26,033 research outputs found
Working with single fathers in Western Siberia: a new departure in Russian social provision
No abstract available
Caring for men in contemporary Russia: gendered constructions of need and hybrid forms of social security
No abstract available
Social security, care and the "withdrawing state" in rural Russia
This chapter presents the development of a research project, exploring the ways in which social security is produced and experienced in rural Russia. Based on a case study of Burla village, the project investigates the ways in which caring practices and material support are provided by and exchanged within a range of formal and informal, state and non-state, community and kinship structures
This chapter begins by exploring the theoretical and contextual frameworks for the study through a discussion of theoretical approaches to understanding “social security”, “care” and “the state”, followed by a review of existing literature on welfare, social security and rural life in contemporary Russia. It then goes on to present and discuss early findings from fieldwork conducted in March 2008 and April 2009
EU biofuels sustainability standards and certification systems - how to seek WTO-compatibility
Biofuels are increasingly being produced and consumed as a partial substitute to fossil-fuel based transport fuels in the fight against climate change. Sustainability criteria have been introduced recently by some countries to help ensure biofuels perform better than fossil fuels environmentally. Concerns have been expressed from various quarters that such criteria could represent World Trade Organisation (WTO)-incompatible barriers to trade. The present paper addresses two specific issues. First, it argues that biofuels can be expected to be treated like any other traded product under WTO law. Thus an importing country could not impose different trade measures dependent on whether the biofuel complied with its sustainability criteria. Second, the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBTA) provides guidance on how to draw up criteria to help ensure WTO compatibility. This cannot guarantee compatibility, but it can help reduce significantly the chances of WTO Members bringing actions against a fellow Member’s biofuels sustainability criteria. There is little direct case law to draw upon but it is argued that, if the TBT guidance is followed, in the long term the absence of case law can be taken as an indication that the sustainability criteria established are WTO-compatible
Problems of composition, temporality and change in tracing the Common Agricultural Policy through time
Tri-Institutional Library Support: A Lesson in Forced Collaboration
This paper discusses the trials and tribulations of three separate institutional libraries supporting one new graduate-level academic program. In January 2002, a new distance graduate program in Applied Psychology began with technical, administrative, and academic support provided by three separate institutions. While one institution was initially charged with providing the bulk of library services, in reality, libraries at all three have contributed one service or another. The lead library provides remote database access and document delivery, and initially provided electronic reserves. After the first semester and several glitches, electronic reserves were moved to institutional library #2, which was also hosting the course management system. In the fall of 2002, institutional library #3 began to contribute with an information literacy module that has been incorporated into the orientation for all new students
Double hard scattering without double counting
Double parton scattering in proton-proton collisions includes kinematic
regions in which two partons inside a proton originate from the perturbative
splitting of a single parton. This leads to a double counting problem between
single and double hard scattering. We present a solution to this problem, which
allows for the definition of double parton distributions as operator matrix
elements in a proton, and which can be used at higher orders in perturbation
theory. We show how the evaluation of double hard scattering in this framework
can provide a rough estimate for the size of the higher-order contributions to
single hard scattering that are affected by double counting. In a numeric
study, we identify situations in which these higher-order contributions must be
explicitly calculated and included if one wants to attain an accuracy at which
double hard scattering becomes relevant, and other situations where such
contributions may be neglected.Comment: 80 pages, 20 figures. v2: clarifications in section 4, extended
section 8, small changes elsewher
Decoherence of Macroscopic Closed Systems within Newtonian Quantum Gravity
A theory recently proposed by the author aims to explain decoherence and the
thermodynamical behaviour of closed systems within a conservative, unitary,
framework for quantum gravity by assuming that the operators tied to the
gravitational degrees of freedom are unobservable and equating physical entropy
with matter-gravity entanglement entropy. Here we obtain preliminary results on
the extent of decoherence this theory predicts. We treat first a static state
which, if one were to ignore quantum gravitational effects, would be a quantum
superposition of two spatially displaced states of a single classically well
describable ball of uniform mass density in empty space. Estimating the quantum
gravitational effects on this system within a simple Newtonian approximation,
we obtain formulae which predict e.g. that as long as the mass of the ball is
considerably larger than the Planck mass, such a would-be-coherent static
superposition will actually be decohered whenever the separation of the centres
of mass of the two ball-states excedes a small fraction (which decreases as the
mass of the ball increases) of the ball radius. We then obtain a formula for
the quantum gravitational correction to the would-be-pure density matrix of a
non-relativistic many-body Schroedinger wave function and argue that this
formula predicts decoherence between configurations which differ (at least) in
the "relocation" of a cluster of particles of Planck mass. We estimate the
entropy of some simple model closed systems, finding a tendency for it to
increase with "matter-clumping" suggestive of a link with existing
phenomenological discussions of cosmological entropy increase.Comment: 11 pages, plain TeX, no figures. Accepted for publication as a
"Letter to the Editor" in "Classical and Quantum Gravity
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