Migrant workers in Liverpool: A study of A8 and A2 nationals

This study focuses on the needs and experiences of Central and Eastern European migrants living and working in Liverpool. It was funded by Liverpool City Council and formed the evidence base for their successful application for Migration Impact Funding

‘Doing research’ with gypsy-travellers in England: reflections on experience and practice

In order to bring the lives of Gypsy–Travellers in line with the sustainable communities’ agenda, there is now a duty for local planning authorities in England to assess the accommodation and related needs of Gypsy–Travellers. As such, there has been an increase in research, which aims to ‘find out’ more about these communities. This article explores some of the issues that researchers should consider when carrying out research with Gypsy– Travellers. It focuses specifically on issues around identifying and engaging with members of the Gypsy and Traveller communities, offering some strategies and solutions based on the experiences of the authors and other researchers

A study of A8 and A2 migrants in Nottingham

The research was commissioned by Nottingham City Council and One Nottingham in August 2008 and was conducted by a team of researchers from the Salford Housing & Urban Studies Unit at the University of Salford. The study was greatly aided by research support from Nottingham City Council Children’s Services Asylum Seeker/Refugee Support Team, as well as a number of community interviewers. The project was managed by a steering group composed of officers representing Nottingham City Council, One Nottingham, Nottingham City Homes, NHS Nottingham City, Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service, Nottinghamshire Police and Basic Educational Guidance in Nottinghamshire (BEGIN). The main objective of this research was to explore the needs and experiences of A8 and A2 migrants living and working in Nottingham

Investigating the Rotational Phase of Stellar Flares on M dwarfs Using K2 Short Cadence Data

We present an analysis of K2 short cadence data of 34 M dwarfs which have spectral types in the range M0 - L1. Of these stars, 31 showed flares with a duration between $\sim$10-90 min. Using distances obtained from Gaia DR2 parallaxes, we determined the energy of the flares to be in the range $\sim1.2\times10^{29}-6\times10^{34}$ erg. In agreement with previous studies we find rapidly rotating stars tend to show more flares, with evidence for a decline in activity in stars with rotation periods longer than $\sim$10 days. The rotational modulation seen in M dwarf stars is widely considered to result from a starspot which rotates in and out of view. Flux minimum is therefore the rotation phase where we view the main starspot close to the stellar disk center. Surprisingly, having determined the rotational phase of each flare in our study we find none show any preference for rotational phase. We outline three scenarios which could account for this unexpected finding. The relationship between rotation phase and flare rate will be explored further using data from wide surveys such as NGTS and TESS.Comment: Accepted main Journal MNRA

The multi-thermal and multi-stranded nature of coronal rain

In this work, we analyse coordinated observations spanning chromospheric, TR and coronal temperatures at very high resolution which reveal essential characteristics of thermally unstable plasmas. Coronal rain is found to be a highly multi-thermal phenomenon with a high degree of co-spatiality in the multi-wavelength emission. EUV darkening and quasi-periodic intensity variations are found to be strongly correlated to coronal rain showers. Progressive cooling of coronal rain is observed, leading to a height dependence of the emission. A fast-slow two-step catastrophic cooling progression is found, which may reflect the transition to optically thick plasma states. The intermittent and clumpy appearance of coronal rain at coronal heights becomes more continuous and persistent at chromospheric heights just before impact, mainly due to a funnel effect from the observed expansion of the magnetic field. Strong density inhomogeneities on spatial scales of 0.2"-0.5" are found, in which TR to chromospheric temperature transition occurs at the lowest detectable scales. The shape of the distribution of coronal rain widths is found to be independent of temperature with peaks close to the resolution limit of each telescope, ranging from 0.2" to 0.8". However we find a sharp increase of clump numbers at the coolest wavelengths and especially at higher resolution, suggesting that the bulk of the rain distribution remains undetected. Rain clumps appear organised in strands in both chromospheric and TR temperatures, suggesting an important role of thermal instability in the shaping of fundamental loop substructure. We further find structure reminiscent of the MHD thermal mode. Rain core densities are estimated to vary between 2x10^{10} cm^{-3} and 2.5x10^{11} cm^{-3} leading to significant downward mass fluxes per loop of 1-5x10^{9} g s^{-1}, suggesting a major role in the chromosphere-corona mass cycle.Comment: Abstract is only short version. See paper for full. Countless pages, figures (and movies, but not included here). Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Unresolved fine-scale structure in solar coronal loop-tops

