Addressing ethnicity in social care research

This article surveys recent developments in relation to the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnicdisadvantage in social policy research and practice, with a focus on social care. While therehas been limited increase in attention to ethnicity within general policy discussion andincreasing sophistication within specialist debates, advances in theory and methodology havelargely failed to penetrate the research mainstream, let alone policy or practice. This is along-standing problem. We advocate more focussed consideration of ethnicity and ethnicdisadvantage at all levels. Failure to do so creates the risk of social policy research being leftbehind in understanding rapid changes in ethnic minority demographics and patterns of migration, with increasing disadvantage to minorities

The Management of Oppression: Focussing on relationships between refugees and the British state in Newcastle upon Tyne

This thesis uses an empirically informed Marxist analysis to investigate the role of interests, consciousness and unpaid activity of refugees and asylum seekers in shaping their relationships with the British state, including case studies from the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. I argue that antagonism between the British state and refugees from economically underdeveloped countries is rooted in capitalist relations of production, with Britain occupying an imperialist position. The thesis advances a novel perspective on ‘social capital’, understood as purposive and sustained forms of non-contractual engagement, with implicit norms and values. Social capital is ‘unmasked’ as a way of understanding and intervening in relations at an individual level, in order to influence change at a social level. I argue that the tendency of recent Labour governments’ policy has been to break up social capital formations among refugees which are seen as threatening, whilst actively cultivating formations which engage refugees on an individual basis, as part of managing their oppression. The thesis identifies contradictions and possibilities for resistance within this process, such as simultaneous tendencies for volunteering to contribute to more collective forms of identity and more individualised forms of action. The multi-level research design explores processes connecting the individual to the global. Empirical data is used to interrogate and develop a theoretical framework which is rooted in classical Marxism, draws on insights developed within qualitative social research methods and anti-oppressive practice, and engages creatively with challenges from post-modernism and feminism. The methodology combines: theoretical research; secondary statistics and literature at an international level; interviews with key participants and archival research on local histories of migration and settlement, including three organisational case studies; four contemporary organisational case studies; and individual volunteer case studies based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with eighteen refugees and asylum seekers

Lower income students and the ‘double deficit’ of part-time work:undergraduate experiences of finance, studying and employability

This paper explores how the various pressures of finance, employability and part-time work are experienced by undergraduates studying in an English Red Brick University. Drawing on the results of a 3-year qualitative study that followed 40 students throughout their 3 years of studies (n₁ = 40, n₂ = 40, n₃ = 38, ntotal = 118), the paper details three dimensions by which students understood their part-time employment experiences: the characteristics of employment types; motivations for employment and the challenges of shaping their employment experiences around their studies. It is argued that the current shortfalls in the student budget and the pressures of the employability agenda may actually serve to further disadvantage the lower income groups in the form of a ‘double deficit’. Not only are discrepancies between income and expenditure likely to mean that additional monies are necessary to study for a degree, the resulting need for part-time employment is also likely to constrain both degree outcome and capacity to enhance skills necessary for ‘employability’

Sonification Aesthetics and Listening for Network Situational Awareness

This paper looks at the problem of using sonification to enable network administrators to maintaining situational awareness about their network environment. Network environments generate a lot of data and the need for continuous monitoring means that sonification systems must be designed in such a way as to maximise acceptance while minimising annoyance and listener fatigue. It will be argued that solutions based on the concept of the soundscape offer an ecological advantage over other sonification designs.Comment: Workshop paper presented at SoniHED --- Conference on Sonification of Health and Environmental Data, York, UK, 12 September, 201

Temporal tensions: EU citizen migrants, asylum seekers and refugees navigating dominant temporalities of work in England

This article considers the role of temporality in the differential inclusion of migrants. In order to do this we draw on research which examined the working lives of a diverse group of new migrants in North East England: Eastern European migrants arriving from 2004 and asylum seekers and refugees arriving from 1999. In so doing we emphasise both distinct and shared experiences, related to immigration status but also a range of other dimensions of identity. We specifically consider how dominant temporalities regulate the lives of new migrants through degrees, periods and moments of acceleration/deceleration. The paper illustrates the ways in which dominant temporalities control access and non-access to particular, often precarious forms of work – but also how migrants attempt to navigate such restrictions through their own use and constructions of time. We explore this in relation to three 'phases' of time. Firstly, through experiences of the UK asylum system and work prohibition. Secondly for a broader group of participants we explore the speeding up and slowing down of transitions to and progression within work. Lastly, we consider how participants experience everyday temporal tensions between paid employment and unpaid care. Across these phases we suggest that dominant orderings of time and the narratives which make sense of these, represent non-simultaneous temporalities that do not neatly map onto each other

New high-resolution age data from the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary indicate rapid, ecologically driven onset of the Cambrian explosion

