The British electoral system 1885-1970

At a time when the electoral system is coming under renewed scrutiny, this article examines the origins and creation of the present system in 1884-5, and its subsequent survival. This is the first such analysis to draw upon Public Record Office and party archives. Whilst showing that the political classes have been quite prepared to consider the merits of alternatives, particularly S.T.V., for Ireland or in colonial settings, they have usually been seen as less appropriate for Westminster. In exploring why that should be the case this article seeks to provide a new explanation for the longevity of the electoral arrangements of 1885.

Increasing inter-generational social mobility: is educational expansion the answer?

Reforms which increase the stock of education in a society have long been held by policy-makers as key to improving rates of intergenerational social mobility. Yet, despite the intuitive plausibility of this idea, the empirical evidence in support of an effect of educational expansion on social fluidity is both indirect and weak. In this paper we use the raising of the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16 years in England and Wales in 1972 to estimate the effect of educational participation and qualification attainment on rates of intergenerational social class mobility. Because, in expectation, children born immediately before and after the policy was implemented are statistically exchangeable, the difference in the amount of education they received may be treated as exogenously determined. The exogenous nature of the additional education gain means that differences in rates of social mobility between cohorts affected by the reform can be treated as having been caused by the additional education. The data for the analysis come from the ONS Longitudinal Study, which links individual records from successive decennial censuses between 1971 and 2001. Our findings show that, although the reform resulted in an increase in educational attainment in the population as a whole and a weakening of the association between attainment and class origin, there was no reliably discernible increase in the rate of intergenerational social mobility.

Diversification, size and risk: The case of bank acquisitions of nonbank financial firms

We investigate the risk effects of bank acquisitions of insurance companies and securities firms between 1991 and 2012 using a newly constructed dataset of M&A deals. We examine risk changes before and after deal announcements by decomposing risk into systematic and idiosyncratic components. Subsequently, we investigate the relationship between risk and diversification by modelling the determinants of risks. We find that bank combinations with securities firms yield higher risks than combinations with insurance companies. Bank size is an important and consistent determinant of risk whereas diversification is not. Our results inform the continuing debate on diversification versus functional separation of bank activities.

Genetic programming for the minimum time swing up and balance control acrobot problem

This work describes how genetic programming is applied to evolving controllers for the minimum time swing up and inverted balance tasks of the continuous state and action: limited torque acrobot. The best swing-up controller is able to swing the acrobot up to a position very close to the inverted ‘handstand’ position in a very short time, shorter than that of Coulom (2004), who applied the same constraints on the applied torque values, and to take only slightly longer than the approach by Lai et al. (2009) where far larger torque values were allowed. The best balance controller is able to balance the acrobot in the inverted position when starting from the balance position for the length of time used in the fitness function in all runs; furthermore, 47 out of 50 of the runs evolve controllers able to maintain the balance position for an extended period, an improvement on the balance controllers generated by Dracopoulos and Nichols (2012), which this paper is extended from. The most successful balance controller is also able to balance the acrobot when starting from a small offset from the balance position for this extended period.

Being Taught by Biesta

What are we to do with the writing of Biesta? Raising the same question in relation to Jacques Rancière, in a 2010 study co-authored with Charles Bingham, Gert J. J. Biesta takes the writer of ‘a short, disparaging review of …The Ignorant Schoolmaster’ to task for “schooling” Rancière on the inadequacies of the book reviewed (Biesta & Bingham 2010, 145-148). Readers of Biesta cheering on from the sidelines at this point are placed in an uncomfortable double bind if they are to take this suggestion seriously when reviewing his own work. We are not, Biesta and Bingham (2010, 148) suggest, to police interpretations like a vigilant schoolmaster in possession of superior knowledge but rather ‘proceed as a child who looks forward to the sound of the bell’ and to ‘speak as if truant’.

The state and the development of an information society: Greek policy and experience

The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre-existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic-relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in-depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000–2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post-2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda.

Cosmopolitanism and the relevance of ‘zombie concepts’: the case of anomic suicide amongst Alevi Kurd youth

Against Beck’s claims that conventional sociological concepts and categories are zombie categories, this paper argues that Durkheim’s theoretical framework in which suicide is a symptom of an anomic state of society can help us understand the diversity of trajectories that transnational migrants follow and that shape their suicide rates within a cosmopolitan society. Drawing on ethnographic data collected on eight suicides and three attempted suicide cases of second-generation male Alevi Kurdish migrants living in London, this article explains the impact of segmented assimilation/adaptation trajectories on the incidence of suicide and how their membership of a ‘new rainbow underclass’, as a manifestation of cosmopolitan society, is itself an anomic social position with a lack of integration and regulation.

