The Incidence and Correlates of Workplace Bullying in Ireland. ESRI WP148. 2002

This paper reports the results of the first nationally representative survey of the incidence of workplace bullying in the Republic of Ireland. The results are based on analysis of a sample of over 5,200 individuals in paid work outside the home. Overall, 7% of per persons in the work-place report that they experienced bullying in the 6 months preceding the survey. Bullying victimisation was far more common among employees than among the self-employed, and victimisation rates were higher among women than men. Almost 3% of those at work report that they experienced bullying either daily or several times per week during the reference period. Multivariate analyses of the incidence of bullying suggest that workplace characteristics are more influential than personal attributes in determining bullying victimisation

Does the operations of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Ghana align with the goals of primary health care? Perspectives of key stakeholders in northern Ghana

In 2005, the World Health Assembly (WHA) of the World Health Organization (WHO) urged member states to aim at achieving affordable universal coverage and access to key promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health interventions for all their citizens on the basis of equity and solidarity. Since then, some African countries, including Ghana, have taken steps to introduce national health insurance reforms as one of the key strategies towards achieving universal health coverage (UHC). The aim of this study was to get a better understanding of how Ghana's health insurance institutions interact with stakeholders and other health sector programmes in promoting primary health care (PHC). Specifically, the study identified the key areas of misalignment between the operations of the NHIS and that of PHC.; Using qualitative and survey methods, this study involved interviews with various stakeholders in six selected districts in the Upper East region of Ghana. The key stakeholders included the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), district coordinators of the National Health Insurance Schemes (NHIS), the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and District Health Management Teams (DHMTs) who supervise the district hospitals, health centers/clinics and the Community-based Health and Planning Services (CHPS) compounds as well as other public and private PHC providers. A stakeholders' workshop was organized to validate the preliminary results which provided a platform for stakeholders to deliberate on the key areas of misalignment especially, and to elicit additional information, ideas and responses, comments and recommendations from respondents for the achievement of the goals of UHC and PHC.; The key areas of misalignments identified during this pilot study included: delays in reimbursements of claims for services provided by health care providers, which serves as a disincentive for service providers to support the NHIS; inadequate coordination among stakeholders in PHC delivery; and inadequate funding for PHC, particularly on preventive and promotive services. Other areas are: the bypassing of PHC facilities due to lack of basic services at the PHC level such as laboratory services, as well as proximity to the district hospitals; and finally the lack of clear understanding of the national policy on PHC.; This study suggests that despite the progress that has been made since the establishment of the NHIS in Ghana, there are still huge gaps that need urgent attention to ensure that the goals of UHC and PHC are met. The key areas of misalignment identified in this study, particularly on the delays in reimbursements need to be taken seriously. It is also important for more dialogue between the NHIA and service providers to address key concerns in the implementation of the NHIS which is key to achieving UHC

Direct probe of the intrinsic charm content of the proton

Measurement of Z bosons produced in association with charm jets (Zc) in proton-proton collisions in the forward region provides a direct probe of a potential nonperturbative (intrinsic) charm component in the proton wave function. We provide a detailed study of the potential to measure Zc production at the LHCb experiment in Runs 2 and 3 of the LHC. The sensitivity to valence-like (sea-like) intrinsic charm is predicted to be ⟨x⟩[subscript IC] ≳ 0.3%(1%). The impact of intrinsic charm on Higgs production at the LHC, including Hc, is also discussed in detail.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant PHY-1306550

Small mammal deposits in archaeology : a taphonomic investigation of Tyto alba (barn owl) nesting and roosting sites.

Small mammals have often been utilised as indicators of past environments. Before palaeoecological assessments can be made, investigations into the origin and mode of deposition are carried out. Many small mammal accumulations are predator-derived, and in order to take account of predatory bias in these deposits, it is necessary to identify the predator. Several methodologies have catalogued patterns of bone modification from dietary waste of modern predators, for comparison with taphonomic features found on archaeological assemblages of small mammals. The majority of this research has concentrated only on the adult age range from these predators. However, data from owls have shown that younger individuals are often responsible for more extensive bone modification. To investigate this difference associated with the age of predators and bone modification, two modern Tyto alba roost samples and three modern Tyto alba nest samples were analysed to provide evidence of bone modification from adult and baby owls. Significant differences were found between these two groups, with higher rates of bone digestion associated with the nest samples, To test whether these taphonomic patterns could be identified in archaeological deposits, small mammal assemblages from four archaeological sites (The Old Vicarage at Tadcaster, Filey Roman Signal Station, Fox Hole Cave and Carsington Pasture Cave) were analysed. At one of these sites, bone digestion matched that of the Tyto alba nest sites. Bone digestion at the other three sites was higher than that recorded in this study for either Tyto alba adults or their young. This study has shown that it is possible to recognise owl nests in the archaeological record, and concludes that analysis of these assemblages can elucidate not only the origin of specific predator deposits, but can also be used to investigate the nature of human occupation, usage and abandonment of these sites

