Football's Ability to Combat Social Exclusion

Over the past few years there has been a clear shift in governmental focus on the role of sport within British society. The old maxim of ‘sport for sport’s sake’ has been largely superseded by an approach emphasising the role of sport in helping to create a more inclusive social environment (Department for Culture, Media and Sport / Strategy Unit, 2002; Local Government Association, 2001). Sporting excellence is no longer enough on its own, rather sport is seen as a tool to be used in addressing the underlying factors which lead to the exclusion of certain individuals and communities. It is our contention that this political positioning and the related search for funding leads to over ambitious claims for what can be achieved. As the sport with the highest media and public following, football (soccer) is increasingly being challenged regarding its role in addressing this social agenda. In this paper we review some of the available evidence relating to the contribution of football and sport more generally. To do this we shall first examine how ‘social inclusion’ is interpreted; then, adopting a more questioning view of both football and sport, summarise what their contribution to social inclusion might realistically be. We contend that this has to mean considering a more differentiated interpretation of both sport and social inclusion

Improved determination of Q-factor and resonant frequency by a quadratic curve-fitting method

The Q-factor and peak frequency of resonant phenomena give useful information about the propagation and storage of energy in an electronic system and therefore its electromagnetic compatibility performance. However, the calculation of Q by linear interpolation of a discrete frequency response to obtain the half-power bandwidth can give inaccurate results, particularly if the data are noisy or the frequency resolution is low. We describe a more accurate method that makes use of the Lorentzian shape of the resonant peaks and involves fitting a second-order polynomial to the reciprocal power plotted against angular frequency. We demonstrate that this new method requires less than one quarter the number of frequency points as the linear method to give comparable accuracy in Q. The new method also gives comparable accuracy for signal-to-noise ratios that are approximately 8 dB greater. It is also more accurate for determination of peak frequency. Examples are given both from measured frequency responses and from simulated data obtained by the transmission line matrix method

IPD - the Immuno Polymorphism Database

The Immuno Polymorphism Database (IPD) (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ipd/) is a set of specialist databases related to the study of polymorphic genes in the immune system. IPD currently consists of four databases: IPD-KIR, contains the allelic sequences of Killer-cell Immunoglobulin-like Receptors; IPD-MHC, a database of sequences of the Major Histocompatibility Complex of different species; IPD-HPA, alloantigens expressed only on platelets; and IPD-ESTAB, which provides access to the European Searchable Tumour Cell-Line Database, a cell bank of immunologically characterized melanoma cell lines. The IPD project works with specialist groups or nomenclature committees who provide and curate individual sections before they are submitted to IPD for online publication. The IPD project stores all the data in a set of related databases. Those sections with similar data, such as IPD-KIR and IPD-MHC share the same database structure. The sharing of a common database structure makes it easier to implement common tools for data submission and retrieval. The data are currently available online from the website and ftp directory; files will also be made available in different formats to download from the website and ftp server. The data will also be included in SRS, BLAST and FASTA search engines at the European Bioinformatics Institute

Oblique-incidence secondary emission from charged dielectrics

Secondary electron emission coefficients were measured on FEP-Teflon for normal and oblique incidence in the presence of a normal electric field. Such measurements require knowledge of the electrostatic environment surrounding the specimen, and they require calculation of particle trajectories such that particle impact parameters can be known. A simulation using a conformal mapping, a Green's integral, and a trajectory generator provides the necessary mathematical support for the measurements, which were made with normal fields of 1.5 and 2.7 kV/mm. When incidence is normal and energy exceeds the critical energy, the coefficient is given by (V sub 0/V) to the .58 power, and for oblique incidence this expression may be divided by the cosine of the angle. The parameter V sub 0 is a function of normal field

Testing the bus guardian unit of the FTMP

Fault-tolerant multiprocessor (FTMP) operation is discussed. Fault-modeling in the bus guardian units (BGUs) is covered. Testing the BGU is discussed. A testing algorithm is proposed

The determinants of the wealth effects of banks' expanded securities powers

After several unsuccessful attempts by Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall restrictions on banks, the Federal Reserve more than doubled the revenue that commercial banking organizations' securities subsidiaries may earn from certain securities activities. The wealth effects associated with this event for a sample of publicly traded banking organizations are examined. We find evidence that indicates the revenue limit resulted in a less-than-optimal mix of activities for securities subsidiaries. However, subsequent merger activity that could have been generated by the revenue increase was not viewed favorably by investors.Securities

Consolidation, technology, and the changing structure of banks' small business lending

The U.S. banking industry continues to consolidate, with large, complex banking organizations becoming more important. Traditionally, these institutions have not emphasized small business lending. On the other hand, technological advances, particularly credit scoring models, make it easier for banks to extend small business credit. To see what effects these influences might have generated on small business lending, David Ely and Kenneth Robinson explore the small business lending patterns at U.S. banks from 1994 through 1999. They find that larger banks are increasing their market share, most noticeably in the smallest segment of the small business loan market. The authors also present evidence that the size of the average small business loan has declined, especially at larger organizations, and that the gap in lending focus on the smallest small business loans has narrowed between small and large banks. These trends are consistent with increasing use of credit scoring models.Credit ; Credit scoring systems

Software integration testing based on communication coverage criteria and partial model generation

This paper considers the problem of integration testing the components of a timed distributed software system. We assume that communication between the components is specified using timed interface automata and use computational tree logic (CTL) to define communication-based coverage criteria that refer to send- and receive-statements and communication paths. The proposed method enables testers to focus during component integration on such parts of the specification, e.g. behaviour specifications or Markovian usage models, that are involved in the communication between components to be integrated. A more specific application area of this approach is the integration of test-models, e.g. a transmission gear can be tested based on separated models for the driver behaviour, the engine condition, and the mechanical and hydraulical transmission states. Given such a state-based specification of a distributed system and a concrete coverage goal, a model checker is used in order to determine the coverage or generate test sequences that achieve the goal. Given the generated test sequences we derive a partial test-model of the components from which the test sequences are derived. The partial model can be used to drive further testing and can also be used as the basis for producing additional partial models in incremental integration testing. While the process of deriving the test sequences could suffer from a combinatorial explosion, the effort required to generate the partial model is polynomial in the number of test sequences and their length. Thus, where it is not feasible to produce test sequences that achieve a given type of coverage it is still possible to produce a partial model on the basis of test sequences generated to achieve some other criterion. As a result, the process of generating a partial model has the potential to scale to large industrial software systems. While a particular model checker, UPPAAL, was used, it should be relatively straightforward to adapt the approach for use with other CTL based model checkers. A potential additional benefit of the approach is that it provides a visual description of the state-based testing of distributed systems, which may be beneficial in other contexts such as education and comprehension

Polynomial Cointegration among Stationary Processes with Long Memory

n this paper we consider polynomial cointegrating relationships among stationary processes with long range dependence. We express the regression functions in terms of Hermite polynomials and we consider a form of spectral regression around frequency zero. For these estimates, we establish consistency by means of a more general result on continuously averaged estimates of the spectral density matrix at frequency zeroComment: 25 pages, 7 figures. Submitted in August 200