5,547 research outputs found
Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change
{Excerpt} For decades, unions around the world, like the teachers\u27 union in Australia, have been struggling. Across advanced English-speaking economies, we have seen the rising power of capital and its increasing influence over government. This has created a hostile environment for unions, characterized by aggressive employers, unfriendly governments, and declining union membership. Unions have been forced to reevaluate their role and objectives. Debates have considered how unions could advance the conditions of their members and whether achieving this goal also requires a more fundamental confrontation with the political and economic logic that underpins this crisis for unions (Hyman 2007).
This book is about the promise of successful coalitions. I consider why coalitions have re-surfaced as a strategy and the various ways in which coalitions can successfully achieve social change and rebuild the organizational strength of civil society. To do this, I identify three elements of coalitions using case studies based in Australia, the United States, and Canada. I draw out key principles about how to build strong coalitions and the circumstances under which coalitions succeed. I apply these lessons directly to unions, distinguishing the ways in which coalitions support union revitalization and enable unions to win on issues and build political agendas that they have struggled with on their own
Refining light stop exclusion limits with cross sections
If light supersymmetric top (stop) quarks are produced at the LHC and decay
via on- or off-shell -bosons they can be expected to contribute to a
precision cross section measurement. Using the latest results of the
CMS experiment, we revisit constraints on the stop quark production and find
that this measurement can exclude portions of the parameter space not probed by
dedicated searches. In particular we can exclude light top squarks up to
230~GeV along the line separating three- and four-body decays, . We also study the exclusion limits in the case
when the branching ratio for these decays is reduced and we show significant
improvement over previously existing limits.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; references updated, minor changes; to appear in
Phys. Lett.
Uraemic toxins and new methods to control their accumulation : game changers for the concept of dialysis adequacy
The current concept of an adequate dialysis based only on the dialysis process itself is rather limited. We now have considerable knowledge of uraemic toxicity and improved tools for limiting uraemic toxin accumulation. It is time to make use of these. A broader concept of adequacy that focusses on uraemic toxicity is required. As discussed in the present review, adequacy could be achieved by many different methods in combination with, or instead of, dialysis. These include preservation of renal function, dietary intake, reducing uraemic toxin generation rate and intestinal absorption, isolated ultrafiltration and extracorporeal adsorption of key uraemic toxins. A better measure of the quality of dialysis treatment would quantify the uraemic state in the patient using levels of a panel of key uraemic toxins. Treatment would focus on controlling uraemic toxicity while reducing harm or inconvenience to the patient. Delivering more dialysis might not be the best way to achieve this
Cultural Identity Change and the Repatriation of Taiwanese Academic Sojourners in the UK
Living and working in close proximity to international academic sojourners, we all will instinctively, or indeed empirically, be conscious that the sojourn is, for many, a time of challenge to existing cultural schemata which frequently results in changes in construal of the self and the wider community. Some sojourners seem to have an inclination to adopt certain cultural scripts of the host country while others seem to become more affirmed in their own cultural backgrounds. The important implications of such change on the repatriation experience and ultimately the wider home community seem to be largely underrepresented in the literature. It is the aim of this study therefore to extend the existing body of knowledge in this regard taking the contextual focus of the Taiwanese academic sojourner returning from postgraduate study in the UK.
This paper discusses one of the key emergent themes of a recent doctoral study which takes Sussman’s (2000) Cultural Identity Model of Cultural Transitions as a theoretical starting point from which to investigate manifestations of cultural identity change in Taiwanese postgraduate students in the UK. The implications of these changes are then considered through detailed qualitative analysis of the repatriation experiences of the same students. The findings are the result of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 35 repatriated Taiwanese academic sojourners and reveal most significantly a close correlation between the quality and quantity of contact with the host culture and the affective nature of the repatriation experience. Implications of these findings for UK higher educational institutions will be opened up to the audience for debate following the presentation
Institutional Challenges in the Data Decade
Throughout the year, the DCC stages regional data management roadshows to present best practice and showcase new tools and resources. This article reports on the second roadshow, organised in conjunction with the White Rose University Consortium and held on 1-3 March 2011 at the University of Sheffield.
