Reports on Payments to Governments: A report on early developments and experiences

We are concerned in this report to review and discuss aspects of the Reports submitted in line with the Payments to Governments Regulations. We consider the process of transposition of this Accounting Law into UK law and the early implementation or operationalization of this law in the UK. Recommendations drawn from the study will be useful for Publish What You Pay (PWYP) and other interested stakeholders in communications with government, regulators and standard setters and in general campaign activity

Introduction to Loop Quantum Gravity

This article is based on the opening lecture at the third quantum geometry and quantum gravity school sponsored by the European Science Foundation and held at Zakopane, Poland in March 2011. The goal of the lecture was to present a broad perspective on loop quantum gravity for young researchers. The first part is addressed to beginning students and the second to young researchers who are already working in quantum gravity.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:gr-qc/041005

Mechanical Systems: Symmetry and Reduction

Reduction theory is concerned with mechanical systems with symmetries. It constructs a lower dimensional reduced space in which associated conservation laws are taken out and symmetries are \factored out" and studies the relation between the dynamics of the given system with the dynamics on the reduced space. This subject is important in many areas, such as stability of relative equilibria, geometric phases and integrable systems

Independent Sector Regulators and their Relationship with Competition Authorities

Independent sector regulators and competition authorities share many objectives and common interests, particularly because they both can play key roles in promoting effective and beneficial competition. In this note, the criteria and rationale for the independence of sector regulators and competition authorities are explained, along with a suggestion that independence may sometimes be especially critical for institutions with broad economic oversight and quasi-judicial responsibilities or, alternately, for institutions most subject to influence of special interests. The note suggests that sector regulators may benefit, in times of high technological change and uncertainty, from principle-based laws that allow regulators the flexibility to adjust their precise rules in light of evolving circumstances. Moreover, the note suggests that in some respects, the sectors subject to independent regulation may usefully include other sectors beyond those most traditionally associated with independent regulation. Ultimately, ensuring consistency and convergence between sector regulator and competition authority objectives and actions is important; ironically, independence can make ensuring such consistency through direct co-operation a challenge. Based on international experience, multiple mechanisms exist for achieving or encouraging such consistency; some combination of these merits consideration by designers of competition policy regimes

About the hyperbolicity of complete intersections

This note is an extended version of a thirty minutes talk given at the "XIX Congresso dell'Unione Matematica Italiana", held in Bologna from September 12th to September 17th, 2011. This was essentially a survey talk about connections between Kobayashi hyperbolicity properties and positivity properties of the canonical bundle of projective algebraic varieties.Comment: 9 pages, no figures, to appear on Boll. Unione Mat. Ita

Infinitary Combinatory Reduction Systems: Confluence

We study confluence in the setting of higher-order infinitary rewriting, in particular for infinitary Combinatory Reduction Systems (iCRSs). We prove that fully-extended, orthogonal iCRSs are confluent modulo identification of hypercollapsing subterms. As a corollary, we obtain that fully-extended, orthogonal iCRSs have the normal form property and the unique normal form property (with respect to reduction). We also show that, unlike the case in first-order infinitary rewriting, almost non-collapsing iCRSs are not necessarily confluent