35,428 research outputs found
Crossing the Boundary: a study of the nature and extent of racism in local league cricket
Since the start of the 1993/4 football season the 'Let's Kick Racism Out of Football’ has had some success in persuading clubs and players to recognise racism in the game and act to counter it. This summer, following our own research (Long et al, 1995) the Rugby Football League and the Commission for Racial Equality launched a 13-point Action Plan for professional clubs to adopt. Within cricket 'Hit Racism for Six' (HR46) was set-up last year to act as a pressure group to stimulate discussion about racism in cricket. Issues of race and racism in sport have recently attracted considerable media attention and stimulated popular debate. Emotion has run high over the articles by Robert Henderson (1995) and Roger Bannister (Connor 1995), the continuing confrontation between Raymond Illingworth and Devon Malcolm, the Botham/Lamb v Khan court case and the trouble on the terraces at Headingley during the summer of 1996. The balance attempted by programmes in the Radio 5 series on ‘Race around the UK’ represented one attempt to encourage a more considered approach, but throughout it has been clear that there is still a shortage of substantive research on race in sport. The Carnegie National Sports Development Centre conducted a study of black and ethnic minorities in cricket in Yorkshire that focused on issues of participation and sports development. Following the success of our rugby league project, Leeds City Council were keen for us to try to explore the more sensitive issues around race and racism. While the study of rugby league had been on the professional game this study of cricket was to be of local league cricket. Within the region this is how most people experience their cricket with some 1,300 teams affiliated to the Yorkshire Cricket Association. To establish views on race and racism we sought responses from: a) the secretaries of local league clubs b) Asian, black and white players in the leagues c) league umpire
The dynamical fate of planetary systems in young star clusters
We carry out N-body simulations to examine the effects of dynamical
interactions on planetary systems in young open star clusters. We explore how
the planetary populations in these star clusters evolve, and how this evolution
depends on the initial amount of substructure, the virial ratio, the cluster
mass and density, and the initial semi-major axis of the planetary systems. The
fraction of planetary systems that remains intact as a cluster member, fbps, is
generally well-described by the functional form fbps=f0(1+[a/a0]^c)^-1, where
(1-f0) is the fraction of stars that escapes from the cluster, a0 the critical
semi-major axis for survival, and c a measure for the width of the transition
region. The effect of the initial amount of substructure over time can be
quantified as fbps=A(t)+B(D), where A(t) decreases nearly linearly with time,
and B(D) decreases when the clusters are initially more substructured. Provided
that the orbital separation of planetary systems is smaller than the critical
value a0, those in clusters with a higher initial stellar density (but
identical mass) have a larger probability of escaping the cluster intact. These
results help us to obtain a better understanding of the difference between the
observed fractions of exoplanets-hosting stars in star clusters and in the
Galactic field. It also allows us to make predictions about the free-floating
planet population over time in different stellar environments.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Single and Many Particle Correlation Functions and Uniform Phase Bases for Strongly Correlated Systems
The need for suitable many or infinite fermion correlation functions to
describe some low dimensional strongly correlated systems is discussed. This is
linked to the need for a correlated basis, in which the ground state may be
postive definite, and in which single particle correlations may suffice. A
particular trial basis is proposed, and applied to a certain quasi-1D model.
The model is a strip of the 2D square lattice wrapped around a cylinder, and is
related to the ladder geometries, but with periodic instead of open boundary
conditions along the edges. Analysis involves a novel mean-field approach and
exact diagonalisation. The model has a paramagnetic region and a Nagaoka
ferromagnetic region. The proposed basis is well suited to the model, and
single particle correlations in it have power law decay for the paramagnet,
where the charge motion is qualitatively hard core bosonic. The mean field also
leads to a BCS-type model with single particle long range order.Comment: 23 pages, in plain tex, 12 Postscript figures included. Accepted for
publication in J.Physics : Condensed Matte
The Link Between Ejected Stars, Hardening and Eccentricity Growth of Super Massive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei
The hierarchical galaxy formation picture suggests that super massive black
holes (MBHs) observed in galactic nuclei today have grown from coalescence of
massive black hole binaries (MBHB) after galaxy merging. Once the components of
a MBHB become gravitationally bound, strong three-body encounters between the
MBHB and stars dominate its evolution in a "dry" gas free environment, and
change the MBHB's energy and angular momentum (semi-major axis, eccentricity
and orientation). Here we present high accuracy direct N-body simulations of
spherical and axisymmetric (rotating) galactic nuclei with order a million
stars and two massive black holes that are initially unbound. We analyze the
properties of the ejected stars due to slingshot effects from three-body
encounters with the MBHB in detail. Previous studies have investigated the
eccentricity and energy changes of MBHs using approximate models or Monte-Carlo
three body scatterings. We find general agreement with the average results of
previous semi-analytic models for spherical galactic nuclei, but our results
show a large statistical variation. Our new results show many more phase space
details of how the process works, and also show the influence of stellar system
rotation on the process. We detect that the angle between the orbital plane of
the MBHBs and that of the stellar system (when it rotates) influences the
phase-space properties of the ejected stars. We also find that massive MBHB
tend to switch stars with counter-rotating orbits into co-rotating orbits
during their interactions.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Anomalous scaling of conductivity in integrable fermion systems
We analyze the high-temperature conductivity in one-dimensional integrable
models of interacting fermions: the t-V model (anisotropic Heisenberg spin
chain) and the Hubbard model, at half-filling in the regime corresponding to
insulating ground state. A microcanonical Lanczos method study for finite size
systems reveals anomalously large finite-size effects at low frequencies while
a frequency-moment analysis indicates a finite d.c. conductivity. This
phenomenon also appears in a prototype integrable quantum system of
impenetrable particles, representing a strong-coupling limit of both models. In
the thermodynamic limit, the two results could converge to a finite d.c.
conductivity rather than an ideal conductor or insulator scenario.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to PR
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