Members are not the only fruit: Volunteer activity in British political parties at the 2010 general election

This is the accepted version of the following article: Fisher, J., Fieldhouse, E. and Cutts, D. (2014), Members Are Not the Only Fruit: Volunteer Activity in British Political Parties at the 2010 General Election. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 16: 75–95, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-856X.12011/abstract.Existing research on volunteer activity in political parties has tended to focus on party membership, both in terms of numbers and activities undertaken. Recent developments in British political parties suggest however, an increasing role for party supporters—supporters of parties who are not formal members. Using data collected through surveys of election agents at the 2010 general election, this article examines the extent of supporter activity in constituency (district-level) campaigns, the extent to which active local parties stimulate supporter activity, the correlates of supporter and member activity, and whether supporter activity makes a positive and independent contribution to parties’ constituency campaigns. The article provides an important opportunity to question whether the evolution of party organisations suggests that formal members may be less important than has been previously assumed in the conduct of election campaigns and the extent to which supporter activity complements that of members.Economic and Social Research Counci

Automorphisms of real Lie algebras of dimension five or less

The Lie algebra version of the Krull-Schmidt Theorem is formulated and proved. This leads to a method for constructing the automorphisms of a direct sum of Lie algebras from the automorphisms of its indecomposable components. For finite-dimensional Lie algebras, there is a well-known algorithm for finding such components, so the theorem considerably simplifies the problem of classifying the automorphism groups. We illustrate this by classifying the automorphisms of all indecomposable real Lie algebras of dimension five or less. Our results are presented very concisely, in tabular form

Local skin friction coefficients and boundary layer profiles obtained in flight from the XB-70-1 airplane at Mach numbers up to 2.5

Boundary-layer and local friction data for Mach numbers up to 2.5 and Reynolds numbers up to 3.6 x 10 to the 8th power were obtained in flight at three locations on the XB-70-1 airplane: the lower forward fuselage centerline (nose), the upper rear fuselage centerline, and the upper surface of the right wing. Local skin friction coefficients were derived at each location by using (1) a skin friction force balance, (2) a Preston probe, and (3) an adaptation of Clauser's method which derives skin friction from the rake velocity profile. These three techniques provided consistent results that agreed well with the von Karman-Schoenherr relationship for flow conditions that are quasi-two-dimensional. At the lower angles of attack, the nose-boom and flow-direction vanes are believed to have caused the momentum thickness at the nose to be larger than at the higher angles of attack. The boundary-layer data and local skin friction coefficients are tabulated. The wind-tunnel-model surface-pressure distribution ahead of the three locations and the flight surface-pressure distribution ahead of the wing location are included

Multifrequency Jump-Diffusions: An Equilibrium Approach

This paper proposes that equilibrium valuation is a powerful method to generate endogenous jumps in asset prices, which provides a structural alternative to traditional reduced-form specifications with exogenous discontinuities. We specify an economy with continuous consumption and dividend paths, in which endogenous price jumps originate from the market impact of regime-switches in the drifts and volatilities of fundamentals. We parsimoniously incorporate shocks of heterogeneous durations in consumption and dividends while keeping constant the number of parameters. Equilibrium valuation creates an endogenous relation between a shock's persistence and the magnitude of the induced price jump. As the number of frequencies driving fundamentals goes to infinity, the price process converges to a novel stochastic process, which we call a multifractal jump-diffusion.

Multifrequency News and Stock Returns

Recent research documents that aggregate stock prices are driven by shocks with persistence levels ranging from daily intervals to several decades. Building on these insights, we introduce a parsimonious equilibrium model in which regime-shifts of heterogeneous durations affect the volatility of dividend news. We estimate tightly parameterized specifications with up to 256 discrete states on daily U.S. equity returns. The multifrequency equilibrium has significantly higher likelihood than the classic Campbell and Hentschel (1992) specification, while generating volatility feedback effects 6 to 12 times larger. We show in an extension that Bayesian learning about stochastic volatility is faster for bad states than good states, providing a novel source of endogenous skewness that complements the "uncertainty" channel considered in previous literature (e.g., Veronesi, 1999). Furthermore, signal precision induces a tradeoff between skewness and kurtosis, and economies with intermediate investor information best match the data.

Simplification of the tug-of-war model for cellular transport in cells

The transport of organelles and vesicles in living cells can be well described by a kinetic tug-of-war model advanced by M\"uller, Klumpp and Lipowsky. In which, the cargo is attached by two motor species, kinesin and dynein, and the direction of motion is determined by the number of motors which bind to the track. In recent work [Phys. Rev. E 79, 061918 (2009)], this model was studied by mean field theory, and it was found that, usually the tug-of-war model has one, two, or three distinct stable stationary points. However, the results there are mostly obtained by numerical calculations, since it is hard to do detailed theoretical studies to a two-dimensional nonlinear system. In this paper, we will carry out further detailed analysis about this model, and try to find more properties theoretically. Firstly, the tug-of-war model is simplified to a one-dimensional equation. Then we claim that the stationary points of the tug-of-war model correspond to the roots of the simplified equation, and the stable stationary points correspond to the roots with positive derivative. Bifurcation occurs at the corresponding parameters, under which the simplified one-dimensional equation exists root with zero derivative. Using the simplified equation, not only more properties of the tug-of-war model can be obtained analytically, the related numerical calculations will become more accurate and more efficient. This simplification will be helpful to future studies of the tug-of-war model

Is Accurate Understanding of Global Warming Necessary to Promote Willingness to Sacrifice?

Although not definitive, the authors\u27 study suggests potential benefits from having a general public better informed about global climate change. They find, e.g., that accurate information appears to increase willingness to accept personal sacrifice

Fractal Droplets in Two Dimensional Spin Glasses

The two-dimensional Edwards-Anderson model with Gaussian bond distribution is investigated at T=0 with a numerical method. Droplet excitations are directly observed. It turns out that the averaged volume of droplets is proportional to l^D with D = 1.80(2) where l is the spanning length of droplets, revealing their fractal nature. The exponent characterizing the l dependence of the droplet excitation energy is estimated to be -0.42(4), clearly different from the stiffness exponent for domain wall excitations.Comment: 4 pages 4 figure

Universality class of criticality in the restricted primitive model electrolyte

The 1:1 equisized hard-sphere electrolyte or restricted primitive model has been simulated via grand-canonical fine-discretization Monte Carlo. Newly devised unbiased finite-size extrapolation methods using temperature-density, (T, rho), loci of inflections, Q = ^2/ maxima, canonical and C_V criticality, yield estimates of (T_c, rho_c) to +- (0.04, 3)%. Extrapolated exponents and Q-ratio are (gamma, nu, Q_c) = [1.24(3), 0.63(3); 0.624(2)] which support Ising (n = 1) behavior with (1.23_9, 0.630_3; 0.623_6), but exclude classical, XY (n = 2), SAW (n = 0), and n = 1 criticality with potentials phi(r)>Phi/r^{4.9} when r \to \infty