2,175 research outputs found
'All sorts and conditions of men':The social origins of the founders of the ICAEW
The early organisation of accountants in Scotland during the 1850s and 1860s has excited the intellectual curiosity and research endeavour of a number of students of professionalisation. By contrast, until recently there was a dearth of academic interest in institutional developments in England and Wales during the 1870s and 1880s. Yet, organisations such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) which emanate from this period soon became the most significant players on the British professional scene and were to exert considerable influence on the development of accountancy institutions and professional ideologies in several locations. Exploiting a variety of genealogical sources this paper seeks to fill a void in the literature by analysing the social origins of the founding members of the principal professional association in England and Wales. It provides evidence of early chartered accountancy as a destination for long distance, upwardly mobile males, both intergenerationally and intragenerationally. The rate of self-recruitment among the founders of the ICAEW is shown to be low. The proportion of founders deriving from the upper and upper-middle classes is revealed to have been markedly less than that of their Scottish counterparts. The paper contributes to understandings of the complex professionalisation of British accountants, the extent of social mobility in Victorian Britain, the pathways to social advance in a class-based society, and illuminates the social complexion of one of the ‘new’ professions which emerged during the nineteenth century
Evolution of virulence: triggering host inflammation allows invading pathogens to exclude competitors.
Virulence is generally considered to benefit parasites by enhancing resource-transfer from host to pathogen. Here, we offer an alternative framework where virulent immune-provoking behaviours and enhanced immune resistance are joint tactics of invading pathogens to eliminate resident competitors (transferring resources from resident to invading pathogen). The pathogen wins by creating a novel immunological challenge to which it is already adapted. We analyse a general ecological model of 'proactive invasion' where invaders not adapted to a local environment can succeed by changing it to one where they are better adapted than residents. However, the two-trait nature of the 'proactive' strategy (provocation of, and adaptation to environmental change) presents an evolutionary conundrum, as neither trait alone is favoured in a homogenous host population. We show that this conundrum can be resolved by allowing for host heterogeneity. We relate our model to emerging empirical findings on immunological mediation of parasite competition
Multiple Factorizations of Bivariate Linear Partial Differential Operators
We study the case when a bivariate Linear Partial Differential Operator
(LPDO) of orders three or four has several different factorizations.
We prove that a third-order bivariate LPDO has a first-order left and right
factors such that their symbols are co-prime if and only if the operator has a
factorization into three factors, the left one of which is exactly the initial
left factor and the right one is exactly the initial right factor. We show that
the condition that the symbols of the initial left and right factors are
co-prime is essential, and that the analogous statement "as it is" is not true
for LPDOs of order four.
Then we consider completely reducible LPDOs, which are defined as an
intersection of principal ideals. Such operators may also be required to have
several different factorizations. Considering all possible cases, we ruled out
some of them from the consideration due to the first result of the paper. The
explicit formulae for the sufficient conditions for the complete reducibility
of an LPDO were found also
Phosphorus Leaching in Sandy Soils. I. Short-term Effects of Fertilizer Applications and Environmental Conditions
The consequences of previous as well as current environmental conditions and management practices on the potential for phosphorus (P) to be lost by drainage from sandy soils in the short term (\u3c 1 year) were studied in the laboratory and the field. The potential for P losses by drainage was estimated by measuring soil solution P levels and rapidly released P. Rapidly released P was measured by determining the concentration of dissolved inorganic P contained in filtered (µm) soil solutions after incubating soil at saturation for 15 min at ambient temperature. In the laboratory, sandy soils were incubated with ordinary superphosphate, coastal superphosphate (a granulated mixture of equal parts of superphospate, rock phosphate and elemental sulfur) or lime-superphosphate (a lime-reverted superphosphate with 18% kiln dust) and sequentially desorbed with deionized water. The effects of the extent of leaching, fertilizer type, application rate and the time of contact with the soil on soil solution P levels were investigated. The influence of annual pasture death and summer rainfall on rapidly released P in soils that had been pre-treated by leaching were also investigated. Phosphorus concentrations decreased logarithmically in the successive supernatants of the sequentially desorbed soils. More P was desorbed from soils incubated with superphosphate and lime-superphosphate than soil incubated with coastal superphosphate. At each level of pre-leaching, the P concentrations in the soil solution increased with increasing time. The level, to which the P concentration in the soil solution increased at each time, decreased with increased extent of pre-leaching. The addition of P fertilizers increased the concentration of P in the soil solution. The concentrations increased with increasing application rate and were much higher for superphosphate than for coastal superphosphate; however, there was little effect of contact time on soil solution P levels. Rapidly released P levels after leaching increased during a period of no further leaching. Additional moisture or plant material during this period of no further leaching increased the rate and extent to which rapidly released P increased. Monitoring of rapidly released P in the 0-2, 2-5, 5-10 and 10-20 cm layers of field plots, with and without applications of superphosphate, showed that sampling depth, water flow path, fertilizer management, rainfall pattern and background P levels would affect the estimate of short-term P losses. Rapidly released P in the 0-2 cm layer varied markedly with time and was higher (P \u3c 0.05) than that in lower soil layers. Rapidly released P increased after the winter and spring rains diminished and then decreased after the rains commenced again at the end of the summer. A possible annual cycle of P in sandy soils in a mediterranean climate is postulated by considering the laboratory and field data in combination
Phase diagram and upper critical field of homogenously disordered epitaxial 3-dimensional NbN films
We report the evolution of superconducting properties with disorder, in
3-dimensional homogeneously disordered epitaxial NbN thin films. The effective
disorder in NbN is controlled from moderately clean limit down to Anderson
metal-insulator transition by changing the deposition conditions. We propose a
phase diagram for NbN in temperature-disorder plane. With increasing disorder
we observe that as kFl-->1 the superconducting transition temperature (Tc) and
minimum conductivity (sigma_0) go to zero. The phase diagram shows that in
homogeneously disordered 3-D NbN films, the metal-insulator transition and the
superconductor-insulator transition occur at a single quantum critical point at
kFl~1.Comment: To appear in Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism
(ICSM2010 proceedings
The B-L/Electroweak Hierarchy in Heterotic String and M-Theory
E8 x E8 heterotic string and M-theory, when compactified on a Calabi-Yau
threefold admitting an SU(4) vector bundle with Wilson lines, can give rise to
the exact MSSM spectrum with three right-handed neutrino chiral superields, one
per family. Rank preserving Wilson lines require that the standard model group
be augmented by a gauged U(1)_B-L. Since there are no fields in this theory for
which 3(B-L) is an even, non-zero integer, the gauged B-L symmetry must be
spontaneously broken at a low scale, not too far above the electroweak scale.
