Book review: The political power of the business corporation

"The Political Power of the Business Corporation." Stephen Wilks. Edward Elgar. March 2013. --- Thanks to successful wealth generation and ideological victories, the large business corporation has become an effective political actor and has entered into partnership with government in the design of public policy and delivery of public services. In this book Stephen Wilks argues that governmental and corporate elites have transformed British politics to create a ‘new corporate state’ with similar patterns in the USA, in competitor economies – including China – and in global governance. Reviewed by Nizar Manek

The Rise of a Magnetic Flux Tube in a Background Field: Solar Helicity Selection Rules

The buoyant transport of magnetic fields from the solar interior towards the surface plays an important role in the emergence of active regions, the formation of sunspots and the overall solar dynamo. Observations suggest that toroidal flux concentrations often referred to as "flux tubes", rise from their region of initiation likely in the solar tachocline towards the solar surface due to magnetic buoyancy. Many studies have assumed the existence of such magnetic structures and studied the buoyant rise of an isolated flux tube in a quiescent, field-free environment. Here, motivated by their formation (Cline et al. 2003; Brummell et al. 2002), we relax the latter assumption and study the rise of a toroidal flux tube embedded in a large-scale poloidal background magnetic field. We find that the presence of the large-scale background field severely affects the dynamics of the rising tube. A relatively weak background field, as low as 6% of the tube strength, can destroy the rise of a tube that would otherwise rise in the absence of the background field. Surprisingly, the rise of tubes with one sign of the twist is suppressed by a significantly weaker background field than the other. This demonstrates a potential mechanism for the selection of the preferred helicity of rising and emerging tubes for the solar case that is commensurate with many features of the hemispherical rule.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Investigative financial journalism: seminar report

This report on the inaugural seminar for Polis/LSE seminars in Investigative Journalism and Law which considered the mechanics involved in the process of financial investigation is by Nizar Manek ([email protected]), coordinator Polis/LSE seminars in Investigative Journalism and La

Freedom of information – Challenges and the way forward

Commentary: While the media has demonstrated that it can cover global and governance issues, it neglects the potential to be a responsible partner, especially in developing countries such as Papua New Guinea and to an extent the Pacific. However, this partnership can be strengthened with the media industry and government departments and agencies working to improve their ability to work with each to achieve social, economical and political mileage. Freedom of information and a free media is about upholding the freedom we currently enjoy in a democratic society, as it is about our freedom to express ourselves and be informed appropriately and responsibly

The Enduring Persecution of Queerness in Germany from Hilter to Adenauer

Runner-up for the Griswold Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Historical ScholarshipIn The Enduring Persecution of Queerness in Germany from Hitler to Adenauer, Parker Manek etches a disturbing picture of the 20th-century landscape in which gay Germans lived and died. Manek explains how the disasters and political drama of these years first opened a space for queer life to flourish, and then slammed that space shut with often-rabid violence. He writes with an admirably philosophical style, analyzing the community of victims into various categories and identifying fascinating exceptions, intersections, and ironies. Manek also takes the time to reflect thoughtfully on how gay individuals have, or have not, added to the chorus of the voices of Holocaust survivors, and what it means for them to return in this way to that inhuman era. –Austin Schellerhttp://history.ou.edu/journal-2015undergraduat

Algorithms for the Implementation of a Dynamic Energy Pricing Policy

In the upcoming smart grid era, dynamic pricing using primarily data collected from smart meters installed in homes and businesses is a virtual certainty. The possibilities this feature may offer are many, and we examine in this study how subunits of the electricity grid may implement load scheduling given a model for predicting ever-changing energy prices over a day. We present a realistic linear model that utilities may use for implementing dynamic pricing, and argue how accurate prediction of this model by its customers may be profitable both for the utilities and their customers. The thesis provides algorithms for achieving balancing using this pricing model. Using the total demand on the grid for a 24-hour period, we provide a dynamic programming algorithm and a greedy algorithm that find the partitioning of the total demand into intervals which will minimize the total cost. The output of the above algorithms can be seen as providing us with the global ideal load curve. Using this, each subunit of the grid creates its own ideal load curve, which is the scaled version of the global load curve. The issue then for each grid subunit is to find a schedule for its flexible loads so that its load profile is as close to its ideal load curve as possible. We have proposed a number of algorithms for this purpose using different search heuristics. One needs to resort to heuristics as the optimization problem can be shown to be NP-hard. The search heuristics that we have considered are: a Greedy algorithm to traverse through our search space of possible schedules, a randomized Greedy algorithm with random restarts to explore the search space further, the Metropolis algorithm, the Tabu search, and finally, a randomized Tabu search with random restarts