Towards a Critique of Educative Violence: Walter Benjamin and ‘Second Education’

Although modern systems of mass education are typically defined in their opposition to violence, it has been argued that it is only through an insistent and critical focus upon violence that radical thought can be sustained. This article seeks to take up this challenge in relation to Walter Benjamin’s lesser-known writings on education. Benjamin retained throughout his life a deep suspicion about academic institutions and about the pedagogic, social and economic violence implicated in the idea of cultural transmission. He nonetheless remained committed to the possibility of another kind of revolutionary potential inherent to true education and, when he comes to speak of this in his Critique of Violence, it is remarkable that he describes it as manifesting an educative violence. This article argues that Benjamin’s philosophy works toward a critique of educative violence that results in a distinction between a ‘first’ and ‘second’ kind of education and asks whether destruction might have a positive role to play within pedagogical theories in contrast to current valorisations of creativity and productivity.

Da Ideia ao Mercado: um caminho desenvolvido por meio de mapas conceituais para difundir a cultura da inovação e induzir sua gestão

This thesis objective is to build a cognitive model focused on the diffusion of innovation management and its culture, where the sharing method will be the concept maps. For that construction, in addition to detailing the method, will be also presented the bases of knowledge that served to construct the model. Those bases were built through literature survey that will be also presented. This sharing proposition, proposes to strictly use concept maps instead of texts and the non-hierarchical knowledge construction. Besides the introduction of these guidelines, a navigation tool modeled based on conceptual mapping where the user choices, or better explaining, the user’s possibility to opt, or not, for a certain way, will be based on their own knowledge basis and forward thinking.

Performance of microstrip antennas in the presence of EBG in an indoor localization system

Indoor localization systems in nowadays is a huge area of interest not only at academic but also at industry and commercial level. The correct location in these systems is strongly influenced by antennas performance which can provide several gains, bandwidths, polarizations and radiation patterns, due to large variety of antennas types and formats. This paper presents the design, manufacture and measurement of a compact microstrip antenna, for a 2.4 GHZ frequency band, enhanced with the use of Electromagnetic Band-Gap (EBG) structures, which improve the electromagnetic behavior of the conventional antennas. The microstrip antenna with an EBG structure integrated allows an improvement of the location system performance in about 25% to 30% relatively to a conventional microstrip antenna.

Bending effects on a textile microstrip antenna

This paper describes the design of a textile microstrip antenna for 2.4 GHz. Two different fabrics are used: one for the dielectric part and another one for the conductor part. The dielectric constant of the dielectric fabric is determined experimentally. The input matching is studied by electromagnetic simulation and experimentally. Since the antenna is meant to be incorporated in the user's clothe, the effect that the antenna bending has on the matching level is also investigated both theoretically and experimentally.

LMP triggered real time demand response events

Recent changes in power systems mainly due to the substantial increase of distributed generation and to the operation in competitive environments has created new challenges to operation and planning. In this context, Virtual Power Players (VPP) can aggregate a diversity of players, namely generators and consumers, and a diversity of energy resources, including electricity generation based on several technologies, storage and demand response. Demand response market implementation has been done in recent years. Several implementation models have been considered. An important characteristic of a demand response program is the trigger criterion. A program for which the event trigger depends on the Locational Marginal Price (LMP) used by the New England Independent System operator (ISO-NE) inspired the present paper. This paper proposes a methodology to support VPP demand response programs management. The proposed method has been computationally implemented and its application is illustrated using a 32 bus network with intensive use of distributed generation. Results concerning the evaluation of the impact of using demand response events are also presented.

O tema da "saudade" em Gaspar Frutuoso

Colóquio Internacional "Camões e os seus Contemporâneos", Universidade dos Açores, Ponta Delgada, 18 a 20 de Abril de 2012.

Corrugated horn antenna for a CosmoGal satellite with reduced dimensions

This paper presents the design methodology for the creation of corrugated horn antennas for the CosmoGal satellite. The mission will collect the radiation of the cosmic microwave background, by a radiometer in three different radio astronomy frequency bands (10.6-10.7GHz; 15.35-15.4GHz; 23.6-24GHz). It is discussed the design of several types of horns, simulated with the CST software. The best result points to a choked Gaussian corrugated horn antenna, with directivity of 23 dBi, side lobes 35 dB below and cross polarization better than -45 dB. Plus, with the advantage of having a small dimension, with a total length of only 7.43λ © 2014 IEEE.

Non-uniform microstrip antenna array for RX DSRC communications

The urgent need to mitigate traffic problems such as accidents, road hazards, pollution and traffic jam have strongly driven the development of vehicular communications. DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) is the technology of choice in vehicular communications, enabling real time information exchange among vehicles V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) and between vehicles and infrastructure V2I (Vehicle-Infrastructure). This paper presents a receiving antenna for a single lane DSRC control unit. The antenna is a non-uniform array with five microstrip patches. The obtained beam width, bandwidth and circular polarization quality, among other characteristics, are compatible with the DSRC standards, making this antenna suitable for this application. © 2014 IEEE.