Celebrating Economies of Change: Brave Visions for Inclusive Futures

This issue has been inspired by a path-breaking conference held by the Canadian Society for Ecologi-cal Economics (CANSEE), which took place this past May 2019 in Waterloo, Ontario. Entitled Engaging Economies of Change, the conference aimed to ex-pand existing research networks in the economy-environment nexus by building connections beyond the academy in order to meaningfully engage with the practicalities of building and implementing change. This issue captures the rich content shared during the event, as well as descriptions of the pro-cesses and efforts made to create a welcoming and respectful space where academics and community activists could build alliances and discuss common challenges. The conference organizers – all graduate students and activists themselves -- called this ‘building a brave space’.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Experimental demonstration of counterfactual quantum key distribution

Counterfactual quantum key distribution provides natural advantage against the eavesdropping on the actual signal particles. It can prevent the photon-number-splitting attack when a weak coherent light source is used for the practical implementation. We realized the counterfactual quantum key distribution in an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer of 12.5-km-long quantum channel with a high-fringe visibility of 96:4%. As a result, we obtained secure keys against the noise-induced attack (eg. the vacuum attack) and passive photon-number-splitting attack.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Obliged to calculate: My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness

This paper argues neoliberal programs of government in education are equipping parents for calculativeness. Regimes of testing and the publication of these results and other organizational data are contributing to a public economy of numbers that increasingly oblige citizens to calculate. Using the notions of calculative and market devices, this paper examines the Australian Government’s My School website, which publishes academic and organizational information about schools, including national test results. While it is often assumed that such performance technologies contribute to neoliberal reform of education through school choice, the paper argues the website is technically limited in its capacity to facilitate the economic calculations and calculated action of parents resulting in school choice. The paper instead opens My School to analysis as a technique of governmental self-formation. Using the theoretical resources of actor-network theory and Foucauldian scholarship, this paper complicates assumptions in the literature about the extent to which My School actually operates as a ‘market mechanism’. It argues My School attempts to cultivate a calculated form of parental educational agency, irreducible to economic market agency

Optical fibers with interferometric path length stability by controlled heating for transmission of optical signals and as components in frequency standards

We present a simple method to stabilize the optical path length of an optical fiber to an accuracy of about 1/100 of the laser wavelength. We study the dynamic response of the path length to modulation of an electrically conductive heater layer of the fiber. The path length is measured against the laser wavelength by use of the Pound-Drever-Hall method; negative feedback is applied via the heater. We apply the method in the context of a cryogenic resonator frequency standard.Comment: Expanded introduction and outlook. 9 pages, 5 figure

Translations of new public management: a decentred approach to school governance in four OECD countries

Despite the prevalence of corporate and performative models of school governance within and across different education systems, there are various cases of uneven, hybrid expressions of New Public Management (NPM) that reveal the contingency of global patterns of rule. Adopting a ‘decentred approach’ to governance (Bevir, M. 2010. “Rethinking Governmentality: Towards Genealogies of Governance.” European Journal of Social Theory 13 (4): 423–441), this paper compares the development of NPM in four OECD countries: Australia, England, Spain, and Switzerland. A focus of the paper is how certain policy instruments are created and sustained within highly differentiated geo-political settings and through different multi-scalar actors and authorities yet modified to reflect established traditions and practices

Quantum Communication

Quantum communication, and indeed quantum information in general, has changed the way we think about quantum physics. In 1984 and 1991, the first protocol for quantum cryptography and the first application of quantum non-locality, respectively, attracted a diverse field of researchers in theoretical and experimental physics, mathematics and computer science. Since then we have seen a fundamental shift in how we understand information when it is encoded in quantum systems. We review the current state of research and future directions in this new field of science with special emphasis on quantum key distribution and quantum networks.Comment: Submitted version, 8 pg (2 cols) 5 fig

Lawson criterion for ignition exceeded in an inertial fusion experiment

For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin "burn propagation" into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While "scientific breakeven" (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion

Enacting the independent public schools program in Western Australia

The Independent Public Schools (IPS) program began to be implemented in some Western Australian schools in 2010. The IPS program devolves a number of responsibilities to principals and is part of the political objective of removing the constraints of the education bureaucracy by fostering school level decision-making, problem-solving and innovation. This paper argues that IPS can be understood as an instance of 'advanced liberal government'. It then explores the enactment of IPS in a Western Australian high school. This paper suggests that while IPS was designed to empower principals from the constraints of the Department of Education, and principals are taking up the flexibilities offered by the program, some principals may be experiencing a lack of support and resources that imposes constraints in their capacity to innovate and problem-solve