Common mistake:theoretical justification and remedial inflexibility

Discusses the implications for the doctrine of common mistake of the Court of Appeal ruling in Great Peace Shipping Ltd v Tsavliris Salvage (International) Ltd on whether a contract for the hire of a ship was void on the ground of common mistake regarding the position of the ship. Reviews the origins of the doctrine of common mistake and the relationship between the doctrine and the implication of terms. Considers the determination of impossibility. Examines the role of equity in common mistake and remedial equitable intervention.

Cracking capitalist realism: the new student movement and its post-capitalist politics

There is much talk of =the crisis‘ in higher education, often expressed in fatalistic narratives about the (im)possibility of critical resistance or alternatives to the deepening domination of neoliberal rationality and capitalist power throughout social life. But how precisely are we to make sense of this situation? In what ways is it experienced? And what knowledges and practices may help us to respond? These questions form the basis for a series of explorations of the history and character of this crisis, the particular historical conjuncture that we occupy today, and the different types of theoretical analysis and political response it seems to be engendering. Our talk will explore the tensions between readings of the situation as a paralyzing experience of domination, loss and impossibility, on the one hand, and radical transformation and the opening of future possibilities, on the other. We will finally consider what implications new forms of political theory being created in the new student movements have for reconceptualising praxis in higher education today, and perhaps for a wider imagination of post-capitalist politics.

The grip of personalization in adult social care:between managerial domination and fantasy

This paper examines the 'ideological grip' of personalization. It does so empirically, tracking the trajectory of personalization through austerity budgeting in one English local authority. In this case, personalization continued to signify hope and liberation even though the most draconian cuts in the Council's history effectively rendered personalization a practical impossibility. This requires critical theorization. Two bodies of theory are interrogated. First Boltanski's sociology of critique, and, in particular, his notion of managerial domination illuminate the way in which change imperatives and crises come to cement ideological formations. Here it is argued that the articulation of personalization with transformation lends itself to managerial domination. It is further argued, though, that while institutional actors may be able to manipulate the symbolic to evade, what Boltanski terms, deconstructionist critique, this cannot entirely explain the hold of this particular discourse. Here, the Lacanian concept of enjoyment is deployed to interrogate its extra-symbolic function and fantasmatic form. Finally, the paper explores the political implications of such affective attachment and, in particular, the guarantee that personalization offers in a period of welfare state decline. © The Author(s) 2012.

Duality in multi-channel Luttinger Liquid with local scatterer

We have devised a general scheme that reveals multiple duality relations valid for all multi-channel Luttinger Liquids. The relations are universal and should be used for establishing phase diagrams and searching for new non-trivial phases in low-dimensional strongly correlated systems. The technique developed provides universal correspondence between scaling dimensions of local perturbations in different phases. These multiple relations between scaling dimensions lead to a connection between different inter-phase boundaries on the phase diagram. The dualities, in particular, constrain phase diagram and allow predictions of emergence and observation of new phases without explicit model-dependent calculations. As an example, we demonstrate the impossibility of non-trivial phase existence for fermions coupled to phonons in one dimension. © 2013 EPLA.

Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with a single atom

The Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect is widely regarded as the quintessential quantum interference phenomenon in optics. In this work we examine how nonlinearity can smear statistical photon bunching in the HOM interferometer. We model both the nonlinearity and a balanced beam splitter with a single two-level system and calculate a finite probability of anti-bunching arising in this geometry. We thus argue that the presence of such nonlinearity would reduce the visibility in the standard HOM setup, offering some explanation for the diminution of the HOM visibility observed in many experiments. We use the same model to show that the nonlinearity affects a resonant two-photon propagation through a two-level impurity in a waveguide due to a " weak photon blockade" caused by the impossibility of double-occupancy and argue that this effect might be stronger for multi-photon propagation.

The Kim Dynasty and North-East Asian security:breaking the cycle of crises?