The goal for Day 1 was to describe the emerging trends and challenges associated with research data management and their potential impact on higher education institutions, and to introduce the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and its role in supporting research data management. This was achieved through a substantial morning presentation followed by an afternoon of illustrative case studies at both disciplinary and institutional levels, highlighting different models, approaches and working practice. Day 2 was aimed at those in senior management roles and looked at strategic and policy implementation objectives. The Day 3 workshop explored data management requirements from the perspective of the institution and the main UK funding bodies, the different roles and responsibilities involved in effective data management and provided an introduction to data management planning. The portfolio of DCC resources, tools and services was explored in greater detail.
The roadshow provided delegates with advice and guidance to support institutional Research Data Management and has helped to facilitate regional networking and the exchange of skills and experience
Forecasts for Low Spin Black Hole Spectroscopy in Horndeski Gravity
We investigate the prospect of using black hole spectroscopy to constrain the
parameters of Horndeski gravity through observations of gravitational waves
from perturbed black holes. We study the gravitational waves emitted during
ringdown from black holes without hair in Horndeski gravity, demonstrating the
qualitative differences between such emission in General Relativity and
Horndeski theory. In particular, Quasi-Normal Mode frequencies associated with
the scalar field spectrum can appear in the emitted gravitational radiation.
Analytic expressions for error estimates for both the black hole and Horndeski
parameters are calculated using a Fisher Matrix approach, with constraints on
the `effective mass' of the Horndeski scalar field of order eV or tighter being shown to be achievable in some scenarios.
Estimates for the minimum signal-noise-ratio required to observe such a signal
are also presented.Comment: Updated to match published versio
Institutional Challenges in the Data Decade
Throughout the year, the DCC stages regional data management roadshows to present best practice and showcase new tools and resources. This article reports on the second roadshow, organised in conjunction with the White Rose University Consortium and held on 1-3 March 2011 at the University of Sheffield.
The goal for Day 1 was to describe the emerging trends and challenges associated with research data management and their potential impact on higher education institutions, and to introduce the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and its role in supporting research data management. This was achieved through a substantial morning presentation followed by an afternoon of illustrative case studies at both disciplinary and institutional levels, highlighting different models, approaches and working practice. Day 2 was aimed at those in senior management roles and looked at strategic and policy implementation objectives. The Day 3 workshop explored data management requirements from the perspective of the institution and the main UK funding bodies, the different roles and responsibilities involved in effective data management and provided an introduction to data management planning. The portfolio of DCC resources, tools and services was explored in greater detail.
The roadshow provided delegates with advice and guidance to support institutional Research Data Management and has helped to facilitate regional networking and the exchange of skills and experience
Contact Interactions Probe Effective Dark Matter Models at the LHC
Effective field theories provide a simple framework for probing possible dark
matter (DM) models by reparametrising full interactions into a reduced number
of operators with smaller dimensionality in parameter space. In many cases
these models have four particle vertices, e.g. qqXX, leading to the pair
production of dark matter particles, X, at a hadron collider from initial state
quarks, q. In this analysis we show that for many fundamental DM models with
s-channel DM couplings to qq-pairs, these effective vertices must also produce
quark contact interactions (CI) of the form qqqq. The respective effective
couplings are related by the common underlying theory which allows one to
translate the upper limits from one coupling to the other. We show that at the
LHC, the experimental limits on quark contact interactions give stronger
translated limits on the DM coupling than the experimental searches for dark
matter pair production.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
A covariant approach to parameterised cosmological perturbations
We present a covariant formulation for constructing general quadratic actions
for cosmological perturbations, invariant under a given set of gauge symmetries
for a given field content. This approach allows us to analyse scalar, vector
and tensor perturbations at the same time in a straightforward manner. We apply
the procedure to diffeomorphism invariant single-tensor, scalar-tensor and
vector-tensor theories and show explicitly the full covariant form of the
quadratic actions in such cases, in addition to the actions determining the
evolution of vector and tensor perturbations. We also discuss the role of the
symmetry of the background in identifying the set of cosmologically relevant
free parameters describing these classes of theories, including calculating the
relevant free parameters for an axisymmetric Bianchi-I vacuum universe.Comment: Updated to match published versio
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