Talking to families in east London

This CASEbrief summarises findings from CASEreport 09, Talking to Families in East London: A report on the first stage of the research, by Katharine Mumfor

EM Cygni: a study of its eclipse timings

EM Cygni is a Z Cam-subtype eclipsing dwarf nova. Its orbital period variations were reported in the past but the results were in conflict to each other while other studies allowed the possibility of no period variation. In this study we report accurate new times of minima of this eclipsing binary and update its O-C diagram. We also estimate the mass transfer rate in EM Cygni system and conclude that the mass transfer is far from the critical value. The mass transfer rate determined from the eclipse timings is in agreement with the spectroscopically determined value.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomische Nahrichte

Regulatory coherence: blending trade and regulatory policy

Regulatory coherence has over the past four years become a term of art for domestic regulatory systems which interface seamlessly with the systems of other countries. And yet a precise or at least agreed definition remains elusive and descriptions often confuse ends and means. This article sets out to provide greater clarity, and in doing so illustrates that regulatory coherence can be thought of as both an ‘end’ (regulation that supports international trade and investment) and a ‘means’ (good regulatory practice). The adoption by countries of regulatory coherence objectives and practices increasingly blends trade and domestic regulatory policy

Generalized explicit descent and its application to curves of genus 3

We introduce a common generalization of essentially all known methods for explicit computation of Selmer groups, which are used to bound the ranks of abelian varieties over global fields. We also simplify and extend the proofs relating what is computed to the cohomologically-defined Selmer groups. Selmer group computations have been practical for many Jacobians of curves over Q of genus up to 2 since the 1990s, but our approach is the first to be practical for general curves of genus 3. We show that our approach succeeds on some genus-3 examples defined by polynomials with small coefficients.Comment: 58 pages; added a few references, and updated a few other

The Gender Balance of Academic Economics in the UK

Executive summary: Women make up approximately 30% of the research/PhD students, 15% of the lecturers, 10% of the readers/senior lecturers and 5% of the professors. Males in standard full-time academic jobs are twice as likely to be at a senior level (above lecturer) than women (46% compared to 23%). There are few part-time jobs in standard academia and these jobs are dominated by men. It will take some 10 years for the relative stock of female permanent lecturers to equal the proportion (27%) of women in the inflows to that grade. Inflows via new hires into the senior grades were not high enough to have a significant impact on the relative stocks of females at the more senior level. Research-only jobs make up 15% of all full-time academic jobs, most are fixed-term. Research-only jobs are dominated by males although to a lesser extent than occurs in standard full-time academic jobs (some 70% male). Women make up the majority of the very few part-time research-only jobs (26 of 48 jobs). Men are twice as likely to occur in senior level research-only jobs than women. Both men and women are twice as likely to be at senior levels if they work in standard academic jobs than in research-only jobs. There is little difference in the relative position of female academics between new universities, old universities, departments with 4 and above RAE rankings, and those ranked 3 or below. There are 329 women currently enrolled in full-time research/PhD degrees, there are 312 women currently employed full-time in academia. 30% of the PhD students are from the UK; 27% of the females and 32% of the males. Some 80% of the PhD students are enrolled in the 4 or 5 RAE ranked departments: this proportion is the same for males and females. The majority of recent PhD graduates have not taken employment in standard academic jobs in the UK - more so for women than men.Gender; academic; economics; explanations;

Royal Economic Society Women’s Committee Survey on the Gender and Ethnic Balance of Academic Economics 2008

This report describes the data from the seventh, 2008, survey of gender and ethnic balance amongst academic economists in CHUDE membership departments in UK universities.