From informal practices to formal conduct: Which ethical practices and issues for French lobbying consulting?

In France, lobbying consulting is at the same time a recent and not well received activity, conversely to the United States. The influence of public decision making is certainly a particularly sensitive occupation, at both managerial and societal levels. This is why ethics as applied to business can play a central role in its establishment. This paper examines the practices and issues of ethics in lobbying consulting. The chosen field in this exploratory study is France. The case of a lobbying consultancy firm is more specifically developed. A three month participant observation research is complemented by secondary data on the profession in France and in the United States, as well as on French, European, American and Quebec institutions. The results of this research are developed along two lines: 1. The practice of lobbying ethics differs according to age and degree of institutionalization of the profession in the country. In France ethics is informal and based primarily on exemplary, with a particularly low regulatory potential. 2. The stakes of ethics are both internal to the lobbying consulting profession, in its structuring from an emerging to an established profession, as well as external in the clarifying of its relationship with its stakeholders including customers, government and the civil society

Shape in an Atom of Space: Exploring quantum geometry phenomenology

A phenomenology for the deep spatial geometry of loop quantum gravity is introduced. In the context of a simple model, an atom of space, it is shown how purely combinatorial structures can affect observations. The angle operator is used to develop a model of angular corrections to local, continuum flat-space 3-geometries. The physical effects involve neither breaking of local Lorentz invariance nor Planck scale suppression, but rather reply on only the combinatorics of SU(2) recoupling. Bhabha scattering is discussed as an example of how the effects might be observationally accessible.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; v2 references adde

User's guide for the Nimbus 7 ERB Solar Analysis Tape (ESAT)

Five years of Nimbus 7 ERB solar data is available in compact form on a single ERB solar analysis tape (ESAT). The period covered is November 16, 1978 through October 31, 1983. The Nimbus 7 satellite performs just under 14 orbits a day and the ERB solar telescope observe the Sun once per orbit as the satellite passes + or - near the south pole. The data were carefully calibrated and screened. Mean orbital and daily values are given for the total solar irradiance plus selected spectral intervals. In addition, selected solar activity indicators are on the tape. The ERB experiment, the solar data calibration and screening procedures, the solar activity indicators, and the tape format are described briefly

Spatial Hypersurfaces in Causal Set Cosmology

Within the causal set approach to quantum gravity, a discrete analog of a spacelike region is a set of unrelated elements, or an antichain. In the continuum approximation of the theory, a moment-of-time hypersurface is well represented by an inextendible antichain. We construct a richer structure corresponding to a thickening of this antichain containing non-trivial geometric and topological information. We find that covariant observables can be associated with such thickened antichains and transitions between them, in classical stochastic growth models of causal sets. This construction highlights the difference between the covariant measure on causal set cosmology and the standard sum-over-histories approach: the measure is assigned to completed histories rather than to histories on a restricted spacetime region. The resulting re-phrasing of the sum-over-histories may be fruitful in other approaches to quantum gravity.Comment: Revtex, 12 pages, 2 figure

Human-Centered Systems Analysis Of Mixed Equipage In Oceanic Air Traffic Control

Technical capabilities for improved communication, surveillance, and navigation (CNS) over the oceans are currently available. However, all aircraft operators will not equip simultaneously because of the high costs required. Consequently, as these CNS systems are integrated into oceanic air transportation architecture, the controller will have to manage the current low frequency surveillance and communication paths in parallel with future enhanced CNS. The cognitive effects of the mixed equipage environment were studied through field studies and experimental analysis