Half a million excess deaths in the Iraq war:Terms and conditions may apply

Hagopian et al. (2013) published a headline-grabbing estimate for the Iraq war of half a million excess deaths , i.e. deaths that would not have happened without the war. We reanalyse the data from the University Collaborative Iraq Mortality Study and refute their dramatic claim. The Hagopian et al. (2013) estimate has four main defects: i) most importantly, it conflates non-violent deaths with violent ones; ii) it fails to account for the stratified sampling design of the UCIMS; iii) it fully includes all reported deaths regardless of death certificate backing, even when respondents say they have a death certificate but cannot produce one when prompted; iv) it adds approximately 100,000 speculative deaths not supported by data. Thus, we reject the 500,000 estimate. Indeed, we find that the UCIMS data cannot even support a claim that the number of non-violent excess deaths in the Iraq war has been greater than zero. We recommend future research to follow our methodological lead in two main directions; supplement traditional excess death estimates with excess death estimates for non-violent deaths alone, and use differences-in-differences estimates to uncover the relationship between violence and non-violent death rates

Bounds on heavy sterile neutrinos revisited

We revise the bounds on heavy sterile neutrinos, especially in the case of their mixing with muon neutrinos in the charged current. We summarize the present experimental limits, and we reanalyze the existing data from the accelerator neutrino experiments and from Super-Kamiokande to set new bounds on a heavy sterile neutrino in the range of masses from 8 MeV to 390 MeV. We also discuss how the future accelerator neutrino experiments can improve the present limits.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures; a detailed and expanded versio

Charged particle jet measurements with the ALICE experiment in proton-proton collisions at the LHC

We present preliminary results of measurements of charged particle jet properties in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV using the ALICE detector. Jets are reconstructed using $\rm anti-k_{T}, k_{T}$ and SISCone jet finding algorithms with resolution parameter $R=0.4$ in the range of transverse momentum from 20 to 100 GeV/$c$ in the midrapidity region (\mid\eta\mid\textless 0.5). The uncorrected charged jet spectra obtained using the three different jet finders show good agreement. The data are compared to predictions from PYTHIA-Perugia0, PYTHIA-Perugia2011, and PHOJET. The mean charged particle multiplicity in leading jets increases with increasing jet $p_{\rm T}$ and is consistent with model predictions. The radial distributions of transverse momentum about the jet direction and the distributions of the average radius containing 80% of the total jet $p_{\rm T}$ found in the jet cone ($R = 0.4$ in this analysis), indicate that high $p_{\rm T}$ jets are more collimated than low $p_{\rm T}$ jets.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, Conference Proceedings submitted for the 28th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Puerto Rico, April 7-14, 201

Tutorial on Neutron Physics in Dosimetry

Almost since the time of the discovery of the neutron more than 70 years ago, efforts have been made to understand the effects of neutron radiation on tissue and, eventually, to use neutrons for cancer treatment. In contrast to charged particle or photon radiations which directly lead to release of electrons, neutrons interact with the nucleus and induce emission of several different types of charged particles such as protons, alpha particles or heavier ions. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the neutron-nucleus interaction is necessary for dose calculations and treatment planning with the needed accuracy. We will discuss the concepts of dose and kerma, neutron-nucleus interactions and have a brief look at nuclear data needs and experimental facilities and set-ups where such data are measured.Comment: Invited talk at the 11th Neutron and Ion Dosimetry Symposium NEUDOS-11, October 11-16, 2009, Cape Town, South Africa. 14 pages, 8 figures; submitted to Radiation Measurement

From social rights to the market: neo-liberalism and the knowledge economy

Public higher education has a long history, with its growth associated with mass higher education and the extension of a social right to education from secondary schooling to university education. Following the rise in student numbers since the 1970s, the aspiration to higher education has been universalized, although opportunities remain structured by social background. This paper looks at changing policies for higher education in the UK and the emergence of a neoliberal knowledge regime. This subordinates higher education to the market and shifts the burden of paying for degree courses onto students. It seeks to stratify institutions and extend the role of for-profit providers. From a role in the amelioration of social inequality, universities are now asked to participate actively in the widening inequalities associated with a neoliberal global market order

Key worker services for disabled children: what characteristics of services lead to better outcomes for children and families?

