SN 2018fif: The explosion of a large red supergiant discovered in its infancy by the Zwicky transient facility

High-cadence transient surveys are able to capture supernovae closer to their first light than ever before. Applying analytical models to such early emission, we can constrain the progenitor stars’ properties. In this paper, we present observations of SN 2018fif (ZTF 18abokyfk). The supernova was discovered close to first light and monitored by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Early spectroscopic observations suggest that the progenitor of SN 2018fif was surrounded by relatively small amounts of circumstellar material compared to all previous cases. This particularity, coupled with the high-cadence multiple-band coverage, makes it a good candidate to investigate using shock-cooling models. We employ the SOPRANOS code, an implementation of the model by Sapir & Waxman and its extension to early times by Morag et al. Compared with previous implementations, SOPRANOS has the advantage of including a careful account of the limited temporal validity domain of the shock-cooling model as well as allowing usage of the entirety of the early UV data. We find that the progenitor of SN 2018fif was a large red supergiant with a radius of R = 744.0-+128.0183.0 R☉ and an ejected mass of Mej = 9.3-+5.80.4 M☉. Our model also gives information on the explosion epoch, the progenitor’s inner structure, the shock velocity, and the extinction. The distribution of radii is double-peaked, with smaller radii corresponding to lower values of the extinction, earlier recombination times, and a better match to the early UV data. If these correlations persist in future objects, denser spectroscopic monitoring constraining the time of recombination, as well as accurate UV observations (e.g., with ULTRASAT), will help break the extinction/radius degeneracy and independently determine both

Improving health system responses when patients are harmed: a protocol for a multistage mixed-methods study

Introduction: At least 10% of hospital admissions in high-income countries, including Australia, are associated with patient safety incidents, which contribute to patient harm (‘adverse events’). When a patient is seriously harmed, an investigation or review is undertaken to reduce the risk of further incidents occurring. Despite 20 years of investigations into adverse events in healthcare, few evaluations provide evidence of their quality and effectiveness in reducing preventable harm. This study aims to develop consistent, informed and robust best practice guidance, at state and national levels, that will improve the response, learning and health system improvements arising from adverse events. Methods and analysis: The setting will be healthcare organisations in Australian public health systems in the states of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. We will apply a multistage mixed-methods research design with evaluation and in-situ feasibility testing. This will include literature reviews (stage 1), an assessment of the quality of 300 adverse event investigation reports from participating hospitals (stage 2), and a policy/procedure document review from participating hospitals (stage 3) as well as focus groups and interviews on perspectives and experiences of investigations with healthcare staff and consumers (stage 4). After triangulating results from stages 1–4, we will then codesign tools and guidance for the conduct of investigations with staff and consumers (stage 5) and conduct feasibility testing on the guidance (stage 6). Participants will include healthcare safety systems policymakers and staff (n=120–255) who commission, undertake or review investigations and consumers (n=20–32) who have been impacted by adverse events. Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval has been granted by the Northern Sydney Local Health District Human Research Ethics Committee (2023/ETH02007 and 2023/ETH02341). The research findings will be incorporated into best practice guidance, published in international and national journals and disseminated through conferences

Beyond ‘Blue-Collar Professionalism’ : Continuity and Change in the Professionalization of Uniformed Emergency Services Work

The sociology of professions has so far had limited connections to emergency services occupations. Research on emergency occupations tends to focus on workplace culture and identity, often emphasizing continuity rather than change. Police officers, firefighters and paramedics have their historical roots in manual, technical or ‘semi-professional’ occupations and their working lives still bear many of the hallmarks of blue-collar, uniformed ‘street-level’ work. But uniformed emergency services - like many other occupations – are increasingly undergoing processes of ‘professionalization’. The organizations in which they are employed and the fields in which they work have undergone significant change and disruption, calling into question the core features, cultures and duties of these occupations. This paper argues that sociology of work on emergency services could be helpfully brought into closer contact with the sociology of professions in order to better understand these changes. It suggests four broad empirical and conceptual domains where meaningful connections can be made between these literatures, namely: leadership and authority; organizational goals and objectives; professional identities; and ‘extreme’ work. Emergency services are evolving in complex directions while retaining certain long-standing and entrenched features. Studying emergency occupations as professions also sheds new light on the changing nature of ‘professionalism’ itself

Political Theory Rediscovers Public Administration

Political theory is rediscovering the colossus of public administration—the vast public service and regulatory bureaucracies and their countless employees and extensions that conduct the daily business of government. This review explains how something so visible could ever have fallen from view, and surveys four burgeoning areas of research. These pertain to the legitimacy of public administration, to the articulation of standards of good government distinct from good public policy, to the analysis of how the moral agency of bureaucrats is implicated and undermined by the everyday operation of bureaucratic agencies, and to how we should conceptualize the state when we apprehend it through the seemingly banal routines of administration. What emerges from this body of work is a picture of the executive bureaucracy as an object of normative, critical, and conceptual inquiry on a par with the other two branches of government, the legislature and the judiciary. </jats:p

Stress, cognitive functioning, mind wandering, and mindfulness: A latent variable examination

