Stafford Beer in memoriam – ‘an argument of change’ three decades on.

Purpose This paper is written in memory of the late Stafford Beer. The paper engages with only one dimension of the whole man: Stafford Beer as the diagnostician and prognostician of the social conditions that he so keenly observed. Design/methodology/approach The paper revisits a talk that Stafford Beer gave, over three decades ago, to administrators of the UK National Health Service (NHS). It uses the content of the talk, entitled “Health and Quiet Breathing”, to diagnose the problems that have been encountered in the development of NHS information management strategies. The paper concludes with some brief personal recollections of Stafford Beer as a friend and as a teacher. Findings The paper finds Stafford Beer’s managerial cybernetics to be a useful tool in understanding many of the problems that have beset NHS information management strategies: lack of operational research, problems in the commodification of information, financial scandal, and bureaucracy. In its examination of these issues, the paper recognises Stafford Beer’s status as a legatee of not only Norbert Wiener, but also of the great philosophers. Value The paper demonstrates how the problem-orientation of Stafford Beer’s managerial cybernetics continues to be fresh and relevant to today’s society and provides a brief portrait of him both as a friend and as a teacher

On the Equivalence of Geometric and Analytic K-Homology

We give a proof that the geometric K-homology theory for finite CW-complexes defined by Baum and Douglas is isomorphic to Kasparov's K-homology. The proof is a simplification of more elaborate arguments which deal with the geometric formulation of equivariant K-homology theory.Comment: 29 pages, v4: corrected definition of E in proof of Prop 3.

Imagining an ideal school for wellbeing: Locating student voice

ePublications@SCU is an electronic repository administered by Southern Cross University Library. Its goal is to capture and preserve the intellectual output of Southern Cross University authors and researchers, and to increase visibility and impact through open access to researchers around the world. For further information please contac

Dust in stationary and flowing plasmas

This thesis contains work of a computational and theoretical nature. The floating potential of dust grains immersed in plasma is investigated via particle-in-cell simulation for a range of parameters. In particular, work is focused on the charging of grains large with respect to the electron Debye length. Numerical fits are given for the floating potential of large grains in stationary and flowing plasma. A modified version of the well known orbit-motion-limited (OML) theory is developed for large dust grains. The modified OML theory is shown to be in good agreement with simulation. This modified theory is then adapted for use with flowing plasmas. In the case of flowing plasma, for low ion temperatures and flow speeds upwards of Mach 1, interesting and unexpected effects are seen in the potential and density distribution around dust grains, these are investigated and discussed. Finally, the application of this work is outlined with particular focus on dust grains in a tokamak plasma environment

Daniel Royot, l’Humour et la culture américaine

Daniel Royot, l’Humour et la culture américain

A qualitative study of parents' experiences using family support services: applying the concept of surface and depth

UK policy and practice endorses family support for child well-being. Achieving such support requires multi-agency approaches, that consider all aspects of parents’ and children’s lives and which offer practical, social and emotional help. The potential for services to make a positive impact on parents and their families will depend in part on the level and nature of engagement. In this paper a case is made for the application of the two-part ‘surface and depth’ concept for understanding how practitioners engage with families and how they might improve the chances of supporting sustainable differences for parents and families. To illustrate, qualitative data from a review of family centre support provided by a north of England local authority, are presented. The review was commissioned to explore why families often need to re-engage with intensive support services. Data are drawn from interviews with parents (n=18, recruited following a survey of all those registered with the service during April – May 2009) and discussions with family centre support workers (n=4) and following thematic analysis three dominant themes emerged: ‘resources available’, ‘staff approach’ and ‘real life’, were appraised in light of the ‘surface and depth’ concept. Much of the work with parents effectively dealt with pressing needs. This felt gratifying for both parent and worker and supported immediate service engagement. However, each noted that the more complex issues in parents’ lives went unchallenged and thus the sustainability of progress in terms of parenting practice was questionable. A ‘strengths focused’ approach by staff, that understood needs in the context of parents’ ‘real life’ circumstances was important to parent engagement. Thus, longer term benefits from family support requires practitioners to work with parents to problem solve immediate issues whilst also digging deeper to acknowledge and seek to resolve the more complex challenges parents face in their real lives

Topological tunneling with Dynamical overlap fermions

Tunneling between different topological sectors with dynamical chiral fermions is difficult because of a poor mass scaling of the pseudo-fermion estimate of the determinant. For small fermion masses it is virtually impossible using standard methods. However, by projecting out the small Wilson eigenvectors from the overlap operator, and treating the correction determinant exactly, we can significantly increase the rate of topological sector tunneling and reduce substantially the auto-correlation time. We present and compare a number of different approaches, and advocate a method which allows topological tunneling even at low mass with little addition to the computational cost.Comment: 17 pages; v2 as accepted in computer Physics Communication

Ramcat

Ramca