GLASS SHOULDERS

Glass Shoulders is a collection of poems that embody events from my life which have served as catalysts in the process of integrating myself emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. In the poetry, the speaker searches for spiritual knowledge, and is guided toward meditation of Spirit as an internal reality to find healing. The narrative of the manuscript portrays the speaker’s deep introspection of self, exploring loss and resiliency through challenges surrounding grief, unrecovered abuses, and mood disorders. The inspiration for these poems arose from my contemplations on the incongruities between fate and free will, and how behaviors are influenced by the attitude of each. The poems explore her innermost conflicts as she contemplates whether she is director of her own destiny, or subject to a predestined fate, and seek to illumine how these differences effect her choices, behaviors, and attitude towards Spirit. The speaker is bipolar, and the paradox of the book debates whether the union of her polar selves is the ingredient to healing her phobias and disconnections, granting Spirit integration, or do her fractured selves support greater sensory experience that enhance her perceptions of self and Spirit toward new levels of recognition. The poems contain a variety of humor, tone, and voice. The humor in the poetry is unconscious to the speaker and shields her from her sense of loss and separation from her partner, her family, and divinity. At times she appears sarcastic and flippant, curious and gullible, yet always there is an undercurrent of deep thought. My visions and images for the poems are sourced from the philosophies of metaphysics, and are inspired by both Western and Eastern teachings of mysticism and myth that leads to Self-realization, or God-communion. It is through my studies of these sciences and methodologies that I have sourced my life long aspirations of spiritual knowledge for greater understanding of the human condition. Glass Shoulders is my attempt to show Self-realization as a gnosis of healing. This is a tale of freedom of psyche

The Nature and Purpose of Acute Psychiatric Wards: The Tompkins Acute Ward Study

Background: Acute inpatient care in the UK is being subjected to increasing critical scrutiny, highlighting concerns about content and quality. There is an absence of clarity and consensus on what acute inpatient care is for, adding to difficulties in developing this service sector. Aim: To define the function of acute psychiatric wards. Methods: Interviews were conducted with multidisciplinary staff (13 Ward Managers, 14 F Grade nurses, 11 Occupational Therapists and 9 Consultant Psychiatrists), on rationales for admission, their care and treatment philosophy, and the roles of different professionals. Results: Patients are admitted because they appear likely to harm themselves or others, and because they are suffering from a severe mental illness, and/or because they or their family/community require respite, and/or because they have insufficient support and supervision available to them in the community. The tasks of acute inpatient care are to keep patients safe, assess their problems, treat their mental illness, meet their basic care needs and provide physical healthcare. These tasks are completed via containment, 24-hour staff presence, treatment provision, and complex organisation and management. Conclusions: Professional education, audit, research and the structuring of services all need to be oriented towards these tasks. Declaration of interest: This study was funded by the Tompkins Foundation and the Department of Health Nursing Quality initiative

The experiences of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease

Being diagnosed with a chronic illness such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) can have a considerable psychological impact on a person’s life. However, this has been little explored and therefore it is unclear what support may be most beneficial at this time. This study therefore explored personal experiences of being diagnosed with PD. Six participants were interviewed and data analysed using thematic analysis. Three over-arching themes emerged: 1) “Understanding it is an important thing” – The value of knowledge; 2) "You’ve got to get used to accepting the fact that you need help" - The social implications of being diagnosed with PD; and 3) "I think you need to talk to somebody" - The importance of supportive others. The process of diagnosis was complex and often challenging for participants, with respect to their own understanding and that of others. Recommendations for future practice within specialist PD services are made, to improve the support that is offered at this time

No excess of bright galaxies around the redshift 7.1 quasar ULAS J1120+0641

We present optical and near-infrared imaging of the field of the z = 7.0842 quasar ULAS J112001.48+064124.3 taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. We use these data to search for galaxies that may be physically associated with the quasar, using the Lyman break technique, and find three such objects, although the detection of one in Spitzer Space Telescope imaging strongly suggests it lies at z ∼ 2. This is consistent with the field luminosity function and indicates that there is no excess of >L★ galaxies within 1 Mpc of the quasar. A detection of the quasar shortwards of the Lyα line is consistent with the previously observed evolution of the intergalactic medium at z > 5.5.SC acknowledges support from the NSF grant AST-1010004 and NASA HST grant GO-13033.06-A, RJM acknowledges ERC funding via the award of a consolidator grant, and BV has been supported by the ERC grant ‘Cosmic Dawn’.This is the final published version. It originally appeared in MNRAS at http://www.mnras.org/content/442/4/3454.full

Radio imaging of the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Field - III. Evolution of the radio luminosity function beyond z=1

We present spectroscopic and eleven-band photometric redshifts for galaxies in the 100-uJy Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Field radio source sample. We find good agreement between our redshift distribution and that predicted by the SKA Simulated Skies project. We find no correlation between K-band magnitude and radio flux, but show that sources with 1.4-GHz flux densities below ~1mJy are fainter in the near-infrared than brighter radio sources at the same redshift, and we discuss the implications of this result for spectroscopically-incomplete samples where the K-z relation has been used to estimate redshifts. We use the infrared--radio correlation to separate our sample into radio-loud and radio-quiet objects and show that only radio-loud hosts have spectral energy distributions consistent with predominantly old stellar populations, although the fraction of objects displaying such properties is a decreasing function of radio luminosity. We calculate the 1.4-GHz radio luminosity function (RLF) in redshift bins to z=4 and find that the space density of radio sources increases with lookback time to z~2, with a more rapid increase for more powerful sources. We demonstrate that radio-loud and radio-quiet sources of the same radio luminosity evolve very differently. Radio-quiet sources display strong evolution to z~2 while radio-loud AGNs below the break in the radio luminosity function evolve more modestly and show hints of a decline in their space density at z>1, with this decline occurring later for lower-luminosity objects. If the radio luminosities of these sources are a function of their black hole spins then slowly-rotating black holes must have a plentiful fuel supply for longer, perhaps because they have yet to encounter the major merger that will spin them up and use the remaining gas in a major burst of star formation.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS: 36 pages, including 13 pages of figures to appear online only. In memory of Stev

