Influence by Intimidation: Business Lobbying in the Regulatory Process

Interest group influence in the policy process is often assumed to occur through a mechanism of exchange, persuasion, or subsidy. Here, we explore how business groups may also exert influence by intimidating policymakers—a form of persuasion, but one based not on the provision of policy information but of political information. We develop a theory where a business firm lobbies a regulator to communicate political information about its capacity to commit to future influence-seeking activities that would sanction the regulator. The regulator assesses the credibility of this message by evaluating the firm’s commitment to lobbying. Guided by our theory, we present evidence consistent with expectations that intimidation can shape regulatory outcomes to the advantage of certain firms, both through a chilling effect, where lobbying derails nascent regulatory plans, as well as a retreating effect, where opposition to published proposals leads to their withdrawal

Family Safeguarding Hertfordshire

Family Safeguarding Hertfordshire is a reform of children’s services that aims to improve how these services work with families, and outcomes for children and their parents. The report evaluates the project and presents local and national lessons

Rapid microbial dynamics in response to an induced wetting event in Antarctic Dry Valley Soils

The cold deserts of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV), Antarctica, host a high level of microbial diversity. Microbial composition and biomass in arid vs. ephemerally wetted regions are distinctly different, with wetted communities representing hot spots of microbial activity that are important zones for biogeochemical cycling. While climatic change is likely to cause wetting in areas not historically subject to wetting events, the responses of microorganisms inhabiting arid soils to water addition is unknown. The purpose of this study was to observe how an associated, yet non-wetted microbial community responds to an extended addition of water. Water from a stream was diverted to an adjacent area of arid soil with changes in microbial composition and activities monitored via molecular and biochemical methods over 7 weeks. The frequency of genetic signatures related to both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms adapted to MDV aquatic conditions increased during the limited 7 week period, indicating that the soil community was transitioning into a typical “high-productivity” MDV community. This work is consistent with current predictions that MDV microbial communities in arid regions are highly sensitive to climate change, and further supports the notion that changes in community structure and associated biogeochemical cycling may occur much more rapidly than predicted

High efficiency nanoparticle solution-processed Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2 solar cells

Thin film Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2-based (generally referred to as CIGS) solar cells represent a promising alternative to conventional crystalline silicon solar cells due to their high efficiencies, reduced cost and better material utilisation. In recent years it has been demonstrated that it is possible to form thin films by annealing nanoparticulate material such that the nanoparticles coalesce to form large grained thin films. In this paper, we present a 13.8 % efficient CIGS solar cell derived from printed nanoparticle inks. The approach was successfully extended to fabricate monolithic devices on larger substrates. These results demonstrate that low-cost, non-vacuum printing of CIGS nanoparticles has great potential to achieve high efficiencies and reduce the performance gap with the more traditional vacuum co-evaporation and sputtering techniques

The word as a unit of meaning. The role of context in words meaning

A unit of meaning is a word plus all those words within its contextual context that are needed to disambiguate this word to make it monosemous. A lot of research were made to study the influence of the context. They testify that there is usually in each word a hard core of relatively stable meaning and can be modified by the context within certain limits

Analysis and comparison of different selenization routes for nanoparticle ink deposited Cu(In1-xGax)(SeyS1-y)2 solar cells

This paper investigates the effect of using different selenization sources, namely elemental Se and H2Se, on Cu(In1-xGax)(SeyS1-y)2 devices derived from depositions of nanoparticle inks. Nanoparticles used in this synthesis are chalcogenides (e.g. CuInGaS). The effect of the selenization species has a large effect on the performance and electrical properties of these devices. Elemental selenized devices show higher efficiencies (>16%) compared to H2Se processed devices (<12%). Various techniques are used in this study, including Raman spectroscopy, TEM, I-V-T, EQE, admittance spectroscopy and C-V-T to identify the difference in performance between the two selenization methods. Differences are observed in both the bulk and interface properties of the devices