The impact of regulation, ownership and business culture on managing corporate risk within the water industry

Although the specifics of water utility ownership, regulation and management culture have been explored in terms of their impact on economic and customer value, there has been little meaningful engagement with their influence on the risk environment and risk management. Using a literature review as the primary source of information, this paper maps the existing knowledge base onto two critical questions: what are the particular features of regulation, ownership and management culture which influence the risk dynamic, and what are the implications of these relationships in the context of ambitions for resilient organizations? In addressing these queries, the paper considers the mindful choices and adjustments a utility must make to its risk management strategy to manage strategic tensions between efficiency, risk and resilience. The conclusions note a gap in understanding of the drivers required for a paradigm shift within the water sector from a re-active to a pro-active risk management culture. A proposed model of the tensions between reactive risk management and pro-active, adaptive risk management provides a compelling case for measured risk management approaches which are informed by an appreciation of regulation, ownership and business culture. Such approaches will support water authorities in meeting corporate aspirations to become "high reliability" services while retaining the capacity to out-perform financial and service level targets

The inverse-square law and quantum gravity

A program is described which measures the gravitational acceleration of antiprotons. This idea was approached from a particle physics point of view. That point of view is examined starting with some history of physics over the last 200 years

Role of the spin-orbit splitting and the dynamical fluctuations in the Si(557)-Au surface

Our it ab initio calculations show that spin-orbit coupling is crucial to understand the electronic structure of the Si(557)-Au surface. The spin-orbit splitting produces the two one-dimensional bands observed in photoemission, which were previously attributed to spin-charge separation in a Luttinger liquid. This spin splitting might have relevance for future device applications. We also show that the apparent Peierls-like transition observed in this surface by scanning tunneling microscopy is a result of the dynamical fluctuations of the step-edge structure, which are quenched as the temperature is decreased

On the Stability Domain of Systems of Three Arbitrary Charges

We present results on the stability of quantum systems consisting of a negative charge $-q_1$ with mass $m_{1}$ and two positive charges $q_2$ and $q_3$, with masses $m_{2}$ and $m_{3}$, respectively. We show that, for given masses $m_{i}$, each instability domain is convex in the plane of the variables $(q_{1}/q_{2}, q_{1}/q_{3})$. A new proof is given of the instability of muonic ions $(\alpha, p, \mu^-)$. We then study stability in some critical regimes where $q_3\ll q_2$: stability is sometimes restricted to large values of some mass ratios; the behaviour of the stability frontier is established to leading order in $q_3/q_2$. Finally we present some conjectures about the shape of the stability domain, both for given masses and varying charges, and for given charges and varying masses.Comment: Latex, 24 pages, 14 figures (some in latex, some in .eps

Brownian motion on the Sierpinski carpet

We prove that, up to scalar multiples, there exists only one local regular Dirichlet form on a generalized Sierpinski carpet that is invariant with respect to the local symmetries of the carpet. Consequently for each such fractal the law of Brownian motion is uniquely determined and the Laplacian is well defined

Challenges in Reconciling Different Views of Neuroanatomy in a Reference Ontology of Anatomy

A fundamental requirement for integrating neuroscience data is a well-structured ontology that can incorporate, accommodate and reconcile different neuroanatomical views. Here we describe the challenges in creating such ontology, and, because of its principled design, illustrate the potential of the Foundational Model of Anatomy to be that ontology

Stretching single polysaccharide molecules using AFM: A potential method for the investigation of the intermolecular uronate distribution of alginate?

Illustrative examples of the way in which the molecular force-extension behaviour of polysaccharides is governed by the nature of the linkage between their constituent pyranose rings are presented for a series of standard homopolymers. These results agree with previously proposed general hypotheses regarding the possibility of generating force-induced conformational transitions, and with the predictions of a model in which the inter-conversion of pyranose conformers is assumed to be an equilibrium process on the timescale of the molecular stretching. Subsequently, we investigate the potential of the technique in the characterisation of co-polymeric polysaccharides in which the nature of the glycan linkages is different between the two distinct residue types. Specifically, we explore the possibility that the ratio of mannuronic acid (M) to guluronic acid (G) in alginate chains will be reflected in their single molecule stretching behaviour, owing to their contrasting equatorial and axial linkages. Furthermore, as the technique described interrogates the sample one polymer at a time we outline the promise of, and the obstacles to, obtaining a new level of characterisation using this methodology where differences observed in the single molecule stretching curves obtained from single alginate samples reflectsomething of the real intermolecular distribution of the M / G ratio

The Bravyi-Kitaev transformation for quantum computation of electronic structure

Quantum simulation is an important application of future quantum computers with applications in quantum chemistry, condensed matter, and beyond. Quantum simulation of fermionic systems presents a specific challenge. The Jordan-Wigner transformation allows for representation of a fermionic operator by O(n) qubit operations. Here we develop an alternative method of simulating fermions with qubits, first proposed by Bravyi and Kitaev [S. B. Bravyi, A.Yu. Kitaev, Annals of Physics 298, 210-226 (2002)], that reduces the simulation cost to O(log n) qubit operations for one fermionic operation. We apply this new Bravyi-Kitaev transformation to the task of simulating quantum chemical Hamiltonians, and give a detailed example for the simplest possible case of molecular hydrogen in a minimal basis. We show that the quantum circuit for simulating a single Trotter time-step of the Bravyi-Kitaev derived Hamiltonian for H2 requires fewer gate applications than the equivalent circuit derived from the Jordan-Wigner transformation. Since the scaling of the Bravyi-Kitaev method is asymptotically better than the Jordan-Wigner method, this result for molecular hydrogen in a minimal basis demonstrates the superior efficiency of the Bravyi-Kitaev method for all quantum computations of electronic structure