The "New European Union" - Characteristics, Contradictions and Challenges

Endorsement of the ‘Reform Treaty’, culminating in its’ signing as the Treaty of Lisbon in December 2007, promises to end the EU’s enduring institutional problems. The compromise reached is the best realistically possible outcome given the divergent interests in the EU27. Yet uncertainties and reservations remain: the Treaty must be ratified by all member states; and the proposed institutional solutions have to be tested in practice. Important areas of economic and social policy, along with much of foreign and security policy, and all of defence, are still the domain of national governments. The Single Market is yet to be completed and in several member state polities resistance to greater liberalisation is strong. The framework conditions for functionality have improved but this does not guarantee that governments will vigorously tackle common challenges in a coordinated and efficient way at national and European levels. Further differentiation within the EU appears unavoidable.

Singular vectors for the WNW_N algebras

In this paper, we use free field realisations of the A-type principal, or Casimir, $W_N$ algebras to derive explicit formulae for singular vectors in Fock modules. These singular vectors are constructed by applying screening operators to Fock module highest weight vectors. The action of the screening operators is then explicitly evaluated in terms of Jack symmetric functions and their skew analogues. The resulting formulae depend on sequences of pairs of integers that completely determine the Fock module as well as the Jack symmetric functions.Comment: 18 page

The EU and Turkey: political machinations in a three-level game

The possible commencement of negotiations on Turkey’s membership of the European Union has, towards the end of 2004, charged to the top of the European political agenda. This is an intensely contested issue, comprising many sub-themes and multiple tangents. I adopt the conception of a three level game1 to examine arguments, interests and influences circulating and interconnected to the core question of potential Turkish EU membership. This extends Robert Putnam’s ‘Two-Level Game’,2 represented here as activity within individual EU member-states (domestic level) and between EU and other states (international level), to include activity among EU states, institutions and other European actors (European level). The paper discusses economic, cultural, and security-strategic considerations, all of which are politicised by advocates and opponents alike

Properties of dual codes defined by nondegenerate forms

Dual codes are defined with respect to non-degenerate sesquilinear or bilinear forms over a finite Frobenius ring. These dual codes have the properties one expects from a dual code: they satisfy a double-dual property, they have cardinality complementary to that of the primal code, and they satisfy the MacWilliams identities for the Hamming weight

Could the sentiments of Rio derail an active nation?

A critical perspective on the policy implications of success at the 2016 Rio Olympic and Paralympic Game

Measurement of customer satisfaction and performance measurement within a local government framework

Paper presented at conference at the Academy of Marketing, Royal Holloway College in London, UK, July 2007.The aim of the paper is to establish a performance measurement framework for addressing and improving customer satisfaction levels within a public sector service. The paper describes the methods utilised in order to achieve these objectives by reviewing relevant literature associated with organisational performance and customer satisfaction. This informs and provide the framework for the research. A useful framework model was produced that facilitates the application of customer satisfaction measurement and enables performance in this respect to be monitored

Measured Water Temperature Characteristics in a Pipeline Distribution System

YesThis paper describes the design, development, deployment and performance assessment of a prototype system for monitoring the 'health' of a water distribution network based on the temperature distribution and time-dependent variations in temperature across the network. It has been found that the water temperature can reveal unusual events in a water distribution network, indicated by dynamic variations in spatial temperature differential. Based on this indication it is shown how patterns of changes in the water temperature can be analysed using AQUIS pipeline distribution software and used in conjunction with hydraulic (e.g. flow and pressure) sensors to indicate the state of ¿health¿ of the network during operation