Mechanisms to strengthen accountability and oversight within municipalities, with specific reference to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee and the Audit Committee of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality

Published ArticlePublic accountability is, to an increasing extent, becoming one of the main requirements of good governance in all spheres of government. Ijeoma and Sambumbu (2013:282) maintain that effective accountability and oversight result in improved good corporate governance, effective management of public finances and effective service delivery. Thornhill (2015:79) states that accountability refers to “a statutory obligation to provide for independent and impartial observers holding the right of reporting their findings at the highest levels of state, any available information about financial administration which they may request”. On the other hand, oversight entails the proactive control mechanisms initiated by the legislature for the executive and administrative organs of state to encourage compliance with the statutory and legislative frameworks, in order to ensure effective delivery on agreed objectives for the achievement of government priorities (South African Legislative Sector, 2008:4). This article seeks to determine what oversight and accountability mechanisms are currently applied within municipalities. For the purpose of this article the mechanisms to promote accountability and oversight within municipalities, with specific reference to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) and Audit Committee of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, will be discussed, followed by a discussion of the current challenges of accountability and oversight within municipalities. The article further aims to make specific recommendations to strengthen accountability and oversight within municipalities in the Free State Province

Holography and Fermions at a Finite Chemical Potential

We review the Sakai-Sugimoto model of holographic QCD at zero temperature and finite chemical potential, comparing the results to those expected at large-$N_c$ QCD, and those in a closely related holographic model. We find that as the baryon chemical potential is increased above a critical value, there is a phase transition to a nuclear matter phase, the details of which depend on the model. We argue that the nuclear matter phase is necessarily inhomogeneous to arbitrarily high density, which suggests an explanation of the "chiral density wave" instability of the quark Fermi surface in large-$N_c$ QCD. Some details of the instanton distribution in the holographic dual are reminiscent of a Fermi surface. This short manuscript summarizes a talk given by M.R. at "Theory Canada 4" conference, and is based largely (but not entirely) on the results of \cite{Rozalietal2008}.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

Mechanisms to strengthen accountability and oversight within municipalities, with specific reference to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee and the Audit Committee of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality

Public accountability is, to an increasing extent, becoming one of the main requirements of good governance in all spheres of government. Ijeoma and Sambumbu (2013:282) maintain that effective accountability and oversight result in improved good corporate governance, effective management of public finances and effective service delivery. Thornhill (2015:79) states that accountability refers to “a statutory obligation to provide for independent and impartial observers holding the right of reporting their findings at the highest levels of state, any available information about financial administration which they may request”. Oversight entails the proactive control mechanisms initiated by the legislature for the executive and administrative organs of state to encourage compliance with the statutory and legislative frameworks, in order to ensure effective delivery on agreed objectives for the achievement of government priorities (South African Legislative Sector 2008:4). This article determines what oversight and accountability mechanisms are currently applied within municipalities. For the purpose of this article the mechanisms to promote accountability and oversight within municipalities, with specific reference to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) and Audit Committee of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion of the current challenges of accountability and oversight within municipalities. The article further aims to make specific recommendations to strengthen accountability and oversight within municipalities in the Free State Province

Mechanisms to strengthen accountability and oversight within municipalities, with specific reference to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee and the Audit Committee of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality

Public accountability is, to an increasing extent, becoming one of the main requirements of good governance in all spheres of government. Ijeoma and Sambumbu (2013:282) maintain that effective accountability and oversight result in improved good corporate governance, effective management of public finances and effective service delivery. Thornhill (2015:79) states that accountability refers to “a statutory obligation to provide for independent and impartial observers holding the right of reporting their findings at the highest levels of state, any available information about financial administration which they may request”. Oversight entails the proactive control mechanisms initiated by the legislature for the executive and administrative organs of state to encourage compliance with the statutory and legislative frameworks, in order to ensure effective delivery on agreed objectives for the achievement of government priorities (South African Legislative Sector 2008:4). This article determines what oversight and accountability mechanisms are currently applied within municipalities. For the purpose of this article the mechanisms to promote accountability and oversight within municipalities, with specific reference to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) and Audit Committee of Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality, will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion of the current challenges of accountability and oversight within municipalities. The article further aims to make specific recommendations to strengthen accountability and oversight within municipalities in the Free State Province

Horizon energy and angular momentum from a Hamiltonian perspective

Classical black holes and event horizons are highly non-local objects, defined in terms of the causal past of future null infinity. Alternative, (quasi)local definitions are often used in mathematical, quantum, and numerical relativity. These include apparent, trapping, isolated, and dynamical horizons, all of which are closely associated to two-surfaces of zero outward null expansion. In this paper we show that three-surfaces which can be foliated with such two-surfaces are suitable boundaries in both a quasilocal action and a phase space formulation of general relativity. The resulting formalism provides expressions for the quasilocal energy and angular momentum associated with the horizon. The values of the energy and angular momentum are in agreement with those derived from the isolated and dynamical horizon frameworks.Comment: 39 pages, 3 figures, Final Version : content essentially unchanged but many small improvements made in response to referees, a few references adde

