Assessing the effectiveness of business support services in England: evidence from a theory based evaluation

In England, publicly supported advisory services for small firms are organised primarily through the Business Link (BL) network. Based on the programme theory underlying this business support services we develop four propositions and test these empirically using data from a new survey of over 3,000 English small firms. Our empirical results provide a broad validation of the programme theory underlying BL assistance for small firms in England during 2003, and more limited support for its effectiveness. More specifically, we find strong support for the value of BL operators maintaining a high profile as a way of boosting take-up. We also find some support for the approach to market segmentation adopted by BL allowing more intensive assistance to be targeted on younger firms and those with limited liability status. In terms of the outcomes of BL support, and allowing for issues of sample selection, we find no significant effects on growth from ‘other’ assistance but do find positive and significant employment growth effects from intensive assistance. This provides partial support for the programme theory assertion that BL support will lead to improvements in business growth performance and stronger support for the proposition that there would be differential outcomes from intensive and other assistance. The positive employment growth outcomes identified here from intensive assistance, even allowing for sample selection, suggest something of an improvement in the effectiveness of the BL network since the late 1990s

Geometric Entanglement of Symmetric States and the Majorana Representation

Permutation-symmetric quantum states appear in a variety of physical situations, and they have been proposed for quantum information tasks. This article builds upon the results of [New J. Phys. 12, 073025 (2010)], where the maximally entangled symmetric states of up to twelve qubits were explored, and their amount of geometric entanglement determined by numeric and analytic means. For this the Majorana representation, a generalization of the Bloch sphere representation, can be employed to represent symmetric n qubit states by n points on the surface of a unit sphere. Symmetries of this point distribution simplify the determination of the entanglement, and enable the study of quantum states in novel ways. Here it is shown that the duality relationship of Platonic solids has a counterpart in the Majorana representation, and that in general maximally entangled symmetric states neither correspond to anticoherent spin states nor to spherical designs. The usability of symmetric states as resources for measurement-based quantum computing is also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures; submitted to Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS

Finding a moral homeground: appropriately critical religious education and transmission of spiritual values

Values-inspired issues remain an important part of the British school curriculum. Avoiding moral relativism while fostering enthusiasm for spiritual values and applying them to non-curricular learning such as school ethos or children's home lives are challenges where spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development might benefit from leadership by critical religious education (RE). Whether the school's model of spirituality is that of an individual spiritual tradition (schools of a particular religious character) or universal pluralistic religiosity (schools of plural religious character), the pedagogy of RE thought capable of leading SMSC development would be the dialogical approach with examples of successful implementation described by Gates, Ipgrave and Skeie. Marton's phenomenography, is thought to provide a valuable framework to allow the teacher to be appropriately critical in the transmission of spiritual values in schools of a particular religious character as evidenced by Hella's work in Lutheran schools

Variation in the effects of vegetation and litter on recruitment across productivity gradients

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72736/1/j.1365-2745.1999.00367.x.pd