Energy stability analysis for a hybrid fluid-kinetic plasma model

In plasma physics, a hybrid fluid-kinetic model is composed of a magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) part that describes a bulk fluid component and a Vlasov kinetic theory part that describes an energetic plasma component. While most hybrid models in the plasma literature are non-Hamiltonian, this paper investigates a recent Hamiltonian variant in its two-dimensional configuration. The corresponding Hamiltonian structure is described along with its Casimir invariants. Then, the energy-Casimir method is used to derive explicit sufficient stability conditions, which imply a stable spectrum and suggest nonlinear stability

Picking up the pace in public services

Following the reforms of the public management system in the 1980s, legislative change and programmes of work to develop and shape the system have occurred at various times. The work programmes have tended to come and go, with mixed success, each designed around maintaining the strengths that accountability for outputs has brought to public sector agencies while increasing the focus on achieving outcomes

The turn to precarity in twenty-first century fiction

This is an open access article. Copyright © 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH.Recent years have seen several attempts by writers and critics to understand the changed sensibility in post-9/11 fiction through a variety of new -isms. This essay explores this cultural shift in a different way, finding a ‘turn to precarity’ in twenty-first century fiction characterised by a renewal of interest in the flow and foreclosure of affect, the resurgence of questions about vulnerability and our relationships to the other, and a heightened awareness of the social dynamics of seeing. The essay draws these tendencies together via the work of Judith Butler in Frames of War, in an analysis of Trezza Azzopardi’s quasi-biographical study of precarious life, Remember Me

Parents appointing the principal: The experiences of four New Zealand primary school boards of trustees

Universally motivated by altruism and the desire to serve their children’s schools well, locally elected parent representatives of New Zealand boards of trustees (BOTs) are charged with the responsibility of appointing the principal. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with the chairpersons of four primary schools in two cities – two in affluent high decile areas and two in relatively disadvantaged low decile ones – in order to examine the perspectives and understandings that informed the board recruitment and selection process. Findings suggest that the appointment of a principal with the capacity to exercise highly effective, contextually specific educational leadership is more likely to occur in higher decile schools and is most needed in lower decile ones. The paper concludes that targeted support and a review of governance arrangements will be necessary for inequity in principal appointment processes to be addressed