Stress is a common facet of daily life. Unfortunately, a clear pattern of a negative impact of stress on a variety of cognitive functions has emerged. For instance, psychological stress has been shown to impair working memory (Banks & Boals, 2016; Klein & Boals, 2001) and perceived stress and PTSD symptoms have been linked to poorer self-report everyday cognitive functioning (Boals & Banks, 2012). Mind wandering—or thoughts unrelated to the current task —increases as a result of daily stressors and increases in mind wandering lead to decreases in cognitive functioning (Banks & Boals, 2016). Mindfulness meditation training improves working memory task performance and reduces negative affect (Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010). Therefore, mindfulness may alter both perceived stress and self-report cognitive functioning. One main limitation to prior work is the reliance on single measures of critical constructs. The current study addressed this concern by modeling the relationships between stress, self-reported cognitive functioning, mindfulness, and mind wandering using a latent variable approach. Participants completed three self-report measures of each latent construct of interest: cognitive functioning, stress, mind wandering, and mindfulness. Structural equation model analysis suggested a well-fitting model with four latent variables,χ2 = 129.61, p \u3c .0001, RMSEA= 0.105, CFI= 0.938. Consistent with our hypotheses, stress was negatively related to cognitive functioning, whereas mindfulness was positively related to cognitive functioning and negatively related to stress. Stress was predictive of mind wandering, but in contrast to previous research, mind wandering was not negatively linked to cognitive functioning

When the State Meets the Street: Moral Agency and Discretionary Power at the Frontlines of Public Service

When citizens interact with the state, they encounter street-level bureaucrats—the social service workers, police officers, counselors and educators responsible for implementing public policy and enforcing the law. These bureaucrats are caught in a predicament. The proper implementation of public policy depends on their capacity to act as sensible moral agents who can interpret vague directives, strike compromises between conflicting values, and adopt appropriate demeanors when interacting with clients. And yet, these bureaucrats must operate in a working environment that is notoriously challenging, and that tends, over time, to dampen their moral sensibility and to truncate their understanding of their role and responsibilities. While public bureaucracies depend on the moral agency of street-level bureaucrats, they proceed, at the same time, to undermine that very agency. My dissertation explores the factors that lead to this predicament, and the remedies that can be offered to it. Instead of focusing on the moment of ethical decision-making, as organizational ethicists and moral philosophers frequently do, I put the accent on the moral dispositions that street-level bureaucrats develop while on the job—on how they understand themselves, how they perceive and interpret moral situations, and how they weigh various moral considerations. By shifting the object of analysis from decisions to dispositions, I bring into focus a family of pathological dispositions that are distinct from the well-known problems of corruption, rule-breaking, and abuse of discretion. These dispositions are troubling in a special sense: not because they are departures from the role that street-level bureaucrats are meant to play, but because they are reductive takes on it. I explain why street-level bureaucrats are frequently drawn towards reductive dispositions, and argue that such a drift can only be counteracted through a combination of individual practices, group-level dynamics, and managerial policies. On each of these three fronts—individual, collegial, and managerial—the dissertation aims to shed light on the conditions that make moral agency possible in bureaucracy. It defends an approach to individual moral formation that departs from the traditional emphasis on autonomy and virtue, and that underscores the importance of situationally-specific practices of the self. It provides an account of how informal exchanges amongst peers can serve to anchor a model of accountability that is more flexible than those that rely on hierarchy and professional communities. It claims, finally, that managers are not simply responsible for designing incentive structures, but also for shaping the range of moral personalities that are available to their subordinates. Taken together, these arguments show how we can integrate the moral agency of frontline bureaucrats into a compelling normative theory of the state, and why we need to do so. Throughout, the dissertation situates normative questions in a richly textured account of bureaucratic life that draws extensively on scholarship from across the social sciences, on literary and filmic representations of bureaucracy, and on eight months of participant observation that I conducted in an anti-poverty agency in Boston.Governmen

Des pratiques d'enseignement de l'algèbre élémentaire aux apprentissages des élèves - Cas des expressions algébriques en EB7 (5e) et EB8 (4e) au Liban.

This research is a contribution to the study of the effects of teaching on the learning of algebra, including algebraic expressions, as soon as it is introduced in grade 7 (EB7) and grade 8 (EB8).We compare the case of regular education with that of experimental teaching where algebraic knowledge is taught more as an adapted tool for problem solving.We refer to the anthropological theory of didactics (Chevallard, 1992) to analyze the algebraic content used in the different teaching methods, and to the didactic and ergonomic double approach (Robert and Rogalski, 2002) of mathematical teaching practices to analyze the components mediative and cognitive practices observed.The results are drawn on five mathematics teachers from two schools in Beirut, nine classes of grade 7 and grade and their 263 students whose algebraic learning was assessed.This research shows a positive impact of the experimental device on student learning, and this in all classes observed. It also shows a variability of this impact, depending on the teacher, which is due to the mediating dimension of their practice. Specifically to the importance they attach to the procedures and knowledge of their students to adjust their teaching by didactic regulations.Cette recherche est une contribution à l’étude des effets de l’enseignement sur l’apprentissage de l’algèbre, notamment des expressions algébriques, dès son introduction en EB7 (5e) et EB8 (4e). Nous comparons le cas de l’enseignement ordinaire et celui d’un enseignement expérimental où le savoir algébrique est davantage enseigné comme un outil adapté pour résoudre des problèmes. Nous nous référons à la théorie anthropologique du didactique (Chevallard, 1992) pour analyser le contenu algébrique proposé dans les différents enseignements et à la double approche didactique et ergonomique (Robert et Rogalski, 2002) des pratiques d’enseignement des mathématiques pour analyser les composantes médiative et cognitive des pratiques observées.Les résultats concernent cinq enseignants de mathématiques de deux établissements scolaires de Beyrouth, neuf classes d’EB7 et EB8 et leurs 263 élèves dont les apprentissages algébriques ont été évalués.Cette recherche montre un impact positif du dispositif expérimental sur les apprentissages des élèves, et cela dans toutes les classes observées. Elle montre aussi une variabilité de cet impact selon les enseignants qui tient à la dimension médiative de leur pratique, et plus précisément à l’importance qu’ils accordent aux procédures et aux connaissances de leurs élèves pour ajuster leur enseignement par des régulations didactiques