The Chiral MagnetoHydroDynamics of QCD fluid at RHIC and LHC

The experimental results on heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC indicate that QCD plasma behaves as a nearly perfect fluid described by relativistic hydrodynamics. Hydrodynamics is an effective low-energy Theory Of Everything stating that the response of a system to external perturbations is dictated by conservation laws that are a consequence of the symmetries of the underlying theory. In the case of QCD fluid produced in heavy ion collisions, this theory possesses anomalies, so some of the apparent classical symmetries are broken by quantum effects. Even though the anomalies appear as a result of UV regularization and so look like a short distance phenomenon, it has been realized recently that they also affect the large distance, macroscopic behavior in hydrodynamics. One of the manifestations of anomalies in relativistic hydrodynamics is the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME). At this conference, a number of evidences for CME have been presented, including i) the disappearance of charge asymmetry fluctuations in the low-energy RHIC data where the energy density is thought to be below the critical one for deconfinement; ii) the observation of charge asymmetry fluctuations in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC. Here I give a three-page summary of some of the recent theoretical and experimental developments and of the future tests that may allow to establish (or to refute) the CME as the origin of the observed charge asymmetry fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, talk at Quark Matter 2011 Conference, Annecy, France, 23-28 May 201

Nonperturbative renormalization group approach to frustrated magnets

This article is devoted to the study of the critical properties of classical XY and Heisenberg frustrated magnets in three dimensions. We first analyze the experimental and numerical situations. We show that the unusual behaviors encountered in these systems, typically nonuniversal scaling, are hardly compatible with the hypothesis of a second order phase transition. We then review the various perturbative and early nonperturbative approaches used to investigate these systems. We argue that none of them provides a completely satisfactory description of the three-dimensional critical behavior. We then recall the principles of the nonperturbative approach - the effective average action method - that we have used to investigate the physics of frustrated magnets. First, we recall the treatment of the unfrustrated - O(N) - case with this method. This allows to introduce its technical aspects. Then, we show how this method unables to clarify most of the problems encountered in the previous theoretical descriptions of frustrated magnets. Firstly, we get an explanation of the long-standing mismatch between different perturbative approaches which consists in a nonperturbative mechanism of annihilation of fixed points between two and three dimensions. Secondly, we get a coherent picture of the physics of frustrated magnets in qualitative and (semi-) quantitative agreement with the numerical and experimental results. The central feature that emerges from our approach is the existence of scaling behaviors without fixed or pseudo-fixed point and that relies on a slowing-down of the renormalization group flow in a whole region in the coupling constants space. This phenomenon allows to explain the occurence of generic weak first order behaviors and to understand the absence of universality in the critical behavior of frustrated magnets.Comment: 58 pages, 15 PS figure

Nuclear level densities and γ -ray strength functions of 180,181Ta and neutron capture cross sections

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Holographic Gravitational Anomaly and Chiral Vortical Effect

We analyze a holographic model with a pure gauge and a mixed gauge-gravitational Chern-Simons term in the action. These are the holographic implementations of the usual chiral and the mixed gauge-gravitational anomalies in four dimensional field theories with chiral fermions. We discuss the holographic renormalization and show that the gauge-gravitational Chern-Simons term does not induce new divergences. In order to cancel contributions from the extrinsic curvature at a boundary at finite distance a new type of counterterm has to be added however. This counterterm can also serve to make the Dirichlet problem well defined in case the gauge field strength vanishes on the boundary. A charged asymptotically AdS black hole is a solution to the theory and as an application we compute the chiral magnetic and chiral vortical conductivities via Kubo formulas. We find that the characteristic term proportional to T^2 is present also at strong coupling and that its numerical value is not renormalized compared to the weak coupling result.Comment: 27 pages, no figure

Resonances in odd-odd 182Ta

Abstract: Enhanced γ -decay on the tail of the giant electric dipole resonance, such as the scissors or pygmy resonances, can have significant impact on (n,γ ) reaction rates. These rates are important input for modeling processes that take place in astrophysical environments and nuclear reactors. Recent results from the University of Oslo indicate the existence of a significant enhancement in the photon strength function for nuclei in the actinide region due to the scissors resonance. Further, the M1 strength distribution of the scissors resonances in rare earth nuclei has been studied extensively over the years. To investigate the evolution and persistence of the scissor resonance in other mass regions, an experiment was performed utilizing the NaI(Tl) γ -ray detector array (CACTUS) and silicon particle telescopes (SiRi) at the University of Oslo Cyclotron laboratory. Particle-γ coincidences from the 181Ta(d,p)182Ta and 181Ta(d,d’)181Ta reactions were used to measure the nuclear level density and photon strength function of the well-deformed 181Ta and 182Ta systems, to investigate the existence of resonances below the neutron separation energy