Rewards at the top: the European Union

Book synopsis: Anyone observing the recent scandals in the United Kingdom could not fail to understand the political importance of the rewards of high public office. The British experience has been extreme but by no means unique, and many countries have experienced political over the pay and perquisites of public officials. This book addresses an important element of public governance, and does so in longitudinal and comparative manner. The approach enables the contributors to make a number of key statements not only about the development of political systems but also about the differences among those systems. It provides a unique and systematic investigation of both formal and informal rewards for working in high-level positions in the public sector, and seeks to determine the impacts of the choices of reward structures. Covering 14 countries and drawing on a wide range of data sources, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of comparative public administration, international politics and government

Apollo 16 far-ultraviolet imagery and spectra of the Large Magellanic Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud was observed by the far ultraviolet camera spectrograph from the lunar surface during the Apollo 16 mission 22 April 1972. Images were obtained with about 3 arc min resolution, in the 1,050 to 1,600 and 1,250 to 1,600 A wavelength ranges, of nearly the entire LMC. Spectra were also obtained in the 1,050 to 1,600 and 900 to 1,600 A ranges along a strip 1/4 deg wide (determined by the instrument's grid collimator) passing across the LMC. The images and spectra have been scanned with a PDS microdensitometer, and isodensity contour plots have been prepared using the Univac 1108 computer

Distribution of hot stars and hydrogen in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Imagery of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the wavelength ranges 1050 to 1600 A and 1250 to 1600 A, was obtained by the S201 far ultraviolet camera during the Apollo 16 mission. These images were reduced to absolute far-UV intensity distributions over the area of the LMC, with 3 to 5 arc min angular resolution. Comparison of these far-UV measurements in the LMC with H sub alpha and 21 cm surveys reveals that interstellar hydrogen in the LMC is often concentrated in 100 pc clouds within 500 pc clouds. Furthermore, at least 25 associations of O-B stars in the LMC are outside the interstellar hydrogen clouds; four of them appear to be on the far side. Far-UV and mid-UV spectra were obtained of stars in 12 of these associations, using the International Ultraviolet Explorer. Equivalent widths of L alpha and six other lines, and relative intensities of the continuum at seven wavelength from 1300 A to 2900 A, were measured. These spectra are also discussed

Optimizing the Throughput of Particulate Streams Subject to Blocking

Filtration, flow in narrow channels and traffic flow are examples of processes subject to blocking when the channel conveying the particles becomes too crowded. If the blockage is temporary, which means that after a finite time the channel is flushed and reopened, one expects to observe a maximum throughput for a finite intensity of entering particles. We investigate this phenomenon by introducing a queueing theory inspired, circular Markov model. Particles enter a channel with intensity $\lambda$ and exit at a rate $\mu$. If $N$ particles are present at the same time in the channel, the system becomes blocked and no more particles can enter until the blockage is cleared after an exponentially distributed time with rate $\mu^*$. We obtain an exact expression for the steady state throughput (including the exiting blocked particles) for all values of $N$. For $N=2$ we show that the throughput assumes a maximum value for finite $\lambda$ if $\mu^*/\mu < 1/4$. The time-dependent throughput either monotonically approaches the steady state value, or reaches a maximum value at finite time. We demonstrate that, in the steady state, this model can be mapped to a previously introduced non-Markovian model with fixed transit and blockage times. We also examine an irreversible, non-Markovian blockage process with constant transit time exposed to an entering flux of fixed intensity for a finite time and we show that the first and second moments of the number of exiting particles are maximized for a finite intensity.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figure

The XMM-Newton spectral-fit database

The XMM-Newton spectral-fit database is an ongoing ESA funded project aimed to construct a catalogue of spectral-fitting results for all the sources within the XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue for which spectral data products have been pipeline-extracted (~ 120,000 X-ray source detections). The fundamental goal of this project is to provide the astronomical community with a tool to construct large and representative samples of X-ray sources by allowing source selection according to spectral properties.Comment: Conference proceedings of IAU Symposium 304: Multiwavelength AGN surveys and studie

Unraveling radial dependency effects in fiber thermal drawing

Fiber-based devices with advanced functionalities are emerging as promising solutions for various applications in flexible electronics and bioengineering. Multimaterial thermal drawing, in particular, has attracted strong interest for its ability to generate fibers with complex architectures. Thus far, however, the understanding of its fluid dynamics has only been applied to single material preforms for which higher order effects, such as the radial dependency of the axial velocity, could be neglected. With complex multimaterial preforms, such effects must be taken into account, as they can affect the architecture and the functional properties of the resulting fiber device. Here, we propose a versatile model of the thermal drawing of fibers, which takes into account a radially varying axial velocity. Unlike the commonly used cross section averaged approach, our model is capable of predicting radial variations of functional properties caused by the deformation during drawing. This is demonstrated for two effects observed, namely, by unraveling the deformation of initially straight, transversal lines in the preform and the dependence on the draw ratio and radial position of the in-fiber electrical conductivity of polymer nanocomposites, an important class of materials for emerging fiber devices. This work sets a thus far missing theoretical and practical understanding of multimaterial fiber processing to better engineer advanced fibers and textiles for sensing, health care, robotics, or bioengineering applications

Cyber-pseudepigraphy: A New Challenge for Higher Education Policy and Management

There is no lack of critical literature dealing with cyber-plagiarism and the implications for assessment in higher education. The practice of the selling of academic papers through the Internet is generally included under the category of plagiarism, although it is suggested that this ought to be considered under the separate category of cyber-pseudepigraphy. Pseudepigraphy is defined in this essay as the deliberate ascription of false authorship to a piece of writing, and cyber-pseudepigraphy is defined as using the Internet to have another person write an academic essay or paper, without this authorship being acknowledged. It is suggested that cyber-pseudepigraphy has widespread implications, and five critical issues are discussed. The essay finally raises the prospect of a return to some form of unseen examination as a method of student assessment as a way of dealing with this problem