Purpose—This article considers North Korea and the notion of crisis, by linking historical development over the Korean peninsula to the conflict resolution literature, and investigates why despite a large number of destabilizing events, a war involving Pyongyang has yet to erupt. Design/methodology—This article uses historical data and a framework developed by Aggarwal et al., in order to highlight patterns of interaction between states such as the United States, North Korea and South Korea, organizations such as the United Nations, as well as processes such as the Six- Party Talks and the Agreed Framework. The article then develops a crisis framework based on conflict resolution and negotiation literature, and applies it to three North Korean administrations. Findings—Findings suggest that an open- ended understanding of time (for all parties involved on the peninsula) leads to an impossibility to reach a threshold where full- scale war would be triggered, thus leaving parties in a stable state of crisis for which escalating moves and de- escalating techniques might become irrelevant. Practical implications—It is hoped that this article will help further endeavors linking conflict resolution theoretical frameworks to the Korean peninsula security situation. In the case of the Korean peninsula, time has been understood as open-ended, leading parties to a lingering state of heightened hostilities that oscillates toward war, but that is controlled enough not to reach it. In-depth analysis of particular security sectors such as nuclear energy, food security, or missile testing would prove particularly useful in understanding the complexity of the Korean peninsula situation to a greater extent. It is hoped that this paper will help further endeavours linking conflict resolution theoretical frameworks to the Korean peninsula security situation. Originality/value—This research suggests that regarding the Korean peninsula, time has been understood as open- ended, leading parties to a lingering state of heightened.

The Kim Dynasty and North-East Asian security:breaking the cycle of crises

This article considers North Korea and the notion of crisis, by linking historical development over the Korean peninsula to the conflict resolution literature, and investigates why despite a large number of destabilising events, a war involving Pyongyang has yet to erupt. The paper considers historical data and uses a framework developed by Aggarwal et al. in order to highlight patterns of interaction between states such as the United States, North Korea and South Korea, organisations such as the United Nations, as well as processes such as the Six-Party Talk and the Agreed Framework. The paper then develops a crisis framework based on conflict resolution and negotiation literature, and applies it to three North Korean administrations. Findings suggests that an elastic understanding of time (for all parties involved on the peninsula) leads to an impossibility to reach a threshold where full-scale war would be triggered, thus leaving parties in a stable state of crisis for which escalating moves and de-escalating techniques might become irrelevant.

Perspective work on optical fibre sensors

Optical fibre based sensors are transforming industry by permitting monitoring in hitherto inaccessible environments or measurement approaches that cannot be reproduced using conventional electronic sensors. A multitude of techniques have been developed to render the fibres sensitive to a wide range of parameters including: temperature, strain, pressure (static and dynamic), acceleration, rotation, gas type, and specific biochemical species. Constructed entirely of glass or polymer material, optical fibre devices like fibre gratings offer the properties: low loss, dielectric construction, small size, multiplexing, and so on [1-3]. In this paper, the authors will show the latest developing industrial applications, using polymer optical fibre (POF) devices, and comparing their performance with silica optical fibre devices. The authors address two pressing commercial requirements. The first concerns the monitoring of fuel level in civil aircraft. There is a strong motivation in the aerospace industry to move away from electrical sensors, especially in the fuel system. This is driven by the need to eliminate potential ignition hazards, the desire to reduce cabling weight and the need to mitigate the effects of lightning strikes in aircraft where the conventional metallic skin is increasingly being replaced by composite materials. In this case, the authors have developed pressure sensors based on a diaphragm in which a polymer fibre Bragg grating (POFBG) has been embedded [3]. These devices provide high pressure sensitivity enabling level measurement in the mm range. Also, it has developed an approach incorporating several such sensors which can compensate for temperature drifts and is insensitive to fluid density. Compared with silica fibre-based sensors, their performance is highly enhanced. Initial results have attracted the interest of Airbus from UK, who is keen to explore the potential of optical technology in commercial aircraft. The second concerns the monitoring of acoustic signals and vibration in the subsea environment, for applications in geophysical surveying and security (detection of unwanted craft or personnel). There is strong motivation to move away from electrical sensors due to the bulk of the sensor and associated cabling and the impossibility of monitoring over large distances without electrical amplification. Optical approaches like optical hydrophones [5] offer a means of overcoming these difficulties. In collaboration with Kongsberg from Norway, the authors will exploit the sensitivity improvements possible by using POF instead of silica fibre. These improvements will arise as a result of the much more compliant nature of POF compared to silica fibre (3 GPa vs 72 GPa, respectively). Essentially, and despite the strain sensitivity of silica and POFBGs being very similar, this renders the POF much more sensitive to the applied stress resulting from acoustic signals or vibration. An alternative way of viewing this is that the POF is better impedance-matched to the surrounding environment (water for the intended applications), because although its impedance is higher than that of water, it is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than that of silica. Finally, other future industrial applications will be presented and discussed, showing the vast range of the optical fiber devices in sensing applications.