Book Review – Volunteer Economies: The Politics and Ethics of Voluntary Labour in Africa, edited by Ruth Prince and Hannah Brown

LSE’s Jordan Vieira describes the book as a valuable contribution to the study of Africa that showcases the many benefits of situating ethnographic work within its historical, socio-political, and economic contexts

Government Spending Across the World: How the United States Compares

In this brief, authors Michael Ettlinger, Jordan Hensley, and Julia Vieira analyze how much the governments of different countries spend, and on what, to illuminate the range of fiscal policy options available and provide a basis for determining which approaches work best. They report that the United States ranks twenty-fourth in government spending as a share of GDP out of twenty-nine countries for which recent comparable data are available. The key determinant of where countries rank in overall government spending is the amount spent on social protection. The United States ranks last in spending on social protection as a share of GDP and twenty-second in per capita spending. The United States ranks at or near the top in military, health care, education, and law enforcement spending. Measuring government spending by different methods and including tax expenditures does not appear to significantly alter the conclusion that the United States is a low-tax, low-spending country relative to the other countries examined, particularly when compared to its fellow higher-income countries

The austerity of time: living with neoliberalism, financialization, and difference in London’s Docklands

Based on twenty-four months of ethnographic fieldwork that drew upon relationships cultivated over several years, this thesis explores how abstract time is materialized in the everyday lives of people on the Isle of Dogs in London. Bound by the Thames on three sides and a series of interlocking quays on the fourth, the Isle of Dogs is the geographically distinct heart of London’s Docklands that had historically been home to a homogeneous white, working-class community for nearly two centuries. This changed with the closing of the docks, the financialization of the British economy, increased (im)migration of finance professionals alongside the proximal construction of the Canary Wharf financial hub in the 1990s, and the austerity policies of recent governments. Against this backdrop of a shrinking state, market competition, and political upheaval evidenced by the UK’s departure from the European Union, the thesis argues and investigates four core points. First, that issues of time are vital, though often taken-for-granted and underexplored, aspects of social life that deserve explicit ethnographic engagement in various registers of lived experience. Second, that constructions of time, continuity, and money are mutually constitutive of each other and generative of widespread impatience exacerbated by a sense of time lack and imminent rupture. Such anxiety manifests in various interrelated social issues seen in part in housing, crime, ideas of belonging, and class tension. Third, given the above, that time and money share congruent notions of transaction and management, which form particular social practices and interpersonal relationships. Finally, that these points underscore a tension between competitive accumulation and social accommodation (and the conditions under which people vacillate between the two) amid desires to create or prolong desired actualizations of lifestyle and social reproduction within an ultimately finite (differentiated) living present. The thesis examines these themes through the lens of a pub with a precarious existence and the life courses and rhythms of its landlords, staff, and patrons. It follows an overarching narrative that concludes with the pub’s closure, an event that encapsulates and exemplifies the key points discussed throughout

Covid and care: how a ‘stacked’ care system could help places like Hackney

The weakness of local support networks, already cut to the bone, has been cruelly exposed by the pandemic. The LSE’s COVID and Care Research Group looks at the situation in Hackney and explains how an alternative ‘stacked’ care system could help

The one-dimensional XXZ model with long-range interactions

The one-dimensional XXZ model (s=1/2, N sites) with uniform long-range interactions among the transverse components of the spins is considered. The Hamiltonian of the model is explicitly given by $H=J\sum_{j=1}^{N}(s_{j}^{x}s_{j+1}^{x}+s_{j}^{y}s_{j+1}^{y}) -(I/N)\sum_{j,k=1}^{N}s_{j}^{z}s_{k}^{z}-h\sum_{j=1}^{N}s_{j}^{z},$ where the $s^{x,y,z}$ are half the Pauli spin matrices. The model is exactly solved by applying the Jordan-Wigner fermionization, followed by a Gaussian transformation. In the absence of the long-range interactions (I=0), the model, which reduces to the isotropic XY model, is known to exhibit a second-order quantum phase transition driven by the field at zero temperature. It is shown that in the presence of the long-range interactions (I different from 0) the nature of the transition is strongly affected. For I>0, which favours the ordering of the transverse components of the spins, the transition is changed from second- to first-order, due to the competition between transverse and xy couplings. On the other hand, for I<0, which induces complete frustration of the spins, a second-order transition is still present, although the system is driven out of its usual universality class, and its critical exponents assume typical mean-field values.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, presented at ICM2000, to be published in the Proceedings (Journal of Magnetism & Magnetic Materials

Stretched during COVID, Britain’s social infrastructure needs an urgent boost

Besides ‘the economy’ and ‘health’ lies a neglected area of human life during the pandemic: social infrastructures. These vital links, sustained by families and communities, now need to be a priority. The LSE COVID and Care Recovery Group call for both urgent and long term help for voluntary and community groups

Fine-Tuning Language Models with Advantage-Induced Policy Alignment

Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) has emerged as a reliable approach to aligning large language models (LLMs) to human preferences. Among the plethora of RLHF techniques, proximal policy optimization (PPO) is of the most widely used methods. Despite its popularity, however, PPO may suffer from mode collapse, instability, and poor sample efficiency. We show that these issues can be alleviated by a novel algorithm that we refer to as Advantage-Induced Policy Alignment (APA), which leverages a squared error loss function based on the estimated advantages. We demonstrate empirically that APA consistently outperforms PPO in language tasks by a large margin, when a separate reward model is employed as the evaluator. In addition, compared with PPO, APA offers a more stable form of control over the deviation from the model's initial policy, ensuring that the model improves its performance without collapsing to deterministic output. In addition to empirical results, we also provide a theoretical justification supporting the design of our loss function

