Glen H. Elder: Life Course, Agency, and Time: An Interview by Matthias Pohlig

"During three interview sessions in early and mid 2011 Glen H. Elder was asked to reflect upon the issue of time and the life course on the basis of his experience and contribution to the development and establishment of the life course approach. His interest in the subject now spans several decades. Recalling his personal history and involvement in life course research Elder reviews the approach’s key categories including agency and timing, or the connection between agency and contingency. He discusses conceptual differences between the notions of biography and those applying to biographical, institutional and historical time. He reflects upon the interconnection of social change, historical events and the lives of individuals, and comments on contemporary challenges for modern lives. Finally, he discusses methodological advancements in life course research and his current and future research plans." (author's abstract)"Im Rahmen von drei Interviews, die Anfang und Mitte 2011 geführt wurden, wurde Glen H. Elder darum gebeten, seine jahrzehntelange Erfahrung im Bereich der Lebenslaufforschung sowie seine Beiträge dazu Revue passieren zu lassen. Ausgehend von seinem persönlichen Zugang zur Lebenslaufforschung spricht er über Schlüsselkategorien dieses Ansatzes wie etwa agency und timing sowie den Zusammenhang von agency und Kontingenz. Elder diskutiert Unterschiede in den Konzepten von Biographie und denen der biographischen, institutionellen und historischen Zeit, reflektiert den Zusammenhang von sozialem Wandel, historisch bedeutsamen Ereignissen und dem Leben von Individuen und kommentiert aktuelle Herausforderungen des modernen Lebens. Schließlich spricht er über methodische Entwicklungen im Bereich der Lebenslaufforschung und stellt seine aktuellen und zukünftigen Forschungspläne vor." (Autorenreferat

The uses and utility of intelligence: the case of the British Government during the War of the Spanish Succession

This article was supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.It is usually taken for granted that intelligence organisations provide information for decision-making and that the knowledge produced in the process is therefore deeply utilitarian. Drawing on organisational sociology, this article draws on a case study of English intelligence efforts during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) to reflect critically on the assumed direct relationship between intelligence-gathering and political decision-making. In eighteenth-century England, intelligence frequently fulfilled other, often more symbolic functions, for example when access to intelligence was employed to legitimise individual actors. In this sense, intelligence was doubtlessly useful, albeit in other ways than generally postulated by intelligence theory. These observations strongly suggest a ‘missing dimension’ in the history of intelligence in other periods as well as intelligence theory more generally.Peer Reviewe

Which Physical Quantity Deserves the Name “Quantity of Heat”?

“What is heat?” was the title of a 1954 article by Freeman J. Dyson, published in Scientific American. Apparently, it was appropriate to ask this question at that time. The answer is given in the very first sentence of the article: heat is disordered energy. We will ask the same question again, but with a different expectation for its answer. Let us imagine that all the thermodynamic knowledge is already available: both the theory of phenomenological thermodynamics and that of statistical thermodynamics, including quantum statistics, but that the term “heat” has not yet been attributed to any of the variables of the theory. With the question “What is heat?” we now mean: which of the physical quantities deserves this name? There are several candidates: the quantities Q, H, Etherm and S. We can then formulate a desideratum, or a profile: What properties should such a measure of the quantity or amount of heat ideally have? Then, we evaluate all the candidates for their suitability. It turns out that the winner is the quantity S, which we know by the name of entropy. In the second part of the paper, we examine why entropy has not succeeded in establishing itself as a measure for the amount of heat, and we show that there is a real chance today to make up for what was missed

On the Verdict of the German Physical Society Against the Karlsruhe Physics Course – a Chronicle of Events

The Karlsruhe Physics Course (KPC) is a novel approach to the teaching of physics at the secondary school. It was developed more than 30 years ago. The KPC textbooks have since been used in a certain, slightly increasing number of German schools. Simultaneously, ideas of the KPC have found their way into the mainstream textbooks. Only recently, the German Physical Society (DPG) got aware of the course. In their opinion the KPC represents a danger to the teaching of physic. Therefore, the DPG nominated an expert panel with the assignment of finding scientific errors in the KPC. The panel believed to have found such errors. Thereupon the DPG has initiated a campaign with the objective of eliminating not only the KPC textbooks from the market but to eradicate any other manifestation of ideas that might have originated in the KPC work. The DPG did so not only in Germany but worldwide. Among other things, the DPG alerted the European Physical Society and the Chinese Physical Society. As a result of these measures, a discussion of unusual fierceness arose, first in Germany, but then spreading to other countries. Thereby the physics community got more and more polarized. A chronicle of an eventful year and a brief evaluation will be given from the perspective of the author of the course and of a teacher who uses the KPC in his classes

Is mass a measure of inertia?

