Continuity and Change in World Bank Development Discourses and the Rhetoric Role of Accounting

Purpose ? The paper traces how the World Bank has utilised accounting rhetoric/languages in articulating development discourses at different stages of global capitalism through the case study of development projects in Sri Lanka and published development reports. Design/methodology/approach ? Multiple methods are employed including archival research and interviews. In-depth interviews were organised with village level development project participants. Development reports published by the World Bank (1978-2006) are closely examined. Findings ? Development projects in Sri Lanka and development reports show that ideological shifts brought about the changes in accounting rhetoric in development discourses. The paper further shows that the articulations and re-articulations of development discourse have yet to grasp the real complexity of the local problems in those villages in Sri Lanka. The mere focus on management styles (albeit important) driven by the ideology of the aid agencies seems to bring little reward to villagers and, indeed, the policy makers. Research limitations/implications ? This study focuses on the effectiveness of development projects and shows how culture and values in a traditional local setting are in conflict with rational ideas imported from a different setting. This finding has policy implications for the economic development programmes often prescribed by the aid agencies without considering the local context. Originality/value ? The paper adds to the literature on the use of accounting languages in development discourses, especially in the context of Less Developed Countries (LDCs). It will be of great value to researchers and practitioners seeking to gain a better understanding of reforms driven by a particular set of accounting technology in distant places

An Exploratory Study of Online Information Regarding Colony Collapse Disorder

The cause or causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) are uncertain. CCD defines specific characteristics of the nationwide deaths of honey bee colonies in the last decade. Adult bees often disappear from the hive and die, leaving the colony weak and vulnerable to disease. Environmental scientists and agriculturalists have developed many different theories about CCD and its origins. The different theories create challenges regarding the effective dissemination of information about CCD to the different realms of public information seekers. There is a need for an exploration of the online communication of CCD information using federal environmental agency web resources. CCD research information dissemination practices are one example of the trans-disciplinary complexity surrounding many current environmental issues. The study addresses different information “packages” offered or not offered for different types of CCD information seekers. The goal of the study is to inform future research addressing the comprehensive construction of federal e-government science information by finding strengths and weaknesses in the current information landscape of CCD resources on the web

Performance of a newly developed SDCCD for X-ray use

A Scintillator Deposited CCD (SDCCD) is a wide-band X-ray detector consisting of a CCD and a scintillator directly attached to each other. We assembled the newly developed SDCCD that the scintillator CsI(Tl) is below the fully depleted CCD. The incident X-rays enter the CCD depletion layer first. Then, X-rays passing through the depletion layer are absorbed in the CsI(Tl). The contact surface of the CCD is a back-illuminated side so that we can have good light collection efficiency. In our experimental setup, we confirmed good performance of our SDCCD detecting many emission lines up to 88\,keV that comes from $^{109}$Cd.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, accepted publication for Nucl. Instr. and Meth. (2010

Coupled Cluster Channels in the Homogeneous Electron Gas

We discuss diagrammatic modifications to the coupled cluster doubles (CCD) equations, wherein different groups of terms out of rings, ladders, crossed-rings and mosaics can be removed to form approximations to the coupled cluster method, of interest due to their similarity with various types of random phase approximations. The finite uniform electron gas is benchmarked for 14- and 54-electron systems at the complete basis set limit over a wide density range and performance of different flavours of CCD are determined. These results confirm that rings generally overcorrelate and ladders generally undercorrelate; mosaics-only CCD yields a result surprisingly close to CCD. We use a recently developed numerical analysis [J. J. Shepherd and A. Gr\"uneis, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 226401 (2013)] to study the behaviours of these methods in the thermodynamic limit. We determine that the mosaics, on forming the Brueckner Hamltonian, open a gap in the effective one-particle eigenvalues at the Fermi energy. Numerical evidence is presented which shows that methods based on this renormalisation have convergent energies in the thermodynamic limit including mosaic-only CCD, which is just a renormalised MP2. All other methods including only a single channel, namely ladder-only CCD, ring-only CCD and crossed-ring-only CCD, appear to yield divergent energies; incorporation of mosaic terms prevents this from happening.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Comments welcome: [email protected]

Development and Testing of a 2-D Transfer CCD

This paper describes the development, operation, and characterization of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) that feature an electrode structure that allows the transfer of charge both horizontally and vertically through the image area. Such devices have been termed two-dimensional (2-D) transfer CCDs (2DT CCDs), as opposed to the conventional devices, which might be called one-dimensional transfer CCDs, but in other respects are the same as conventional CCD devices. Batches of two different 2DT CCD test devices, featuring different electrode structures but with identical clocking operation in each case, were produced and tested. The methodology of 2-D charge transfer in each of the device types is described, followed by a presentation of test results from the new CCDs. The ability of both 2DT CCD transfer electrode schemes to successfully transfer charge in both horizontal and vertical directions in the image section of the devices has been proven, opening up potential new applications for 2DT CCD use