The phantom of Palais Brongniart economic patriotism and the Paris stock exchange

French governments are famous for promoting national champions, notably by preventing foreign takeovers, but in 2005-2006, the Villepin administration allowed the New York Stock Exchange to take control of Euronext, a French-led pan-European company that includes the Paris Bourse. By mapping the public discourse surrounding this striking case of non-intervention, we explain why opponents of the transatlantic merger failed in their appeals to economic patriotism. Discursive strategies designed to justify discrimination against territorially defined outsiders ran into several hurdles, including weak patriotic sentiments for the company concerned; a lack of patriotic alternatives to the proposed merger; and the questionable patriotic credentials of those demanding intervention. Our findings advance research on the demand side of economic patriotism including its discursive dimension. Beyond that, they inform research on business-government relations, and on the political implications of corporate ownership structures. -- Französische Regierungen sind eigentlich dafür bekannt, dass sie einheimische Unternehmen vor Auslandsübernahmen schützen. Im Jahr 2005-2006 gestattete Villepins Regierung jedoch der New York Stock Exchange die Übernahme von Euronext, einer paneuropäischen Gesellschaft unter französischer Leitung, zu der auch die Pariser Börse gehört. Der öffentliche Diskurs zu diesem bedeutenden Fall von Nichtintervention gibt Aufschluss darüber, warum die Gegner der transatlantischen Fusion mit ihren Forderungen nach Wirtschaftspatriotismus scheiterten. Diskursiven Strategien zur Rechtfertigung von Diskriminierung gegen territorial definierte Außenseiter standen mehrere Hindernisse im Weg, etwa unzureichend ausgeprägte patriotische Gefühle für den Übernahmekandidaten, der Mangel patriotischer Alternativen zu einer transatlantischen Fusion und die mangelnde patriotische Glaubwürdigkeit derer, die eine staatliche Einmischung forderten. Der vorliegende Aufsatz ergänzt mit seinem diskursiven Schwerpunkt die aktuelle Forschung zu Wirtschaftspatriotismus. Außerdem trägt er zur Forschung über die Beziehungen zwischen Staat und Unternehmen und über die politischen Auswirkungen von Veränderungen in der Struktur von Unternehmenseigentum bei.

An evaluation of Lolita and related natural language processing systems

This research addresses the question, "how do we evaluate systems like LOLITA?" LOLITA is the Natural Language Processing (NLP) system under development at the University of Durham. It is intended as a platform for building NL applications. We are therefore interested in questions of evaluation for such general NLP systems. The thesis has two, parts. The first, and main, part concerns the participation of LOLITA in the Sixth Message Understanding Conference (MUC-6). The MUC-relevant portion of LOLITA is described in detail. The adaptation of LOLITA for MUC-6 is discussed, including work undertaken by the author. Performance on a specimen article is analysed qualitatively, and in detail, with anonymous comparisons to competitors' output. We also examine current LOLITA performance. A template comparison tool was implemented to aid these analyses. The overall scores are then considered. A methodology for analysis is discussed, and a comparison made with current scores. The comparison tool is used to analyse how systems performed relative to each-other. One method, Correctness Analysis, was particularly interesting. It provides a characterisation of task difficulty, and indicates how systems approached a task. Finally, MUC-6 is analysed. In particular, we consider the methodology and ways of interpreting the results. Several criticisms of MUC-6 are made, along with suggestions for future MUC-style events. The second part considers evaluation from the point of view of general systems. A literature review shows a lack of serious work on this aspect of evaluation. A first principles discussion of evaluation, starting from a view of NL systems as a particular kind of software, raises several interesting points for single task evaluation. No evaluations could be suggested for general systems; their value was seen as primarily economic. That is, we are unable to analyse their linguistic capability directly

Multi-filter spectrophotometry simulations

To complement both the multi-filter observations of quasar environments described in these proceedings, as well as the proposed UBC 2.7 m Liquid Mirror Telescope (LMT) redshift survey, we have initiated a program of simulated multi-filter spectrophotometry. The goal of this work, still very much in progress, is a better quantitative assessment of the multiband technique as a viable mechanism for obtaining useful redshift and morphological class information from large scale multi-filter surveys

The "Reducing the Impact of Sexual Exploitation" (RISE) Project: An Implementation evaluation

