The transboundary dynamics of COVID-19 present an unprecedented test of organisational resilience. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS), a talisman of collective fortitude against disease and ...illness, has struggled to cope with inadequate provision of virus tests, ventilators, and personal protective equipment needed to fight the pandemic. In this paper, we reflect on the historic dynamics and strategic priorities that have undermined the NHS's attempts to navigate these troubled times. We invoke the organisational resilience literature to address 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of preparedness in readiness and response to the current pandemic. In particular, we draw on Meyer's (
1982
) seminal work on 'adaptation to jolts', excavating current preparedness failings. We argue an overreliance on perceived efficiency benefits of 'lean production' and 'just in time' continuity planning superseded strategic redundancy and slack in the system. This strategic focus was not simply the result of a failure in foresight, but rather a failure to act adaptively on knowledge of the known threats and weaknesses spotlighted by earlier projections of an inevitable pandemic threat. In conclusion, we consider how the UK Government and NHS must now undergo a phase of 'readjustment' in Meyer's terms, in light of these failings. We suggest that independent responsibility for national future preparedness should be handed to the NHS free from political interference. This would operate under the umbrella of a national emergency preparedness, resilience and response public body, enshrined in law, and similar in governance to the current Bank of England. This will help ensure that foresight is accompanied by durability and fortitude in safeguarding the UK against future pandemic threats.
Relativistic energy density functionals (EDF) have become a standard tool for nuclear structure calculations, providing a complete and accurate, global description of nuclear ground states and ...collective excitations. Guided by the medium dependence of the microscopic nucleon self-energies in nuclear matter, semi-empirical functionals have been adjusted to the nuclear matter equation of state and to bulk properties of finite nuclei, and applied to studies of arbitrarily heavy nuclei, exotic nuclei far from stability, and even systems at the nucleon drip-lines. REDF-based structure models have also been developed that go beyond the static mean-field approximation, and include collective correlations related to the restoration of broken symmetries and to fluctuations of collective variables. These models are employed in analyses of structure phenomena related to shell evolution, including detailed predictions of excitation spectra and electromagnetic transition rates.
The problem of pairing in the S01 channel of finite nuclei is revisited. In nuclear matter forces of separable form can be adjusted to the bare nuclear force, to any phenomenological pairing ...interaction such as the Gogny force or to exact solutions of the gap equation. In finite nuclei, because of translational invariance, such forces are no longer separable. Using well-known techniques of Talmi and Moshinsky we expand the matrix elements in a series of separable terms, which converges quickly preserving translational invariance and finite range. In this way the complicated problem of a cut-off at large momenta or energies inherent in other separable or zero range pairing forces is avoided. Applications in the framework of the relativistic Hartree–Bogoliubov approach show that the pairing properties are depicted on almost the same footing as by the original pairing interaction not only in nuclear matter, but also in finite nuclei. This simple separable force can be easily applied for the investigation of pairing properties in nuclei far from stability as well as for further investigations going beyond mean field theory.
Parametric correlations are studied in several classes of covariant density functional theories (CDFTs) using a statistical analysis in a large parameter hyperspace. In the present manuscript, we ...investigate such correlations for two specific types of models, namely, for models with density dependent meson exchange and for point coupling models. Combined with the results obtained previously in Ref. 1 for a non-linear meson exchange model, these results indicate that parametric correlations exist in all major classes of CDFTs when the functionals are fitted to the ground state properties of finite nuclei and to nuclear matter properties. In particular, for the density dependence in the isoscalar channel only one parameter is really independent. Accounting for these facts potentially allows one to reduce the number of free parameters considerably.
The neutron and proton drip lines represent the limits of the nuclear landscape. While the proton drip line is measured experimentally up to rather high Z values, the location of the neutron drip ...line for absolute majority of elements is based on theoretical predictions which involve extreme extrapolations. The first ever systematic investigation of the location of the proton and neutron drip lines in the covariant density functional theory has been performed by employing a set of the state-of-the-art parametrizations. Calculated theoretical uncertainties in the position of two-neutron drip line are compared with those obtained in non-relativistic DFT calculations. Shell effects drastically affect the shape of two-neutron drip line. In particular, model uncertainties in the definition of two-neutron drip line at Z∼54, N=126 and Z∼82, N=184 are very small due to the impact of spherical shell closures at N=126 and 184.
Recent applications of relativistic mean field theory for finite nuclei are reviewed. We discuss the description of ground states of nuclei and their properties like nuclear radii as well as ...deformation parameters and their energy surfaces. In particular we concentrate on the description of exotic nuclei far from the line of beta-stability. A field theoretical theory for pairingcorrelations is presented and new results for realistic pairing interactions are discussed. High-spin states and superdeformed bands are investigated within the framework of a relativistic extension of the cranking theory. Finally we review applications of time-dependent relativistic mean field theory for the description of oscillations with small amplitudes as well as large amplitude collective motion in connection with relativistic Coulomb excitations.
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