Almost laura algebras

In this paper, we propose a generalization for the class of laura algebras, which we call almost laura. We show that this new class of algebras retains most of the essential features of laura algebras, especially concerning the important role played by the non-semiregular components in their Auslander-Reiten quivers. Also, we study more intensively the left supported almost laura algebras, showing that these are characterized by the presence of a generalized standard, convex and faithful component. Finally, we prove that almost laura algebras behave well with respect to full subcategories, split-by-nilpotent extensions and skew group algebras.Comment: 21 pages, very minor changes, to appear in J. Algebr

International financial regulation: A role for the Eurozone? EU Diplomacy Paper 08/2012, October 2012

The deepest financial crisis to strike the global economy since the Great Depression has unceremoniously called into question the very foundations of the Western economic model. The liberalisation of capital flows and the growing internationalisation of financial markets outpaced global regulatory and supervisory efforts. The repercussions of the financial crisis have given new dynamism to the reform of financial regulation both globally and within the European Union (EU). The Eurozone, by way of its own failings, has emerged as a stronger conceptual and legitimate entity since the onset of the crisis, but to what extent does this equate to a greater external role, in particular in the reform of international financial regulation? This paper argues that the Eurozone is currently not in a position to play an important role in the reform of international financial regulation, as it is a weak actor in the context of the EU financial architecture, which is still largely characterised by differing national regimes, a prevailing influence from the UK and fragmented external representation. The key finding from this study is that internal tensions in the EU are at the very heart of the Eurozone’s difficulties in playing a role in the reform of international financial regulation. Surmounting these tensions is a pre-requisite for the Eurozone if it is to overcome its structural weakness in international financial politics. However, the implications of such evolutions to the Eurozone, as an entity, and to European integration are far-reaching

Moving into the information age : from records to Google Earth

Many of us are avid recorders of Yorkshire’ varied flora and fauna. Over a recording career of many years a single recorder can personally amass large data sets or, if involved with networks of similarly-minded people, groups of recorders can rapidly build truely massive data sets numbering many tens of thousands of records. Sometimes we wish to make sense of these large data sets by mapping their geographic location, perhaps to understand distributional trends in space across time. Though data sets can be easily mapped in software such as MapMate or Levana, the resulting maps are basic outline projections of the reference region on which records are plotted (Figure 1). Though useful for understanding distribution in the abstract they lack the directness (and ability to zoom in and out) offered by scaleable photographic representations of location as provided by satellite imagery embedded and rendered in a digital environment. As County Butterfly Recorder (Butterfly Conservation) for Yorkshire I wished to make use of the software Google Earth, which is the pre-eminent example of scaleable mapping software, to map butterfly sightings across a number of years. The object was to motivate recorders in the coming butterfly-recording year to go out and explore those parts of Yorkshire which had not so far provided any butterfly sightings. The problem was how to take almost 75,000 records, representing just two years worth of butterfly sightings, currently residing in the butterfly software Levana and plot them in Google Earth. This turned out to be a relatively painless journey but requiring some tricks that I thought it would be useful to share. I would hope that this article will allow other people with data bases of records that they would like to present in Google Earth to do exactly that

Introduction

Husserl’s philosophy, by the usual account, evolved through three stages: 1. development of an anti-psychologistic, objective foundation of logic and mathematics, rooted in Brentanian descriptive psychology; 2. development of a new discipline of "phenomenology" founded on a metaphysical position dubbed "transcendental idealism"; transformation of phenomenology from a form of methodological solipsism into a phenomenology of intersubjectivity and ultimately (in his Crisis of 1936) into an ontology of the life-world, embracing the social worlds of culture and history. We show that this story of three revolutions can provide at best a preliminary orientation, and that Husserl was constantly expanding and revising his philosophical system, integrating views in phenomenology, ontology, epistemology and logic with views on the nature and tasks of philosophy and science as well as on the nature of culture and the world in ways that reveal more common elements than violent shifts of direction. We argue further that Husserl is a seminal figure in the evolution from traditional philosophy to the characteristic philosophical concerns of the late twentieth century: concerns with representation and intentionality and with problems at the borderlines of the philosophy of mind, ontology, and cognitive science

‘All the places we were not supposed to go’:a case study of formative class and gender habitus in adventure climbing

This paper explores the origins of meaning in adventurous activities. Specifically, the paper reports on a study of 10 adventure climbers in the Scottish mountaineering community. The study explores how formative experiences have influenced engagement in adventure climbing. Work has been done on the phenomenology of adventure and how individuals interpret and find meaning in the activity—this paper goes a step further and asks where do these dispositions come from? Using Bourdieu’s ideas of field, habitus and forms of capital to frame these experiences in the wider social environment, early experiences are identified that, for the subjects of this study, provide a framework for their later adoption of the ‘adventure habitus’. Among these influences are mainstream education, adventure education in particular, as well as broader formative experiences relating to factors such as gender and class. In addition, the study suggests that accounts differ between males and females in terms of their attitudes and dispositions towards adventure. This may relate to their respective experiences as well as expanding opportunities for both males and females. However, while the ‘adventure field’ provides a context where women can develop transformative identities, these are nearly always subject to male validation

The unified transform method for linear initial-boundary value problems: a spectral interpretation

It is known that the unified transform method may be used to solve any well-posed initial-boundary value problem for a linear constant-coefficient evolution equation on the finite interval or the half-line. In contrast, classical methods such as Fourier series and transform techniques may only be used to solve certain problems. The solution representation obtained by such a classical method is known to be an expansion in the eigenfunctions or generalised eigenfunctions of the self-adjoint ordinary differential operator associated with the spatial part of the initial-boundary value problem. In this work, we emphasise that the unified transform method may be viewed as the natural extension of Fourier transform techniques for non-self-adjoint operators. Moreover, we investigate the spectral meaning of the transform pair used in the new method; we discuss the recent definition of a new class of spectral functionals and show how it permits the diagonalisation of certain non-self-adjoint spatial differential operators.Comment: 3 figure