NNLO predictions for dijet production in diffractive DIS

Cross sections for inclusive dijet production in diffractive deep-inelastic scattering are calculated for the first time in next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) accuracy. These cross sections are compared to several HERA measurements published by the H1 and ZEUS collaborations. We computed the total cross sections, 49 single-differential and five double-differential distributions for six HERA measurements. The NNLO corrections are found to be large and positive. The normalization of the resulting predictions typically exceeds the data, while the kinematical shape of the data is described better at NNLO than at next-to-leading order (NLO). Our results use the currently available NLO diffractive parton distributions, and the discrepancy in normalization highlights the need for a consistent determination of these distributions at NNLO accuracy

Critique of research assessments

This article introduces this issue of articles on research assessments and rankings. It focuses on the British Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs) and New Zealand’s Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) and contrasts these with systems that are not tied to funding formulas and emphasise quality enhancement rather than quality assurance. It indicates the negative consequences for individuals, institutions and the professional ethos of universities. It does not deny that there are also benefits gained by institutions that win additional funding through these mechanisms. Research managers benefit by being able to concentrate the efforts of researchers and gain more control over the research enterprise. However, scholarship and creativity are the likely losers in these exercises

The research assessment exercise in Hong Kong: Positive and negative consequences

This article reports findings from 39 interviews from two Hong Kong universities and offers a critique of the RAE system. Respondents stated that the main emphasis in counting research productivity was on articles in prestigious international journals. There were many negative comments about this as the main quality indicator. Some respondents mentioned that international journal articles benefited natural and physical scientists more than social scientists and devalued local research and local journals, resulting in a bias towards the West. The more positive comments accepted the RAE, feeling that there was an emphasis on quality not just quantity. In terms of the impact of the RAEs, many participants expressed that the exercises encouraged a great deal more publishing and that academics could fast track their careers by publishing more. However, the negative responses indicated that the RAEs encouraged a glut of publications that were more mediocre with little substance or originality

Embodiment and becoming in secondary drama classrooms: The effects of neoliberal education cultures on performances of text and self

This article explores the effects of neoliberalism and performative educational cultures on secondary school drama classrooms. We consider the ways Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis and Butler’s concept of gender performance enable us to chart the embodied, relational, spatial and affective energies that inhabit the often neoliberal and heterosexually striated space of the drama classroom. These post-humanist analyses are useful methodological tools for mapping the complexities of student becomings in the space context of the secondary school. We also show how Foucault’s governmentality and Ball’s theory of competitive performativity are particularly salient in the context of immanent capitalism that shapes the desires of its subjects. These frameworks, when combined, can be useful in critiquing neoliberal educational assemblages and in indicating emerging deterritorializations and lines of flight in teachers and students

Desiring machines and nomad spaces: Neoliberalism, performativity and becoming in senior secondary drama classrooms

This paper explores Deleuze and Guattari\u27s schizoanalysis in relation to student and teacher becomings and the way these are actualised within the neoliberal and heterosexually striated spaces of the secondary school assemblage. Deleuze and Guattari considered a narrow approach to education problematic and called for creativity as a site of ‘resistance’. Drama is one subject rich with potentiality for students to strengthen their creativity and ‘speak back’ against the neoliberal project. What our research revealed is how the drama classroom is an open, dynamic space where students can embody different identities at a critical time in their adolescent development. What is delimiting about this potentiality is the proclivity of teachers and students, as desiring machines, to conform to the dominant neoliberal culture of competitive performativity. The paper proposes that schizoanalysis offers new insights for mapping complex desire-flows and embodied identities through and against the dominant performative and heterosexist culture

More than “sluts” or “prissy girls”: Gender and becoming in senior secondary drama classrooms

This article examines the relationships between the embodiment of dramatic characters, gender, and identity. It draws on ethnographic data based on observations and interviews with 24 drama teachers and senior secondary drama students in Western Australia. We explore how student becomings in year 12 drama classrooms are mediated and constituted through socially overcoded gender binaries in a dominant neoliberal culture of competitive performativity. We ask the questions: What constructions of femininity and masculinity are students embodying from popular dramatic texts in the drama classroom at a critical time in their social and emotional development? Are these constructions empowering? Or disempowering? What factors are influencing teachers’ choices of texts for their predominantly female students? Our research shows that what is delimiting about this potentiality in a time of identity exploration and formation are the constraining gender-binary roles available to young women particularly, and the performative pressures teachers are experiencing

Performativity and creativity in senior secondary drama classrooms

This article examines the intersection between the senior secondary drama classroom, creativity and neoliberalism. Informed by a research project involving fifteen West Australian drama teachers and thirteen students, it considers the drama classroom as one site where tensions between the performative needs of neoliberal education and the more humanistic desires that drama teachers embody are enacted. This paper suggests that drama education can be a powerfully transformative vehicle for creative and innovative thinking because of its spatially unique classroom environment and embodied nature. However, collisions between rhetoric and reality, social good and economic return, can mean that young people are denied opportunities for choice and the capability development that drama education brings

University accountability practices in Mainland China and Hong Kong: a comparative analysis / Rui Yang, Lesley Vidovich and Jan Currie

This article reports findings from research about the tensions between global commonalities and localised differences in accountability policies and practices in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Based on empirical data, it indicates complex and dynamic interrelationships in globalising processes. There is resentment among academics in both societies toward the externally derived accountability practices and China and Hong Kong have both failed to strike a balance between the state, markets and universities. The findings remind us again of the crucial importance of local contexts in international policy borrowing. The theoretical framework adopted in this article brings together a hybrid of critical and post-structuralist perspectives to inform the analysis of policy, and allows for a macro or ‘bigger picture’ at global, regional and national levels, as well as micro-level interactions within individual institutions to be examined simultaneously. In-depth understanding was gained by collecting data in case study universities in different settings. Both documentary and interview data were collected from each case study institution. Quotes are used extensively to allow respondents’ voices to be heard, and an audit trail is provided with respondents coded for each institution

The impact of a national clinician-led audit initiative on care and mortality after hip fracture in England: an external evaluation using time trends in non-audit data.

BACKGROUND: Hip fracture is the most common serious injury of older people. The UK National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) was launched in 2007 as a national collaborative, clinician-led audit initiative to improve the quality of hip fracture care, but has not yet been externally evaluated. METHODS: We used routinely collected data on 471,590 older people (aged 60 years and older) admitted with a hip fracture to National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England between 2003 and 2011. The main variables of interest were the use of early surgery (on day of admission, or day after) and mortality at 30 days from admission. We compared time trends in the periods 2003-2007 and 2007-2011 (before and after the launch of the NHFD), using Poisson regression models to adjust for demographic changes. FINDINGS: The number of hospitals participating in the NHFD increased from 11 in 2007 to 175 in 2011. From 2007 to 2011, the rate of early surgery increased from 54.5% to 71.3%, whereas the rate had remained stable over the period 2003-2007. Thirty-day mortality fell from 10.9% to 8.5%, compared with a small reduction from 11.5% to 10.9% previously. The annual relative reduction in adjusted 30-day mortality was 1.8% per year in the period 2003-2007, compared with 7.6% per year over 2007-2011 (P<0.001 for the difference). INTERPRETATION: The launch of a national clinician-led audit initiative was associated with substantial improvements in care and survival of older people with hip fracture in England