Local environmental action in Japan: the transfer of the groundwork approach

This paper is the basis for a report on the transfer of the UK Groundwork approach to Japan. It details the background and history of Groundwork in the UK and sets out some of the relevant context in Japan. A Japanese case study (plus two further secondary cases) is detailed and conclusions and recommendations are drawn from the work to help suggest future directions for GW and environmental action in Japan in the future

Strange Fluctuations at RHIC

Robust statistical observables can be used to extract the novel isospin fluctuations from background contributions in K-short K-plus measurements in nuclear collisions. To illustrate how this can be done, we present new HIJING and UrQMD computations of these observables.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, talk at Quark Matter 200

Corporate Social Responsibility at Gap: An Interview with Eva Sage-Gavin

Gap Inc. is one of the world\u27s largest specialty retailers, with more than 3,000 stores and fiscal 2005 revenues of $16 billion. They operate four of the most recognized apparel brands in the world — Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Forth & Towne. According to the company website “At Gap Inc., social responsibility isn\u27t just a catchphrase or a feel good initiative. It\u27s a reflection of who we are and how we operate as a company. To us, being socially responsible means striving to embed our values and ethics into everything we do — from how we run our business, to how we treat our employees, to how we impact the communities where we do business. In 2003 Gap Inc. was the first retailer to release a social responsibility report, offering a comprehensive overview of their approach to social responsibility. The report was broadly lauded for its willingness to be open and honest about both the successes and failures in this arena. In fact, this report won Business Ethics magazine\u27s Social Reporting Award for unprecedented honesty in reporting on factory conditions. Their 2004 Social Responsibility Report continued that discussion and provided new information on their progress, challenges, and new initiatives. Eva Sage-Gavin is Executive Vice President, Human Resources and Corporate Communications, of Gap Inc. In her role as Chief People Officer, she sets the strategy for the company\u27s communications and human resources operations worldwide, including staffing, diversity, rewards, recognition, employee benefits, learning and development, strategic change, and internal and external communications. She set aside time to provide more specifics to how and why Gap Inc. places so much emphasis on corporate social responsibility

Dynamic Riemannian Geometry of the Ising Model

A general understanding of optimal control in non-equilibrium systems would illuminate the operational principles of biological and artificial nanoscale machines. Recent work has shown that a system driven out of equilibrium by a linear response protocol is endowed with a Riemannian metric related to generalized susceptibilities, and that geodesics on this manifold are the non-equilibrium control protocols with the lowest achievable dissipation. While this elegant mathematical framework has inspired numerous studies of exactly solvable systems, no description of the thermodynamic geometry yet exists when the metric cannot be derived analytically. Herein, we numerically construct the dynamic metric of the 2D Ising model in order to study optimal protocols for reversing the net magnetization.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The space program and new england industry

Space program effect upon new england industry and econom

Code Generation for Efficient Query Processing in Managed Runtimes

In this paper we examine opportunities arising from the conver-gence of two trends in data management: in-memory database sys-tems (IMDBs), which have received renewed attention following the availability of affordable, very large main memory systems; and language-integrated query, which transparently integrates database queries with programming languages (thus addressing the famous ‘impedance mismatch ’ problem). Language-integrated query not only gives application developers a more convenient way to query external data sources like IMDBs, but also to use the same querying language to query an application’s in-memory collections. The lat-ter offers further transparency to developers as the query language and all data is represented in the data model of the host program-ming language. However, compared to IMDBs, this additional free-dom comes at a higher cost for query evaluation. Our vision is to improve in-memory query processing of application objects by introducing database technologies to managed runtimes. We focus on querying and we leverage query compilation to im-prove query processing on application objects. We explore dif-ferent query compilation strategies and study how they improve the performance of query processing over application data. We take C] as the host programming language as it supports language-integrated query through the LINQ framework. Our techniques de-liver significant performance improvements over the default LINQ implementation. Our work makes important first steps towards a future where data processing applications will commonly run on machines that can store their entire datasets in-memory, and will be written in a single programming language employing language-integrated query and IMDB-inspired runtimes to provide transparent and highly efficient querying. 1

A comparison of the UK Standard Assessment Procedure and detailed simulation of solar energy systems for dwellings

The drive to reduce worldwide Carbon Emissions directly associated with dwellings and to achieve a zero carbon home dictates that Renewable Energy Technologies will have an increasingly large role in the built environment. Created by the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is the UK Government's approved methodology for assessing the energy ratings of dwellings. This paper presents an evaluation of the advantage given to SAP ratings by the domestic installation of typical Photovoltaic (PV) and Solar Domestic Hot Water (SDHW) systems in the UK. Comparable PV and SDHW systems will also be simulated with more detailed modelling packages. Results suggest that calculation variances can exist between the SAP methodology and detailed simulation methods, especially for higher performance systems that deviate from the default efficiency parameters

Traces of Thermalization from Transverse Momentum Fluctuations in Nuclear Collisions

Scattering of particles produced in Au+Au collisions at RHIC can wrestle the system into a state near local thermal equilibrium. I illustrate how measurements of the centrality dependence of the mean transverse momentum and its fluctuations can exhibit this thermalization.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figures, final version to appear in PR