Working conditions, work-life conflict and wellbeing in UK prison officers: the role of affective rumination and detachment

Although prison officers experience the working conditions associated with work-life conflict, little research has explored this issue. This study draws upon the work-home resources model (ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012) to investigate relationships between working conditions (demands and experiences of aggression) and time-based, strain-based and behavior-based work-life conflict in UK prison officers (n = 1,682). Associations between working conditions, work-life conflict, and emotional exhaustion were also examined. Two recovery behaviors (affective rumination and detachment) were considered as potential moderators of associations between working conditions and emotional exhaustion. High levels of all work-life conflict dimensions were found which were related to working conditions and emotional exhaustion. Some evidence was found that higher rumination and lower detachment exacerbated the positive association between both job demands and aggression and emotional exhaustion. The implications of the findings for the wellbeing and professional functioning of prison officers are discussed, together with key areas for future research

Some Global Characteristics of the Galactic Globular Cluster System

The relations between the luminosities $M_{V}$, the metallicities $[Fe/H]$, the Galactocentric radii $R$, and the central concentration indices $c$ of Galactic globular clusters are discussed. It is found that the most luminous clusters rarely have collapsed cores. The reason for this might be that the core collapse time scales for such populous clusters are greater than the age of the Galaxy. Among those clusters, for which the structure has not been modified by core collapse, there is a correlation between central concentration and integrated luminosity, in the sense that the most luminous clusters have the strongest central concentration. The outermost region of the Galaxy with $R>10$ kpc was apparently not able to form metal-rich $([Fe/H]>-1.0)$ globular clusters, whereas such clusters (of which Ter 7 is the prototype) were able to form in some nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies. It is not yet clear how the popular hypothesis that globular clusters were initially formed with a single power law mass spectrum can be reconciled with the observation that both (1) Galactic globular clusters with $R>80$ kpc, and (2) the globulars associated with the Sagittarius dwarf, appear to have bi-modal luminosity functions.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur

Do the nearby BHB stars belong to the Thick Disk or the Halo?

We study the Milky Way region Z<3.0 kpc, where the thick disk and inner halo overlap, by using the kinematics of local blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars (within 1 kpc) and new samples of BHB stars and A-type stars from the Century Survey. We derive Galactic U,V,W velocities for these BHB and A-type star samples using proper motions from the NOMAD catalog. The mean velocities and the velocity dispersions of the BHB samples (Z<3 kpc) are characteristic of the halo, while those of the Century Survey A-type stars are characteristic of the thick disk. There is no evidence from our samples that the BHB stars rotate with the thick disk in the region Z<3 kpc. Nearly a third of the nearby local RR Lyrae stars have disk kinematics and are more metal-rich than [Fe/H]~-1. Only a few percent of the Century Survey BHB stars have these properties. Only one nearby BHB star (HD 130201) is likely to be such a disk star but selection based on high proper motions will have tended to exclude such stars from the local sample. The scale height derived from a sample of local RR Lyrae stars agrees with that of the Century Survey BHB stars. The local samples of BHB stars and metal-weak red giants are too incomplete for a similar comparison.Comment: 14 pages, accepted to A

The Metallicity Dependence of the Fourier Components of RR Lyrae Light Curves is the Oosterhoff/Arp/Preston Period Ratio Effect in Disguise

The correlation of particular Fourier components of the light curves of RR Lyrae variables with metallicity, discovered by Simon and later by Kovacs and his coworkers, is shown to have the same explanation as the period ratios (period shifts in log P) between RRab Lyrae variables that have the same colors, amplitudes, and light-curve shapes but different metallicities. A purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the model which predicts the period-metallicity relations is the mediating parameters of colors, amplitudes, and light-curve shapes also explains the Simon/Kovacs et al. correlation between period, Phi_31, and metallicity. The proof is made by demonstrating that the combination of the first and third phase terms in a Fourier decomposition of RRab light curves, called Phi_31 by Simon and Lee, varies monotonically across the RR Lyrae instability strip in the same way that amplitude, color, and rise time vary with period within the strip. The premise of the model is that if horizontal branches at the RR Lyrae strip are stacked in luminosity according to the metallicity, then there necessarily must be a log period shift between RR Lyraes with different metallicities at the same Phi_31 values. However, there are exceptions to the model. (...)Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in The A

The Kinematic Properties of BHB and RR Lyrae stars towards the Anticentre and the North Galactic Pole: The Transition between the Inner and the Outer Halo

We identify 51 blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars, 12 possible BHB stars and 58 RR Lyrae stars in Anticentre fields. Their selection does not depend on their kinematics. Light curves and ephemerides are given for 7 previously unknown RR Lyrae stars. All but 4 of the RR Lyrae stars are of Oosterhoff type I. Our selection criteria for BHB stars give results that agree with those used by Smith et al. (2010) and Ruhland et al. (2011). We use 5 methods to determine distances for the BHB stars and 3 methods for the RR Lyrae stars to get distances on a uniform scale. Absolute proper motions (largely derived from the GSCII and SDSS (DR7) databases) are given for these stars; radial velocities are given for 31 of the BHB stars and 37 of the RR Lyrae stars. Combining these data for BHB and RR Lyrae stars with those previously found in fields at the North Galactic Pole, we find that retrograde orbits dominate for galactocentric distances greater than 12.5 kpc. The majority of metal-poor stars in the solar neighbourhood are known to be concentrated in a Lperp vs. Lz angular momentum plot. We show that the ratio of the number of outliers to the number in the main concentration increases with galactocentric distance. The location of these outliers with Lperp and Lz shows that the halo BHB and RR Lyrae stars have more retrograde orbits and a more spherical distribution with increasing galactocentric distance. Six RR Lyrae stars are identified in the H99 group of outliers; the small spread in their [Fe/H] suggests that they could have come from a single globular cluster. Another group of outliers contains two pairs of RR Lyrae stars; the stars in each pair have similar properties.Comment: 40 pages, 19 figures, to be published in MNRA