are discussed

Comparison of Orbiter PRCS Plume Flow Fields Using CFD and Modified Source Flow Codes

The Space Shuttle Orbiter will use Reaction Control System (RCS) jets for docking with the planned International Space Station (ISS). During approach and backout maneuvers, plumes from these jets could cause high pressure, heating, and thermal loads on ISS components. The object of this paper is to present comparisons of RCS plume flow fields used to calculate these ISS environments. Because of the complexities of 3-D plumes with variable scarf-angle and multi-jet combinations, NASA/JSC developed a plume flow-field methodology for all of these Orbiter jets. The RCS Plume Model (RPM), which includes effects of scarfed nozzles and dual jets, was developed as a modified source-flow engineering tool to rapidly generate plume properties and impingement environments on ISS components. This paper presents flow-field properties from four PRCS jets: F3U low scarf-angle single jet, F3F high scarf-angle single jet, DTU zero scarf-angle dual jet, and F1F/F2F high scarf-angle dual jet. The RPM results compared well with plume flow fields using four CFD programs: General Aerodynamic Simulation Program (GASP), Cartesian (CART), Unified Solution Algorithm (USA), and Reacting and Multi-phase Program (RAMP). Good comparisons of predicted pressures are shown with STS 64 Shuttle Plume Impingement Flight Experiment (SPIFEX) data

Eurovision 2023: Exploring Liverpool's multi-agency approach to a large-scale event

In May 2023, Liverpool hosted the Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of Ukraine, involving 37 competing nations. With over 12,000 accredited staff involved in the planning and delivery of Eurovision, it is the largest and most complex multi-agency event that Liverpool has ever hosted. The organisations involved included Culture Liverpool, Merseyside Police, Liverpool City Council, North West Ambulance Service, Liverpool One, BBC, Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Camp and Furnace, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, and many more. This presented an exciting opportunity to explore multi-agency working for a major live event. The research will identify the key themes associated with a multi-agency approach, around relationship building, consistency, longevity, and trust. It will also investigate the ways in which multi-agency information sharing takes place in the preparation and delivery of a large-scale live event, informing a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship on law enforcement information exchange. To understand how agencies work together and share information for Eurovision 2023, the following data is collected: i.) field observations during multi-agency meetings, the multi-agency tabletop exercise, and the live events (i.e. opening ceremony, semi-finals, final); ii.) policy documents; iii.) post-event online surveys; and iv.) post-event semi-structured interviews. Participants include practitioners from a range of the organisations involved. Quantitative (descriptives) and qualitative (content, thematic) analyses will be conducted. As a ‘work-in-progress’, an overview of the research and headline findings will be presented

Scale-invariant magnetic textures in the strongly correlated oxide NdNiO3_3

Strongly correlated quantum solids are characterized by an inherently granular electronic fabric, with spatial patterns that can span multiple length scales in proximity to a critical point. Here, we used a resonant magnetic X-ray scattering nanoprobe with sub-100 nm spatial resolution to directly visualize the texture of antiferromagnetic domains in NdNiO$_3$. Surprisingly, our measurements revealed a highly textured magnetic fabric, which is shown to be robust and nonvolatile even after thermal erasure across its ordering ($T_{N\acute{e}el}$) temperature. The scale-free distribution of antiferromagnetic domains and its non-integral dimensionality point to a hitherto-unobserved magnetic fractal geometry in this system. These scale-invariant textures directly reflect the continuous nature of the magnetic transition and the proximity of this system to a critical point. The present study not only exposes the near-critical behavior in rare earth nickelates but also underscores the potential for novel X-ray scattering nanoprobes to image the multiscale signatures of criticality near a critical point.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

The effect of COVID19 public health restrictions on the health of people with musculoskeletal conditions and symptoms : the CONTAIN study

Funding This work was supported by Versus Arthritis [Grant Number: 20748] and the British Society for Rheumatology. The funding for the original studies included were from Versus Arthritis (MAmMOTH) and the British Society for Rheumatology (BSRBR-AS and BSR-PsA). Daniel Whibley is supported by a Versus Arthritis Foundation Fellowship [Grant Number 21742] Acknowledgements We are grateful to help from staff at the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society and specifically to patient partners Lynne Laidlaw (for help with designing questionnaire) and Susan Davis (for commenting on the manuscript). The authors do not report any conflicts of interest. GJM conceived the idea for the study and all authors were involved in the detailed planning. MH, KK, EM-B and MB were responsible for obtaining ethics and research governance approvals. MB undertook the analysis which was independently verified by GTJ. GJM, with input from MB, drafted the manuscript, and all authors contributed important intellectual content via written comments. We thank Linda Dean for comments on the manuscript. Data Availability Statement The data within the article which relate to the collection of BSR register data are owned by the BSR – access to these data are subject to application being made to the BSR: Registers (rheumatology.org.uk) . For other data in the article, application can be made for access to the data by contacting the corresponding author.Peer reviewedPublisher PD