Collective Employee Representation and the Impact of Law: Initial Response to the Employment Relations Act 1999.

Using data gathered primarily during interviews with managers and trade union officials, this article examines how trade unions and employers have reacted to the introduction of the statutory procedure for union recognition in the Employment Relations Act 1999 (ERA). Findings indicate that the ERA and the drift of EU influence have had a substantial effect in shifting the balance of employer attitudes towards greater approval of trade unions and have accelerated the rate at which employers are redesigning their relationships with unions. Although employers are tending to restrict unions' influence over traditional issues such as pay-setting, they are increasingly seeking their assistance in implementing difficult organisational changes. The article explores the impact of such changes on trade union activity and collective representation more broadly.Collective bargaining, employee representation, trade union recognition labour legislation

Stochastic Hosting Capacity in LV Distribution Networks

Hosting capacity is defined as the level of penetration that a particular technology can connect to a distribution network without causing power quality problems. In this work, we study the impact of solar photovoltaics (PV) on voltage rise. In most cases, the locations and sizes of the PV are not known in advance, so hosting capacity must be considered as a random variable. Most hosting capacity methods study the problem considering a large number of scenarios, many of which provide little additional information. We overcome this problem by studying only cases where voltage constraints are active, with results illustrating a reduction in the number of scenarios required by an order of magnitude. A linear power flow model is utilised for this task, showing excellent performance. The hosting capacity is finally studied as a function of the number of generators connected, demonstrating that assumptions about the penetration level will have a large impact on the conclusions drawn for a given network

Dual frequency comb assisted analog-to-digital conversion

Photonic analog to digital conversion offers promise to overcome the signal-to-noise ratio and sample rate trade-off in conventional analog to digital converters (ADCs), critical for modern digital communications and signal analysis. We propose using phase-stable dual frequency combs with a fixed frequency spacing offset to downconvert spectral slices of a broadband signal and enable high-resolution parallel digitization. To prove the concept of our proposed method, we demonstrate the detection of a 10 GHz subcarrier modulated (SCM) signal using 500 MHz bandwidth ADCs by optically converting the SCM signal to 10 1 GHz bandwidth signals that can be processed in parallel for full signal detection and reconstruction. Using sinusoidal-wave-based standard ADC testing, we demonstrate a spurious-free dynamic range of >45 dB and signal-to-noise-and-distortion of >20 dB, limited by the receiver front-end design

Performance of dual frequency comb channelizers for RF signal processing

We analyse the performance limits of dual frequency comb based photonic signal processors. We show that the relative phase noise between the two combs is critical to defining the signal-to-noise-ratio of such systems

Noise and distortion analysis of dual frequency comb photonic RF channelizers

Dual frequency combs are emerging as highly effective channelizers for radio frequency (RF) signal processing, showing versatile capabilities in various applications including Fourier signal mapping, analog-to-digital conversion and sub-sampling of sparse wideband signals. Although previous research has considered the impact of comb power and harmonic distortions in individual systems, a rigorous and comprehensive performance analysis is lacking, particularly regarding the impact of phase noise. This is especially important considering that phase noise power increases quadratically with comb line number. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of a dual frequency comb channelizer and evaluate the signal to noise ratio limits and design challenges when deploying such systems in a high bandwidth signal processing context. We show that the performance of these dual comb based signal processors is limited by the relative phase noise between the two optical frequency combs, which to our knowledge has not been considered in previous literature. Our simulations verify the theoretical model and examine the stochastic noise contributions and harmonic distortion, followed by a broader discussion of the performance limits of dual frequency comb channelizers, which demonstrate the importance of minimizing the relative phase noise between the two frequency combs to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio signal processing

Phase noise of electro-optic dual frequency combs

Dual frequency combs are emerging as new tools for spectroscopy and signal processing. The relative phase noise of the tone pairs determines the performance (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio) of the detected spectral components. Although previous research has shown that the signal quality generally degrades with an increase in frequency difference between tone pairs, the scaling of the relative phase noise of dual frequency comb systems has not been fully characterized. In this Letter, we model and characterize the phase noise of a coherent electro-optic dual frequency comb system. Our results show that at high offset frequencies, the phase noise is an incoherent sum of the timing phase noise of the two combs, multiplied by line number. At low offset frequencies, however, the phase noise scales more slowly due to the coherence of the common frequency reference

Glycogen storage disease type 3: A management challenge in pregnancy

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Are litigation and collective bargaining complements or substitutes for achieving gender equality? A study of the British equal pay act

We present a socio-legal case study of the recent equal pay litigation wave in Britain, which saw an unprecedented increase in the number of claims, triggered in part by the entry of no-win, no-fee law firms into this part of the legal services market. Although the rise in litigation led to greater adversarialism in pay bargaining, litigation and collective bargaining mostly operated as complementary mechanisms in advancing an equality agenda. Litigation may be a more potent agent for social change than some recent analyses, which stress the limits of the law in the face of organisational pressures to canalise and diffuse human rights, have suggestedWe are grateful to the ESRC’s Gender Network for financial supportThis is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Oxford University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cje/bev00