On the evolutionary behaviour of BL Lac objects

We present a new well defined sample of BL Lac objects selected from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS). The sample consists of 39 objects with 35 forming a flux limited sample down to f_X = 8 x 10^{-13} cgs, redshifts are known for 33 objects (and 31 of the complete sample). X-ray spectral properties were determined for each object individually with the RASS data. The luminosity function of RASS selected BL Lac objects is compatible with results provided by objects selected with the Einstein observatory, but the RASS selected sample contains objects with luminosities at least tenfold higher. Our analysis confirms the negative evolution for X-ray selected BL Lac objects found in a sample by the Einstein observatory, the parameterization provides similar results. A subdivision of the sample into halves according to the X-ray to optical flux ratio yielded unexpected results. The extremely X-ray dominated objects have higher redshifts and X-ray luminosities and only this subgroup shows clear signs of strong negative evolution. The evolutionary behaviour of objects with an intermediate spectral energy distribution between X-ray and radio dominated is compatible with no evolution at all. Consequences for unified schemes of X-ray and radio selected BL Lac objects are discussed.We suggest that the intermediate BL Lac objects are the basic BL Lac population. The distinction between the two subgroups can be explained if extreme X-ray dominated BL Lac objects are observed in a state of enhanced X-ray activity.Comment: 14 pages incl. 8 figures, accepted by A&

Hearing the voices of older adult patients: processes and findings to inform health services research

Background Clinical academic research and service improvement is planned using Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) but older PPIE participants are consulted less often due to the perception that they are vulnerable or hard to engage. Objectives To consult frail older adults about a recently adopted service, discharge to assess (D2A), and to prioritise services improvements and research topics associated with the design and delivery of discharge from hospital. To use successive PPIE processes to enable a permanent PPIE panel to be established. Participants Following guidance from an established hospital PPI panel 27 older adult participants were recruited. Participants from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, affluent and non-affluent areas and varied social circumstances were included. Methods Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted in participants own homes or nearby social venues. Results Priorities for discharge included remaining independent despite often feeling lonely at home; to remain in hospital if needed; and for services to ensure effective communication with families. The main research priority identified was facilitating independence, whilst establishing a permanent PPIE panel involving older adults was viewed favourably. Conclusions Taking a structured approach to PPIE enabled varied older peoples’ voices to express their priorities and concerns into early discharge from hospital, as well as enabling the development of health services research into hospital discharge planning and management. Older people as participants identified research priorities after reflecting on their experiences. Listening and reflection enabled researchers to develop a new “Community PPIE Elders Panel” to create an enduring PPIE infrastructure for frail older housebound people to engage in research design, development and dissemination

The Information Systems Content Area on the CPA Exam: Does Candidate Age Matter?

This study examines scores on the Business Environment and Concepts (BEC) section of the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination. The BEC examination includes six content areas, one of which is Information Systems and Communication (INFO SYS). The relationship of candidate age and candidate performance for the BEC examination was examined, along with each of the six related content areas that comprise the BEC exam. The results show that candidate age is negatively related to scores on the BEC examination. The results also show that age is negatively related to five of the six content areas of the BEC examination. No relationship was found between performance on the INFO SYS content area and candidate age. These results suggest that information systems knowledge is retained with age. These findings are of interest to accounting and information systems educators and CPA examination candidates

(Un)settling dispossession : neoliberal development, gender violence, and indigenous struggles for land in Guyana

(Un)settling Dispossession: Neoliberal Development, Gender Violence, and Indigenous Struggles for Land in Guyana examines how and why conditions of indigenous land dispossession and gendered racial violence against indigenous women persist, even accelerate, in a context where indigenous rights are ostensibly upheld by the state. Based on eighteen months of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork, this project maps the conditions structuring indigenous political subjectivities through an analysis of three distinct, yet related topics: neoliberal state development and recognition, gender and sexual violence, and the quotidian lived experience of indigenous territorial struggles. Grounded in a feminist political economic perspective, this project brings into conversation critical feminist geography and anthropological perspectives on space, territory, and the body with critical scholarship on race, indigeneity, and recognition. This study posits that the Guyanese state retains territorial authority, even as it recognizes indigenous collective land rights, through social and spatial orders that operate through neoliberal logics, or a (re)territorialization of indigenous lands. As such, territorial rights granted by the state have become the essential counterpart or accessory of authorized dispossession as the state’s conferral of rights paradoxically reinforces patriarchy (and attendant violence) against and within indigenous communities, placing indigenous peoples within a space of corporeal-spatial precarity. These processes operate in tandem with the racial-sexual representation of the indigenous female ‘body,’ which manifest in the gendered violence to which they are subjected. The violence indigenous women experience, as a racial and gendered process of dispossession, must be understood in relation to the pervasive gender violence Creole (descendants of enslaved Africans and East-Indian indentured servants) women experience, in particular the black female body. Broadly, this project maps intersecting colonial legacies of dispossession—indigenous displacement, slavery, and indentureship—which structure the complex relations between indigenous and majority Creole descendants and the state. While indigenous mobilizing efforts must negotiate assertions of state sovereignty, as well as Creole claims of belonging, these contentions also point to the space(s) in which indigenous political subjectivities challenge the nation-building project. Ultimately, this study attends to the mundane spaces of indigenous struggles for land, the mutually constitutive processes of land and body dispossession, and how the paradoxical space to which indigenous peoples are relegated, as hypervisible and invisible, also constitutes the ground upon which indigenous futures are imagined and constructed.Anthropolog

A constructivist grounded theory of Ghara Igbanwe for the older Igbo people

Ghara igbanwe encompasses a form of holistic care for the elderly that is deeply rooted in the cultural practices of the Igbo people and their beliefs around afterlife and spirituality. This form of holistic care of the elderly is poorly understood within the literature and as a result, the complex needs of the Igbo elderly is often misunderstood by healthcare professionals and Nigerian politicians. This research study explores needs of the older Igbo ethnic group of Nigerians over 65 years of age and in doing so, develop a theory about ghara igbanwe. Using the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology, 16 Igbo elderly and their caregivers were interviewed until theoretical saturation was achieved. Data generated was then coded and mapped in the Constructivist Grounded Theory tradition. Ghara igbanwe, as theorised by this study, means that the elderly people in Igbo serve as intermediaries between the living and their ancestors. This understanding of the role of older Igbo people has major implications on their care needs. The current state of care provision challenges this unique role of the Igbo elderly politically, socio-economically and culturally. For ghara igbanwe to be successful, the Igbo elderly population need to be respected and supported as intermediaries. The approach to care should be culturally sensitive to the traditions and practices of the Igbo people. In other words, Western approaches to rehabilitation or holistic care of the elderly should not be blindly applied to the Igbo context. The key contribution of this thesis is this theory of elderly as intermediaries in Igbo, Nigeria. This thesis asserts that there needs to be a consideration of the intermediary roles that older Igbo people play in society. By doing so, care provision will then be holistic and successful at promoting health and well-being for the Igbo elderly