Impact at Scale: Policy Innovation for Institutional Investment With Social and Environmental Benefit

Explores policy options to maximize impact investing opportunities for institutional investors and accelerate the development of impact investing practices and products. Presents case studies of and insights from investors and service providers

The Facebook Formula: An experimental study into which electioneering strategies used over Facebook are most effective at influencing the Australian youth vote.

Facebook is rapidly changing Australia’s political media landscape. Young voters’ growing reliance on Facebook for the consumption of political news has corresponded with politicians’ increasingly prudent use of social media; suggesting that Facebook will play a defining role as an influential political arena to access future generations of voters. It is therefore important for electioneers and political scientists to understand which electioneering strategies used over Facebook are the most effective at influencing the Australian youth vote. This thesis takes a post-positivist approach to research to examine this causal relationship; using the experimental method to isolate and test the effects of extant online electioneering strategies on the voting habits of young Australians. It employs web-based crowdsourcing services to recruit participants into the experiments, and in doing so encounters sample size problems which prevent it from drawing conclusions against hypotheses. While the thesis is unable to evaluate the causal relationship between online electioneering strategies and youth voting habits, by learning from the sampling issues encountered in the study it makes an important contribution towards our understanding of experiments in Australian political science. Additionally, considering problems in the study were caused by sampling issues rather than the methodological design, the thesis is able to offer a robust methodology for future post-positivist research into this area

My Two Ears Can Witness : Feminist Pedagogy from Rehearsal Hall to Classroom

Given that university rehearsal halls are a natural home for feminist pedagogy, this paper addresses professors across campus under the contention that the signature pedagogy of theatre offers a model for faculty in other disciplines. The essay adapts a series of rehearsal hall techniques for traditional classrooms as efficient ways of fostering subjectivity, empowerment, community, and reflection in service of socio-cultural ends. The original teaching activities outlined herein do not require theatrical performance, but they nevertheless draw upon the power of live witnessing and interactive response that make theatre a powerful pedagogical tool. The authors conclude with an illustration of how their techniques impacted a unique performance of Shakespeare\u27s Comedy of Errors and call for greater interaction between liberatory pedagogues across the disciplines

Covid-19 and Child Criminal Exploitation in the UK: Implications of the Pandemic for County Lines

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.open access articleIn March 2020, the UK was placed in lockdown following the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Just as legitimate workplaces made changes to enable their employees to work from home, the illicit drugs trade also made alternative arrangements, adapting its supply models to ensure continuity of operations. Based upon qualitative interviews with 46 practitioners, this paper assesses how front-line professionals have experienced and perceived the impact of Covid-19 on child criminal exploitation and County Lines drug supply in the UK. Throughout the paper, we highlight perceived adaptations to the County Lines supply model, the impact of lockdown restrictions on detection and law enforcement activities aimed at County Lines, and on efforts to safeguard children and young people from criminal exploitation. Our participants generally believed that the pandemic had induced shifts to County Lines that reflected an ongoing evolution of the drug supply model and shifts in understanding or attention because of the Covid-19 restrictions, rather than a complete reconstitution of the model itself. Practitioners perceived that Covid-19 has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on some young people’s vulnerability to exploitation, on the way in which police and frontline practitioners respond to County Lines and child criminal exploitation and on the way illegal drugs are being moved and sol

Discrete time translation symmetry breaking in a Josephson junction laser

A Josephson junction laser is realised when a microwave cavity is driven by a voltage-biased Josephson junction. Through the ac Josephson effect, a dc voltage generates a periodic drive that acts on the cavity and generates interactions between its modes. A sufficiently strong drive enables processes that down-convert a drive resonant with a high harmonic into photons at the cavity fundamental frequency, breaking the discrete time translation symmetry set by the Josephson frequency. Using a classical model, we determine when and how this transition occurs as a function of the bias voltage and the number of cavity modes. We find that certain combinations of mode number and voltage tend to facilitate the transition which emerges via an instability within a subset of the modes. Despite the complexity of the system, there are cases in which the critical drive strength can be obtained analytically.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures (supplement: 4 pages, 1 figure

Child Criminal Exploitation: and County Lines drugs distribution: Understanding the impact of Covid-19. Report

In March 2020, restrictions on movement and social contact were imposed across the UK following the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Many legitimate businesses either closed their doors entirely or made changes to enable their employees to work from home. Media reports also began to circulate suggesting that the illicit drugs trade was also making alternative arrangements for the supply of illegal drugs

Framework assessment for costs of poor quality in higher education processes

Higher education quality costs are escalating daily and the cost of poor quality is becoming excessive. The higher education department has indicated that inefficiencies within the higher education environment are affecting the performance and the return of investments. This research uses 2011 and 2012 records retrieved on Industrial Engineering department from the Management Information System unit of Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa. It focuses on how cost of poor quality can be categorized within higher education environment, and identifies methods which can be used to minimize these costs with the purpose of improving the performance and return of investments. The paper established the cost of poor quality for the department using the teaching input grant, teaching output grant, research output grant, and institutional factor grants, teaching input unit, students' full credit load and among other factors. The results of this research indicated that USD94,3166.24 and USD933,431.92 were lost for the year 2011 and 2012 respectively on just one department and affirmed that failure cost and preventative costs are the main costs associated with higher education inefficiencies and shortfalls. Thus, application of lean enterprise or lean six sigma tools is recommended to salvage the situation

On the Highly Connected Dyadic, Near-Regular, and Sixth-Root-of-Unity Matroids

Subject to announced results by Geelen, Gerards, and Whittle, we completely characterize the highly connected members of the classes of dyadic, near-regular, and sixth-root-of-unity matroids.Comment: 23 pages, SageMath worksheet in ancillary files. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1902.0713