Issues of alcohol misuse among older people : attitudes and experiences of social work practitioners

This small-scale qualitative research focused on the experiences of social workers vis--vis older people who misuse alcohol. Based in an Older People's Team in the west of Scotland, the study explored service provision for alcohol misuse and examined whether practitioners felt the existing services provided by the Substance Misuse Team were effective in meeting the needs of older people with an alcohol problem. Using semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 18 participants, the majority (14) of whom were female and whose ages ranged from 31 to 54 years. Several key themes emerged including the extent of alcohol problems among older people and the complex reasons that cause older people to misuse alcohol. These reasons commonly related to the increasing challenges of old age. The data also demonstrated that current services are not meeting the needs of older people. Practitioners identified a need for an 'age-specific' approach to target more effectively the complex needs of older people. Recommendations from practitioners included ways to develop new and more effective services, including a more age-specific service, such as providing longer term support in older people's own homes, using a specialised support worker, and increasing staff training on alcohol use among older people

NA

http://www.archive.org/details/investigationofe00blaiU.S. Navy (U.S.N.) authors

Work-life imbalance: informal care and paid employment

In the United Kingdom informal carers are people who look after relatives or friends who need extra support because of age, physical or learning disability or illness. The majority of informal carers are women and female carers also care for longer hours and for longer durations than men. Thus women and older women in particular, shoulder the burden of informal care. We consider the costs of caring in terms of the impact that these kinds of caring responsibilities have on employment. The research is based on the responses of informal carers to a dedicated questionnaire and in-depth interviews with a smaller sub-sample of carers. Our results indicate that the duration of a caring episode as well as the hours carers commit to caring impact on their employment participation. In addition carers’ employment is affected by financial considerations, the needs of the person they care for, carers’ beliefs about the compatibility of informal care and paid work and employers’ willingness to accommodate carers’ needs. Overall, the research confirms that informal carers continue to face difficulties when they try to combine employment and care in spite of recent policy initiatives designed to help them

Flame extension lengths beneath a confined ceiling induced by fire in a channel with longitudinal air flow

This paper investigates the length of flame extension for an impinging flame underneath the confined ceiling in a channel with longitudinal air flow. Previous works in this field have been primarily concerned with un-confined ceilings and no forced air flow conditions. Under longitudinal air flow conditions, the flame extension beneath the channel ceiling is non-symmetrical, that is, different in the upstream and downstream directions from the fire source. In this study, experiments were carried out with two channeled ceilings with widths of 1.5 m and 0.5 m. Square porous gas burners of different sizes were employed as the fire source, using propane as fuel, with various heat release rates and source-ceiling heights. The flame extension lengths beneath the ceiling, both upstream and downstream from the fire source, were measured. Their difference as well as their total length was quantified for different magnitudes of forced longitudinal air flow along the channel. Results show that the flame extension lengths beneath the ceiling increases with heat release rate, but decreases with source-ceiling height, channel width, burner size or longitudinal air flow speed. With a longitudinal air flow, the flame extension is longer downstream than upstream. Non-dimensional correlations are proposed for the flame extension lengths (upstream, downstream and their total length), based on the unburnt fuel distribution upstream and downstream, as well as considering air entrainment of the ceiling flow, which further consumes the unburnt fuel along the ceiling. These correlations are shown to fit the data well

Daffodils

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-ps/1469/thumbnail.jp

Entrances and exits: changing perceptions of primary teaching as a career for men

Original article can be found at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713640830~db=all Copyright Informa / Taylor and Francis. DOI: 10.1080/03004430802352087The number of men in teaching has always been small, particularly in early childhood, but those that do come into teaching usually do so for the same reasons as women, namely enjoyment of working with children, of wanting to teach and wanting to make a difference to children's lives. However, in two separate studies, the authors have shown that on beginning teacher training in 1998, and at the point of leaving the profession in 2005, men and women tend to emphasise different concerns. This article will explore those differences and seek possible explanations for how men's views of teaching might be changing over time.Peer reviewe

Reducing The Computational Requirements for Simulating Tunnel Fires by Combining Multiscale Modelling and Multiple Processor Calculation

Multiscale modelling of tunnel fires that uses a coupled 3D (fire area) and 1D (the rest of the tunnel) model is seen as the solution to the numerical problem of the large domains associated with long tunnels. The present study demonstrates the feasibility of the implementation of this method in FDS version 6.0, a widely used fire-specific, open source CFD software. Furthermore, it compares the reduction in simulation time given by multiscale modelling with the one given by the use of multiple processor calculation. This was done using a 1200 m long tunnel with a rectangular cross-section as a demonstration case. The multiscale implementation consisted of placing a 30 MW fire in the centre of a 400 m long 3D domain, along with two 400 m long 1D ducts on each side of it, that were again bounded by two nodes each. A fixed volume flow was defined in the upstream duct and the two models were coupled directly. The feasibility analysis showed a difference of only 2% in temperature results from the published reference work that was performed with Ansys Fluent (Colella et al., 2010). The reduction in simulation time was significantly larger when using multiscale modelling than when performing multiple processor calculation (97% faster when using a single mesh and multiscale modelling; only 46% faster when using the full tunnel and multiple meshes). In summary, it was found that multiscale modelling with FDS v.6.0 is feasible, and the combination of multiple meshes and multiscale modelling was established as the most efficient method for reduction of the calculation times while still maintaining accurate results. Still, some unphysical flow oscillations were predicted by FDS v.6.0 and such results must be treated carefully