Creating Employment Opportunities for People with Mental Health Problems: A Feasibility Study for New Initiatives

This paper describes a feasibility study for the development of a network of employment services for people with mental health problems (and others) who are unemployed. It highlights the problems of using debate-orientated, soft OR methods when there are difficulties of open communication between different interest groups. In this case, the interest groups were clients and professionals in the mental health system. To bypass these difficulties, a series of confidential interviews was conducted with stakeholders. The issue of who was to be interviewed was resolved through a rolling programme of recommendations, where each interviewee recommended others until most of the people being recommended were people who had already been seen. This approach allowed for the involvement of many people and agencies who the researchers did not initially suspect might be stakeholders. Having conducted the interviews, the researchers then produced a design in the form of an ‘expert’ report. Although they had serious reservations about taking such an approach instead of simply supporting the expertise of already identified stakeholders, it turned out, upon reflection, that they had made the right decision. The ‘expert’ appoach allowed the views of service users to be taken into account. Also, the rolling programme of recommendations used to determine who should be interviewed actually uncovered hitherto ‘hidden’ stakeholders who were crucial to the success or failure of the whole project.     

Absorption spectrum of the firefly luciferin anion isolated in vacuo

The excited-state physics of the firefly luciferin anion depends on its chemical environment, and it is therefore important to establish the intrinsic behavior of the bare ion. Here we report electronic absorption spectra of the anion isolated in vacuo obtained at an electrostatic ion storage ring and an accelerator mass spectrometer where ionic dissociation is monitored on a long time scale (from 33 μs and up to 3 ms) and on a short time scale (0-3 μs), respectively. In the ring experiment the yield of all neutrals (mainly CO(2)) as a function of wavelength was measured whereas in the single pass experiment, the abundance of daughter ions formed after loss of CO(2) was recorded to provide action spectra. We find maxima at 535 and 265 nm, and that the band shape is largely determined by the sampling time interval, which is due to the kinetics of the dissociation process. Calculations at the TD-B3LYP/TZVPP++ level predict maximum absorption at 533 and 275 nm for the carboxylate isomer in excellent agreement with the experimental findings. The phenolate isomer lies higher in energy by 0.22 eV, and also its absorption maximum is calculated to be at 463 nm, which is far away from the experimental value. Our data serve to benchmark future theoretical models for bioluminescence from fireflies.     

Utilization of carbon nanofibers for airborne ultrasonic acoustic field detection using heterodyne interferometry

Carbon nanofibers and nanotubes are currently being utilized as active elements in acoustic sensors for emerging microelectromechanical systems and nanoelectromechanical systems technologies. A methodology for measuring the displacement of carbon nanofibers in combination with heterodyne interferometry is reported here. Experimental results show that ultrasonic field detection is possible using this technique, and results are presented for measurements in the ultrasonic frequency range. This approach could potentially lead to new calibration methods for ultrasonic sensors. A different approach to that of interferometry is also reported for future investigation.     

The effect of deformation on the superconducting transition temperature of a niobium-32% zirconium alloy

An increase of T_c by up to 0.5 with a 93 per cent area reduction of a Nb-32%Zr alloy is reported. Various possibilities for explaining this phenomenon are discussed.