New and advanced space-based observing facilities continue to lower the resolution limit and detect solar coronal loops in greater detail. We continue to discover even finer substructures within coronal loop cross-sections, in order to understand the nature of the solar corona. Here, we push this lower limit further to search for the finest coronal loop substructures, through taking advantage of the resolving power of the Swedish 1 m Solar Telescope/CRisp Imaging Spectro-Polarimeter (CRISP), together with co-observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Image Assembly (AIA). High-resolution imaging of the chromospheric Hα 656.28 nm spectral line core and wings can, under certain circumstances, allow one to deduce the topology of the local magnetic environment of the solar atmosphere where its observed. Here, we study post-flare coronal loops, which become filled with evaporated chromosphere that rapidly condenses into chromospheric clumps of plasma (detectable in Hα) known as a coronal rain, to investigate their fine-scale structure. We identify, through analysis of three data sets, large-scale catastrophic cooling in coronal loop-tops and the existence of multi-thermal, multi-stranded substructures. Many cool strands even extend fully intact from loop-top to footpoint. We discover that coronal loop fine-scale strands can appear bunched with as many as eight parallel strands within an AIA coronal loop cross-section. The strand number density versus cross-sectional width distribution, as detected by CRISP within AIA-defined coronal loops, most likely peaks at well below 100 km, and currently, 69% of the substructure strands are statistically unresolved in AIA coronal loops.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Explosive events in active region observed by IRIS and SST/CRISP

Transition-region explosive events (EEs) are characterized by non-Gaussian line profiles with enhanced wings at Doppler velocities of 50–150 km s−1. They are believed to be the signature of solar phenomena that are one of the main contributors to coronal heating. The aim of this study is to investigate the link of EEs to dynamic phenomena in the transition region and chromosphere in an active region. We analyse observations simultaneously taken by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) in the Si iv 1394 Å line and the slit-jaw (SJ) 1400 Å images, and the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope in the Hα line. In total 24 events were found. They are associated with small-scale loop brightenings in SJ 1400 Å images. Only four events show a counterpart in the Hα−35 km s−1 and Hα+35 km s−1 images. Two of them represent brightenings in the conjunction region of several loops that are also related to a bright region (granular lane) in the Hα−35 km s−1 and Hα+35 km s−1 images. 16 are general loop brightenings that do not show any discernible response in the Hα images. Six EEs appear as propagating loop brightenings, from which two are associated with dark jet-like features clearly seen in the Hα−35 km s−1 images. We found that chromospheric events with jet-like appearance seen in the wings of the Hα line can trigger EEs in the transition region and in this case the IRIS Si iv 1394 Å line profiles are seeded with absorption components resulting from Fe ii and Ni ii. Our study indicates that EEs occurring in active regions have mostly upper-chromosphere/transition-region origin. We suggest that magnetic reconnection resulting from the braidings of small-scale transition region loops is one of the possible mechanisms of energy release that are responsible for the EEs reported in this paper

The multi-thermal and multi-stranded nature of coronal rain

We analyze coordinated observations of coronal rain in loops, spanning chromospheric, transition region (TR), and coronal temperatures with sub-arcsecond spatial resolution. Coronal rain is found to be a highly multithermal phenomenon with a high degree of co-spatiality in the multi-wavelength emission. EUV darkening and quasi-periodic intensity variations are found to be strongly correlated with coronal rain showers. Progressive cooling of coronal rain is observed, leading to a height dependence of the emission. A fast-slow two-step catastrophic cooling progression is found, which may reflect the transition to optically thick plasma states. The intermittent and clumpy appearance of coronal rain at coronal heights becomes more continuous and persistent at chromospheric heights just before impact, mainly due to a funnel effect from the observed expansion of the magnetic field. Strong density inhomogeneities of 0.″2-0.″5 are found, in which a transition from temperatures of 105 to 104 K occurs. The 0.″2-0.″8 width of the distribution of coronal rain is found to be independent of temperature. The sharp increase in the number of clumps at the coolest temperatures, especially at higher resolution, suggests that the bulk distribution of the rain remains undetected. Rain clumps appear organized in strands in both chromospheric and TR temperatures. We further find structure reminiscent of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) thermal mode (also known as entropy mode), thereby suggesting an important role of thermal instability in shaping the basic loop substructure. Rain core densities are estimated to vary between 2 × 1010 and 2.5 × 1011cm−3, leading to significant downward mass fluxes per loop of 1–5 × 109 g s−1, thus suggesting a major role in the chromosphere-corona mass cycle.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Performance, Politics and Media: How the 2010 British General Election leadership debates generated ‘talk’ amongst the electorate.

During the British General Election 2010 a major innovation was introduced in part to improve engagement: a series of three live televised leadership debates took place where the leader of each of the three main parties, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative, answered questions posed by members of the public and subsequently debated issues pertinent to the questions. In this study we consider these potentially ground breaking debates as the kind of event that was likely to generate discussion. We investigate various aspects of the ‘talk’ that emerged as a result of watching the debates. As an exploratory study concerned with situated accounts of the participants experiences we take an interpretive perspective. In this paper we outline the meta-narratives (of talk) associated with the viewing of the leadership debates that were identified, concluding our analysis by suggesting that putting a live debate on television and promoting and positioning it as a major innovation is likely to mean that is how the audience will make sense of it – as a media event