The Berlin land election 2006

This article examines the 2006 Berlin Land election, including the election campaigns of the main parties, the results, and the process of post-election coalition formation. While few doubted that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) would emerge as the largest party, and that the highly popular Klaus Wowereit would continue as Berlin's governing mayor; the big questions were what coalition he would lead and whether Berliners would vote for a continuation of the (initially controversial) red-red coalition comprising the SPD and the Left Party. Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS)

Women MPs and the socio-environmental preconditions for political participation in the Federal Republic

With the election of Germany's first woman chancellor in November 2005 it would appear that equal opportunities have finally been achieved in German politics. Furthermore, most parties in the Federal Republic are committed to increasing or maintaining certain levels of female representation within their ranks, and many use quotas to achieve this. This article looks not only at the formal mechanisms employed by the German parties to help women enter politics, but also at whether the practice of politics is conducive to women's working methods and lifestyles. Its focus is on the compatibility of a political career with family responsibilities. The author argues that while quotas have helped increase the number of female politicians, party cultures and practices have not been completely transformed. Many problems remain for current and potential female politicians, especially those whose family circumstances make it hard to adapt to the male norms of behaviour which still characterise political life in the Federal Republic

The PDS tests the West: the party of Democratic Socialism's campaign to become a Pan-German socialist party

Since German reunification the post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) has been widely regarded as the articulator of eastern German interests within the political system of the Federal Republic. However, the party's leadership does not want it to be merely a regional interest party, but a 'modern socialist party' with nationwide support. It faces difficulties in this, however, associated with its perceived identity as an 'eastern', leftist party, and its ability to attract largely idealist leftist supporters in the west. The reunited city of western Berlin provides the PDS with a testing-ground for its strategies for western expansion in general. However, the party is unlikely to achieve a breakthrough in the west of Germany unless it abandons its self-proclaimed special responsibility to serve eastern interests. Furthermore, an east-west conflict prevails within the PDS which has both cultural and ideological dimensions, and this could prove divisive in such a heterogeneous party

On conjectures of Foulkes, Siemons and Wagner and Stanley

Let A = (AI, ... ,Ar ) be a partition of n. An unordered A-tabloid is a partition of the set {I, 2, ... , n} into r pairwise disjoint sets of sizes AI, ,Ar . Let F denote the field of complex numbers and C the symmetric group of {I, 2, , n}. Define HA to be the permutation module of FC whose basis is the set of unordered A-tabloids. Foulkes conjectured in [13] that there exists an injective FC-homomorphism H(b a ) -t H(a b ) when a ::; b. Independently Siemons and Wagner [27] and Stanley [29] generalized this conjecture to ask if there exists an injective map HA -t HA'. In this thesis we investigate these conjectures.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

N=2 Gauge Theories: Congruence Subgroups, Coset Graphs and Modular Surfaces

We establish a correspondence between generalized quiver gauge theories in four dimensions and congruence subgroups of the modular group, hinging upon the trivalent graphs which arise in both. The gauge theories and the graphs are enumerated and their numbers are compared. The correspondence is particularly striking for genus zero torsion-free congruence subgroups as exemplified by those which arise in Moonshine. We analyze in detail the case of index 24, where modular elliptic K3 surfaces emerge: here, the elliptic j-invariants can be recast as dessins d'enfant which dictate the Seiberg-Witten curves.Comment: 42+1 pages, 5 figures; various helpful comments incorporate

Olivines in angrite LEW 87051: Phenos or xenos

Nyquist et al. recently reported the presence of live Mn-53 in angrite LEW 86010 when it crystallized. Hence, melting must have occurred within approx. 10 Ma of the accretion of the angrite parent body, and LEW 86010 is the oldest known differentiated meteorite. This discovery has made it even more desirable to understand teh petrogenesis of angrites, which presumably were all formed at a similar time. As part of the continuing work on angrite petrogenesis, crystallization experiments were conducted on LEW 87051, the other Antarctic angrite, to clarify its petrogenesis. Several aspects of the experimental work is reported. Although the details are not understood, it is clear that the Cr abundance in the experimental olivines must be controlled by spinel crystallization