Background: Research has shown that families of disabled children who have a key worker benefit from this service and recent policy initiatives emphasize the importance of such services. However, research is lacking on which characteristics of key worker schemes for disabled children are related to better outcomes for families. Methods: A postal questionnaire was completed by 189 parents with disabled children who were receiving a service in seven key worker schemes in England and Wales. Path analysis was used to investigate associations between characteristics of the services and outcomes for families (satisfaction with the service, impact of key worker on quality of life, parent unmet need, child unmet need). Results: The four path models showed that key workers carrying out more aspects of the key worker role, appropriate amounts of contact with key workers, regular training, supervision and peer support for key workers, and having a dedicated service manager and a clear job description for key workers were associated with better outcomes for families. Characteristics of services had only a small impact on child unmet need, suggesting that other aspects of services were affecting child unmet need. Conclusions: Implications for policy and practice are discussed, including the need for regular training, supervision and peer support for key workers and negotiated time and resources for them to carry out the role. These influence the extent to which key workers carry out all aspects of the key worker's role and their amount of contact with families, which in turn impact on outcomes

The limits of social class in explaining ethnic gaps in educational attainment

This paper reports an analysis of the educational attainment and progress between age 11 and age 14 of over 14,500 students from the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE). The mean attainment gap in national tests at age 14 between White British and several ethnic minority groups were large, more than three times the size of the gender gap, but at the same time only about one-third of the size of the social class gap. Socio-economic variables could account for the attainment gaps for Black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students, but not for Black Caribbean students. Further controls for parental and student attitudes, expectations and behaviours indicated minority ethnic groups were on average more advantaged on these measures than White British students, but this was not reflected proportionately in their levels of attainment. Black Caribbean students were distinctive as the only group making less progress than White British students between age 11 and 14 and this could not be accounted for by any of the measured contextual variables. Possible explanations for the White British-Black Caribbean gap are considered

Environment Behavior Models for Scenario Generation and Testing Automation

In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Advances in Model-Based Software Testing (A-MOST'05), the 27th International Conference on Software Engineering ICSE’05, May 15-16, 2005, St. Louis, USAThis paper suggests an approach to automatic scenario generation from environment models for testing of real-time reactive systems. The behavior of the system is defined as a set of events (event trace) with two basic relations: precedence and inclusion. The attributed event grammar (AEG) specifies possible event traces and provides a uniform approach for automatically generating, executing, and analyzing test cases. The environment model includes a description of hazardous states in which the system may arrive and makes it possible to gather statistics for system safety assessment. The approach is supported by a generator that creates test cases from the AEG models. We demonstrate the approach with case studies of prototypes for the safety-critical computer-assisted resuscitation algorithm (CARA) software for a casualty intravenous fluid infusion pump and the Paderborn Shuttle System

The contribution of financial entities to the sustainable development through the reporting of corporate social responsibility information

This paper aims at examining the relationship between board composition and corporate social responsibility (CSR) of a sample of listed financial entities, discussing the driving reasons of these entities to disclose CSR information. We hypothesize that there is a positive association between outside (institutional and independent directors) and female directors and CSR disclosure and a negative relationship between inside directors and CSR reporting. Our findings provide evidence that the proportions of independent directors and female directors on boards encourage CSR disclosure. Moreover, the results also show that the proportions of inside directors and institutional directors on boards do not have influence on CSR reporting. Thus, our evidence suggests that board attributes such as independent and female directors encourage financial entities to report CSR matters, showing the effectiveness of these two corporate governance mechanisms. The paper shed light on the influence of board structure of financial entities on CSR disclosure. Therefore, this study contributes to past research by providing an index to measure CSR disclosure of financial entities and the importance of the distinction between outside and inside directors