Managing change in the legal firm through the teaching company scheme

This paper draws from our experiences in the initial stages of this project and illustrates the many challenges facing legal firms undertaking such major restructuring of their business processes. Theearly involvement of all stakeholders and the development of effective change management strategies are emphasised

Considering John Lewis Gaddis’s Kennan Biography: Questionable Interpretations and Unpursued Evidence and Issues

Kennan, Gaddis et Bernstein: une introduction Si les divisions disciplinaires ou une absence de curiosité pour l’historiographie de la Guerre froide ont tenu nombre de lecteurs de cette revue éloignés des travaux et de l’action de Barton J. Bernstein, John L. Gaddis et George F. Kennan, ces propos liminaires entendent réduire cette distance. Pour ce faire, ils saisissent les enjeux transdisciplinaires du débat que nous poursuivons en publiant cet essai détaillé du premier sur la biographie qu..

Hydrodynamic theory of an electron gas

The generalised hydrodynamic theory of an electron gas, which does not rely on an assumption of a local equilibrium, is derived as the long-wave limit of a kinetic equation. Apart from the common hydrodynamics variables the theory includes the tensor fields of the higher moments of the distribution function. In contrast to the Bloch hydrodynamics, the theory leads to the correct plasmon dispersion and in the low frequency limit recovers the Navies-Stocks hydrodynamics. The linear approximation to the generalised hydrodynamics is closely related to the theory of highly viscous fluids.Comment: 4 pages, revte

Learning effective amino acid interactions through iterative stochastic techniques

The prediction of the three-dimensional structures of the native state of proteins from the sequences of their amino acids is one of the most important challenges in molecular biology. An essential ingredient to solve this problem within coarse-grained models is the task of deducing effective interaction potentials between the amino acids. Over the years several techniques have been developed to extract potentials that are able to discriminate satisfactorily between the native and non-native folds of a pre-assigned protein sequence. In general, when these potentials are used in actual dynamical folding simulations, they lead to a drift of the native structure outside the quasi-native basin. In this study, we present and validate an approach to overcome this difficulty. By exploiting several numerical and analytical tools we set up a rigorous iterative scheme to extract potentials satisfying a pre-requisite of any viable potential: the stabilization of proteins within their native basin (less than 3-4 \AA$$ cRMS). The scheme is flexible and is demonstrated to be applicable to a variety of parametrizations of the energy function and provides, in each case, the optimal potentials.Comment: Revtex 17 pages, 10 eps figures. Proteins: Structure, Function and Genetics (in press

How the extinction of extragalactic background light affects surface photometry of galaxies, groups and clusters

The faint regions of galaxies, groups and clusters hold important clues about how these objects formed, and surface photometry at optical and near-infrared wavelengths represents a powerful tool for studying such structures. Here, we identify a hitherto unrecognized problem with this technique, related to how the night sky flux is typically measured and subtracted from astronomical images. While most of the sky flux comes from regions between the observer and the target object, a small fraction - the extragalactic background light (EBL) - comes from behind. We argue that since this part of the sky flux can be subject to extinction by dust present in the galaxy/group/cluster studied, standard reduction procedures may lead to a systematic oversubtraction of the EBL. Even very small amounts of extinction can lead to spurious features in radial surface surface brightness profiles and colour maps of extended objects. We assess the likely impact of this effect on a number of topics in extragalactic astronomy where very deep surface photometry is currently attempted, including studies of stellar halos, starburst host galaxies, disc truncations and diffuse intragroup/intracluster light. We argue that EBL extinction may provide at least a partial explanation for the anomalously red colours reported for the halos of disc galaxies and the hosts of local starburst galaxies. EBL extinction effects also mimic truncations in discs with unusually high dust opacities, but are unlikely to be the cause of such features in general. Failure to account for EBL extinction can also give rise to a non-negligible underestimate of intragroup and intracluster light at the faintest surface brightness levels currently probed. (Abridged)Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Nutrient levels and trade-offs control diversity in a serial dilution ecosystem

Microbial communities feature an immense diversity of species and this diversity is linked with outcomes ranging from ecosystem stability to medical prognoses. Yet the mechanisms underlying microbial diversity are under debate. While simple resource-competition models don't allow for coexistence of a large number of species, it was recently shown that metabolic trade-offs can allow unlimited diversity. Does this diversity persist with more realistic, intermittent nutrient supply? Here, we demonstrate theoretically that in serial dilution culture, metabolic trade-offs allow for high diversity. When a small amount of nutrient is supplied to each batch, the serial dilution dynamics mimic a chemostat-like steady state. If more nutrient is supplied, diversity depends on the amount of nutrient supplied due to an "early-bird" effect. The interplay of this effect with different environmental factors and diversity-supporting mechanisms leads to a variety of relationships between nutrient supply and diversity, suggesting that real ecosystems may not obey a universal nutrient-diversity relationship.Comment: Appendix follows main tex

Literacy under and over the desk: oppositions and heterogeneity

In this paper I argue that a dominant theme in New Literacy Studies research, the differences between literacy practices inside and outside school, has sometimes involved conflating ‘home literacy’ with private, unregulated ‘vernacular literacy’, and the use of an idealised abstract notion of schooled literacy to represent students’ actual everyday experience in the classroom. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic research in two British primary schools, I use examples of ‘unofficial’ and ‘official’ literacy activities from 10-11 year-olds to show that a wide range of different forms of literacy can be found in the classroom and I argue that the division between ‘vernacular’ and ‘schooled’ is not as clear-cut as is sometimes assumed. My analysis of children’s literacy activities suggests that, on the one hand, unofficial activities orientate towards and index official knowledges and the macro-level institutional order and, on the other hand, official activities are interpenetrated with informal practices and procedures. I also comment on some implications of using the New Literacy Studies ‘events and practices’ conceptual framework for understanding what is going on in classrooms

Unlocking the secrets of stellar haloes using combined star counts and surface photometry

The stellar haloes of galaxies can currently be studied either through observations of resolved halo stars or through surface photometry. Curiously, the two methods appear to give conflicting results, as a number of surface photometry measurements have revealed integrated colours that are too red to be reconciled with the halo properties inferred from the study of resolved stars. Several explanations for this anomaly have been proposed - including dust photoluminescence, extinction of extragalactic background light and a bottom-heavy stellar initial mass function. A decisive test is, however, still lacking. Here, we explain how observations of the halo of a nearby galaxy, involving a combination of both surface photometry and bright star counts, can be used to distinguish between the proposed explanations. We derive the observational requirements for this endeavour and find that star counts in filters VI and surface photometry in filters VIJ appears to be the optimal strategy. Since the required halo star counts are already available for many nearby galaxies, the most challenging part of this test is likely to be the optical surface photometry, which requires several nights of exposure time on a 4-8 m telescope, and the near-IR surface photometry, which is most readily carried out using the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures; v.2 matches published version (minor changes only