Customer premises services market demand assessment 1980 - 2000. Volume 1: Executive summary

Estimates of market demand for domestic civilian telecommunications services for the years 1980 to 2000 are provided. Overall demand, demand or satellite services, demand for satellite delivered Customer Premises Service (CPS), and demand for 30/20 GHz Customer Premises Services are covered. Emphasis is placed on the CPS market and demand is segmented by market, by service, by user class and by geographic region. Prices for competing services are discussed and the distribution of traffic with respect to distance is estimated. A nationwide traffic distribution model for CPS in terms of demand for CPS traffic and earth stations for each of the major SMSAs in the United States are provided

The contested and contingent outcomes of Thatcherism in the UK

The death of Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 sparked a range of discussions and debates about the significance of her period in office and the political project to which she gave her name: Thatcherism. This article argues that Thatcherism is best understood as a symbolically important part of the emergence of first-phase neoliberalism. It engages with contemporary debates about Thatcherism among Marxist commentators and suggests that several apparently divergent positions can help us now reach a more useful analysis of Thatcherism’s short- and long-term outcomes for British political economy. The outcomes identified include: an initial crisis in the neoliberal project in the UK; the transformation of the party political system to be reflective of the politics of neoliberalism, rather than its contestation; long-term attempts at the inculcation of the neoliberal individual; de-industrialisation and financial sector dependence; and a fractured and partially unconscious working class. In all long-term outcomes, the contribution of Thatcherism is best understood as partial and largely negative, in that it cleared the way for a longer-term and more constructive attempt to embed neoliberal political economy. The paper concludes by suggesting that this analysis can inform current debates on the left of British politics about how to oppose and challenge the imposition of neoliberal discipline today

Tunable singlet-triplet splitting in a few-electron Si/SiGe quantum dot

We measure the excited-state spectrum of a Si/SiGe quantum dot as a function of in-plane magnetic field, and we identify the spin of the lowest three eigenstates in an effective two-electron regime. The singlet-triplet splitting is an essential parameter describing spin qubits, and we extract this splitting from the data. We find it to be tunable by lateral displacement of the dot, which is realized by changing two gate voltages on opposite sides of the device. We present calculations showing the data are consistent with a spectrum in which the first excited state of the dot is a valley-orbit state.Comment: 4 pages with 3 figure

Doing challenging research studies in a patient centred way: qualitative study to inform a randomised controlled trial in the paediatric emergency care setting

Objective: To inform the design of a randomised controlled trial (called EcLiPSE) to improve the treatment of children with convulsive status epilepticus (CSE). EcLiPSE requires the use of a controversial deferred consent process. Design: Qualitative interview and focus group study. Setting: 8 UK support groups for parents of children who have chronic or acute health conditions and experience of paediatric emergency care. Participants: 17 parents, of whom 11 participated in telephone interviews (10 mothers, 1 father) and 6 in a focus group (5 mothers, 1 father). 6 parents (35%) were bereaved and 7 (41%) had children who had experienced seizures, including CSE. Results: Most parents had not heard of deferred consent, yet they supported its use to enable the progress of emergency care research providing a child's safety was not compromised by the research. Parents were reassured by tailored explanation, which focused their attention on aspects of EcLiPSE that addressed their priorities and concerns. These aspects included the safety of the interventions under investigation and how both EcLiPSE interventions are used in routine clinical practice. Parents made recommendations about the appropriate timing of a recruitment discussion, the need to individualise approaches to recruiting bereaved parents and the use of clear written information. Conclusions: Our study provided information to help ensure that a challenging trial was patient centred in its design. We will use our findings to help EcLiPSE practitioners to: discuss potentially threatening trial safety information with parents, use open-ended questions and prompts to identify their priorities and concerns and clarify related aspects of written trial information to assist understanding and decision-making

The aerodynamic challenges of the design and development of the space shuttle orbiter

The major aerodynamic design challenge at the beginning of the United States Space Transportation System (STS) research and development phase was to design a vehicle that would fly as a spacecraft during early entry and as an aircraft during the final phase of entry. The design was further complicated because the envisioned vehicle was statically unstable during a portion of the aircraft mode of operation. The second challenge was the development of preflight aerodynamic predictions with an accuracy consistent with conducting a manned flight on the initial orbital flight. A brief history of the early contractual studies is presented highlighting the technical results and management decisions influencing the aerodynamic challenges. The configuration evolution and the development of preflight aerodynamic predictions will be reviewed. The results from the first four test flights shows excellent agreement with the preflight aerodynamic predictions over the majority of the flight regimes. The only regimes showing significant disagreement is confined primarily to early entry, where prediction of the basic vehicle trim and the influence of the reaction control system jets on the flow field were found to be deficient. Postflight results are analyzed to explain these prediction deficiencies

Quantum control and process tomography of a semiconductor quantum dot hybrid qubit

The similarities between gated quantum dots and the transistors in modern microelectronics - in fabrication methods, physical structure, and voltage scales for manipulation - have led to great interest in the development of quantum bits (qubits) in semiconductor quantum dots. While quantum dot spin qubits have demonstrated long coherence times, their manipulation is often slower than desired for important future applications, such as factoring. Further, scalability and manufacturability are enhanced when qubits are as simple as possible. Previous work has increased the speed of spin qubit rotations by making use of integrated micromagnets, dynamic pumping of nuclear spins, or the addition of a third quantum dot. Here we demonstrate a new qubit that offers both simplicity - it requires no special preparation and lives in a double quantum dot with no added complexity - and is very fast: we demonstrate full control on the Bloch sphere with $\pi$-rotation times less than 100 ps in two orthogonal directions. We report full process tomography, extracting high fidelities equal to or greater than 85% for X-rotations and 94% for Z-rotations. We discuss a path forward to fidelities better than the threshold for quantum error correction.Comment: 6 pages, excluding Appendi

'Word from the street' : when non-electoral representative claims meet electoral representation in the United Kingdom

Taking the specific case of street protests in the UK – the ‘word from the street’– this article examines recent (re)conceptualizations of political representation, most particularly Saward’s notion of ‘representative claim’. The specific example of nonelectoral claims articulated by protestors and demonstrators in the UK is used to illustrate: the processes of making, constituting, evaluating and accepting claims for and by constituencies and audiences; and the continuing distinctiveness of claims based upon electoral representation. Two basic questions structure the analysis: first, why would the political representative claims of elected representatives trump the nonelectoral claims of mass demonstrators and, second, in what ways does the ‘perceived legitimacy’ of the former differ from the latter