The Experiences of Restorative Justice Practices for Those Attending an Alternative Provision: A Thematic Analysis

Restorative practices can be traced back to the Maori communities in New Zealand and have their historical and cultural origins in those communities. Restorative practices were then applied in the criminal justice sector throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and a decade later in the education sector. The argued benefit of restorative practice in schools is that it can help to shift the focus from ‘zero-tolerance’ approaches to less punitive approaches, providing young people with the opportunity to learn and develop skills when conflict occurs. Current research in the UK tends to focus on the evaluation of restorative practices, with a focus on its effect on reducing exclusions and other sanctions. There is good evidence that restorative practices are successful in reducing exclusions and that it is a good alternative to the ‘zero-tolerance’ behaviour policies in mainstream schools. However, there is a distinct lack of research being carried out in specialist settings such as pupil referral units and alternative provisions. Additionally, much of the qualitative research has focussed more on the adult’s perceptions and does not give a lot of detail on young people’s experiences of restorative practices. I conducted my research in an alternative provision with six young people who had experienced at least one restorative meeting. I gathered the young people’s views through semi-structured interviews and analysed the transcripts using thematic analysis. Three major themes were identified, with several subthemes. Theme one highlighted that the young people had knowledge of restorative meetings, but that their understanding of the purpose of these meetings deviated from the underpinnings of restorative practices. Similarly, theme two showed that the young people were broadly critical of the process and spoke about areas such as equality, feelings of disempowerment and the application of restorative practice. Theme three demonstrated they had both positive and negative reflections on their previous education setting. These themes raise questions on how restorative practice is being used in this setting and how the young people have interpreted and responded to its use. The findings suggest that, at least in this setting, young people’s experience of restorative practice is not always being applied in a way that aligns with its underlying principles. The potential implications of this misalignment are discussed and suggestions for evidence-based practice are outlined

Observer techniques for estimating the state-of-charge and state-of-health of VRLABs for hybrid electric vehicles

The paper describes the application of observer-based state-estimation techniques for the real-time prediction of state-of-charge (SoC) and state-of-health (SoH) of lead-acid cells. Specifically, an approach based on the well-known Kalman filter, is employed, to estimate SoC, and the subsequent use of the EKF to accommodate model non-linearities to predict battery SoH. The underlying dynamic behaviour of each cell is based on a generic Randles' equivalent circuit comprising of two-capacitors (bulk and surface) and three resistors, (terminal, transfer and self-discharging). The presented techniques are shown to correct for offset, drift and long-term state divergence-an unfortunate feature of employing stand-alone models and more traditional coulomb-counting techniques. Measurements using real-time road data are used to compare the performance of conventional integration-based methods for estimating SoC, with those predicted from the presented state estimation schemes. Results show that the proposed methodologies are superior with SoC being estimated to be within 1% of measured. Moreover, by accounting for the nonlinearities present within the dynamic cell model, the application of an EKF is shown to provide verifiable indications of SoH of the cell pack

State-of-charge and state-of-health prediction of lead-acid batteries for hybrid electric vehicles using non-linear observers

The paper describes the application of state-estimation techniques for the real-time prediction of state-of-charge (SoC) and state-of-health (SoH) of lead-acid cells. Approaches based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) are presented to provide correction for offset, drift and state divergence - an unfortunate feature of more traditional coulomb-counting techniques. Experimental results are employed to demonstrate the relative attributes of the proposed methodolog

Sensitivity of the r-process to nuclear masses

The rapid neutron capture process (r-process) is thought to be responsible for the creation of more than half of all elements beyond iron. The scientific challenges to understanding the origin of the heavy elements beyond iron lie in both the uncertainties associated with astrophysical conditions that are needed to allow an r-process to occur and a vast lack of knowledge about the properties of nuclei far from stability. There is great global competition to access and measure the most exotic nuclei that existing facilities can reach, while simultaneously building new, more powerful accelerators to make even more exotic nuclei. This work is an attempt to determine the most crucial nuclear masses to measure using an r-process simulation code and several mass models (FRDM, Duflo-Zuker, and HFB-21). The most important nuclear masses to measure are determined by the changes in the resulting r-process abundances. Nuclei around the closed shells near N=50, 82, and 126 have the largest impact on r-process abundances irrespective of the mass models used.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted in European Physical Journal