Correlations and fluctuations of a confined electron gas

The grand potential $\Omega$ and the response $R = - \partial \Omega /\partial x$ of a phase-coherent confined noninteracting electron gas depend sensitively on chemical potential $\mu$ or external parameter $x$. We compute their autocorrelation as a function of $\mu$, $x$ and temperature. The result is related to the short-time dynamics of the corresponding classical system, implying in general the absence of a universal regime. Chaotic, diffusive and integrable motions are investigated, and illustrated numerically. The autocorrelation of the persistent current of a disordered mesoscopic ring is also computed.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Teenage drinking and interethnic friendships.

This report explores the links between young people’s interethnic friendships and their drinking patterns and behaviours. Britain is a multicultural society, but little is currently known about if, and how, young people mix with friends from different ethnic backgrounds and the potential impact of this on drinking attitudes and behaviours. Research was undertaken to examine these links using quantitative and qualitative methods among a sample of 14-and 15-year-olds in diverse locations in London and Berkshire. The report: • explores the intra- and interethnic mix of young people’s friendship groups as described by young people in questionnaires and interviews; • analyses how drinking patterns vary by ethnicity, religion and gender; • investigates the links between young people’s background characteristics, their friendship groups (including the ethnicity of friends) and their reported drinking rates; and • looks at the implications of the findings, including recommendations for harm reduction based on education and peer support programmes

Political and Media Discourses about Integrating Refugees in the UK

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article addresses political and media discourses about integrating refugees in the UK in the context of the “refugee crisis”. A discursive psychological approach is presented as the best way to understand what talk about the concept is used to accomplish in these debates. A large corpus of political discussions (13 hours of debate featuring 146 politicians) and 960 newspaper articles from the UK were discourse analysed. The analysis identified five dilemmas about integration: Integration is positive and necessary, but challenging; Host communities are presented as welcoming, but there are limits to their capacity; Refugees are responsible for integration, but host communities need to provide support; Good refugees integrate, bad ones don't; Refugees are vulnerable and are skilled. All are used to warrant the inclusion or exclusion of refugees. The responsibility of western nations to support refugees is therefore contingent on the refugees behaving in specific ways

Matrix De Rham complex and quantum A-infinity algebras

I establish the relation of the non-commutative BV-formalism with super-invariant matrix integration. In particular, the non-commutative BV-equation, defining the quantum A-infinity-algebras, introduced in "Modular operads and Batalin-Vilkovisky geometry" IMRN, Vol. 2007, doi: 10.1093/imrn/rnm075, is represented via de Rham differential acting on the matrix spaces related with Bernstein-Leites simple associative algebras with odd trace q(N), and with gl(N|N). I also show that the Lagrangians of the matrix integrals from "Noncommmutative Batalin-Vilkovisky geometry and Matrix integrals", Comptes Rendus Mathematique, vol 348 (2010), pp. 359-362, arXiv:0912.5484, are equivariantly closed differential forms.Comment: published versio

Radiobiological studies with monoenergetic neutrons

The Radiological Research Accelerator Facility (RARAF) has the capability of producing essentially monoenergetic neutron beams, ranging in energy from 16.4 MeV down to 220 keV. In addition, two lower energy neutron beams are available which consist of a wide spectrum of energies and are described as the 110 keV and 60 keV spectra. Seedlings of Vicia faba have been used to measure the oxygen enhancement ratio (OER) and the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of each of these neutron beams. The OER decreases as the neutron energy is reduced between 15.4 MeV and 220 keV, but does not appear to decrease further for lower energy neutrons. RBE increases as the neutron energy is reduced from 15.4 AleV to 440 keV; the curve then goes through a maximum at around 350 keV, and for lower energies the RBE falls again

Best-Worst Scaling: A simple method to determine drinks and wine style preferences

Wine marketers are continually involved with measuring consumer preferences usually by means of surveys or consumer purchase panel data. In this paper we provide initial results using a relatively new and very straightforward method for measuring consumer preferences. The best-worst scaling method (also called max-diffs) simply asks consumers to look at sets of products, attributes, or other factors to be compared and choose from each set the best/most favourable and the worst/least favourable. A simple count and manipulation results in a single preference scale, where the differences may be compared as distances rather than rank order. Managerial implications of the importance of wine attributes that influence consumer drinks purchasing and wine style selection are discussed as well as suggestions for future research. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the practical and a scholarly usefulness of this approach and present a call for replication in other markets in an ongoing manner.Steven Goodman, Larry Lockshin and Eli Cohe

Using the best-worst method to examine market segments and identify different influences of consumer choice

Wine marketers use market segmentation to target different products to different segments in order to increase sales, often with little evidence about what influences choice within or between segments. In this paper we provide initial results using a relatively new and very straightforward method for measuring consumer preferences. The best-worst scaling method (also called max-diffs) simply asks consumers to look at sets of products, attributes, or other factors to be compared and choose from each set the best/most favourable and the worst/least favourable. A simple count and manipulation results in a single preference scale, where the differences may be compared as distances rather than rank order. This paper shows how segmenting the consumers using factors such as gender, frequency of consumption, wine involvement and age produce segments with similar preferences for different varietal wines. Two country examples are used, Israel and Australia, to show the ability of the Best-Worst method to develop ‘maps’ of segments across markets based on patterns of choice. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the practical and a scholarly usefulness of this approach and to show the method for a larger cross-national study across major wine consuming markets.Steven Goodman, Larry Lockshin and Eli Cohenhttp://academyofwinebusiness.com/?page_id=33