Bibliotecas escolares do século XXI: implementando makerspaces

Incorporando o Movimento Maker, a biblioteca escolar permite com que os alunos passem por experiências de “colocar a mão na massa”, aprendendo de forma independente por meio de metodologias ativas. Esta&nbsp; pesquisa&nbsp; objetivou&nbsp; definir&nbsp; os&nbsp; recursos&nbsp; necessários&nbsp; para&nbsp; a&nbsp; implementação&nbsp; de makerspaces em bibliotecas escolares. Para alcançar o objetivo proposto discutiu-se a inovação no processo de ensino e aprendizagem e o uso de tecnologias, definiu-se a origem, os conceitos e derivações dos&nbsp; makerspaces, mapeou-se&nbsp; as&nbsp; bibliotecas&nbsp; escolares&nbsp; que&nbsp; implementaram&nbsp; estes&nbsp; espaços&nbsp; ao redor do mundo, para, finalmente, explicar&nbsp; o&nbsp; processo&nbsp; de planejamento e financiamento desses espaços, elencando os hardwares, materiais de consumo e&nbsp; materiais&nbsp; de&nbsp; makerspace&nbsp; utilizados&nbsp; nas&nbsp; escolas&nbsp; estudadas. Trata-se de uma pesquisa exploratória, bibliográfica e de abordagem qualitativa pesquisa. Concluiu-se que é preciso desenvolver e implementar a cultura maker na escola, antes mesmo de implementar o makerspace, e que os bibliotecários, incentivadores do acesso à informação, podem participar ativamente do seu desenvolvimento e implementação. Como barreiras enfrentadas para a implantação dos makerspaces pode-se considerar o financiamento das mais difíceis de serem superadas, entretanto não devem ser usadas como o motivo para não inovar.Incorporating the Maker Movement allows the school library students' to go through hands-on experiences, learning independently through active methodologies. This research aimed to define the necessary resources for the implementation of makerspaces in school libraries. The innovation in teaching and learning processes and the use of technologies were discussed to achieve the proposed aim. The research defined the origin, definitions, and makerspaces derivations'. It also mapped the school libraries which implemented these spaces around the world. This made it possible to explain the planning and financing process by listing the hardware, consumables, and makerspace materials used in the studied schools. This research is exploratory, bibliographic, and has a qualitative approach. It concludes that it is necessary to develop and implement the maker culture at school, even before the makerspace is implemented. It also shows that librarians, who encourage access to information, can actively participate in its development and implementation. Financing can be considered the most arduous barrier to overcome when implementing a makerspace. Even so, this should not be used as an excuse for not innovating

Development of forest structure and leaf area in secondary forests regenerating on abandoned pastures in Central Amazonia

The area of secondary forest (SF) regenerating from pastures is increasing in the Amazon basin; however, the return of forest and canopy structure following abandonment is not well understood. This study examined the development of leaf area index (LAI), canopy cover, aboveground biomass, stem density, diameter at breast height (DBH), and basal area ( BA) by growth form and diameter class for 10 SFs regenerating from abandoned pastures. Biomass accrual was tree dominated, constituting >= 94% of the total measured biomass in all forests abandoned >= 4 to 6 yr. Vine biomass increased with forest age, but its relative contribution to total biomass decreased with time. The forests were dominated by the tree Vismia spp. (> 50%). Tree stem density peaked after 6 to 8 yr ( 10 320 stems per hectare) before declining by 42% in the 12- to 14-yr-old SFs. Small-diameter tree stems in the 1-5-cm size class composed > 58% of the total stems for all forests. After 12 to 14 yr, there was no significant leaf area below 150-cm height. Leaf area return (LAI = 3.2 after 12 to 14 yr) relative to biomass was slower than literature-reported recovery following slash-and-burn, where LAI can reach primary forest levels ( LAI = 4 - 6) in 5 yr. After 12 to 14 yr, the colonizing vegetation returned some components of forest structure to values reported for primary forest. Basal area and LAI were 50% - 60%, canopy cover and stem density were nearly 100%, and the rapid tree-dominated biomass accrual was 25% - 50% of values reported for primary forest. Biomass accumulation may reach an asymptote earlier than expected because of even-aged, monospecific, untiered stand structure. The very slow leaf area accumulation relative to biomass and to reported values for recovery following slash-and-burn indicates a different canopy development pathway that warrants further investigation of causes ( e. g., nutrient limitations, competition) and effects on processes such as evapotranspiration and soil water uptake, which would influence long-term recovery rates and have regional implications

Feasibility conditions on the parameters of a strongly regular graph

We consider a strongly regular graph, G, and associate a three dimensional Euclidean Jordan algebra, V, to the adjacency matrix A of G. Then, by considering convergent series of Hadamard powers of the idempotents of the unique complete system of orthogonal idempotents of V, we establish new feasibility conditions for the existence of strongly regular graphs