Cooperation in policing in Europe - current trends and future challenges

The paper presents the range of current and future challenges for European policing in the following areas: cooperation; illegal migration; drug market; use of internet and electronic communications; banking, finance and information technology sectors. The author explains how police will have to strengthen international cooperation for tackling these challenges. Moreover, he underlines that international cooperation is a key element for successful and effective policing not only in the field of operational policing but also in the areas of police training/education and policing research

On wild ramification in quaternion extensions

Quaternion extensions are often the smallest extensions to exhibit special properties. In the setting of the Hasse-Arf Theorem, for instance, quaternion extensions are used to illustrate the fact that upper ramification numbers need not be integers. These extensions play a similar role in Galois module structure. To better understand these examples, we catalog the ramification filtrations that are possible in totally ramified extensions of dyadic number fields. Interestingly, we find that the catalog depends, for sharp lower bounds, upon the refined ramification filtration, which is associated with the biquatratic subfield. Moreover these examples, as counter-examples to the conclusion of Hasse-Arf, occur only when the refined filtration is, in two different ways, extreme.Comment: 19 pages. This is an extensive revision of the earlier draf

The Development of explosives competencies, training and education in the UK

Competent explosives workers in the Armed Forces and in the civil sector are critical to the safe production, testing and use of explosives. Moreover we need competent explosives specialists to combat the challenge from terrorism and clean up the planet from the explosive hazards that are the legacy of past conflicts. Unfortunately many countries are witnessing a significant loss of capability in this area and are looking at ways of replenishing vital expertise. This paper describes the work done in recent years by the authors and others in the UK to establish numbers of people working in the sector and to consider the skills and knowledge required to carry out their work. It outlines the concept of national occupational standards and the framework of professional and vocational qualifications that are available or are being developed for explosives specialists. It also describes some of the educational and e-learning programmes designed to support this initiative. Ultimately the aim is to address the professionalism of all personnel who deal with explosives in order to reduce the incidence and consequence of accidents and maintain national capability

Detecting Axion-Like Particles With Gamma Ray Telescopes

We propose that axion-like particles (ALPs) with a two-photon vertex, consistent with all astrophysical and laboratory bounds, may lead to a detectable signature in the spectra of high-energy gamma ray sources. This occurs as a result of gamma rays being converted into ALPs in the magnetic fields of efficient astrophysical accelerators according to the "Hillas criterion", such as jets of active galactic nuclei or hot spots of radio galaxies. The discovery of such an effect is possible by GLAST in the 1-100 GeV range and by ground based gamma ray telescopes in the TeV range.Comment: corrected typos, one plot modified, material rearranged for clarification. Conclusions unchanged. Matches version published in Phys. Rev. Let

The Intergalactic Propagation of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Ray Nuclei: An Analytic Approach

It is likely that ultra-high energy cosmic rays contain a significant component of heavy or intermediate mass nuclei. The propagation of ultra-high energy nuclei through cosmic radiation backgrounds is more complicated than that of protons and its study has required the use of Monte Carlo techniques. We present an analytic method for calculating the spectrum and the composition at Earth of ultra-high energy cosmic rays which start out as heavy nuclei from their extragalactic sources. The results obtained are in good agreement with those obtained using numerical methods.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys Rev

SELLING TRAVEL AS PART OF A PACKAGE. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSPORT RESEARCH.

The selling of long-distance travel as a package has its origins in the latter half of the last century and the practice has been instrumental in turning travel into a consumer item. Packaging is found to be significant in the Australian airline market while the degree of concentration in travel wholesaling and air transport is high. Travel packageing can be characterised as “price building”, a strategy which has been growing in popularity in competitive service sectors. This paper explorers optimal business strategies that take advantage of building, but it is shown that there are implications for policy analysis and for studies of travel demand. The relevance of bundling in transport research is illustrated while noting that there has been a lack of attention to the subject. Opportunities for further research are suggested

Innovation in Concentrating Solar Power Technologies: A Study Drawing on Patent Data

Better understanding the innovative process of renewable energy technologies is important for tackling climate change. Though concentrating solar power is receiving growing interest, innovation studies so far have explored innovative activity in solar technologies in general, ignoring the major differences between solar photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies. This study relies on patent data to examine international innovative activity in concentrating solar power technologies. Our unique contribution, based on engineering expertise and detailed datawork, is a classification system matching solar thermal technologies to the International Patent Classification (IPC) system. To this end we suggest a narrowly defined set of IPC classes and a broader one of technologies relevant to CSP, but not exclusively so. We moreover exploit information from three international patent offices, the European, the United States and the Japanese patent office. Innovative activity in narrowly defined CSP technologies has experienced an early boom before 1980 and only recently showed some signs of more activity - a pattern closely resembling the R&D support path. R&D and innovation are concentrated in few high-tech countries - such as the U.S. or Germany. Large CSP potential is not a sufficient condition for innovation, only developed countries such as Australia with both CSP potential and adequate economic and scientific capabilities are found to be among the group of relevant innovators.Innovation, patent data, solar technologies, climate change