Mass is usually introduced as a measure of the inertia of a body. But what do we mean by inertia anyway? We introduce a measure of inertia. It turns out that for high, relativistic velocities neither the rest mass nor the relativistic mass fulfills the requirements for a meaningfully defined measure of inertia. But how are we going to talk about inertia in the physics lesson? How can we use students\u27 everyday language and still arrive at a clear conceptualization? We will try to give an answer to these questions

A hydraulic energy flow within the moving Earth

We consider the Earth moving through empty space at 30 km s$^{−1}$ (in the Sun\u27s frame of reference). Associated with this motion is a convective flow of kinetic and internal energy. Since there is high pressure inside the Earth, and since the Earth is moving, there is yet another \u27hydraulic\u27 energy flow. This latter is what this article is about. Although this energy flow is huge, it is not addressed in the textbooks. The reason is that for the explanation one needs a concept which is not introduced in traditional presentations of classical gravitation: the gravitomagnetic field. The corresponding theory, gravitoelectromagnetism, was formulated in 1893 by Heaviside in analogy to Maxwell\u27s theory of electromagnetism. We discuss the question of what are the sources and sinks of this hydraulic, non-convective energy flow. To answer the question, we need to study the energy flow density distribution within the gravitational field. In doing so, we will make some interesting observations. The energy flow within the field is twice as large as it should be to transfer the field energy from one side of the Earth to the other. The excess flow goes back through the matter of the Earth. Since our readers may not be familiar with Heaviside\u27s theory, we first treat the electromagnetic analogue of our problem and then translate the results to the gravitational situation

Heaviside’s Gravitoelectromagnetism: What is it good for and what not?

We learn and teach classical mechanics essentially as it was developed by Newton. The theory is more than 300 years old, but still useful for many pur- poses. However, even in contexts where it produces correct results, it has a flaw: it uses actions at a distance. In addition, it is not able to describe the transport and storage of energy in the gravitational field locally. The general theory of relativity not only eliminated the actions at a distance of Newtonian mechanics, but also predicted phenomena which the Newtonian the- ory of gravitation could not explain. However, for solving many problems and for an introduction of gravitation in a standard lecture, general relativity is too complicated, mainly because of the tensor calculus. To bridge the gap between these two theories we propose to use Heaviside’s the- ory of gravitoelectromagnetism. This theory has the same structure as Maxwell’s electromagnetism. It has the advantage that it does not describe forces as actions at a distance and that it allows to establish a local energy balance. We discuss the limits of applicability of Heaviside’s theory. It turns out that be- sides the well-known condition low field/slow motion, another condition must be satisfied. The theory is only applicable to quasi-stationary processes. In particu- lar, it cannot describe gravitational waves. Nevertheless, it is useful for teaching, because some major shortcomings of the Newtonian theory are avoided

The Karlsruhe Physics Course for the secondary school A-level : Mechanics

The Karlsruhe Physics Course is a textbook for the secondary school. It is based on a unified subject structure. It is therefore easy to understand and at the same time compact. In addition, it removes barriers to neighboring disciplines. Obsolete concepts have been eliminated and the number of technical terms greatly reduced. It is a favorite read by boys and girls

Polarization and marginalization during the Eurozone crisis: The persistence of Eurosclerosis

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis taking place since 2008 are real-life tests for policies aimed at promoting inclusive labor markets in the Eurozone. Therefore, this article discusses first how the risk of being a labor market outsider evolved in the Eurozone during the crises, and whether this risk diverged between social groups. Using EU-SILC data, we describe the overall level of outsider risks before and during the crises - risks of being either unemployed, temporarily employed or earning a low wage - among the labor force ('polarization') and the concentration of these risks among vulnerable groups ('marginalization'). Our results show that the outsider risks have particularly increased in the Southern European countries, and for young workers throughout the EU, and in the case of unemployment, also for low-skilled workers. In the second step, we study how employment protection legislation, union density and wage bargaining systems influence polarization and marginalization in the context of an economic crisis. In contrast to discussions about the end of Eurosclerosis, we find that strict employment protection and centralized bargaining in-crease the marginalization of vulnerable groups while strong unions can reduce polarization