The representation gap: why ignoring Euroscepticism has opened the door for extremist parties

How should mainstream parties react to increasing Euroscepticism among voters? Robert Rohrschneider and Stephen Whitefield argue that the failure of mainstream parties to alter their positions on European integration in light of these shifts in public opinion has left a significant representational gap for extreme anti-integration parties to fill. They notice a difference between western European and eastern European countries, remarking that the latter have better managed to integrate growing scepticism about the EU, although the examples of Hungary and Poland demonstrate that the adoption of Eurosceptic stances is by no means a firewall against extreme politics

Britain's role in the world: a conversation

Stephen Whitefieldtalks to Colin Hay about Britain’sprojection of its place in the world today, set in the contextof the diminished sense of Britishness and the story of thelong decline of the country itseel

Party competition and emotive rhetoric

When do parties use emotive rhetoric to appeal to voters? In this article, we argue that politicians are more likely to employ positive affect (valence) in their rhetoric to appeal to voters when parties are not ideologically distinct and when there is uncertainty about public preferences. To test these propositions, our article uses well-established psycholinguistic affect dictionaries to generate scores from three time series of political text: British party manifestos (1900-2015) and annual party leaders’ speeches (1977-2014) as well as U.S. Presidents’ State of the Union addresses (1880-2016). Our findings corroborate our expectations and have important implications for the study of party competition by illuminating the role of valence in the way politicians communicate their policies

Integrated Network Management of Hybrid Networks

We describe our collaborative efforts towards the design and implementation of a next generation integrated network management system for hybrid networks (INMS/HN). We describe the overall software architecture of the system at its current stage of development. This network management system is specifically designed to address issues relevant for complex heterogeneous networks consisting of seamlessly interoperable terrestrial and satellite networks. Network management systems are a key element for interoperability in such networks. We describe the integration of configuration management and performance management. The next step in this integration is fault management. In particular we describe the object model, issues of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), browsing tools and performance data graphical widget displays, management information database (MIB) organization issues. Several components of the system are being commercialized by Hughes Network Systems. A revised version of this report has been published in Proceedings of the 1st Conference of Commercial Development of Space, Part One, pp. 345-350, Albuquerque, New Mexico, January 7-11, 1996.</ul

Hybrid Network Management

We describe our collaborative efforts towards the design and implementation of a next generation integrated network management system for hybrid network (INMS/HN). We describe the overall software architecture of the system at its current stage of development. This network management system if specifically designed to address issues relevant for complex heterogeneous networks consisting of seamlessly interoperable terrestrial and satellite networks. Network management systems are a key element for interoperability in such networks. We describe the integration of configuration management and performance management. The next step in this integration is fault management. In particular we describe the object model, issues of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), browsing tools and performance data graphical widget displays, management, information database (MIB) organization issues. Several components of the system are being commercialized by Hughes Networks Systems. A revised version of this technical report has been published in Proceedings of the AIAA: 16th International Communications Satellite Systems Conference and Exhibit, Part 1, pp. 490-500, Washington, D.C., February 25- 29, 1996.</ul

Whitefield News

File includes: January 2016 Volume 3, Issue 7 February 2016 Volume 3, Issue 8 March 2016 Volume 3, Issue 9 April 2016 Volume 3, Issue 10 May 2016 Volume 3, Issue 11 June 2016 Volume 3, Issue 12 July 2016 Volume 4, Issue 1 August 2016 Volume 4, Issue 2 September 2016, Volume 4, Issue 3 October 2016, Volume 4, Issue 4 November 2016, Volume 4, Issue 5 December 2016, Volume 4, Issue

Next Generation Network Management Technology

Today's telecommunications networks are becoming increasingly large, complex, mission critical and heterogeneous in several dimensions. For example, the underlying physical transmission facilities of a given network may be ﲭixed media (copper, fiber- optic, radio, and satellite); the sub networks may be acquired from different vendors due to economic, performance, or general availability reasons; the information being transmitted over the network may be ﲭultimedia (video, data, voice, and images) and, finally, varying performance criteria may be imposed e.g. data transfer may require high throughput while the others, whose concern is voice communications, may require low call blocking probability. For these reasons, future telecommunications networks are expected to be highly complex in their services and operations. Due to this growing complexity and the disparity among management systems for individual sub networks, efficient network management systems have become critical to the current and future success of telecommunications companies. This paper addresses a research and development effort which focuses on prototyping configuration management, since that is the central process of network management and all other network management functions must be built upon it. Our prototype incorporates ergonomically designed graphical user interfaces tailored to the network configuration management subsystem and to the proposed advanced object-oriented database structure. The resulting design concept follows open standards such as Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) and incorporates object oriented programming methodology to associate data with functions, permit customization, and provide an open architecture environment. A revised version of this technical report has been published in The 12th Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion/Commercialization, pp. 75-82, Albuquerque, NM, January 8-12, 1995.</ul

Holocene fluctuations in human population demonstrate repeated links to food production and climate

We consider the long-term relationship between human demography, food production, and Holocene climate via an archaeological radiocarbon date series of unprecedented sampling density and detail. There is striking consistency in the inferred human population dynamics across different regions of Britain and Ireland during the middle and later Holocene. Major cross-regional population downturns in population coincide with episodes of more abrupt change in North Atlantic climate and witness societal responses in food procurement as visible in directly dated plants and animals, often with moves toward hardier cereals, increased pastoralism, and/or gathered resources. For the Neolithic, this evidence questions existing models of wholly endogenous demographic boom–bust. For the wider Holocene, it demonstrates that climate-related disruptions have been quasi-periodic drivers of societal and subsistence change