Cultural theory and the dynamics of organizational change: the response of housing associations in London to the Housing Act 1988

The aim of this article is to consider the most effective way of conceptualizing a sector that has undergone radical change: the UK voluntary housing sector. The article considers existing accounts of housing associations and classifies these into five analytically distinct groups: practitioners, historical accounts, managerialist approaches, network theorists and institutionalist accounts. The main contention is that each of these is limited in explanatory potential, primarily due to their neglect of culture. This article proposes a more detailed framework for developing an understanding of the substantial changes affecting housing associations since the 1980s; that offered by "grid-group cultural theory". The article provides longitudinal qualitative data obtained from London housing associations to support the contention that organizational change can most usefully be understood by reference to the cultural themes of hierarchy and individualism. The article contends that cultural theory offers the opportunity to develop a systematic analysis that accounts for institutional history and organizational differentiation

Strategies for equivalent dose determination without heating, suitable for portable luminescence readers

This work was supported by the UK Space Agency CREST3 program under grant ST/P001998/1. Research in Next Generation Luminescence methods in Aberystwyth is supported by NERC grant CC003, and by HEFCW infrastructure funding for SPARCL.In recent years a number of portable instruments have been built for measuring the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) signal from naturally occurring minerals. Some of these instruments have incorporated ionising radiation sources, giving the possibility of determining an equivalent dose (De), but little use has been made of these. One challenge has been that heating samples in this type of equipment is a major engineering challenge, yet methods for De determination use thermal pretreatments to remove charge from unstable traps, making signals arising from irradiation in nature and the laboratory comparable. This paper explores three strategies for obtaining accurate estimates of the De of samples in situations where thermal treatments are not possible: (1) deriving a correction factor based on comparing De values obtained using protocols with and without heating; (2) removing the contribution from the 110 °C TL peak and other unstable defects by component fitting the unheated OSL signal; and (3) adding a small beta dose to the sample prior to measurement of the natural luminescence signal so that the 110 °C TL peak is filled, making this measurement comparable with regeneration measurements where this peak is also populated. All three methods are promising when applied to quartz that has been physically separated from samples using standard laboratory procedures. The next step in this work will be to explore whether such methods can be applied to mixed mineral assemblages as would be encountered in the field.PostprintPeer reviewe

Comment on "Liquid-Liquid Phase Transition in Supercooled Yttria-Alumina"

A Comment on the Letter by Adrian C. Barnes et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103 225702 (2009). The authors of the Letter offer a Reply

Time projection chambers for the T2K near detectors

The T2K experiment is designed to study neutrino oscillation properties by directing a high intensity neutrino beam produced at J-PARC in Tokai, Japan, towards the large Super-Kamiokande detector located 295 km away, in Kamioka, Japan. The experiment includes a sophisticated near detector complex, 280 m downstream of the neutrino production target in order to measure the properties of the neutrino beam and to better understand neutrino interactions at the energy scale below a few GeV. A key element of the near detectors is the ND280 tracker, consisting of two active scintillator-bar target systems surrounded by three large time projection chambers (TPCs) for charged particle tracking. The data collected with the tracker is used to study charged current neutrino interaction rates and kinematics prior to oscillation, in order to reduce uncertainties in the oscillation measurements by the far detector. The tracker is surrounded by the former UA1/Nomad dipole magnet and the TPCs measure the charges, momenta, and particle types of charged particles passing through them. Novel features of the TPC design include its rectangular box layout constructed from composite panels, the use of bulk micromegas detectors for gas amplification, electronics readout based on a new ASIC, and a photoelectron calibration system. This paper describes the design and construction of the TPCs, the micromegas modules, the readout electronics, the gas handling system, and shows the performance of the TPCs as deduced from measurements with particle beams, cosmic rays, and the calibration system