Perceptions of Gender Group Variability in Majority and Minority Contexts Two Field Studies with Nurses and Police Officers

Two field studies demonstrated that majority and minority size moderate perceived group variability. In Study 1 we found an outgroup homogeneity (OH) effect for female nurses in the majority, but an ingroup homogeneity (IH) effect for a token minority of male nurses. In Study 2 we found similar effects in a different setting - an OH effect for policemen in the majority and an IH effect for policewomen in the minority. Although measures of visibility, status, and, especially, familiarity tended to show the same pattern as perceived variability, there was no evidence that they mediated perceived dispersion. Results are discussed in terms of group size, rather than gender, being moderators of perceived variability, and with reference to Kanter's (1977a, 1977b) theory of group proportions.

Radiochromic film spectroscopy of laser-accelerated proton beams using the FLUKA code and dosimetry traceable to primary standards

A new approach to spectroscopy of laser induced proton beams using radiochromic film (RCF) is presented. This approach allows primary standards of absorbed dose-to-water as used in radiotherapy to be transferred to the calibration of GafChromic HD-810 and EBT in a 29 MeV proton beam from the Birmingham cyclotron. These films were then irradiated in a common stack configuration using the TARANIS Nd:Glass multi-terawatt laser at Queens University Belfast, which can accelerate protons to 10-12 MeV, and a depth-dose curve was measured from a collimated beam. Previous work characterizing the relative effectiveness (RE) of GafChromic film as a function of energy was implemented into Monte Carlo depth-dose curves using FLUKA. A Bragg peak (BP) "library" for proton energies 0-15 MeV was generated, both with and without the RE function. These depth-response curves were iteratively summed in a FORTRAN routine to solve for the measured RCF depth-dose using a simple direct search algorithm. By comparing resultant spectra with both BP libraries, it was found that the effect of including the RE function accounted for an increase in the total number of protons by about 50%. To account for the energy loss due to a 20 mu m aluminum filter in front of the film stack, FLUKA was used to create a matrix containing the energy loss transformations for each individual energy bin. Multiplication by the pseudo-inverse of this matrix resulted in "up-shifting" protons to higher energies. Applying this correction to two laser shots gave further increases in the total number of protons, N of 31% and 56%. Failure to consider the relative response of RCF to lower proton energies and neglecting energy losses in a stack filter foil can potentially lead to significant underestimates of the total number of protons in RCF spectroscopy of the low energy protons produced by laser ablation of thin targets.

nero- a post-maximum supernova radiation transport code

The interpretation of supernova (SN) spectra is essential for deriving SN ejecta properties such as density and composition, which in turn can tell us about their progenitors and the explosion mechanism. A very large number of atomic processes are important for spectrum formation. Several tools for calculating SN spectra exist, but they mainly focus on the very early or late epochs. The intermediate phase, which requires a non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) treatment of radiation transport has rarely been studied. In this paper, we present a new SN radiation transport code, nero, which can look at those epochs. All the atomic processes are treated in full NLTE, under a steady-state assumption. This is a valid approach between roughly 50 and 500days after the explosion depending on SN type. This covers the post-maximum photospheric and the early and the intermediate nebular phase. As a test, we compare nero to the radiation transport code of Jerkstrand, Fransson & Kozma and to the nebular code of Mazzali et al. All three codes have been developed independently and a comparison provides a valuable opportunity to investigate their reliability. Currently, nero is one-dimensional and can be used for predicting spectra of synthetic explosion models or for deriving SN properties by spectral modelling. To demonstrate this, we study the spectra of the 'normal' Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) 2005cf between 50 and 350 days after the explosion and identify most of the common SN Ia line features at post-maximum epochs. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.

Accelerating code on multi-cores with FastFlow

FastFlow is a programming framework specifically targeting cache-coherent shared-memory multi-cores. It is implemented as a stack of C++ template libraries built on top of lock-free (and memory fence free) synchronization mechanisms. Its philosophy is to combine programmability with performance. In this paper a new FastFlow programming methodology aimed at supporting parallelization of existing sequential code via offloading onto a dynamically created software accelerator is presented. The new methodology has been validated using a set of simple micro-benchmarks and some real applications. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

A spectral synthesis code for rapid modelling of supernovae

We present TARDIS-an open-source code for rapid spectral modelling of supernovae (SNe). Our goal is to develop a tool that is sufficiently fast to allow exploration of the complex parameter spaces of models for SN ejecta. This can be used to analyse the growing number of highquality SN spectra being obtained by transient surveys. The code uses Monte Carlo methods to obtain a self-consistent description of the plasma state and to compute a synthetic spectrum. It has a modular design to facilitate the implementation of a range of physical approximations that can be compared to assess both accuracy and computational expediency. This will allow users to choose a level of sophistication appropriate for their application. Here, we describe the operation of the code and make comparisons with alternative radiative transfer codes of differing levels of complexity (SYN++, PYTHON and ARTIS). We then explore the consequence of adopting simple prescriptions for the calculation of atomic excitation, focusing on four species of relevance to Type Ia SN spectra-Si II, SII, MgII and Ca II. We also investigate the influence of three methods for treating line interactions on our synthetic spectra and the need for accurate radiative rate estimates in our scheme.

Fleuve glauque : les départements de la Seine, banlieue des romans « Spécial Police » de Frédéric Dard

This paper studies the representation of suburbs as a place of anguish in the “Special Police” novels (Fleuve Noir publisher, Paris) by Frédéric Dard. This anxiety, it is argued, is what lends this collection of 25 novels some of their essential qualities, their unhealthy climate and absolute darkness. Dard’s suburbs fit into the traditions of realism; but the atmosphere, characters and plots owe to the American hardboiled school and like in film noir, space is stylized and dramatized, and often used to express a judgment of moral nature. Spatial representations in these novels are part of a critique of civilization and constitute a comment on the social modernization and public intervention in the development of the French territory in the postwar period. The novels written by Frédéric Dard from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s offer a profoundly original representation of suburban angst and what was not yet known at the time as the suburban malaise. Avoiding clichés and excessively connoted referential spaces, Dard anchor these noir novels he called “novels of the night” in landscapes that are both biographical and intertextual. The West Suburbs of Paris and what was
to become the Yvelines department are at the centre of Dard’s novelistic geography, turning into a mythical and deadly space in which is negotiated an acculturation in France of the evil and ruined world described in American noir.

Crime, Punishment and Article 3 ECHR: Puzzles and Prospects of Applying an Absolute Right in a Penal Context

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides that ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’, is considered to enshrine an absolute right. Yet it contains an under-explored element: inhuman and degrading punishment. While torture has been the subject of extensive academic commentary, and inhuman and degrading treatment has been examined to some extent, the prohibition of inhuman and degrading punishment has not been explored in significant depth, in spite of its considerable potential to alter the penal landscape.

This paper elucidates the key doctrinal elements of inhuman and degrading punishment ‘and treatment associated with it’, in the words of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It addresses a number of ‘puzzles’ or problems which arise in applying the absolute right enshrined in Article 3 of the ECHR to sentencing and imprisonment, clarifies ECtHR doctrine and highlights some of its key implications. Bringing a theoretically informed understanding to bear on the application of Article 3 of the ECHR in a penal context, the paper provides clarity and coherence to a complex and crucial intersection between human rights and penology.