Unification-based constraints for statistical machine translation

Morphology and syntax have both received attention in statistical machine translation research, but they are usually treated independently and the historical emphasis on translation into English has meant that many morphosyntactic issues remain under-researched. Languages with richer morphologies pose additional problems and conventional approaches tend to perform poorly when either source or target language has rich morphology. In both computational and theoretical linguistics, feature structures together with the associated operation of unification have proven a powerful tool for modelling many morphosyntactic aspects of natural language. In this thesis, we propose a framework that extends a state-of-the-art syntax-based model with a feature structure lexicon and unification-based constraints on the target-side of the synchronous grammar. Whilst our framework is language-independent, we focus on problems in the translation of English to German, a language pair that has a high degree of syntactic reordering and rich target-side morphology. We first apply our approach to modelling agreement and case government phenomena. We use the lexicon to link surface form words with grammatical feature values, such as case, gender, and number, and we use constraints to enforce feature value identity for the words in agreement and government relations. We demonstrate improvements in translation quality of up to 0.5 BLEU over a strong baseline model. We then examine verbal complex production, another aspect of translation that requires the coordination of linguistic features over multiple words, often with long-range discontinuities. We develop a feature structure representation of verbal complex types, using constraint failure as an indicator of translation error and use this to automatically identify and quantify errors that occur in our baseline system. A manual analysis and classification of errors informs an extended version of the model that incorporates information derived from a parse of the source. We identify clause spans and use model features to encourage the generation of complete verbal complex types. We are able to improve accuracy as measured using precision and recall against values extracted from the reference test sets. Our framework allows for the incorporation of rich linguistic information and we present sketches of further applications that could be explored in future work

Measurement of the resonant and CP components in B¯0→J/ψπ+π− decays

The resonant structure of the reaction B¯0→J/ψπ+π− is studied using data from 3  fb−1 of integrated luminosity collected by the LHCb experiment, one third at 7 TeV center-of-mass energy and the remainder at 8 TeV. The invariant mass of the π+π− pair and three decay angular distributions are used to determine the fractions of the resonant and nonresonant components. Six interfering π+π− states, ρ(770), f0(500), f2(1270), ρ(1450), ω(782) and ρ(1700), are required to give a good description of invariant mass spectra and decay angular distributions. The positive and negative charge parity fractions of each of the resonant final states are determined. The f0(980) meson is not seen and the upper limit on its presence, compared with the observed f0(500) rate, is inconsistent with a model where these scalar mesons are formed from two quarks and two antiquarks (tetraquarks) at the eight standard deviation level. In the qq¯ model, the absolute value of the mixing angle between the f0(980) and the f0(500) scalar mesons is limited to be less than 17° at 90% confidence level.National Science Foundation (U.S.)United States. Dept. of Energ

Measurement of ψ(2S) polarisation in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV

The polarisation of prompt ψ(2S) mesons is measured by performing an angular analysis of ψ(2S) → μ[superscript +]μ[superscript −] decays using proton-proton collision data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb[superscript −1], collected by the LHCb detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The polarisation is measured in bins of transverse momentum p[subscript T] and rapidity y in the kinematic region 3.5 < p[subscript T] < 15 GeV/c and \(2.0 , and is compared to theoretical models. No significant polarisation is observed.National Science Foundation (U.S.

Search for long-lived particles decaying to jet pairs

A search is presented for long-lived particles with a mass between 25 and 50 GeV/c[superscript 2] and a lifetime between 1 and 200 ps in a sample of proton–proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.62 fb[superscript −1], collected by the LHCb detector. The particles are assumed to be pair-produced by the decay of a standard model-like Higgs boson. The experimental signature of the long-lived particle is a displaced vertex with two associated jets. No excess above the background is observed and limits are set on the production cross-section as a function of the long-lived particle mass and lifetime.National Science Foundation (U.S.

Measurement of the inelastic pp cross-section at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV

The cross-section for inelastic proton-proton collisions, with at least one prompt long-lived charged particle of transverse momentum p [subscript T] > 0.2GeV/c in the pseudorapidity range 2.0 < η < 4.5, is measured by the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV. The cross-section in this kinematic range is determined to be σ [acc over inel] = 55.0 ± 2.4 mb with an experimental uncertainty that is dominated by systematic contributions. Extrapolation to the full phase space, using Pythia 6, yields σ [subscript inel] = 66.9 ± 2.9 ± 4.4 mb, where the first uncertainty is experimental and the second is due to the extrapolation.National Science Foundation (U.S.

Measurement of charged particle multiplicities and densities in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV in the forward region

Charged particle multiplicities are studied in proton–proton collisions in the forward region at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7 TeV with data collected by the LHCb detector. The forward spectrometer allows access to a kinematic range of 2.0 < η < 4.8 in pseudorapidity, momenta greater than 2 GeV/ c and transverse momenta greater than 0.2 GeV/ c. The measurements are performed using events with at least one charged particle in the kinematic acceptance. The results are presented as functions of pseudorapidity and transverse momentum and are compared to predictions from several Monte Carlo event generators.National Science Foundation (U.S.