A high sensitivity balloon-borne X-ray telescope system

A high sensitivity X-ray telescope system suitable for photometric type observations from balloon altitudes is described. The balloon gondola system is defined to include the performance requirements and the overall performance requirements of the balloon gondola support system. Diagrams of the gondola and the installed components are provided. The pointing and control system of the telescope is analyzed

Local agency, adaptation and the shadow system: The institutional architecture of social learning in rural areas of the UK and India

Rural communities across the world face at times a range of environmental, social and economic pressures that threaten their viability in their current form. The ability of local actors to exercise agency in response to potential and emerging threats is of key interest in understanding their capacity to adapt. This paper argues that top-down narratives which focus on canonical organisations and formal institutions are at best a partial account of rural adaptation. More attention needs to be paid to the shadow system, the web of informal and often hidden relationships that permeate public and private life. In the organisational and institutional literature, shadow systems have been discounted as either too complex to be tractable or an inevitable source of corruption and nepotism. Two case studies are presented to establish that neither claim is inexorably true: (i) the adaptation of dairy farmers to market and climate change in Carmarthenshire, South Wales and (ii) NGO mediation of community/state interaction in Tamilnadu, South India. In conclusion, some theoretical and methodological themes are highlighted for further research. These hold the potential to enable a better understanding of the shadow system, and its potential and pitfalls as a site of local agency in rural adaptation. Acnowledgements: This paper draws on learning from two research projects: (i) 'Rapid climate change in the UK: towards an institutional theory of adaptation', funded by the UK Economic and Social Science Research Council's Environment and Human Behaviour Programme, and (ii) 'Thaan Vuzha Nilam Tharisu: The land without a farmer becomes barren', carried out by SPEECH, a Tamil NGO, as part of a larger International Institute for Environment and Development research programme – 'Policies that Work for Sustainable Agriculture and Regenerating Rural Economies.� The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial and institutional assistance that made this research possible

Understanding informal institutions: Networks and communities in rural development

A major theme within the literature on rural development is that the particular mix of formal and informal institutions present in any situation is a key determinant of development outcomes. However, there is some evidence that in policy and practice there are considerable difficulties in articulating formal organizational realities with the rules and norms embedded in informally constructed social structures. The same difficulty is in evidence in the New Institutional Economics, where the mainstream literature concedes the critical importance of informal and cultural institutions, but has thus far failed to develop an adequate theory of the informal. This recognized weakness is all the more urgent because of the growing emphasis on governance, participation and social learning evident in European rural development policy and practice. A clear understanding of the opportunities and pitfalls that arise in working with informal institutions is required, and therefore theories that provide analytical and operational traction in the 'parallel' realities of the formal and the informal. This paper starts from the point of view that at the heart of the institutional dilemma lies a difficulty in conceptualising the informal social structures in which informal institutions are reproduced. A review of relevant bodies of theory is presented; drawing on sociological network theory, perspectives on governance and social capital, and new developments in the organisational and management literature. These suggest some starting points for a theory of informal social realities and the institutions that structure them. The paper concludes with a presentation of a theoretical framework for understanding informal structures in rural development in terms of networks and communities

Mapping an ancient historian in a digital age: the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Image Archive (HESTIA)

HESTIA (the Herodotus Encoded Space-Text-Imaging Archive) employs the latest digital technology to develop an innovative methodology to the study of spatial data in Herodotus' Histories. Using a digital text of Herodotus, freely available from the Perseus on-line library, to capture all the place-names mentioned in the narrative, we construct a database to house that information and represent it in a series of mapping applications, such as GIS, GoogleEarth and GoogleMap Timeline. As a collaboration of academics from the disciplines of Classics, Geography, and Archaeological Computing, HESTIA has the twin aim of investigating the ways geography is represented in the Histories and of bringing Herodotus' world into people's homes

Writing space, living space: time, agency and place relations in Herodotus’s Histories

This chapter examines lived space in Herodotus’s Histories’ and explores how the picture that emerges differs from abstract depictions of space. Such overly schematic representations we see articulated by the Persians at the very beginning of the Histories, or explicitly challenged by Herodotus when he ‘laughs at’ the maps produced by his Ionian contemporaries that similarly divide the world into two regions of equal size (4.36.2), or more subtly undercut when Aristagoras turns up with just such a map and puts it to service an argument in favour of conquest. In particular, we want to challenge conventional readings of a polarised world of East versus West, which, while grounded in Herodotus’s concern to show how ‘Greeks and barbarians came into conflict with each other’ (1.1), fail to take into account either Herodotus’s implicit rejection of the Persian model of an Asia-Europe divide in favour of an inquiry that recognises that places change over time, or the extent to which Herodotus or his historical agents relate those places to each other. Using key features of lived space—time, agency and relation—, we sketch out the beginnings of a network analysis of book 5, backed up by a close textual study of the book’s opening episode. Both methods help to unpack the idea of the Histories’ lived space that underpins and greatly complicates the historical agents’ own understanding of the world around them

