2,428 research outputs found
The New Political Economy of EU State Aid Policy
Despite its importance and singularity, the EU’s state aid policy has attracted less scholarly attention than other elements of EU competition policy. Introducing the themes addressed by the special issue, this article briefly reviews the development of EU policy and highlights why the control of state aid matters. The Commission’s response to the current economic crisis notably in banking and the car industry is a key concern, but the interests of the special issue go far beyond. They include: the role of the European Commission in the development of EU policy, the politics of state aid, and a clash between models of capitalism. The special issue also examines the impact of EU policy. It investigates how EU state aid decisions affect not only industrial policy at the national level (and therefore at the EU level), but the welfare state and territorial relations within federal member states, the external implications of EU action and the strategies pursued by the Commission to limit any potential disadvantage to European firms, and the conflict between the EU’s expanding legal order and national
Implementation, impact and costs of policies for safe staffing in acute NHS trusts
The aim of this research has been to describe the implementation of safe staffing policies in NHS general acute Trusts in England looking at costs and consequences, and examining the factors that have influenced implementation. A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods were used (national survey, analysis of national data, four case studies, realist evaluation) to examine the impact of policies nationally, and explore commonality and variation in local responses to safe staffing policies.
The report is based on independent research commissioned and funded by the NIHR Policy Research Programme (“Implementation, Impact and Costs of Policies for Safe Staffing in Acute NHS Trusts”, PR-ST-1115-10017). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the Department of Health and Social Care, ‘arm’s length bodies’ or other government departments
The Effects of Immobility on Long Bone Remodelling in the Rhesus Monkey
Using Frost\u27s method for undecalcified bone sections, long bones of the lower extremities of ten rhesus monkeys were examined following two months\u27 immobilization and compared with thirteen controls. A decrease in appositional rate and in the surface extent of the ossification process were noted in the immobilized animals. No typical change in resorption was noted. The immobilized animals showed a decreased cortical-total area ratio. These findings suggest that a decrease in activity affects bone by depressing functions mediated by the osteoblast without necessarily evoking an Increased remodelling response
Coulomb blockade of strongly coupled quantum dots studied via bosonization of a channel with a finite barrier
A pair of quantum dots, coupled through a point contact, can exhibit Coulomb
blockade effects that reflect an oscillatory term in the dots' total energy
whose value depends on whether the total number of electrons on the dots is
even or odd. The effective energy associated with this even-odd alternation is
reduced, relative to the bare Coulomb blockade energy for uncoupled dots, by a
factor (1-f) that decreases as the interdot coupling is increased. When the
transmission coefficient for interdot electronic motion is independent of
energy and the same for all channels within the point contact (which are
assumed uncoupled), the factor (1-f) takes on a universal value determined
solely by the number of channels and the dimensionless conductance g of each
individual channel.
This paper studies corrections to the universal value of (1-f) that result
when the transmission coefficent varies over energy scales of the size of the
bare Coulomb blockade energy. We consider a model in which the point contact is
described by a single orbital channel containing a parabolic barrier potential,
and we calculate the leading correction to (1-f) for one-channel (spin-split)
and two-channel (spin-degenerate) point contacts in the limit where the single
orbital channel is almost completely open. By generalizing a previously used
bosonization technique, we find that, for a given value of the dimensionless
conductance g, the value of (1-f) is increased relative to its value for a
zero-thickness barrier, but the absolute value of the increase is small in the
region where our calculations apply.Comment: 13 pages, 3 Postscript figure
NEXUS/Physics: An interdisciplinary repurposing of physics for biologists
In response to increasing calls for the reform of the undergraduate science
curriculum for life science majors and pre-medical students (Bio2010,
Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, Vision & Change), an
interdisciplinary team has created NEXUS/Physics: a repurposing of an
introductory physics curriculum for the life sciences. The curriculum interacts
strongly and supportively with introductory biology and chemistry courses taken
by life sciences students, with the goal of helping students build general,
multi-discipline scientific competencies. In order to do this, our two-semester
NEXUS/Physics course sequence is positioned as a second year course so students
will have had some exposure to basic concepts in biology and chemistry.
NEXUS/Physics stresses interdisciplinary examples and the content differs
markedly from traditional introductory physics to facilitate this. It extends
the discussion of energy to include interatomic potentials and chemical
reactions, the discussion of thermodynamics to include enthalpy and Gibbs free
energy, and includes a serious discussion of random vs. coherent motion
including diffusion. The development of instructional materials is coordinated
with careful education research. Both the new content and the results of the
research are described in a series of papers for which this paper serves as an
overview and context.Comment: 12 page
Resolving the Azimuthal Ambiguity in Vector Magnetogram Data with the Divergence-Free Condition: Application to Discrete Data
We investigate how the divergence-free property of magnetic fields can be
exploited to resolve the azimuthal ambiguity present in solar vector
magnetogram data, by using line-of-sight and horizontal heliographic derivative
information as approximated from discrete measurements. Using synthetic data we
test several methods that each make different assumptions about how the
divergence-free property can be used to resolve the ambiguity. We find that the
most robust algorithm involves the minimisation of the absolute value of the
divergence summed over the entire field of view. Away from disk centre this
method requires the sign and magnitude of the line-of-sight derivatives of all
three components of the magnetic field vector.Comment: Solar Physics, in press, 20 pages, 11 figure
Recommended from our members
Comparison of Structure and Properties of Femtosecond and Nanosecond Laser-Structured Silicon
We compare the optical properties, chemical composition, and crystallinity of silicon microstructures formed in the presence of SF6 by femtosecond laser irradiation and by nanosecond laser irradiation. In spite of very different morphology and crystallinity, the optical properties and chemical composition of the two types of microstructures are very similar. The structures formed with femtosecond (fs) pulses are covered with a disordered nanocrystalline surface layer less than 1 um thick, while those formed with nanosecond (ns) pulses have very little disorder. Both ns-laser-formed and fs-laser-formed structures absorb near-infrared (1.1 – 2.5 um) radiation strongly and have roughly 0.5% sulfur impurities.Engineering and Applied Science
- …