“Always Ready for any Sticky Job”: The Canadian Corps of (Civilian) Firefighters in the Second World War

The Canadian Corps of (Civilian) Firefighters was created. In 1942 to assist the British National Fire Service (NFS) in fighting fires caused by German bombings. Some 400 specially-recruited Corps members served in Britain from 1942 to 1944 under often very hazardous conditions. Its story remains one of the forgotten and more unique Canadian contributions to the war effort

Formal Bureaucracy and the Emergent Forms of the Informal Economy

social organization, development, bureaucracy, democracy

Money from a cultural point of view

Comment on Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The social life of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Formal bureaucracy and the emergent forms of the informal economy

The following essay has three parts. The first is a story about fluctuations in the balance of the relationship between impersonal and personal principles of social organization. This draws heavily on Max Weber’s interpretation of western history. The second part reviews the concept of an ‘informal economy/sector’ from its origin in discussions of the Third World urban poor to its present status as a universal feature of economy. The third part asks how we might conceive of combining the formal/informal pair with a view to promoting development. In conclusion I suggest how partnerships between bureaucracy and the people might be made more equal

Adherence to prophylaxis in adolescents and young adults with severe haemophilia: A quantitative study with patients

© 2017 van Os et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Introduction: haemophilia is an inherited bleeding disorder caused by a deficiency in one of the blood coagulation factors. For people affected by severe haemophilia, the deficiency can cause spontaneous internal bleeding. Most young people with severe haemophilia in the UK follow a preventative treatment regimen (prophylaxis) consisting of several intravenous injections of factor concentrate each week. There is good evidence that prophylaxis reduces bleeds whilst also improving quality of life. However, levels of adherence among young people with haemophilia reported in the existing literature vary widely and are predominately based on estimations made by healthcare professionals and parents. Additionally, drivers of (non)adherence among young people specifically have not been evidenced. Aim: to assess self-reported adherence among young people with haemophilia, provide evidence of psychosocial predictors of adherence, and to establish the associations between non-adherence and number of bleeds and hospital visits. Methods: 91 participants were recruited during outpatient appointments in 13 haemophilia centres across England and Wales, and invited to complete a questionnaire assessing self-reported adherence (VERITAS-Pro), Haemophilia-related pain and impact of pain, Illness Perceptions, Beliefs about Medications, Self-efficacy, Outcome expectations, Positive and Negative Affect, and Social support. Number of hospital visits and bleeds during the previous six months were collected from medical files. Results: Of 78 participants with complete data, just 18% had scores indicating non-adherence. Psychosocial predictors differed between intentional (skipping) and un-intentional (forgetting) non-adherence. Overall, however, better adherence was reported where participants perceived the need for prophylaxis was greater than their concern over taking it as well as having a positive expectancy of its effectiveness, good social support and a stronger emotional reaction to having haemophilia. Conclusion: The findings indicate that adherence is generally good, and that assessing illness and treatment beliefs, social support and outcome expectations may play a valuable role in identifying which individuals are at risk of non-adherence. Interventions aimed at improving adherence should particularly consider improving social support, reducing patients’ concerns about prophylaxis, increasing their belief in the necessity of prophylaxis, and increasing positive outcome expectations.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

On-sky wide field adaptive optics correction using multiple laser guide stars at the MMT

We describe results from the first astronomical adaptive optics system to use multiple laser guide stars, located at the 6.5-m MMT telescope in Arizona. Its initial operational mode, ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO), provides uniform stellar wavefront correction within the 2 arc minute diameter laser beacon constellation, reducing the stellar image widths by as much as 53%, from 0.70 to 0.33 arc seconds at lambda = 2.14 microns. GLAO is achieved by applying a correction to the telescope's adaptive secondary mirror that is an average of wavefront measurements from five laser beacons supplemented with image motion from a faint stellar source. Optimization of the adaptive optics system in subsequent commissioning runs will further improve correction performance where it is predicted to deliver 0.1 to 0.2 arc second resolution in the near-infrared during a majority of seeing conditions.Comment: 13 pages, 1 table, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Expected March 200

Commissioning the MMT ground-layer and laser tomography adaptive optics systems

A multi-laser adaptive optics system, at the 6.5 m MMT telescope, has been undergoing commissioning in preparation for wide-field, partially corrected as well as narrow-field, diffraction limited science observations in the thermal and near infrared. After several delays due to bad weather, we have successfully closed the full high order ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO) control loop for the first time in February 2008 using five Rayleigh laser guide stars and a single tilt star. Characterization and automated correction of static aberrations such as non-common path errors were addressed in May 2008. Calibration measurements in preparation for laser tomography adaptive optics (LTAO) operation are planned for the fall of 2008 along with the start of shared-risk GLAO science observations. We present the results of GLAO observations with the PISCES imager, a 1 - 2.5 µm camera with a field of view of 110 arc seconds. The status of the remaining GLAO commissioning work is also reviewed. Finally, we present plans for commissioning work to implement the LTAO operating mode of the system

The interplay between SME owner-managers and the brand-as-a-person

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the largely unexplored conceptualisation of the brand-as-a-person metaphor in small-tomedium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by examining its potential relation with the SME owner-manager, the pathways to its creation and development and the intuitive nature of this relationship. Design/methodology/approach – A grounded theory approach was used, and data were collected through a set of 36 semi-structured interviews with 30 SME owner-managers in various sectors in Mexico. Findings – The results indicate that SME owner-managers intuitively humanise their brands. The study revealed four pathways to develop the brand-as-a-person metaphor in the SME context: through personality traits, tastes and preferences, abilities and knowledge and values, all suggesting that SMEs’ brand-as-a-person metaphors are largely an extension of their owner-managers. Research limitations/implications – The paper presents a theoretical framework that illustrates the four pathways to the creation and development of brand-as-a-person that are derived from the brand’s relationship with the SME owner-manager. The results of cross-industry semistructured interviews are limited to a single culture context. Practical implications – SME owner-managers should first undertake an introspective personal assessment of their intuitive and conscious decision-making, as SME owner-managers often make decisions in an intuitive way. The results suggest that they should act in a more conscious, responsible and rational way when formulating their brand strategies. Originality/value – This is the first study to clarify the profound influence of SME owner-managers’ personal characteristics, including personality traits, tastes and preferences, abilities and knowledge and values, on the brand-as-a-person metaphor. This study also confirms the intuitive learning strategy formulation of SME owner-managers’ branding practices and SMEs’ need for a more rational approach to branding.Departamento de Organización de Empresas y Marketing. Universidad Pablo de Olavide