Managing time: integration of care and paid work amongst low income families and the role of the United Kingdom’s tax credit system

Under the New Labour Governments in the UK, successive reforms of the tax and benefit system sought to improve the financial benefits of paid work. Drawing on two waves of qualitative interviews with low-income working families this article examines the role of the UK tax credit system in shaping decisions about employment and unpaid care work. The article suggests that the financial support provided for lone parent participants by the tax credit system enhanced their temporal autonomy, permitting participation in paid work to align more closely with temporally situated notions of parental responsibility for caring. For couple families however, parental perceptions of responsibility for pre-school children, along with childcare constraints and the structure of the tax credit system served to constrain the autonomy of the main carer and implicitly encourage a gendered specialisation in caring or employment.

Promoting Civil Society Across the Borders of the EU Neighbourhood: Debates, Constraints and Opportunities

One of the aims of this article it to clarify the nature of the debate over 'civil society' and its relationship to the state. It begins by suggesting that the EU's borderland provides a context in which deep-rooted 'Western' and 'Eastern' understandings of state and civil society meet and overlap. The second section outlines the geo-political reshaping of the 'Neighbourhood'. It concentrates on the influence of non-EU actors, notably Russia, complementing the EU-focused literature on the subject. The third section elaborates the consensus in the literature on the weakness of civil society in the EU 'Neighbourhood'. This is followed by a discussion of 'Western' debates over the role and significance of civil society.

Does chronic illness place constraints on positive constructions of identity? Temporal comparisons and self-evaluations in people with schizophrenia

It is often suggested that people in potentially threatening situations might engage in self-enhancing temporal comparisons that allow them to view themselves and their experience in a more positive light. Data from semistructured interviews with 12 individuals in the UK diagnosed as having schizophrenia were content analyzed to explore patterns of temporal comparison. The study found that the onset of schizophrenic symptoms created a new baseline in participants' representations of their past, with different types of temporal comparisons occurring before and after this point. Although comparisons with past selves after onset supported the suggestion that people may select and construct their past in such a manner that permits them to see their present circumstances more positively and envisage a better future, comparisons with past selves before onset were more negative. The findings suggest that the Theory of Temporal Self-Appraisals (Ross I Wilson, 2000) needs to be elaborated to include people who have experienced major life changes. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Enforcing Member State Compliance with EU Environmental Law: A Critical Evaulation of the Use of Financial Penalties

The 1993 Treaty on European Union finally closed a legal vacuum in
EU law, by giving the Court the power to impose financial penalties to
enforce compliance with its judgments. Today, this power is found
within Article 260(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the
European Union. Drawing upon case law, this article examines the
role that the Court’s enforcement powers have played in relation to
EU environmental law. It argues that EU law has yet to make full use
of their potential. The article commences with the Commission and
questions whether it has sufficient resources to carry out its functions
under Article 260(2). The article also examines the ongoing problem of
Member State delay in complying with Court judgments and the
weight given to environmental considerations in the Court’s decision
making on financial penalties. The article concludes by examining the
implications of the Lisbon Treaty.

The Global Financial Crisis and UK PPPs

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine how Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been affected by the global financial crisis (GFC). After briefly discussing PPPs and the GFC, the paper considers whether the latter has been a contributing factor in the declining number of projects reaching financial close.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs document content analysis to compare the time between notification of a project in the Official Journal of the European Union and its financial close in order to assess whether this period has increased since the beginning of the GFC. Two case studies are also presented.

Findings – Apart from a very small number of projects, the time between official project notification and financial close is lengthening, with the case studies providing some possible explanations for this.

Originality/value – Whilst Burger et al. provide some general statistics on the impact of the GFC on PPPs in a number of countries, this paper examines over 600 PPPs in the UK and supplements this analysis with two case studies, in order to assess whether the GFC has led to delays in projects reaching financial close.

