Canaries Coalmines Thunderstones 2010:"Suppressing the Medical Model”; “Family at War”; and “The Fallenness of Humanity"

A Poetic Annual

Modelling the Performance of Irish Credit Unions, 2002 to 2010

This study undertakes a modeling based performance assessment of all Irish credit unions between 2002 and 2010, a particularly turbulent period in their history. The analysis explicitly addresses the current challenges faced by credit unions in that the modeling approach used rewards credit unions for reducing undesirable outputs (impaired loans and investments) as well as for increasing desirable outputs (loans, earning assets and members’ funds) and decreasing inputs (labour expenditure, capital expenditure and fund expenses). The main findings are: credit unions are subject to increasing returns to scale; technical regression occurred in the years after 2007; there is significant scope for an improvement in efficiency through expansion of desirable outputs and contraction of undesirable outputs and inputs; and that larger credit unions, that are better capitalised and pay a higher dividend to members are more efficient than their smaller, less capitalised, and lower dividend paying counterparts.

RADIATIVE SIGNATURES OF RELATIVISTIC SHOCKS

Particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic, weakly magnetized collisionless shocks show that particles can gain energy by repeatedly crossing the shock front. This requires scattering off self-generated small length-scale magnetic fluctuations. The radiative signature of this first-order Fermi acceleration mechanism is important for models of both the prompt and afterglow emission in gamma-ray bursts and depends on the strength parameter a = lambda e/delta B/mc(2) of the fluctuations (lambda is the length scale and vertical bar delta B vertical bar is the magnitude of the fluctuations). For electrons (and positrons), acceleration saturates when the radiative losses produced by the scattering cannot be compensated by the energy gained on crossing the shock. We show that this sets an upper limit on both the electron Lorentz factor gamma <10(6) (n/1 cm(-3))(-1/6)(-1/6) and on the energy of the photons radiated during the scattering process h omega(max) <40Max(a, 1)(n/1 cm(-3))(1/6)(-1/6) eV, where n is the number density of the plasma and (gamma) over bar is the thermal Lorentz factor of the downstream plasma, provided a <a(crit) similar to 10(6). This rules out "jitter" radiation on self-excited fluctuations with a <I as a source of gamma rays, although high-energy photons might still be produced when the jitter photons are upscattered in an analog of the synchrotron self-Compton process. In fluctuations with a > 1, radiation is generated by the standard synchrotron mechanism, and the maximum photon energy rises linearly with a, until saturating at 70 MeV, when a = a(crit).

LINEAR ACCELERATION EMISSION IN PULSAR MAGNETOSPHERES

Linear acceleration emission occurs when a charged particle is accelerated parallel to its velocity. We evaluate the spectral and angular distribution of this radiation for several special cases, including constant acceleration (hyperbolic motion) of finite duration. Based on these results, we find the following general properties of the emission from an electron in a linear accelerator that can be characterized by an electric field E acting over a distance L: (1) the spectrum extends to a cutoff frequency (h) over bar omega(c)/mc(2) approximate to L(E/E(Schw))(2)/(lambda) over bar (C), where E(Schw) = 1.3 x 10(18) V m(-1) is the Schwinger critical field and (lambda) over bar (C) = (h) over bar /mc = 3.86 x 10(-13) m is the Compton wavelength of the electron, (2) the total energy emitted by a particle traversing the accelerator is 4/3 alpha(f)(h) over bar omega(c) in accordance with the standard Larmor formula where alpha(f) is the fine-structure constant, and (3) the low frequency spectrum is flat for hyperbolic trajectories, but in general depends on the details of the accelerator. We also show that linear acceleration emission complements curvature radiation in the strongly magnetized pair formation regions in pulsar magnetospheres. It dominates when the length L of the accelerator is less than the formation length rho/gamma of curvature photons, where rho is the radius of curvature of the magnetic field lines and gamma the Lorentz factor of the emitting particle. In standard static models of pair creating regions linear acceleration emission is negligible, but it is important in more realistic dynamical models in which the accelerating field fluctuates on a short length scale.

The Maturation of Agile Software Development Principles and Practice: Observations on Successive Industrial Studies in 2010 and 2012

The agile model of software development has been mainstream for several years, and is now in a phase where its principles and practices are maturing. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of an industry survey aimed at understanding how maturation is progressing. The survey was taken across 40 software development companies in Northern Ireland at the beginning of 2012. The paper describes the design of the survey and examines maturity by comparing the results obtained in 2012 with those from a study of agile adoption in the same region in 2010. Both surveys aimed to achieve comprehensive coverage of a single area rather than rely on a voluntary sample. The main outcome from the work is a collection of ‘insights’ into the nature and practice of agile development, the main two of which are reported in this paper.