Renormalization group analysis of the small-world network model

We study the small-world network model, which mimics the transition between regular-lattice and random-lattice behavior in social networks of increasing size. We contend that the model displays a normal continuous phase transition with a divergent correlation length as the degree of randomness tends to zero. We propose a real-space renormalization group transformation for the model and demonstrate that the transformation is exact in the limit of large system size. We use this result to calculate the exact value of the single critical exponent for the system, and to derive the scaling form for the average number of "degrees of separation" between two nodes on the network as a function of the three independent variables. We confirm our results by extensive numerical simulation.Comment: 4 pages including 3 postscript figure

Call for a corporate social conscience index

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a widely used term to describe how large companies adopt practices and policies that curb the potential negative impacts their operations can have on the surrounding environment and the community in which they are based. But companies’ claims of CSR behavior can be difficult to verify. This brief calls for the development of a “Corporate Social Conscience Index” as a mechanism for exerting some degree of transparency and accountability for CSR programs of large multinational companies. The author argues that by developing an index that provides insights to corporations’ excessive, unproductive spending as well as their activities related to environmental sustainability, job creation, and supply chain transparency, consumers along with policy makers, employees and researchers would be able determine whether a corporation is truly practicing corporate social responsibility and pressure more corporations to adopt meaningful CSR programs

In the loves of barnacles

Poetry by Carol Watt

The Differential Structure of an Orbifold

We prove that the underlying set of an orbifold equipped with the ring of smooth real-valued functions completely determines the orbifold atlas. Consequently, we obtain an essentially injective functor from orbifolds to differential spaces.Comment: V3: Final version. Removed a superfluous "2" from some example

'He's dead but he won't lie down!' Posthumous characterisation: the symbiosis of ghost and man, of spirit and flesh

In the case of some Shakespearian characters (e.g.Richard II and Julius Caesar) their postmortal presence influences our reading of their characters when they were alive. The past being is morally nourished by his postmortality. Of course, Shakespeare himself is magnified by his postmortal reputation

Homelessness, empowerment and self-reliance in Scotland and Ireland: the impact of legal rights to housing for homeless people

AbstractThis paper explores the impact of legal rights to housing for homeless people, focusing on the capacity of such rights to ‘empower’ those experiencing homelessness. Lukes’ (2005) three-dimensional view of power, complemented by Bourdieu's (1972) concept of ‘habitus’, is used to distinguish between conceptualisations of empowerment. A distinction is drawn between ‘traditional’ understandings of empowerment, which focus on people's capacity to realise their ‘subjective interests’, and on understandings that foreground ‘real interests’. These latter ‘radical’ perspectives direct attention to people's ‘habitus’ – their internalised dispositions to perceive situations and act in particular ways. Empirically, the paper draws on a qualitative comparison of approaches to homelessness in Scotland and Ireland. Whereas in Scotland virtually all those who are homeless now have a legal right to settled accommodation, Ireland has rejected such a ‘legalistic’ approach, pursuing a consensus driven ‘social partnership’ model. Based on primary research with national experts, service providers and homeless single men in both countries, it is argued that legal rights can effectively empower homeless people. These findings call into question popular and political understandings of the relationship between legal welfare rights and self-reliance.</jats:p