A new measurement of the evolving near-infrared galaxy luminosity function out to z~4: a continuing challenge to theoretical models of galaxy formation

We present the most accurate measurement to date of cosmological evolution of the near-infrared galaxy luminosity function, from the local Universe out to z~4. The analysis is based on a large and highly complete sample of galaxies selected from the first data release of the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey. Exploiting a master catalogue of K- and z-band selected galaxies over an area of 0.7 square degrees, we analyse a sample of ~50,000 galaxies, all with reliable photometry in 16-bands from the far-ultraviolet to the mid-infrared. The unique combination of large area and depth provided by the Ultra Deep Survey allows us to trace the evolution of the K-band luminosity function with unprecedented accuracy. In particular, via a maximum likelihood analysis we obtain a simple parameterization for the luminosity function and its cosmological evolution, including both luminosity and density evolution, which provides an excellent description of the data from z =0 up to z~4. We find differential evolution for galaxies dependent on galaxy luminosity, revealing once again the ``down-sizing behaviour'' of galaxy formation. Finally, we compare our results with the predictions of the latest theoretical models of galaxy formation, based both on semi-analytical prescriptions, and on full hydrodynamical simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, submitted to MNRA

Trajectories of ethnic neighbourhood change : spatial patterns of increasing ethnic diversity

European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program; ERC Grant Agreement, Grant/Award Number: 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio‐spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects); Marie Curie program under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program; Career Integration, Grant/Award Number: PCIG10‐GA‐2011‐303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects)Western cities are increasingly ethnically diverse, and in most cities, the share of the population belonging to an ethnic minority is growing. Studies analysing changing ethnic geographies often limit their analysis to changes in ethnic concentrations in neighbourhoods between 2 points in time. Such a temporally limited approach limits our understanding of pathways of ethnic neighbourhood change and of the underlying factors contributing to change. This paper analyses full trajectories of neighbourhood change in the 4 largest cities in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2013. Our modelling strategy categorises neighbourhoods based on their unique growth trajectories of the ethnic population composition, providing insight in processes of ethnic segregation and its drivers. Our main conclusion is that the ethnic composition in neighbourhoods remains relatively stable over time. We however find evidence for a slow trend towards deconcentration of ethnic minorities and increased population mixing in most neighbourhoods. Spatial mixing appears to be driven by the selective mobility patterns of the native Dutch population as a result of urban restructuring programmes. However, these pathways towards deconcentration are mitigated by processes of ethnic natural growth that reinforce existing patterns of segregation. Despite an increasing inflow of the native Dutch into ethnic concentration neighbourhoods, segregation at the top and bottom ends of the distribution seems to be persistent: High concentrations of ethnic minorities in disadvantaged neighbourhoods versus high concentrations of the native population in more affluent neighbourhoods continue to be a feature of Dutch cities.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Ionized gas velocity dispersion in nearby dwarf galaxies: looking at supersonic turbulent motions

We present the results of ionized gas turbulent motions study in several nearby dwarf galaxies using a scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer with the 6-m telescope of the SAO RAS. Combining the `intensity-velocity dispersion' diagrams (I-sigma) with two-dimensional maps of radial velocity dispersion we found a number of common patterns pointing to the relation between the value of chaotic ionized gas motions and processes of current star formation. In five out of the seven analysed galaxies we identified expanding shells of ionized gas with diameters of 80-350 pc and kinematic ages of 1-4 Myr. We also demonstrate that the I-sigma diagrams may be useful for the search of supernova remnants, other small expanding shells or unique stars in nearby galaxies. As an example, a candidate luminous blue variable (LBV) was found in UGC 8508. We propose some additions to the interpretation, previously used by Munoz-Tunon et al. to explain the I-sigma diagrams for giant star formation regions. In the case of dwarf galaxies, a major part of the regions with high velocity dispersion belongs to the diffuse low surface brightness emission, surrounding the star forming regions. We attribute this to the presence of perturbed low density gas with high values of turbulent velocities around the giant HII regions.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. The high-resolution version locates at http://www.sao.ru/hq/moisav/MoisLoz_full.pd

Dice: Blessed or Cursed?

Every year, hundreds of millions of dice are manufactured and sold. Because of the impossibility of precise dimensional control and nonuniform density, none of these dice are fair. Polyhedral dice manufactured for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons typically contain 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided, and 20-sided dice (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, and D20). D20s are especially problematic. In 3000-roll tests of several D20s, only about one-quarter tested fair. In light of the inherent unfairness of most dice, we explored the possibility of using dice mechanics involving multiple dice to obtain fairer results. For D20s, summing three dice gave promising results. Even using dice that tested highly unfair individually, sums of three dice tested fair. We also considered Fate or Fudge dice mechanics which effectively use the sum of 4 D3s. With one exception, these dice tested fair. In our tests, three D20s tested fairer than four Fate dice