Why do people live apart together?

Interpretations of living apart together (LAT) have typically counter-posed 'new family form' versus 'continuist' perspectives. Recent surveys, however, construct LAT as a heterogeneous category that supports a 'qualified continuist' position – most people live apart as a response to practical circumstances or as a modern version of 'boy/girlfriend', although a minority represents something new in preferring to live apart more permanently. This article interrogates this conclusion by examining in depth why people live apart together, using a nationally representative survey from Britain and interview accounts from 2011. Our analysis shows that LAT as a category contains different sorts of relationship, with different needs and desires. While overall coupledom remains pivotal and cohabitation remains the goal for most, LAT allows people flexibility and room to manoeuvre in adapting couple intimacy to the demands of contemporary life. Hence, we suggest, LAT is both 'new' and a 'continuation'

Lithium-ion battery thermal-electrochemical model-based state estimation using orthogonal collocation and a modified extended Kalman filter

This paper investigates the state estimation of a high-fidelity spatially resolved thermal- electrochemical lithium-ion battery model commonly referred to as the pseudo two-dimensional model. The partial-differential algebraic equations (PDAEs) constituting the model are spatially discretised using Chebyshev orthogonal collocation enabling fast and accurate simulations up to high C-rates. This implementation of the pseudo-2D model is then used in combination with an extended Kalman filter algorithm for differential-algebraic equations to estimate the states of the model. The state estimation algorithm is able to rapidly recover the model states from current, voltage and temperature measurements. Results show that the error on the state estimate falls below 1 % in less than 200 s despite a 30 % error on battery initial state-of-charge and additive measurement noise with 10 mV and 0.5 K standard deviations.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Power Source

Zero gravity crystal growth Final report

Experimental device for growing crystals under zero gravity condition

Using shared goal setting to improve access and equity: a mixed methods study of the Good Goals intervention

Background: Access and equity in children’s therapy services may be improved by directing clinicians’ use of resources toward specific goals that are important to patients. A practice-change intervention (titled ‘Good Goals’) was designed to achieve this. This study investigated uptake, adoption, and possible effects of that intervention in children’s occupational therapy services. Methods: Mixed methods case studies (n = 3 services, including 46 therapists and 558 children) were conducted. The intervention was delivered over 25 weeks through face-to-face training, team workbooks, and ‘tools for change’. Data were collected before, during, and after the intervention on a range of factors using interviews, a focus group, case note analysis, routine data, document analysis, and researchers’ observations. Results: Factors related to uptake and adoptions were: mode of intervention delivery, competing demands on therapists’ time, and leadership by service manager. Service managers and therapists reported that the intervention: helped therapists establish a shared rationale for clinical decisions; increased clarity in service provision; and improved interactions with families and schools. During the study period, therapists’ behaviours changed: identifying goals, odds ratio 2.4 (95% CI 1.5 to 3.8); agreeing goals, 3.5 (2.4 to 5.1); evaluating progress, 2.0 (1.1 to 3.5). Children’s LoT decreased by two months [95% CI −8 to +4 months] across the services. Cost per therapist trained ranged from £1,003 to £1,277, depending upon service size and therapists’ salary bands. Conclusions: Good Goals is a promising quality improvement intervention that can be delivered and adopted in practice and may have benefits. Further research is required to evaluate its: (i) impact on patient outcomes, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and (ii) transferability to other clinical contexts

Living apart together: uncoupling intimacy and co-residence

Over a fifth of those normally classified as “single” are actually in a relationship but not living with their partner – which is 9% of adults in Britain. This sizeable minority has only recently been recognized by social researchers, even though people have long been having relationships without moving in together. In the context of increasing attention to the diversity of ways in which people live and love outside the conventional family, understanding “living apart together” (LAT) relationships is vital for policy-makers, practitioners and researchers who are concerned with couples, families, and individual well-being today. This briefing paper presents the findings of the most comprehensive study of living apart together in Britain to date

Patterns of Learning Object Reuse in the Connexions Repository

Doctoral Dissertation abstract: Since the term learning object was first published, there has been either an explicit or implicit expectation of reuse. There has also been a lot of speculation about why learning objects are, or are not, reused. This study quantitatively examined the actual amount and type of learning object use, to include reuse, modification, and translation, within a single open educational resource repositoryâConnexions. The results indicate that about a quarter of used objects are subsequently reused, modified, or translated. While these results are repository specific, they represent an important first step in providing an empirical evaluation of the frequency and some reasons for reuse, as well as establishing metrics and terminology for future studies

Unquenched QCD with Light Quarks

We present recent results in unquenched lattice QCD with two degenerate light sea quarks using the truncated determinant approximation (TDA). In the TDA the infrared modes contributing to the quark determinant are computed exactly up to some cutoff in quark off-shellness (typically 2$\Lambda_{QCD}$). This approach allows simulations to be performed at much lighter quark masses than possible with conventional hybrid MonteCarlo techniques. Results for the static energy and topological charge distributions are presented using a large ensemble generated on very coarse (6$^4$) but physically large lattices. Preliminary results are also reported for the static energy and meson spectrum on 10$^3$x20 lattices (lattice scale $a^{-1}$=1.15 GeV) at quark masses corresponding to pions of mass $\leq$ 200 MeV. Using multiboson simulation to compute the ultraviolet part of the quark determinant the TDA approach becomes an exact with essentially no increase in computational effort. Some preliminary results using this fully unquenched algorithm are presented.Comment: LateX, 39 pages, 16 eps figures, 1 ps figur