Quantum Stability of the Phase Transition in Rigid QED

Rigid QED is a renormalizable generalization of Feynman's space-time action characterized by the addition of the curvature of the world line (rigidity). We have recently shown that a phase transition occurs in the leading approximation of the large N limit. The disordered phase essentially coincides with ordinary QED, while the ordered phase is a new theory. We have further shown that both phases of the quantum theory are free of ghosts and tachyons. In this letter, we study the first sub-leading quantum corrections leading to the renormalized mass gap equation. Our main result is that the phase transition does indeed survive these quantum fluctuations.Comment: PHYZZX, 9 pages, 3 Postscript figures, to be published in Nucl. Phys.

Siting prisons, sighting communities: geographies of objection in a planning process

This paper reviews the planning process for a Scottish prison located near a former mining village. Analysing the letters of objection submitted by residents offers an opportunity to explore local views about prison and community and to relate these to the unique social and spatial history of the area. The planning process itself structured how residents were able to express themselves and defined what counted as a relevant objection. After deconstructing this process, the paper then restores and uses as a framework for analysis three geographies of objection stripped from local responses to the development proposal: the emotional, temporal, and spatial. Emotional expressions of objection added intensity and gave meaning to claims about the historical decline of the region and also conveyed a deep sense of the proposed building site as a lived space. Particular grounds of opposition—over fear of strangers, the fragility of a local orchid, and the pollution from mining—provide an opportunity to explore the complex nature of place meaning and community identity, ultimately leading to a conclusion that the meaning of place is always in flux. The paper argues that Simmel’s classic concept of the stranger, as the outsider who comes to stay, offers a useful analytic in understanding how the quality of proximal remoteness that prisons and other unwanted developments constitute participates in a constantly evolving sense of the local

Anomalous Height Fluctuation Width in Crossover from Random to Coherent Surface Growths

We study an anomalous behavior of the height fluctuation width in the crossover from random to coherent growths of surface for a stochastic model. In the model, random numbers are assigned on perimeter sites of surface, representing pinning strengths of disordered media. At each time, surface is advanced at the site having minimum pinning strength in a random subset of system rather than having global minimum. The subset is composed of a randomly selected site and its $(\ell-1)$ neighbors. The height fluctuation width $W^2(L;\ell)$ exhibits the non-monotonic behavior with $\ell$ and it has a minimum at $\ell^*$. It is found numerically that $\ell^*$ scales as $\ell^*\sim L^{0.59}$, and the height fluctuation width at that minimum, $W^2(L;\ell^*)$, scales as $\sim L^{0.85}$ in 1+1 dimensions. It is found that the subset-size $\ell^*(L)$ is the characteristic size of the crossover from the random surface growth in the KPZ universality, to the coherent surface growth in the directed percolation universality.Comment: 13 postscript file

Coarsening in the q-State Potts Model and the Ising Model with Globally Conserved Magnetization

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of the $q$-state Potts model following a quench from the high temperature disordered phase to zero temperature. The time dependent two-point correlation functions of the order parameter field satisfy dynamic scaling with a length scale $L(t)\sim t^{1/2}$. In particular, the autocorrelation function decays as $L(t)^{-\lambda(q)}$. We illustrate these properties by solving exactly the kinetic Potts model in $d=1$. We then analyze a Langevin equation of an appropriate field theory to compute these correlation functions for general $q$ and $d$. We establish a correspondence between the two-point correlations of the $q$-state Potts model and those of a kinetic Ising model evolving with a fixed magnetization $(2/q-1)$. The dynamics of this Ising model is solved exactly in the large q limit, and in the limit of a large number of components $n$ for the order parameter. For general $q$ and in any dimension, we introduce a Gaussian closure approximation and calculate within this approximation the scaling functions and the exponent $\lambda (q)$. These are in good agreement with the direct numerical simulations of the Potts model as well as the kinetic Ising model with fixed magnetization. We also discuss the existing and possible experimental realizations of these models.Comment: TeX, Vanilla.sty is needed. [Admin note: author contacted regarding missing figure1 but is unable to supply, see journal version (Nov99)

Unpacking the formation of favourable environments for urban experimentation: the case of the Bristol energy scene