Remittances from Sweden. an Exploration of Swedish Survey Data

The present study explores data on transfers of gifts/economic support to relatives from a recent Swedish Household Income Survey (HEK) compiled by Statistics Sweden. It provides the first analysis of demographic determinants of remittances from Sweden based on official household survey and register data. By exploring a data set that also includes non-migrant households, it presents a unique comparison of patterns of gift-giving and intra-family support between migrant and non-migrant households. We argue that data from the Household Income Survey can be used to obtain an empirically based estimation of the determinants of remittances from Sweden. According to our results, the flows of remittances to developing countries from Sweden appear to be relatively small in comparison with remittance flows from other developed countries. The article analyses these transfers of gifts/economic support in relation to different kinds of income, education, age, time since migration, acquisition of citizenship and family situation. Analyses are made for three types of country groups : developing countries, non-developing countries and Sweden. Whereas the general propensity to give economic support to relatives is similar among native Swedes and migrants from developing and non-developing countries, the patterns of gift-giving and intra-family economic support differ significantly over the life course between individuals from different country groups. Native Swedes tend to give gifts and economic support to relatives at higher ages and when they have adult children who have moved away from home. Migrants from developing countries tend to be younger and have children living at home. The propensity of native Swedes to remit increases with increasing income. Among migrants born in developing countries, other factors than income seem to be more decisive for the propensity to remit. Diverging patterns of remittances between migrants from developing countries and the other groups indicate that remittances are strongly related to phases in the individual life course that vary with the individual migration history.Remittances; Intra-family transfers; Life course

Extracting, investigating and representing geographical concepts in Herodotus: the case of the Black Sea

In a short break from his preparations for the invasion of Scythia, Darius stops off where the Bosporus was bridged and sails to the Dark Rocks, apparently retracing the steps of the Argonauts.1 ‘There’, Herodotus reports, ‘he sat on the headland and viewed the Pontus, a wonderful sight’ (έζόμενος δέ έπί ρίω έθηεĩτο τόν Πόντον έόντα άξιοθέητον 4. 85. 1).2 In this paper, we aim to bring that wonderful sight to life using the latest digital technology, and to set out some of the ways in which the world that Herodotus describes can now be represented. At the same time, however, we will be concerned to show the potential of digital technologies for opening up new lines of enquiry, in particular the investigation of the ‘deep’ topological structures that underpin the Histories. After all, the Persian king is not the only figure to take an interest in the Pontus as a geographical concept: the historian too shows an interest in the Black Sea by extensively mapping the region and its place in the world, both before and after this episode (4. 37-45; 4. 99-101). The way that Herodotus articulates this space himself, which frames, and to a certain extent pre-empts, Darius’ invasion of Scythia, will be the concern of this paper

Measuring Support to Agriculture in a Transition Economy in the Southern Balkans: The case of FYR Macedonia

As a candidate country to the EU and a member of the WTO there is a need for a comprehensive, transparent and internationally comparable assessment of the support to agriculture in Macedonia. OECD that has been measuring support to agriculture on a yearly basis, in its member countries as well as some other countries since the mid-1980s, offers a good tool for such a task. The method is known for its most important indicator, the Producer Support Estimate (PSE). Using this method, data on Macedonian agricultural policy measures, in place – partly or entirely - for the period 1999 to 2004, have been gathered and categorized in order to arrive at an estimate of the level of support.Producer support estimate (PSE), FYR Macedonia, trade protection, Agricultural and Food Policy,

A Multistate Manpower Projection Model

This paper describes the structure and application of a multistate projection model that was developed by the Operational Research Service of the Department of Health and Social Security, UK. The model can be used to calculate the evolution of a multistate manpower or population distribution, with each state's stock classified either by length of time in a state or by age and subdivided into up to four noninteracting population subgroups (e.g., according to sex and country of origin). Both Markov ("push") and Renewal ("pull") flows can be simulated and a wide range of different network configurations can be modeled. Medical manpower planning problems are also discussed--in particular the issue of career planning for doctors in the presence of demand constraints--to exemplify the possible uses of the model. As background, the role of manpower planning in health care planning and the sorts of problems that arise in balancing the supply of, and demand for, any manpower group are outlined. The generality of the Department of Health and Social Security model is demonstrated by highlighting its structural similarity to the multistate models that have been the subject of study at IIASA in recent years. The model's uses in detecting both potential manpower supply instabilities in market-based manpower systems and planning in feasibilities in planned systems are pointed out. A model run is discussed, based on a hypothetical situation, in which growth rates of one grade in a manpower network lead to supply problems for the whole network. The Appendix contains sample input and output files