Book review: The prehistoric apprentice: Investigating apprenticeship, know-how and expertise in prehistoric technologies; L’apprenti préhistorique: Appréhender l’apprentissage, les savoir-faire et l’expertise à travers les productions techniques des soci

Describing cultural change and variability and inferring sociocultural dynamics about past people and communities may be among archaeology’s main goals as a field of practice. In this regard, the concept of skill has proved its usefulness to, time and again, expand the breath of archaeologists and lithic technologists’ analyses. It covers a wide range of applications, from apprenticeship, cognition, paleo-sociology, spatial organization. It is one of the main causes for material culture variability, up there with raw material constraints, design, technological organization or cultural norms. Yet, while skill has certainly been the focus of some research in the last decades, it remains quite peripheral, when considering how central the concept should be to technological inquiries. Whatever the reasons may be, this book, edited by Laurent Klaric and fully bilingual (French and English), aims at changing that, and argues for skill to become a central concern in lithic technology. Its chapters do so strongly and the end-result is a book that should become a reference for lithic technologists, whatever their research interests or schools of thought may be

Pengaruh Model Spasial Based Learning (SBL) Terhadap Kemampuan Berpikir Spasial Mahasiswa Pada Mata Kuliah Praktek Kerja Lapangan Geografi (PKLG)

Spasial  Based  Learning  (SBL)  merupakan  model  yang  dapat  membelajarkan mahasiswa mengenai fenomena geografi dipermukaan bumi. Model SBL mengarahkan peserta mahasiswa memahami fenomena geosfer dipermukaan bumi secara spasial, sehingga  pembelajaran menjadi lebih  kongkret  dan  kontekstual. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh model SBL terhadap kemampuan berpikir spasial. Rancangan penelitian ini adalah quasi experiment dengan menggunakan desain pretest - posttes nonequivalent control group design. Perolehan data kemampuan berpikir spasial menggunakan soal uraian. Hasil perolehan data berpikir spasial berupa nilai gain score pada kelas eksperimen dan kontrol yang dianalisis menggunakan uji-t (Independent Sampel t-test). Subjek penelitian adalah mahasiswa Pendidikan Geografi yang dipilih menggunakan teknik purposive sampling. Hasil uji t-test dengan bantuan SPSS 16.00 for windows menunjukan bahwa nilai Sig. (2-tailed) sebesar 0,001 yang lebih kecil dari 0,05. Berdasarkan hasil analisis disimpulkan bahwa terdapat pengaruh signifikan model SBL terhadap kemampuan berpikir Spasial Mahasiswa. Peningkatan kemampuan berpikir spasial merupakan konsekuensi pembelajaran melalui model SBL

Leading Teams Through Productive Conflict Engagement

Conflict is an inevitable part of organizational life. Depending on how leaders handle conflict, it is either an opportunity to improve work outcomes or a challenge that has negative effects on organizational productivity. Through a qualitative study on 14 leaders, this capstone explores strategies for helping teams engage in productive conflict. In the organizational behavior framework, conflict is often discussed in terms of resolution. Engaging in conflict shifts the focus on accepting its challenges without assuming that there is a need for resolution. This paper explores the dynamics of conflict through the participants’ personal reactions, past strategies, relationships within their workplace, and the organizational culture that they have experienced. The capstone benefits leaders, organizational development professionals and executive coaches who want to look at intervention strategies for teams and organizations dealing with the negative effects of conflict

The Analysis of Knowledge, Attittude, and Practical Political Technique

This study was aimed at determining the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of women in Belu, barriers to women's political participation and efforts to increase women's political participation in Belu. The aspects used in this research method are the type of research, the research approach, research setting, research schedule, the subject of research, data collection techniques, data analysis techniques, and data validity. The results show that the low participation of women in politics Belu was in luenced by the internal and external factors. The internal factor is the poor quality of women's resources in terms of knowledge, attitude and skills of practical political technique. While the external factors include: political and institutional barriers, cultural barriers patriarchy, socio-economic barriers, and so fort