The death of massive stars - I. Observational constraints on the progenitors of Type II-P supernovae

We present the results of a 10.5-yr, volume-limited (28-Mpc) search for supernova (SN) progenitor stars. In doing so we compile all SNe discovered within this volume (132, of which 27 per cent are Type Ia) and determine the relative rates of each subtype from literature studies. The core-collapse SNe break down into 59 per cent II-P and 29 per cent Ib/c, with the remainder being IIb (5 per cent), IIn (4 per cent) and II-L (3 per cent). There have been 20 II-P SNe with high-quality optical or near-infrared pre-explosion images that allow a meaningful search for the progenitor stars. In five cases they are clearly red supergiants, one case is unconstrained, two fall on compact coeval star clusters and the other twelve have no progenitor detected. We review and update all the available data for the host galaxies and SN environments (distance, metallicity and extinction) and determine masses and upper mass estimates for these 20 progenitor stars using the STARS stellar evolutionary code and a single consistent homogeneous method. A maximum likelihood calculation suggests that the minimum stellar mass for a Type II-P to form is m(min) = 8.5(-1.5)(+1) M-circle dot and the maximum mass for II-P progenitors is m(max) = 16.5 +/- 1.5 M-circle dot, assuming a Salpeter initial mass function holds for the progenitor population (in the range Gamma = -1.35(-0.7)(+0.3)). The minimum mass is consistent with current estimates for the upper limit to white dwarf progenitor masses, but the maximum mass does not appear consistent with massive star populations in Local Group galaxies. Red supergiants in the Local Group have masses up to 25 M-circle dot and the minimum mass to produce a Wolf-Rayet star in single star evolution (between solar and LMC metallicity) is similarly 25-30 M-circle dot. The reason we have not detected any high-mass red supergiant progenitors above 17 M-circle dot is unclear, but we estimate that it is statistically significant at 2.4 sigma confidence. Two simple reasons for this could be that we have systematically underestimated the progenitor masses due to dust extinction or that stars between 17-25 M-circle dot produce other kinds of SNe which are not II-P. We discuss these possibilities and find that neither provides a satisfactory solution. We term this discrepancy the 'red supergiant problem' and speculate that these stars could have core masses high enough to form black holes and SNe which are too faint to have been detected. We compare the Ni-56 masses ejected in the SNe to the progenitor mass estimates and find that low-luminosity SNe with low Ni-56 production are most likely to arise from explosions of low-mass progenitors near the mass threshold that can produce a core-collapse.

Playing with Constraints: Stylistic Variation with a Simple Electronic Instrument

A study was conducted by researchers to address the individuation of performance with electronic instruments. The researchers derived a working concept of style as distinct from structure in an activity, which was proposed as a useful framework for considering virtuosity and individuality in interactions with technology, including musical ones. The researchers proposed an alliance between constraint and the development of style. Another study was described, which explored the emergence of personal performance styles in experienced performers with a novel, constrained electronic musical instrument. The study aimed to represent aspects of a realistic situation within the new interfaces for musical expression (NIME) community where a performer needed to determine how to perform with a new instrument for which there was no established performance practice and instruction manual.

Influence of the Time Scale on the Construction of Financial Networks

Background: In this paper we investigate the definition and formation of financial networks. Specifically, we study the influence of the time scale on their construction.

Identifying Critical Financial Networks of the DJIA: Toward a Network-Based Index

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we introduce a novel definition of financial networks obtained from time series data from the stock market. Second, we demonstrate that these networks can be used as an index with the property to reflect critical states of the market, respectively, crashes sufficiently. Our work aims to advocate a network-based analysis in the context of the stock market, because such a collective phenomenon can not only be economically described by networks but also analyzed as demonstrated in this article. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 16: 24-33, 2010

Time-resolved optical spectroscopy of the pulsating DA white dwarf HS0507+0434B - New constraints on mode identification and pulsation properties

We present a detailed analysis of time-resolved optical spectra of the ZZ Ceti white dwarf, HS 0507+0434B. Using the wavelength dependence of observed mode amplitudes, we deduce the spherical degree, l, of the modes, most of which have l = 1. The presence of a large number of combination frequencies (linear sums or differences of the real modes) enabled us not only to test theoretical predictions but also to indirectly infer spherical and azimuthal degrees of real modes that had no observed splittings. In addition to the above, we measure line-of-sight velocities from our spectra. We find only marginal evidence for periodic modulation associated with the pulsation modes: at the frequency of the strongest mode in the lightcurve, we measure an amplitude of 2.6 +/- 1.0 kms(-1), which has a probability of 2% of being due to chance; for the other modes, we find lower values. Our velocity amplitudes and upper limits are smaller by a factor of two compared to the amplitudes found in ZZ Psc. We find that this is consistent with expectations based on the position of HS 0507+0434B in the instability strip. Combining all the available information from data such as ours is a first step towards constraining atmospheric properties in a convectionally unstable environment from an observational perspective.