UKCN / NESTA policy seminar briefing: policies, roles and tasks required in undertaking ‘cross-tenure’ cohousing development

A policy discussion document for the UK Cohousing Network, considering what aspects of housing and design policies need to be considered that can add impetus to the promotion and development of new cross-tenure cohousing neighbourhood

Fiscal indicators - Proceedings of the the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs Workshop held on 22 September 2006 in Brussels

Fiscal indicators are the backbone of effective fiscal policy-making, including the coordination and surveillance of budgetary policy at the EU level. The quality and success of the EU surveillance framework, in particular the timeliness and appropriateness of any policy recommendation or decision taken in the context of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), crucially depend on the quality of its diagnostic instruments. The right conclusions can only be drawn if the underlying analysis is comprehensive and accurate.fiscal indicators, government budget, EU fiscal surveillance, sustainability of fiscal policy, cyclically adjusted budget balance, Larch, Nogueira Martins

Barefoot running improves economy at high intensities and peak treadmill velocity

Aim: Barefoot running can improve running economy (RE) compared to shod running at low exercise intensities, but data is lacking for the higher intensities typical during many distance running competitions. The influence of barefoot running on the velocity at maximal oxygen uptake (vVO2max) and peak incremental treadmill test velocity (vmax) is unknown. The present study tested the hypotheses that barefoot running would improve RE, vVO2max and vmax relative to shod running. Methods: Using a balanced within-subject repeated measures design, eight male runners (aged 23.1±4.5 years, height 1.80±0.06 m, mass 73.8±11.5 kg, VO2max 4.08±0.39 L·min-1) completed a familiarization followed by one barefoot and one shod treadmill running trial, 2-14 days apart. Trial sessions consisted of a 5 minute warm-up, 5 minute rest, followed by 4×4 minute stages, at speeds corresponding to ~67, 75, 84 and 91% shod VO2max respectively, separated by a 1 minute rest. After the 4th stage treadmill speed was incremented by 0.1 km·h-1 every 15 s until participants reached volitional exhaustion. Results: RE was improved by 4.4±7.0% across intensities in the barefoot condition (P=0.040). The improvement in RE was related to removed shoe mass (r2=0.80, P=0.003) with an intercept at 0% improvement for RE at 0.520 kg total shoe mass. Both vVO2max (by 4.5±5.0%, P=0.048) and vmax (by 3.9±4.0%, P=0.030) also improved but VO2max was unchanged (p=0.747). Conclusion: Barefoot running improves RE at high exercise intensities and increases vVO2max and vmax, but further research is required to clarify the influence of very light shoe weights on RE

Employee protection during business rescue proceedings in South Africa : a comparative perspective

Includes bibliographical references.The Companies Act 71 of 2008 (hereafter ‘the Companies Act 2008’) came into force in 2011, bringing with it a corporate rescue regime called ‘business rescue’. If a business is placed under business rescue there are a multitude of legal consequences that follow. A thorough reading of the business rescue provisions reveals that employees are granted a large number of important rights and protections when their employer is placed under business rescue. This dissertation consolidates the company law and labour law aspects of this area of law in order to gain comprehensive understanding of the protection given to employees during business rescue. It is important for lawyers, employees, employers and business rescue practitioners to understand what rights employees have during business rescue in order for those rights to be enforced and utilised effectively. While the protection of employees is undeniably an important objective, it has been argued that the amount of protection afforded to employees in chapter 6 is worrying in that their over-protection could potentially be detrimental to the overall success of the business rescue proceedings. This may ultimately have a negative effect on employees as it is in the best interests of the employees for the business rescue proceedings to be successful. The focus of this dissertation is therefore on whether employees in South Africa are afforded too much protection during business rescue proceedings and, if so, which provisions are problematic

The Revenge of Coordinated Capitalism? Reflections from the Presidential Plenary in Montreal

The global financial crisis of 2008 initially seemed to mark the bankruptcy of neoliberal deregulation and a transition to a new era of renewed faith in government, yet the rising fortunes of parties on the right seem to belie this easy lesson. This essay considers the persistence of managed and relatively egalitarian capitalism after the crisis of finance capitalism. I reflection why some societies are more equitable and solidaristic than others, question whether our beliefs about cross-national variation continue to hold true, and ponder how the financial crisis might affect nations’ capacities to construct coalitions for social solidarity

Extremal/Saturation Numbers for Guessing Numbers of Undirected Graphs

Hat guessing games—logic puzzles where a group of players must try to guess the color of their own hat—have been a fun party game for decades but have become of academic interest to mathematicians and computer scientists in the past 20 years. In 2006, Søren Riis, a computer scientist, introduced a new variant of the hat guessing game as well as an associated graph invariant, the guessing number, that has applications to network coding and circuit complexity. In this thesis, to better understand the nature of the guessing number of undirected graphs we apply the concept of saturation to guessing numbers and investigate the extremal and saturation numbers of guessing numbers. We define and determine the extremal number in terms of edges for the guessing number by using the previously established bound of the guessing number by the chromatic number of the complement. We also use the concept of graph entropy, also developed by Søren Riis, to find a constant bound on the saturation number of the guessing number