23,989 research outputs found
Influences on WebCT Usage: A Study of Attitudes and Practices in the School of Tourism, Hospitality and Events.
Book Reviews: "Enhancing the Experience of Chinese Students in UK Higher Education – Lessons from a Collaborative Project" SEDA Special 23, edited by Monika Foster AND "Events Management" by Razaq Raj, Paul Walters and Tahir Rashid
Evolution of a plasma puff in a longitudinal magnetic field
Evolution of plasma puff in longitudinal magnetic field to analyze characteristics of plasma produced by conical pinch gu
Organising water: The hidden role of intermediary work
ABSTRACT: The increasingly complex challenges of making water management more sustainable require a critical and detailed understanding of the social organisation of water. This paper examines the hitherto neglected role that 'intermediary' organisations play in reshaping the relations between the provision and use of water and sanitation services. In response to new regulatory, environmental, social, and commercial pressures the relationships between water utilities, consumers, and regulators are changing, creating openings for both new and existing organisations to take on intermediary functions. Drawing on recent EU-funded research we provide the first systematic analysis of intermediary organisations in the European water sector, examining the contexts of their emergence, the ways they work, the functions they perform, and the impacts they can have. With a combination of conceptual and empirical analysis we substantiate and elaborate the case for appreciating the often hidden work of intermediaries. We caution, however, against over-simplistic conclusions on harnessing this potential, highlighting instead the need to reframe perspectives on how water is organised to contemplate actor constellations and interactions beyond the common triad of provider, consumer, and regulator
What can we say about seed fields for galactic dynamos?
We demonstrate that a quasi-uniform cosmological seed field is a much less
suitable seed for a galactic dynamo than has often been believed. The age of
the Universe is insufficient for a conventional galactic dynamo to generate a
contemporary galactic magnetic field starting from such a seed, accepting
conventional estimates for physical quantities. We discuss modifications to the
scenario for the evolution of galactic magnetic fields implied by this result.
We also consider briefly the implications of a dynamo number that is
significantly larger than that given by conventional estimates
The Penna model for biological ageing on a lattice: spatial consequences of child-care
We introduce a square lattice into the Penna bit-string model for biological
ageing and study the evolution of the spatial distribution of the population
considering different strategies of child-care. Two of the strategies are
related to the movements of a whole family on the lattice: in one case the
mother cannot move if she has any child younger than a given age, and in the
other case if she moves, she brings these young children with her. A stronger
condition has also been added to the second case, considering that young
children die with a higher probability if their mothers die, this probability
decreasing with age. We show that a highly non uniform occupation can be
obtained when child-care is considered, even for an uniform initial occupation
per site. We also compare the standard survival rate of the model with that
obtained when the spacial lattice is considered (without any kind of
child-care).Comment: 8 pages, 6 Postscript figure
Density fluctuations from warm inflation
Thermal fluctuations provide the main source of large scale density
perturbations in warm inflationary models of the early universe. For the first
time, general results are obtained for the power spectrum in the case when the
friction coefficient in the inflaton equation of motion depends on temperature.
A large increase in the amplitude of perturbations occurs when the friction
coefficient increases with temperature. This has to be taken into account when
constructing models of warm inflation. New results are also given for the
thermal fluctuations in the weak regime of warm inflation when the friction
coefficient is relatively small.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, ReVTe
Beltway: Getting Around Garbage Collection Gridlock
We present the design and implementation of a new garbage collection framework that significantly generalizes existing copying collectors. The Beltway framework exploits and separates object age and incrementality. It groups objects in one or more increments on queues called belts, collects belts independently, and collects increments on a belt in first-in-first-out order. We show that Beltway configurations, selected by command line options, act and perform the same as semi-space, generational, and older-first collectors, and encompass all previous copying collectors of which we are aware. The increasing reliance on garbage collected languages such as Java requires that the collector perform well. We show that the generality of Beltway enables us to design and implement new collectors that are robust to variations in heap size and improve total execution time over the best generational copying collectors of which we are aware by up to 40%, and on average by 5 to 10%, for small to moderate heap sizes. New garbage collection algorithms are rare, and yet we define not just one, but a new family of collectors that subsumes previous work. This generality enables us to explore a larger design space and build better collectors
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