Tutorial on the Quantikz Package

This tutorial introduces (and provides, via the document source) the Quantikz LaTeX package for typesetting quantum circuit diagrams. This takes advantage of tikz to give greater control over the circuit options. Those familiar with the excellent QCircuit package will recognise much of the notation, although it has evolved a bit (hopefully simplified!).Comment: 15 pages, with many exquisite quantum circuits. Corresponding to version 0.9.6 of quantik

Redressing disadvantage and ensuring social cohesion: the role of distance education and elearning policies in the European Union 1957-2007

This paper analyses the development and implementation of the European Union's policies in distance higher education and elearning since the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Distance education emerged in the 1960s and 70s as an instrument at national level to redress disadvantage, and to provide flexible, high-quality and cost-effective access to higher education to adults who were unable, for geographical, employment or personal reasons, to attend on-campus. Analysis of EU policy documents and interviews with key individuals indicates that the support of influential policy entrepreneurs and networks brought distance education to the centre stage in EU education and training policy for a brief period in the early 1990s, culminating in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1992), which committed the EU to ‘encouraging the development of distance education’. Since then, distance learning has been superceded by elearning, and is linked in EU rhetoric to social cohesion in the context of making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. Yet, despite the great potential of elearning, this paper outlines the challenges to its wider adoption. These include the persistence of the digital divide in Europe; student resistance to elearning approaches; and the problem of achieving cost-effectiveness in elearning. Much remains to be done to ensure the flexibility in terms of time, place, pace, and indeed accessibility, which would enable adult students to participate in lifelong learning on a truly democratic basis

Working with single fathers in Western Siberia: a new departure in Russian social provision

No abstract available

Double Homotopy (Co)Limits for Relative Categories

We answer the question to what extent homotopy (co)limits in categories with weak equivalences allow for a Fubini-type interchange law. The main obstacle is that we do not assume our categories with weak equivalences to come equipped with a calculus for homotopy (co)limits, such as a derivator.Comment: 34 page

Correlations of chiral condensates and quark number densities with static quark sources

We investigate correlation functions of the Polyakov loop and static meson/diquark systems with the chiral condensate and the quark number density at finite temperature. In particular the latter observable can give insight in the mechanism of screening and string breaking at finite temperature. We use for our analysis gauge field configurations generated in 2+1 flavor QCD with an improved staggered fermion action with almost physical light quark masses and a physical value of the strange quark mass on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4 and 6.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, presented at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 30 - August 4 2007, Regensburg, German

Scottish ferry policy

The purpose of this paper is to review the evolution of Scottish policy for the provision of ferry services 1999-2009, a period broadly coinciding with the life of the re-established Scottish parliament. We shall argue that, despite clear and consistent warnings by this author and others, the government failed to put in place measures and safeguards that were regarded as standard practice for such an industry providing essential services