Urban experimentation with sustainability has been gaining prominence in policy and academic discourses about urban transformations, spurring the creation of urban living laboratories and transition arenas. However, the academic literature has only begun examining why experimentation flourishes in particular cities, and why it conforms to place-specific styles. Meanwhile, the strategic niche management (SNM) tradition has extensively explored how protective spaces for experimentation emerge but has dealt only tangentially with why this happens in particular places. In this paper, we develop an approach for unpacking the formation of favourable environments for experimentation in specific places. We adopt an abductive research design to create a dialogue between distinct theoretical positions and one in-depth case study. Our case examines the formation of the Bristol energy scene, which hosts a variety of experimental initiatives concerning civic energy alternatives. Based on our findings, we refine the understanding of the processes shaping this experimental setting. There is value in characterising the ‘genealogy’ of experimental spaces and acknowledging their antecedents, path-dependencies and place-specificities. Efforts to foster urban transformation demand nuanced accounts of how places become experimental because they are not static backgrounds for experimentation

Transfer Prices and Innovation in Public Healthcare: Costing and Clinical Choices in the NHS

The establishment of an internal market for clinical services in a publically funded National Health Service (NHS) requires a process for setting transfer prices. Given the values and logics of actors in a public healthcare system, attempts to determine an “optimal” price for specific treatments as prescribed by well-known transfer pricing texts, are likely to be inappropriate. Rejecting a reductionist model of Economic Man, the study adopted a richer perspective on actor reality through a pragmatic constructivist (PC) methodology. The PC methodology was used to interpret data drawn from a case study of a specialist healthcare centre of English NHS. The case study revealed different realities constructed by clinical and managerial actors. Clinical actors in the study were willing to spread a technological innovation but were not being supported by managers whose reality was influenced by centrally set tariff prices which favoured traditional high cost procedures rather than less costly technical innovations. Characterising the different realities as the “pragmatic truth” of managers and the “proactive truth” of clinicians, the challenge was to bring these together for a fully integrated and coherent solution. This challenge required avoiding a top-down “command and control” model of governance and greater flexibility for transfer pricing and incentives. More generally, the study supports alternative institutional mechanisms that can routinely promote the spread of new technological innovations which are not only clinically superior but, as this case illustrates, are sometimes cheaper than the current procedures

Articulating ‘public interest’ through complexity theory

The ‘Public interest’, even if viewed with ambiguity or scepticism, has been one of the primary means by which various professional roles of planners have been justified. Many objections to the concept have been advanced by writers in planning academia. Notwithstanding these, ‘public interest’ continues to be mobilised, to justify, defend or argue for planning interventions and reforms. This has led to arguments that planning will have to adopt and recognise some form of public interest in practice to legitimise itself.. This paper explores current debates around public interest and social justice and advances a vision of the public interest informed by complexity theory. The empirical context of the paper is the poverty alleviation programme, the Kudumbashree project in Kerala, India

Reviewing, indicating, and counting books for modern research evaluation systems

In this chapter, we focus on the specialists who have helped to improve the conditions for book assessments in research evaluation exercises, with empirically based data and insights supporting their greater integration. Our review highlights the research carried out by four types of expert communities, referred to as the monitors, the subject classifiers, the indexers and the indicator constructionists. Many challenges lie ahead for scholars affiliated with these communities, particularly the latter three. By acknowledging their unique, yet interrelated roles, we show where the greatest potential is for both quantitative and qualitative indicator advancements in book-inclusive evaluation systems.Comment: Forthcoming in Glanzel, W., Moed, H.F., Schmoch U., Thelwall, M. (2018). Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springer Some corrections made in subsection 'Publisher prestige or quality

The sacred and the profane: biotechnology, rationality, and public debate

Davies G, 2006. The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Environment and Planning A, 38(3), pp. 423 – 443 DOI: 10.1068/a37387This paper explores the forms of argumentation employed by participants in a recent public engagement process in the United Kingdom around new technologies for organ transplantation, with specific reference to xenotransplantation and stem-cell research. Two forms of reasoning recur throughout participants’ deliberations which challenge specialist framing of this issue. First, an often scatological humour and sense of the profane are evident in the ways in which participants discuss the bodily transformations that such technologies demand. Second, a sense of the sacred, in which new biotechnologies are viewed as against nature or in which commercial companies are ‘playing god’, is a repetitive and well-recognised concern. Such forms of reasoning are frequently dismissed by policymakers as ‘uninformed gut reactions’. Yet they also form a significant part of the repertoire of scientists themselves as they proclaim the hope of new medical breakthroughs, or seek to reconstruct ideas of the body to facilitate new biotechnological transformations. Through questioning of assumptions in Habermas’s notion of discourse ethics, and exploring the importance of hybridity and corporeality as concepts in ethical thinking, the author suggests that, far from being ill-formed opinions, such reasonings perform an important function for thinking through the ontological significance of the corporealisation of these proposed new forms of human and animal bodies

Building the Field of Health Policy and Systems Research: Social Science Matters

In the second in a series of articles addressing the current challenges and opportunities for the development of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR), Lucy Gilson and colleagues argue the importance of insights from the social sciences