It is shown that in these heterotic standard models, the B-L symmetry can be
broken, with a phenomenologically viable B-L/electroweak hierarchy, by at least
one right-handed sneutrino acquiring a vacuum expectation value. This is
explicitly demonstrated, in a specific region of parameter space, using a
renormalization group analysis and soft supersymmetry breaking operators. The
vacuum state is shown to be a stable, local minimum of the potential and the
resultant hierarchy is explicitly presented in terms of tan[beta].Comment: 16 pages; typos fixed, analysis generalize
Quality and location choices under price regulation
In a model of spatial competition, we analyze the equilibrium outcomes in markets where the product price is exogenous. Using an extended version of the Hotelling model, we assume that firms choose their locations and the quality of the product they supply. We derive the optimal price set by a welfarist regulator. If the regulator can commit to a price prior to the choice of locations, the optimal (second-best) price causes overinvestment in quality and an insufficient degree of horizontal differentiation (compared with the first-best solution) if the transportation cost of consumers is sufficiently high. Under partial commitment, where the regulator is not able to commit prior to location choices, the optimal price induces first-best quality, but horizontal differentiation is inefficiently high
The MSSM fine tuning problem: a way out
As is well known, electroweak breaking in the MSSM requires substantial
fine-tuning, mainly due to the smallness of the tree-level Higgs quartic
coupling, lambda_tree. Hence the fine tuning is efficiently reduced in
supersymmetric models with larger lambda_tree, as happens naturally when the
breaking of SUSY occurs at a low scale (not far from the TeV). We show, in
general and with specific examples, that a dramatic improvement of the fine
tuning (so that there is virtually no fine-tuning) is indeed a very common
feature of these scenarios for wide ranges of tan(beta) and the Higgs mass
(which can be as large as several hundred GeV if desired, but this is not
necessary). The supersymmetric flavour problems are also drastically improved
due to the absence of RG cross-talk between soft mass parameters.Comment: 28 pages, 9 PS figures, LaTeX Published versio
Reactor Neutrino Experiments with a Large Liquid Scintillator Detector
We discuss several new ideas for reactor neutrino oscillation experiments
with a Large Liquid Scintillator Detector. We consider two different scenarios
for a measurement of the small mixing angle with a mobile
source: a nuclear-powered ship, such as a submarine or an
icebreaker, and a land-based scenario with a mobile reactor. The former setup
can achieve a sensitivity to at the 90%
confidence level, while the latter performs only slightly better than Double
Chooz. Furthermore, we study the precision that can be achieved for the solar
parameters, and , with a mobile reactor
and with a conventional power station. With the mobile reactor, a precision
slightly better than from current global fit data is possible, while with a
power reactor, the accuracy can be reduced to less than 1%. Such a precision is
crucial for testing theoretical models, e.g. quark-lepton complementarity.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, revised version, to appear in JHEP,
Fig. 1 extended, Formula added, minor changes, results unchange
Resonant structure of space-time of early universe
A new fully quantum method describing penetration of packet from internal
well outside with its tunneling through the barrier of arbitrary shape used in
problems of quantum cosmology, is presented. The method allows to determine
amplitudes of wave function, penetrability and reflection relatively the barrier (accuracy of the method: ), coefficient of penetration (i.e. probability of
the packet to penetrate from the internal well outside with its tunneling),
coefficient of oscillations (describing oscillating behavior of the packet
inside the internal well). Using the method, evolution of universe in the
closed Friedmann--Robertson--Walker model with quantization in presence of
positive cosmological constant, radiation and component of generalize Chaplygin
gas is studied. It is established (for the first time): (1) oscillating
dependence of the penetrability on localization of start of the packet; (2)
presence of resonant values of energy of radiation , at which the
coefficient of penetration increases strongly. From analysis of these results
it follows: (1) necessity to introduce initial condition into both
non-stationary, and stationary quantum models; (2) presence of some definite
values for the scale factor , where start of expansion of universe is the
most probable; (3) during expansion of universe in the initial stage its radius
is changed not continuously, but passes consequently through definite discrete
values and tends to continuous spectrum in latter time.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures, 4 table
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