Double Homotopy (Co)Limits for Relative Categories

We answer the question to what extent homotopy (co)limits in categories with weak equivalences allow for a Fubini-type interchange law. The main obstacle is that we do not assume our categories with weak equivalences to come equipped with a calculus for homotopy (co)limits, such as a derivator.Comment: 34 page

Correlations of chiral condensates and quark number densities with static quark sources

We investigate correlation functions of the Polyakov loop and static meson/diquark systems with the chiral condensate and the quark number density at finite temperature. In particular the latter observable can give insight in the mechanism of screening and string breaking at finite temperature. We use for our analysis gauge field configurations generated in 2+1 flavor QCD with an improved staggered fermion action with almost physical light quark masses and a physical value of the strange quark mass on lattices with temporal extent Nt=4 and 6.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, presented at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 30 - August 4 2007, Regensburg, German

Redressing disadvantage and ensuring social cohesion: the role of distance education and elearning policies in the European Union 1957-2007

This paper analyses the development and implementation of the European Union's policies in distance higher education and elearning since the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Distance education emerged in the 1960s and 70s as an instrument at national level to redress disadvantage, and to provide flexible, high-quality and cost-effective access to higher education to adults who were unable, for geographical, employment or personal reasons, to attend on-campus. Analysis of EU policy documents and interviews with key individuals indicates that the support of influential policy entrepreneurs and networks brought distance education to the centre stage in EU education and training policy for a brief period in the early 1990s, culminating in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1992), which committed the EU to ‘encouraging the development of distance education’. Since then, distance learning has been superceded by elearning, and is linked in EU rhetoric to social cohesion in the context of making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. Yet, despite the great potential of elearning, this paper outlines the challenges to its wider adoption. These include the persistence of the digital divide in Europe; student resistance to elearning approaches; and the problem of achieving cost-effectiveness in elearning. Much remains to be done to ensure the flexibility in terms of time, place, pace, and indeed accessibility, which would enable adult students to participate in lifelong learning on a truly democratic basis

Working with single fathers in Western Siberia: a new departure in Russian social provision

No abstract available

Hindu-Christian Dialogue: Perspectives and Encounters

Reviewed Book: Coward, Harold (ed). Hindu-Christian Dialogue: Perspectives and Encounters. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 198

Rigorous derivation of the Landau equation in the weak coupling limit

We examine a family of microscopic models of plasmas, with a parameter $\alpha$ comparing the typical distance between collisions to the strength of the grazing collisions. These microscopic models converge in distribution, in the weak coupling limit, to a velocity diffusion described by the linear Landau equation (also known as the Fokker-Planck equation). The present work extends and unifies previous results that handled the extremes of the parameter $\alpha$, for the whole range (0, 1/2], by showing that clusters of overlapping obstacles are negligible in the limit. Additionally, we study the diffusion coefficient of the Landau equation and show it to be independent of the parameter.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, accepted to Communications in Pure and Applied Analysi