The structural contradictions and constraints on corporate social responsibility: Challenges for corporate social irresponsibility

Purpose - This chapter engages critically with the ideas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) in order to examine their utility for the purposes of realizing more socially just and environmentally sustainable social and economic practices. Methodology/approach - The chapter develops Marx's understanding of the twin pressures of class struggle and inter-capitalist competition in setting the limits of agency for corporate actors. It is thus theoretical and discursive in nature. Findings - The findings of the chapter suggest that the scope for corporate agency in relation to responsibility/irresponsibility is severely limited by inter-capitalist competition and capitalist social relations. It therefore argues that those interested in social justice and environmental sustainability should focus on these structural pressures rather than theorizing corporate agency. Social implications - The research suggests that the focus of academic and government attention should be on resolving the contradictions and exploitative social relations inherent in capitalism. Without this emphasis activism, corporate agency and government action will not eradicate the types of problem that advocates of CSR/CSI are concerned about. Originality/value of paper - The value of the paper is that it contests and engages critically with the utility of the notion of CSR and the emergent concept of CSI. It asks proponents of these concepts to think seriously about the structural pressures and constraints within which business and policy makers act. Copyrightr © 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Stability Issues for w < -1 Dark Energy

Precision cosmological data hint that a dark energy with equation of state $w = P/\rho < -1$ and hence dubious stability is viable. Here we discuss for any $w$ nucleation from $\Lambda > 0$ to $\Lambda = 0$ in a first-order phase transition. The critical radius is argued to be at least of galactic size and the corresponding nucleation rate is glacial, thus underwriting the dark energy's stability and rendering remote any microscopic effect.Comment: 9 pages LaTeX. Significantly rewritten (including abstract

What Do We Really Know About Cosmic Acceleration?

Essentially all of our knowledge of the acceleration history of the Universe - including the acceleration itself - is predicated upon the validity of general relativity. Without recourse to this assumption, we use SNeIa to analyze the expansion history and find (i) very strong (5 sigma) evidence for a period of acceleration, (ii) strong evidence that the acceleration has not been constant, (iii) evidence for an earlier period of deceleration and (iv) only weak evidence that the Universe has not been decelerating since z~0.3.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Extremal black holes, gravitational entropy and nonstationary metric fields

We show that extremal black holes have zero entropy by pointing out a simple fact: they are time-independent throughout the spacetime and correspond to a single classical microstate. We show that non-extremal black holes, including the Schwarzschild black hole, contain a region hidden behind the event horizon where all their Killing vectors are spacelike. This region is nonstationary and the time $t$ labels a continuous set of classical microstates, the phase space $[\,h_{ab}(t), P^{ab}(t)\,]$, where $h_{ab}$ is a three-metric induced on a spacelike hypersurface $\Sigma_t$ and $P^{ab}$ is its momentum conjugate. We determine explicitly the phase space in the interior region of the Schwarzschild black hole. We identify its entropy as a measure of an outside observer's ignorance of the classical microstates in the interior since the parameter $t$ which labels the states lies anywhere between 0 and 2M. We provide numerical evidence from recent simulations of gravitational collapse in isotropic coordinates that the entropy of the Schwarzschild black hole stems from the region inside and near the event horizon where the metric fields are nonstationary; the rest of the spacetime, which is static, makes no contribution. Extremal black holes have an event horizon but in contrast to non-extremal black holes, their extended spacetimes do not possess a bifurcate Killing horizon. This is consistent with the fact that extremal black holes are time-independent and therefore have no distinct time-reverse.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Class. and Quant. Gravity. Based on an essay selected for honorable mention in the 2010 gravity research foundation essay competitio

Rippled Cosmological Dark Matter from Damped Oscillating Newton Constant

Let the reciprocal Newton 'constant' be an apparently non-dynamical Brans-Dicke scalar field damped oscillating towards its General Relativistic VEV. We show, without introducing additional matter fields or dust, that the corresponding cosmological evolution averagely resembles, in the Jordan frame, the familiar dark radiation -> dark matter -> dark energy domination sequence. The fingerprints of our theory are fine ripples, hopefully testable, in the FRW scale factor; they die away at the General Relativity limit. The possibility that the Brans-Dicke scalar also serves as the inflaton is favorably examined.Comment: RevTex4, 12 pages, 5 figures; Minor revision, References adde

Writing in your own voice: An intervention that reduces plagiarism and common writing problems in students' scientific writing.

In many of our courses, particularly laboratory courses, students are expected to engage in scientific writing. Despite various efforts by other courses and library resources, as instructors we are often faced with the frustration of student plagiarism and related writing problems. Here, we describe a simple Writing in Your Own Voice intervention designed to help students become more aware of different types of plagiarism and writing problems, avoid those problems, and practice writing in their own voice. In this article, we will introduce the types of plagiarism and writing problems commonly encountered in our molecular biology laboratory course, the intervention, and the results of our study. From the evaluation of 365 student reports, we found the intervention resulted in nearly 50% fewer instances of plagiarism and common writing problems. We also observed significantly fewer instances of severe plagiarism (e.g. several sentences copied from an external source). In addition, we find that the effects last for several weeks after the students complete the intervention assignment. This assignment is particularly easy to implement and can be a very useful tool for teaching students how to write in their own voices. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(5):589-598, 2019

New Scale Factor Measure

The computation of probabilities in an eternally inflating universe requires a regulator or "measure". The scale factor time measure truncates the universe when a congruence of timelike geodesics has expanded by a fixed volume factor. This definition breaks down if the generating congruence is contracting---a serious limitation that excludes from consideration gravitationally bound regions such as our own. Here we propose a closely related regulator which is well-defined in the entire spacetime. The New Scale Factor Cutoff restricts to events with scale factor below a given value. Since the scale factor vanishes at caustics and crunches, this cutoff always includes an infinite number of disconnected future regions. We show that this does not lead to divergences. The resulting measure combines desirable features of the old scale factor cutoff and of the light-cone time cutoff, while eliminating some of the disadvantages of each.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure; v2: references adde

Vector field theories in cosmology

Recently proposed theories based on the cosmic presence of a vectorial field are compared and contrasted. In particular the so called Einstein aether theory is discussed in parallel with a recent proposal of a strained space-time theory (Cosmic Defect theory). We show that the latter fits reasonably well the cosmic observed data with only one, or at most two, adjustable parameters, whilst other vector theories use much more. The Newtonian limits are also compared. Finally we show that the CD theory may be considered as a special case of the aether theories, corresponding to a more compact and consistent paradigm.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figure, to appear on Phys. Rev.

Space station rotational equations of motion

Dynamic equations of motion are developed which describe the rotational motion for a large space structure having rotating appendages. The presence of the appendages produce torque coupling terms which are dependent on the inertia properties of the appendages and the rotational rates for both the space structure and the appendages. These equations were formulated to incorporate into the Space Station Attitude Control and Stabilization Test Bed to accurately describe the influence rotating solar arrays and thermal radiators have on the dynamic behavior of the Space Station

Cosmological coincidence problem in interacting dark energy models

An interacting dark energy model with interaction term $Q= \lambda_m H\rho_m+\lambda_dH\rho_d$ is considered. By studying the model near the transition time, in which the system crosses the w=-1 phantom-divide-line, the conditions needed to overcome the coincidence problem is investigated. The phantom model, as a candidate for dark energy, is considered and for two specific examples, the quadratic and exponential phantom potentials, it is shown that it is possible the system crosses the w=-1 line, meanwhile the coincidence problem is alleviated, the two facts that have root in observations.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX. Some minor explanations are added. To be published in Phys. Rev.