21,135 research outputs found
What about the Lib Dems?
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claims that there have been âno deals and understandingsâ with either Labour or the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament, despite the mediaâs obsession with his (potential) role of kingmaker
Book review: enterprising care? Unpaid voluntary action in the 21st century by Irene Hardhill and Susan Baines Posted on April 22, 2012 by Blog Admin
Many voluntary organisations now face having to take up the provision of some public services as government funding shrinks, and are also under considerable pressure to become more enterprising. Chris Gilson reviews Enterprising Care? which includes case study descriptions, discussions of academic debates about volunteering, work and care as well as research practice
Structuring accountability: non-governmental participation in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)
This paper issues from a conference on âCivil Society and Accountable Global Governanceâ, organised by Jan Aart Scholte in May 2007. It examines the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the role of parallel summitry that has established itself on the margins of the official biennial gathering. Now comprising thirty five âcooperation partnersâ from the regions of Europe and East Asia, ASEM summits, and the many other meetings in its name, focus on a host of issue areas for cooperation, from the further development of ICT to climate change and anti-terrorism. However, while business groups and trade unions are accommodated within the formal structures of ASEM, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are not. Nevertheless, the Asia-Europe Peopleâs Forum (AEPF) has established itself alongside the summitry process, and the ways in which it has been able to influence government actions within ASEM to date have been contingent upon the particular structural conditions in which they have had to function. In demonstrating the tensions and opportunities inherent in the interregional space created by ASEM, this paper claims that accountability, itself a contested concept, is shaped by the structural frames of reference of agents, by their (power) relationships with one another and by both the internal and external mechanisms available to them to ensure accountability.
As ASEM has yet to allow the formal inclusion of NGOs within its framework, claims and consultation to date have been conducted on the edges of the official track. In addition, the multitude of NGO types within the AEPF make it difficult to reach consensus and to organise difference. This difference also implicates and reinforces different levels of influence by NGO participants and highlights the fact that different NGOs may approach their remit quite differently. In addition, the ASEM process embeds an Asian versus European participation that is mirrored within AEPF, with the result that at times in the civil society realm, too, there is evidence to suggest that the structure can bring into conflict Asian versus European ways of doing business. Can accountability be ensured within structures whose modes may not be conducive to transparency and scrutiny? And what claims can the NGO community make for its own accountability? The conclusion examines whether the existing paradigm of civic engagement sets up an impossible hurdle for the establishment of open and accountable policy making behaviour within ASEM
Tunable critical current for a vortex pinned by a magnetic dipole
\\A simple model for a superconductor with tunable critical current is
studied theoretically. The model consists of a thin superconducting film with
one vortex interacting with one magnetic dipole, whose magnetic moment is free
to rotate, in the presence of a magnetic field applied parallel to the film
surfaces. The pinning potential for the vortex is calculated exactly in the
London limit. It is found that, due to the dipole freedom to rotate, the
dependence of the pinning potential on the applied field is non-trivial, and
allows both the spatial dependence and strength of the pinning potential to be
changed by the field. As a consequence, the critical current can be tuned by
the applied field. The critical current is obtained numerically as a function
of the applied field. Order of magnitude changes in the critical current
resulting from changes in the direction and magnitude of the applied field are
reported, with discontinuous changes taking place in some cases. Possible
application to vortices in low- superconducting films pinned by arrays of
magnetic dots are briefly considered. \\Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. To be published in Europhysics Letter
Tunable interactions between vortices and a magnetic dipole
The interactions between vortices in a thin superconducting film and one
magnetic dipole in the presence of a magnetic field applied parallel to the
film surfaces are studied theoretically in the London limit. The dipole
magnetic moment is assumed to have constant magnitude and freedom to rotate.
The pinning potential for an arbitrary vortex configuration is calculated
exactly. It is found that, due to the dipole freedom to rotate, the pinning
potential differs significantly from that for a permanent dipole. In
particular, its dependence on the applied field is non-trivial and allows for
tuning of the pinning potential by the applied field. The critical current for
one vortex pinned by the dipole is obtained numerically as a function of the
applied field and found to depend strongly on the field. Order of magnitude
changes in the critical current resulting from changes in the direction and
magnitude of the applied field are reported, with discontinuous changes taking
place in some cases. The effect of vortex pinning by random material defects on
the critical current is investigated using a simple model. It is found that if
random pinning is weak the critical current remains strongly dependent on the
applied field. Possible applications to vortices pinned by arrays of magnetic
dots are briefly considered.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
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