Beacons of Excellence in Stress Prevention

NoThis report describes the work of Robertson Cooper Ltd and UMIST to identify good practice in stress prevention and then identify organisations within the UK that could be called beacons of excellence in comparison to this model. Part one of this report summarises and draws conclusions from all of the substantive academic studies on stress prevention over the last decade and uses this information, as well as advice gained from a panel of international experts, to develop a comprehensive stress prevention model. Part two of the report uses this model to describe examples of stress prevention practices that Robertson Cooper Ltd has identified within a wide range of UK organisations. Case studies are presented for each aspect of the good practice model. Examples of real documentation and organisational practice are presented.Health and Safety Executive (HSE

Boundary and impurity effects on entanglement of Heisenberg chains

We study entanglement of a pair of qubits and the bipartite entanglement between the pair and the rest within open-ended Heisenberg $XXX$ and XY models. The open boundary condition leads to strong oscillations of entanglements with a two-site period, and the two kinds of entanglements are 180 degree out of phase with each other. The mean pairwise entanglement and ground-state energy per site in the $XXX$ model are found to be proportional to each other. We study the effects of a single bulk impurity on entanglement, and find that there exists threshold values of the relative coupling strength between the impurity and its nearest neighbours, after which the impurity becomes pairwise entangled with its nearest neighbours.Comment: 6 pages and 6 figure

The State Of IS In Australian Universities - New South Wales Report

This paper, examining Information Systems in New South Wales universities, highlights the significance of New South Wales as the most populous state in Australia. Rather than offering a comprehensive coverage of all Information Systems courses in the state, the paper gives a broad overview of Information Systems in the states universities while seeking to highlight the distinctive characteristics of some of the universities, deemed to have particular significance in the state. The view portrayed is of an environment threatening the continuing existence of Information Systems in some of the states universities. Again, the state of Information Systems research in the states universities is characterised by diversity and limited collaboration

QUASAT: An orbiting very long baseline interferometer program using large space antenna systems

QUASAT, which stands for QUASAR SATELLITE, is the name given to a new mission being studied by NASA. The QUASAT mission concept involves a free flying Earth orbiting large radio telescope, which will observe astronomical radio sources simultaneously with ground radio telescopes. The primary goal of QUASAT is to provide a system capable of collecting radio frequency data which will lead to a better understanding of extremely high energy events taking place in a variety of celestial objects including quasars, galactic nuclei, interstellar masers, radio stars and pulsars. QUASAT's unique scientific contribution will be the increased resolution in the emission brightness profile maps of the celestial objects

Do Gender Differences in Perceived Prototypical Computer Scientists and Engineers Contribute to Gender Gaps in Computer Science and Engineering?

Women are vastly underrepresented in the fields of computer science and engineering (CS&E). We examined whether women might view the intellectual characteristics of prototypical individuals in CS&E in more stereotype-consistent ways than men might and, consequently, show less interest in CS&E. We asked 269 U.S. college students (187, 69.5% women) to describe the prototypical computer scientist (Study 1) or engineer (Study 2) through open-ended descriptions as well as through a set of trait ratings. Participants also rated themselves on the same set of traits and rated their similarity to the prototype. Finally, participants in both studies were asked to describe their likelihood of pursuing future college courses and careers in computer science (Study 1) or engineering (Study 2). Across both studies, we found that women offered more stereotype-consistent ratings than did men of the intellectual characteristics of prototypes in CS (Study 1) and engineering (Study 2). Women also perceived themselves as less similar to the prototype than men did. Further, the observed gender differences in prototype perceptions mediated the tendency for women to report lower interest in CS&E fields relative to men. Our work highlights the importance of prototype perceptions for understanding the gender gap in CS&E and suggests avenues for interventions that may increase women’s representation in these vital fields

(Never) Mind your p's and q's: Von Neumann versus Jordan on the Foundations of Quantum Theory

In two papers entitled "On a new foundation [Neue Begr\"undung] of quantum mechanics," Pascual Jordan (1927b,g) presented his version of what came to be known as the Dirac-Jordan statistical transformation theory. As an alternative that avoids the mathematical difficulties facing the approach of Jordan and Paul A. M. Dirac (1927), John von Neumann (1927a) developed the modern Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics. In this paper, we focus on Jordan and von Neumann. Central to the formalisms of both are expressions for conditional probabilities of finding some value for one quantity given the value of another. Beyond that Jordan and von Neumann had very different views about the appropriate formulation of problems in quantum mechanics. For Jordan, unable to let go of the analogy to classical mechanics, the solution of such problems required the identication of sets of canonically conjugate variables, i.e., p's and q's. For von Neumann, not constrained by the analogy to classical mechanics, it required only the identication of a maximal set of commuting operators with simultaneous eigenstates. He had no need for p's and q's. Jordan and von Neumann also stated the characteristic new rules for probabilities in quantum mechanics somewhat differently. Jordan (1927b) was the first to state those rules in full generality. Von Neumann (1927a) rephrased them and, in a subsequent paper (von Neumann, 1927b), sought to derive them from more basic considerations. In this paper we reconstruct the central arguments of these 1927 papers by Jordan and von Neumann and of a paper on Jordan's approach by Hilbert, von Neumann, and Nordheim (1928). We highlight those elements in these papers that bring out the gradual loosening of the ties between the new quantum formalism and classical mechanics.Comment: New version. The main difference with the old version is that the introduction has been rewritten. Sec. 1 (pp. 2-12) in the old version has been replaced by Secs. 1.1-1.4 (pp. 2-31) in the new version. The paper has been accepted for publication in European Physical Journal

Einstein and Jordan frames reconciled: a frame-invariant approach to scalar-tensor cosmology

Scalar-Tensor theories of gravity can be formulated in different frames, most notably, the Einstein and the Jordan one. While some debate still persists in the literature on the physical status of the different frames, a frame transformation in Scalar-Tensor theories amounts to a local redefinition of the metric, and then should not affect physical results. We analyze the issue in a cosmological context. In particular, we define all the relevant observables (redshift, distances, cross-sections, ...) in terms of frame-independent quantities. Then, we give a frame-independent formulation of the Boltzmann equation, and outline its use in relevant examples such as particle freeze-out and the evolution of the CMB photon distribution function. Finally, we derive the gravitational equations for the frame-independent quantities at first order in perturbation theory. From a practical point of view, the present approach allows the simultaneous implementation of the good aspects of the two frames in a clear and straightforward way.Comment: 15 pages, matches version to be published on Phys. Rev.

Density perturbations in Kaluza--Klein theories during a de Sitter phase

In the context of Kaluza-Klein theories, we consider a model in which the universe is filled with a perfect fluid described by a barotropic equation of state. An analysis of density perturbations employing the synchronous gauge shows that there are cases where these perturbations have an exponential growth during a de Sitter phase evolution in the external space.Comment: LaTex file, 10 pages. To be published in Classical and Quantum Gravit