721,218 research outputs found
Governance, rational choice and new public management (npm): a general view (and some critics)
This article aims to study the New Public Management (NPM), one of the main trends associated to neoliberalism. It studies governance to show its general, wider and abstract scope. It also focuses on the Rational Choice as an important theory about governance, a basis for NPM. And it observes the neoliberal foundations of NPM, showing critical aspects of its real practice. Methodology: hypothetical deductive method of research, with a qualitative and critical approach and bibliographic-documental research technique. As results of this research, we can conclude that: i) the ideological usage of NPM has been expressed in a culture of minimal state and
government - but in practice, such culture, when embossing implemented reforms, seldom reverted the role of the state, destroyed social safety nets, and placed the tax burden on the working majority rather than on the wealthy elite; ii) advocates for NPM have Western-shaped minds, generally making erroneous assumptions about institutions and cultures, which
may be present in Anglo-American countries, but not in other culturally different ones; iii) in practice, NPM reforms were imposed to low-income countries by donor institutions to adjust their states for good governance - but those reforms did not solve problems with inefficiency and corruption. This work is original and valuable because it shows that even
when public policies highlight the importance of less
state intervention, solid norms and institutions are
always necessary, and because it helps demystifying
discourses that simply put that less state/more market
politics can be valuable everywhere
First Order Extended Gravity and the Dark Side of the Universe: the General Theory
General Relativity is not the definitive theory of Gravitation due to several
shortcomings which are coming out both from theoretical and experimental
viewpoints. At large scales (astrophysical and cosmological scales) the
attempts to match it with the today observational data lead to invoke Dark
Energy and Dark Matter as the bulk components of the cosmic fluid. Since no
final evidence, at fundamental level, exists for such ingredients, it is clear
that General Relativity presents shortcomings at infrared scales. On the other
hand, the attempts to formulate theories more general than the Einstein one
give rise to mathematical difficulties that need workarounds which, in turn,
generate problems from the interpretative viewpoint. We present here a
completely new approach to the mathematical objects in terms of which a theory
of Gravitation may be written in a first-order `a la Palatini formalism, and
introduce the concept of Dark Metric which could completely bypass the
introduction of disturbing concepts as Dark Energy and Dark Matter.Comment: Proceedings of the Conference "The Invisible Universe" Paris, June
29-July 3, 2009 10 page
Theory of controlled quantum dynamics
We introduce a general formalism, based on the stochastic formulation of
quantum mechanics, to obtain localized quasi-classical wave packets as
dynamically controlled systems, for arbitrary anharmonic potentials. The
control is in general linear, and it amounts to introduce additional quadratic
and linear time-dependent terms to the given potential. In this way one can
construct for general systems either coherent packets moving with constant
dispersion, or dynamically squeezed packets whose spreading remains bounded for
all times. In the standard operatorial framework our scheme corresponds to a
suitable generalization of the displacement and scaling operators that generate
the coherent and squeezed states of the harmonic oscillator.Comment: LaTeX, A4wide, 28 pages, no figures. To appear in J. Phys. A: Math.
Gen., April 199
Aproximative solutions to the neutrino oscillation problem in matter
We present approximative solutions to the neutrino evolution equation
calculated by different methods. In a two neutrino framework, using the
physical parameters which gives the main effects to neutrino oscillations from
nu{e} to another flavors for L=3000Km and E=1GeV, the results for the
transition probability calculated by using series solutions, by to take the
neutrino evolution operator as a product of ordered partial operators and by
numerical methods, for a linearly and sinusoidally varying matter density are
compared. The extension to an arbitrary density profile is discussed and the
evolution operator as a product of partial operators in the three neutrino case
is obtained.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
Gravitational waves production from stellar encounters around massive black holes
The emission of gravitational waves from a system of massive objects
interacting on elliptical, hyperbolic and parabolic orbits is studied in the
quadrupole approximation. Analytical expressions are then derived for the
gravitational wave luminosity, the total energy output and gravitational
radiation amplitude. A crude estimate of the expected number of events towards
peculiar targets (i.e. globular clusters) is also given. In particular, the
rate of events per year is obtained for the dense stellar cluster at the
Galactic Center.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; Multifrequency Behaviour of High-Energy Cosmic
Sources, Vulcano Workshop 200
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