How international are we? A study of the barriers to internationalisation of UK Higher Education

The internationalisation of higher education may appear to be a fairly recent phenomenon however it has been highlighted as a trend within developed country universities since the late 1980's. How universities inetrnationalise varies and this can be attributed to the differing definitions and perceptions of internationalisation itself. It is apparent that a wider ranging and more diverse internationalisation strategy will be critical to institutions to successfully manage the complex process of internationalisation. University internationalisation strategies have been analysed using content analysis to identify a number of themes why they internationalise, together with those identified a priori through the literature review. This forumlated a questionnaire, distributed to staff at UK HEIs to assess where they currently are in their internationalisation process and what they perceive as being important to this process and they have been analysed. A further stage of interviews with a range of interviewees of differing job functions at differing HEIs is still to be completed and some early initial analysis will hopefully be available for the conference. The contenet analysis produced an extensive range of coded words/phrases that were grouped into a series of rationales and there were significant similarities to findings from previous studies and also new themes identified. The questionnaire distributed via Surveymonkey generated 76 responses from across 55 different UK HEIs, a representative sample for analysis. It is clear that there is some commonality of issues associated with internationalisation but also that some opinions vary depending upon the role undertaken by the respondent and also whether a pre or post 1992 institution. Internationalisation is likely to increase in importance as traditional UK Government funding stops and HEIs seek other sources of income. To identify barriers will hopefully aid HEIs to successfully operationalise internationalisation and enhance the student experience

Contributions to b→sℓℓ{b \rightarrow s \ell \ell} Anomalies from R{R}-Parity Violating Interactions

We examine the parameter space of supersymmetric models with $R$-parity violating interactions of the form $\lambda' L Q D^c$ to explain the various anomalies observed in $b \rightarrow s \ell \ell$ transitions. To generate the appropriate operator in the low energy theory, we are led to a region of parameter space where loop contributions dominate. In particular, we concentrate on parameters for which diagrams involving winos, which have not been previously considered, give large contributions. Many different potentially constraining processes are analyzed, including $\tau \rightarrow \mu \mu \mu$, $B_s-\bar{B}_s$ mixing, $B \rightarrow K^{(*)} \nu \bar{\nu}$, $Z$ decays to charged leptons, and direct LHC searches. We find that it is possible to explain the anomalies, but it requires large values of $\lambda'$, which lead to relatively low Landau poles.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures, references added, matched to journal versio

The pure cohomology of multiplicative quiver varieties

To a quiver $Q$ and choices of nonzero scalars $q_i$, non-negative integers $\alpha_i$, and integers $\theta_i$ labeling each vertex $i$, Crawley-Boevey--Shaw associate a "multiplicative quiver variety" $\mathcal{M}_\theta^q(\alpha)$, a trigonometric analogue of the Nakajima quiver variety associated to $Q$, $\alpha$, and $\theta$. We prove that the pure cohomology, in the Hodge-theoretic sense, of the stable locus $\mathcal{M}_\theta^q(\alpha)^s$ is generated as a $\mathbb{Q}$-algebra by the tautological characteristic classes. In particular, the pure cohomology of genus $g$ twisted character varieties of $GL_n$ is generated by tautological classes

Stolarsky's conjecture and the sum of digits of polynomial values

Let $s_q(n)$ denote the sum of the digits in the $q$-ary expansion of an integer $n$. In 1978, Stolarsky showed that $$\liminf_{n\to\infty} \frac{s_2(n^2)}{s_2(n)} = 0.$$ He conjectured that, as for $n^2$, this limit infimum should be 0 for higher powers of $n$. We prove and generalize this conjecture showing that for any polynomial $p(x)=a_h x^h+a_{h-1} x^{h-1} + ... + a_0 \in \Z[x]$ with $h\geq 2$ and $a_h>0$ and any base $q$, $$\liminf_{n\to\infty} \frac{s_q(p(n))}{s_q(n)}=0.$$ For any $\epsilon > 0$ we give a bound on the minimal $n$ such that the ratio $s_q(p(n))/s_q(n) < \epsilon$. Further, we give lower bounds for the number of $n < N$ such that $s_q(p(n))/s_q(n) < \epsilon$.Comment: 13 page