International Perspectives on Parenting Support - Non-English Language Sources

This study was commissioned by the DCSF, and began in October 2007. The project aimed to extend existing knowledge of ‘what works’ in parenting support beyond the English language international evidence that was comprehensively reviewed in an earlier study for DCSF (What Works in Parenting Support, Moran, Ghate and van der Merwe 2004). While the previous study focused on English language literature, the focus of this study was to examine parenting support in a selection of non-English language countries. Five countries were selected from an initial list of 12 (originally chosen from a longer list of 22). Their selection was based on the relevance to UK policy and practice, potential translatability to a UK context and indications of promising practice

Optimal sizing of C-type passive filters under non-sinusoidal conditions

In the literature, much attention has been focused on power system harmonics. One of its important effects is degradation of the load power factor. In this article, a C-type filter is used for reducing harmonic distortion, improving system performance, and compensating reactive power in order to improve the load power factor while taking into account economic considerations. Optimal sizing of the C-type filter parameters based on maximization of the load power factor as an objective function is determined. The total installation cost of the C-type filter and that of the conventional shunt (single-tuned) passive filter are comparatively evaluated. Background voltage and load current harmonics are taken into account. Recommendations defined in IEEE standards 519-1992 and 18-2002 are taken as the main constraints in this study. The presented design is tested using four numerical cases taken from previous publications, and the proposed filter results are compared with those of other published techniques. The results validate that the performance of the C-type passive filter as a low-pass filter is acceptable, especially in the case of lower short-circuit capacity systems. The C-type filter may achieve the same power factor with a lower total installation cost than a single-tuned passive filter

Refinement of Techniques Metallographic Analysis of Highly Dispersed Structures

Flaws are regularly made while developing standards and technical specifications. They can come out as minor misprints, as an insufficient description of a technique. In spite the fact that the flaws are well known, it does not come to the stage of introducing changes to standards. In this paper shows that in the normative documents is necessary to clarify the requirements for metallurgical microscopes, which are used for analysis of finely-dispersed

Standard and non-standard primordial neutrinos

The standard cosmological model predicts the existence of a cosmic neutrino background with a present density of about 110 cm^{-3} per flavour, which affects big-bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave background anisotropies, and the evolution of large scale structures. We report on a precision calculation of the cosmic neutrino background properties including the modification introduced by neutrino oscillations. The role of a possible neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry and the impact of non-standard neutrino-electron interactions on the relic neutrinos are also briefly discussed.Comment: 4 pages, no figures. Contribution to the proceedings of SNOW 2006, Stockholm, May 2-6, 2006. Typos corrected, updated reference

Giving Up Foreign Names: An Empirical Examination of Surname Change and Earnings

In this paper we compare the earnings development for a group of immigrants that changes their names to Swedish-sounding or neutral names with immigrants who retain their names from the same region of birth. Our results indicate that name-changers are apparently similar to name-keepers and the earnings before the name change is essentially the same for both groups. However, an earnings gap after the name change is observed. The earnings gap corresponds to on average approximately 26 percent. Our understanding of the data and our results is that the groups are similar before the name change and that the earnings gap after the name change should be attributed to the name change. Our results should be viewed as evidence of unequal treatment of immigrants and natives in the Swedish labor market.Ethnic discrimination; earnings development; name change

Neutrino Oscillations: from Standard and Non-standard Viewpoints

In the standard model of neutrino oscillations, the neutrino flavor states are mixtures of mass-eigenstates, and the phenomena are well described by the neutrino mixing matrix, i.e., the PMNS matrix. I review the recent progress on parametrization of the neutrino mixing matrix. Besides that I also discuss on the possibility to describe the neutrino oscillations by a non-standard model in which the neutrino mixing is caused by the Lorentz violation (LV) contribution in the effective field theory for LV. We assume that neutrinos are massless and that neutrino flavor states are mixing states of energy eigenstates. In our calculation the neutrino mixing parts depend on LV parameters and neutrino energy. The oscillation amplitude varies with the neutrino energy, thus neutrino experiments with energy dependence may test and constrain the Lorentz violation scenario for neutrino oscillation.Comment: 6 pages, Talk presented at CosPA2008, published in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics; Pohang, Korea, 28 October - 1 November 2008; Editor: Sang Pyo Ki

Standard Bearers

In both ethics and epistemology an important question is whether justification is a fully internal or a partly external matter. In view of analogies between relevant considerations in each area, I recommend distinguishing, as basic and independent subjects of normative status, (i) people and (ii) what they do. Evaluations of subjects, on one hand, and of their beliefs and actions, on the other, are less intimately related than is presupposed. This helps resolve internalism/externalism controversies in both domains. An important related advantage of the distinction is its effect on our understanding of normative luck, both moral and epistemic