The replacement of the late Precambrian Ediacaran biota by morphologically disparate animals at the beginning of the Phanerozoic was a key event in the history of life on Earth, the mechanisms and the timescales of which are not entirely understood. A composite section in Namibia providing biostratigraphic and chemostratigraphic data bracketed by radiometric dating constrains the Ediacaran–Cambrian boundary to 538.6–538.8 Ma, more than 2 Ma younger than previously assumed. The U–Pb-CA-ID TIMS zircon ages demonstrate an ultrashort time frame for the LAD of the Ediacaran biota to the FAD of a complex, burrowing Phanerozoic biota represented by trace fossils to a 410 ka time window of 538.99±0.21 Ma to 538.58±0.19 Ma. The extremely short duration of the faunal transition from Ediacaran to Cambrian biota within less than 410 ka supports models of ecological cascades that followed the evolutionary breakthrough of increased mobility at the beginning of the Phanerozoic

Exercise training reduces the acute physiological severity of post-menopausal hot flushes.

A hot-flush is characterised by feelings of intense heat, profuse elevations in cutaneous vasodilation and sweating, and reduced brain blood flow. Exercise training reduces self-reported hot-flush severity, but underpinning physiological data are lacking. We hypothesised that exercise training attenuates the changes in cutaneous vasodilation, sweat rate and cerebral blood flow during a hot flush. In a preference trial, 18 symptomatic post-menopausal women underwent a passive heat stress to induce hot-flushes at baseline and follow-up. Fourteen participants opted for a 16-week moderate intensity supervised exercise intervention, while 7 participants opted for control. Sweat rate, cutaneous vasodilation, blood pressure, heart rate and middle cerebral artery velocity (MCAv) were measured during the hot-flushes. Data were binned into eight equal segments, each representing 12.5% of hot flush duration. Weekly self-reported frequency and severity of hot flushes were also recorded at baseline and follow-up. Following training, mean hot-flush sweat rate decreased by 0.04 mg·cm2 ·min-1 at the chest (95% CI: 0.02-0.06, P = 0.01) and by 0.03 mg·cm2 ·min-1 (0.02-0.05, P = 0.03) at the forearm, compared with negligible changes in control. Training also mediated reductions in cutaneous vasodilation by 9% (6-12) at the chest and by 7% (4-9) at forearm (P≤0.05). Training attenuated hot flush MCAv by 3.4 cm/s (0.7-5.1, P = 0.04) compared with negligible changes in control. Exercise training reduced the self-reported severity of hot-flush by 109 arbitrary units (80-121, P<0.001). These data indicate that exercise training leads to parallel reductions in hot-flush severity and within-flush changes in cutaneous vasodilation, sweating and cerebral blood flo

Quantitative analysis of calf mortality in Great Britain

National bodies in Great Britain (GB) have expressed concern over young stock health and welfare and identified calf survival as a priority; however, no national data have been available to quantify mortality rates. The aim of this study was to quantify the temporal incidence rate, distributional features, and factors affecting variation in mortality rates in calves in GB since 2011. The purpose was to provide information to national stakeholder groups to inform resource allocation both for knowledge exchange and future research. Cattle birth and death registrations from the national British Cattle Movement Service were analyzed to determine rates of both slaughter and on-farm mortality. The number of births and deaths registered between 2011 and 2018 within GB were 21.2 and 21.6 million, respectively. Of the 3.3 million on-farm deaths, 1.8 million occurred before 24 mo of age (54%) and 818,845 (25%) happened within the first 3 mo of age. The on-farm mortality rate was 3.87% by 3 mo of age, remained relatively stable over time, and was higher for male calves (4.32%) than female calves (3.45%). Dairy calves experience higher on farm mortality rates than nondairy (beef) calves in the first 3 mo of life, with 6.00 and 2.86% mortality rates, respectively. The 0- to 3-mo death rate at slaughterhouse for male dairy calves has increased from 17.40% in 2011 to 26.16% in 2018, and has remained low ( [less than] 0.5%) for female dairy calves and beef calves of both sexes. Multivariate adaptive regression spline models were able to explain a large degree of the variation in mortality rates (coefficient of determination = 96%). Mean monthly environmental temperature and month of birth appeared to play an important role in neonatal on-farm mortality rates, with increased temperatures significantly reducing mortality rates. Taking the optimal month of birth and environmental temperature as indicators of the best possible environmental conditions, maintaining these conditions throughout the year would be expected to result in a reduction in annual 0- to 3-mo mortality of 37,571 deaths per year, with an estimated economic saving of around £11.6 million (USD $15.3 million) per annum. National cattle registers have great potential for monitoring trends in calf mortality and can provide valuable insights to the cattle industry. Environmental conditions play a significant role in calf mortality rates and further research is needed to explore how to optimize conditions to reduce calf mortality rates in GB