Whys and hows of in-house writing

The combining of requisite technical knowledge with requisite writing ability is addressed. Considerations in the development of in-house writing courses, in-plant training, are presented and evaluated. Specific problems in past methodology are also detailed. It is suggested that teachers of technical writing should be technical people themselves, preferably with working experience in industry or business; the training provided should be user-oriented, not theory oriented

How Banks Construct and Manage Risk: A Sociological Study of Small Firm Lending in Britain and Germany

This paper analyses the role of banks in financing SMEs in Britain and Germany. It applies a sociological institutionalist approach to understand how banks construct and manage risk, relating to SME business. The empirical analysis is based on the results of a comparative survey of a sample of British and German banks and also refers to statistical material produced by the banks themselves. The paper concludes that, even though bank- firm relations are still deeply embedded in national institutional frameworks, some tendencies towards convergence can also be observed, particularly among commercial banks from the two countries. These flow from both internationalisation and from the political influence of the EU.Bank Lending; SMEs; Britain; Germany

Narrow Technihadron Production at the First Muon Collider

In modern technicolor models, there exist very narrow spin-zero and spin-one neutral technihadrons---$pi^0_T$, $rho^0_T$ and $omega_T$---with masses of a few 100 GeV. The large coupling of $\pi^0_T$ to $\mu^+\mu^-$, the direct coupling of $rho^0_T$ and $omega_T$ to the photon and $Z^0$, and the superb energy resolution of the First Muon Collider may make it possible to resolve these technihadrons and produce them at extraordinarily large rates.Comment: 11 pages, latex, including 2 postscript figure

Quantum states and space-time causality

Space-time symmetries and internal quantum symmetries can be placed on equal footing in a hyperspin geometry. Four-dimensional classical space-time emerges as a result of a decoherence that disentangles the quantum and the space-time degrees of freedom. A map from the quantum space-time to classical space-time that preserves the causality relations of space-time events is necessarily a density matrix.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Information Geometry and its Application

Theory of Quantum Space-Time

A generalised equivalence principle is put forward according to which space-time symmetries and internal quantum symmetries are indistinguishable before symmetry breaking. Based on this principle, a higher-dimensional extension of Minkowski space is proposed and its properties examined. In this scheme the structure of space-time is intrinsically quantum mechanical. It is shown that the causal geometry of such a quantum space-time possesses a rich hierarchical structure. The natural extension of the Poincare group to quantum space-time is investigated. In particular, we prove that the symmetry group of a quantum space-time is generated in general by a system of irreducible Killing tensors. When the symmetries of a quantum space-time are spontaneously broken, then the points of the quantum space-time can be interpreted as space-time valued operators. The generic point of a quantum space-time in the broken symmetry phase thus becomes a Minkowski space-time valued operator. Classical space-time emerges as a map from quantum space-time to Minkowski space. It is shown that the general such map satisfying appropriate causality-preserving conditions ensuring linearity and Poincare invariance is necessarily a density matrix

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Normative values for the profile of mood states for use with athletic samples

The Profile of Mood States (POMS) has been used extensively for the assessment of mood in the sport and exercise environments. The purpose of the study was to develop tables of normative values based on athletic samples. Participants (N = 2,086), comprising athletes at the international (n = 622), club (n = 628), and recreational (n = 836) levels, completed the POMS in one of three situations: pre-competition/exercise, post-competition/exercise, and away from the athletic environment. Differences between the athletic sample and existing norms were found for all mood subscales. Main effects of level of competition and situation were identified. The results support the proposition that the use of the original tables of normative values in sport and exercise environments is inappropriate