What’s the Difference: A Study of the Nature and Extent of Racism in Rugby League

At the start of the 1993/4 season the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and the Professional Footballers' Association launched the 'Let's Kick Racism Out of Football' campaign which subsequently gained the support of the Football Association, the FA Premier, the Endsleigh League and the Football Trust (CRE/PFA, 1994). That campaign led to discussions between the Rugby Football League (RFL), Leeds City Council and the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) with a view to taking action to address racism in rugby league. Some sports though have become renowned as being sites for racialist confrontations, most notably football, as recorded in Hill's (1989) account of John Barnes' experiences and Holland's (1994) work on the terraces at Newcastle, Leeds and Bolton. General impressions suggested that the position in rugby league was not as bad as in football, but racist abuse and occasional incidents of banana throwing and monkey chants have all been recorded at rugby league matches. Concern about racism at matches has also been expressed recently in the letters pages of the rugby league press and players have talked about their own experiences on television. Since we live in a racist society it would be remarkable if there was no evidence of racism in sport. Nonetheless, as the National Governing Body of the sport, the RFL recognised that this was not a reason for taking no action if it were demonstrated that there are cases of racism in rugby league. However, before embarking on direct action it was decided that information was needed on the nature and extent of racism within the game. To that end Leeds Metropolitan University was asked to survey attitudes and it was agreed that this investigation should have three main components: a) the attitudes of the clubs b) the attitudes of (black and white) players c) the attitudes of spectators At this stage we have been concerned only with the professional game, thou

Forecasting Pre-World War I Inflation: The Fisher Effect Revisited

We consider the puzzling behavior of interest rates and inflation in the United States and the United Kingdom between 1879 and 1913. A deflationary regime prior to 1896 was followed by an inflationary one from 1896 until the beginning of World War I; the average inflation rate was 3.8 percentage points higher in the second period than in the first. Yet nominal interest rates were no higher after 1896 than they had been before. This nonadjustment of nominal interest rates would be consistent with rational expectations if inflation were not forecastable, and indeed univariate tests show little sign of serial correlation in inflation. However, inflation was forecastable on the basis of lagged gold production. Investors' expectations of inflation should have risen by at least three percentage points in the United States between 1890 and 1910. We consider in an information processing context alternative ways of accounting for this failure of interest rates to adjust, for example the possible beliefs that increases in gold production might be transitory. We conclude that the failure of investors to exhibit foresight with regard to the shift in the trend inflation rate after 1896 is not persuasive evidence that investors were negligent or naive in processing information.

No-relationship between impossibility of faster-than-light quantum communication and distinction of ensembles with the same density matrix

It has been claimed in the literature that impossibility of faster-than-light quantum communication has an origin of indistinguishability of ensembles with the same density matrix. We show that the two concepts are not related. We argue that: 1) even with an ideal single-atom-precision measurement, it is generally impossible to produce two ensembles with exactly the same density matrix; or 2) to produce ensembles with the same density matrix, classical communication is necessary. Hence the impossibility of faster-than-light communication does not imply the indistinguishability of ensembles with the same density matrix.Comment: 4 pages and 3 figure

Macromolecular separation through a porous surface

A new technique for the separation of macromolecules is proposed and investigated. A thin mesh with pores comparable to the radius of gyration of a free chain is used to filter chains according to their length. Without a field it has previously been shown that the permeability decays as a power law with chain length. However by applying particular configurations of pulsed fields, it is possible to have a permeability that decays as an exponential. This faster decay gives much higher resolution of separation. We also propose a modified screen containing an array of holes with barb-like protrusions running parallel to the surface. When static friction is present between the macromolecule and the protrusion, some of the chains get trapped for long durations of time. By using this and a periodic modulation of an applied electric field, high resolution can be attained.Comment: 18 pages latex, 6 postscript figures, using psfi

Performance modelling in the domain of emergency management

The Emergency Management Combined Response System (EMCRS) is the co-ordination system which plans and controls, agencies, such as fire and police, when they respond to major emergencies. An initial combined agency (CA) model of the EMCRS describes its overall 'actual' performance, as concerns its plans. This model supports the diagnosis of co-ordination problems between agencies. However, at present, it fails to take individual agency plans into account. This paper describes an attempt to improve diagnosis of co-ordination problems by decomposing the EMCRS into its parts and modelling each individually, with respect to their plans. The CA model is then used, with individual agency models, to re-interpret overall EMCRS performance. It is concluded that EMCRS decomposition supports more accurate diagnosis of the effect of the co-ordination problems on its overall performance