This project reports on the implementation evaluation of a two year pilot "Reducing the Impact of Sexual Exploitation (RISE)", that ran in Aberdeen and Dundee. The project was designed to address the Scottish Government’s National Action Plan to Prevent and Tackle Child Sexual Exploitation (2014, 2016), through the deployment of CSE advisors. The overall aim of RISE is to identify, protect and support children and young people who are vulnerable or at risk of CSE, and those who have been identified as victims, and to prevent CSE by disrupting patterns of perpetration. The work of the CSE Advisors has three major strands: training and consultation; direct work with children and families; and improving intelligence sharing. Evaluation Aims: The aim of this research was to evaluate the implementation of RISE, and to identify early indications of potential impact. Four main research objectives underpin this principle aim: i) To examine the processes and structures which have been put in place to implement the project ii) To assess the effectiveness of these processes and structures across the two pilot sites iii) To provide an indication of the overall impact of the project – by gaining insights into the impact the project has on the intended outcomes of the pilot iv) To identify the key lessons learned in implementation of the project and identify potential challenges and opportunities for the future delivery and sustainability of the project Method The implementation evaluation takes a mixed method approach to examine the impact of the RISE project on the service landscape in the two pilot sites. Focus groups were conducted with 31 professionals from policing, social care, education, health and the voluntary sector in each site. Individual interviews were conducted with the CSE Advisors. In addition, the research team examined routinely collected service data, including anonymised and aggregated outcomes data for children and young people, and self-assessment questionnaires for participants on CSE training programmes. Qualitative data was analysed thematically (Braun and Clarke 2006) and quantitative data was analysed descriptively and using a repeated measures ANOVA. Data was then mapped against an implementation framework using a matrix based analysis, to explore service and implementation outcomes. Findings The CSE Advisor role was highly valued in both pilot sites, and was viewed as an effective way to support an improved and more appropriate response to children and young people who are at risk of or have experienced CSE. The introduction of the CSE Advisor role was seen as an effective way to improve professional responses to CSE, to provide targeted support for children, young people and carers, to enhance professional knowledge and skills. CSE Advisors have played a vital role in improving multiagency collaboration and information sharing, and multiagency and police partners indicated that the implementation of the CSE Advisor role has resulted in more trauma-aware practice, and trauma sensitive systems. Stakeholder professionals also indicated that there was evidence that the role had supported more effective disruption of perpetration

Pore characterization through propagator-resolved transverse relaxation exchange

We use the propagator-resolved transverse relaxation exchange experiment to characterize the pore space and fluid behavior of water saturated, tight-packed quartz sand. The experiment uses T2 exchange plots to observe the number of molecules that shift their environment for a range of mixing times. The propagator dimension allows us to determine how far the molecules have moved. The peak intensities are integrated and then plotted as a function of displacement and mixing time. We also model our system using both a probabilistic pore-hopping simulation and a spreading Gaussian model. We use the results of these simulations to interpret the peak intensity plots. From this, we can estimate pore features such as characteristic time, pore radii, and interpore spacing. The tortuosity of the different pore sizes can then be calculated from these values

Child trafficking in Scotland

First paragraph: The Scottish Government Trafficking and Exploitation Strategy (2017) identified the need for Scotland-wide research to explore experiences of child trafficking in Scotland. This study, commissioned by the Scottish Government, aimed to provide an overview of how many children and young people had been identified as victims of human trafficking, to establish their geographic and demographic routes into Scotland and their experiences of professional responses. The research employed case file analysis and interviews with young people and professionals to illuminate these issues. For the index time-period for the research, no UK nationals were identified for the case file analysis. Consequently, the focus of the research was on children and young people who came to the UK across international borders

How two pairs of gradient pulses give access to new information about molecular dynamics

Pulsed Gradient Nuclear Magnetic Resonance provides direct insight regarding the translational motion of spin-bearing molecules. These methods gain a second dimension when the simple gradient pulse pair is enhanced by a second pair. Where the motion encoding of the two pairs is opposite, flow effects are removed from the echo attenuation, making it possible to measure diffusion in the presence of shear flow, or to measure the stochastic part of dispersive flow, and in particular the velocity auto-correlation function. Where the gradient pulse pairs are stepped in independent dimensions, two-dimensional experiments become possible. One class (Fourier-Fourier) is the Velocity Exchange (VEXSY) experiment in which flow velocities may be correlated at different times. Another class (inverse Laplace-inverse Laplace) is the diffusion correlation (DDCOSY) or diffusion exchange (DEXSY) experiment. This approach has proven of particular value in ascertaining local anisotropies in globally isotropic systems, as well as in the model-free measurement of exchange effects