715 research outputs found
Introducing Microcells into Macrocellular Networks: A Case Study
No full textAbstract?The performance in terms of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), teletraffic, and spectral efficiency of a combined macrocellular and microcellular network is investigated when either both types of cells share the same channel set, or when the channel set is partitioned between the macrocells and the microcells. The analysis is for time-division multiple access (TDMA) with frequency hopping, power control, and discontinuous transmission, and the radio channel is composed of an inverse fourth-power path loss law with log-normal fading. We commence by introducing a single microcell into a hexagonal cluster of macrocells before considering clustered microcells. Both omni-directional and sectorized cells are examined. We find that high reuse factors are required when channel sharing is employed. When channel partitioning is used, no co-channel interference occurs between the microcells and the macrocells allowing them to be planned independently. The reuse factors in the microcells and macrocells therefore do not need to be increased beyond conventional values. The outcome is that by opting for channel partitioning, the improvement in spectral efficiency compared to channel sharing is two to three times greater. Index Terms?Co-channel interference, land mobile radio cel-lular systems, time division multiaccess
Doorway Toward The Light- The Story of Special Navajo Education Program
No full textdigitized version of "Doorway Toward The Light," written by Madison Coombs provides a close look at an experiment in 1946 within Navajo education where the history needs to be shared and preserved.: This scannedTo request permission to publish please complete the form located at the Department of Archives and Special Collections web site: http://hdl.handle.net/2286/7f5bakntwx1
Samuel F. Coombs
No full text"The Checklist of Pacific Northwest Americana enters by title the following work, item 961: Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon as Spoken on Puget Sound… Evidence points to Samuel F. Coombs as the author.
Napa (also called "Entre Napa" and "Napa Abajo") [Napa County] Nathan Coombs, Claimant. Case no. 109, Northern District of California. cubanc_lcf_nd109
No full textRoundtable discussion on 'Transnational militancy in the 21st century'
No full textThe following roundtable discussion took place via email between September 2009 and January
2010. The participants were invited on the basis of each having a unique disciplinary background
– history, sociology and political theory – but at the same time enough in common to debate
both the analytic and normative dimensions of transnational militancy. Faisal Devji is currently
Reader in Modern South Asian History at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His most
recently book is The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global
Politics. Prof. Kevin McDonald is Marie Curie International Fellow in the Department of
Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His most recent book, Our Violent
World: Terrorism in Society, is being published April, 2010. Saul Newman is Reader in
Political Theory, also at Goldsmiths College. Saul is known for his work on ‘postanarchist’
theory, but also recently co-authored a book with the title Politics Most Unusual: Violence,
Sovereignty and Democracy in the War on Terror. The roundtable was initiated and
chaired by Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies co-editor Nathan Coombs
Realising catastrophe: the financial ontology of the Anthropocene
No full textThis dissertation investigates how the financial risk management practice of catastrophe modelling is redefining the ontology of natural catastrophe. Drawing from and developing the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’, referring to co-production of the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ on a planetary scale, the dissertation argues that simulation-based risk modelling of future ‘natural’ disasters in insurance and reinsurance markets is not just affecting how catastrophe is interpreted by economic agents, economised and financialised, but is also driving changes in the realisation of actual disasters. The thesis calls this recursive dynamic the ‘financial ontology of Anthropocene catastrophe’. In developing the argument, the thesis extends actor-network theoretical perspectives on the Anthropocene to take fuller account of market devices, performativity and calculative practices in finance. Documentary research, 62 interviews and 14 participant observation episodes serve to reconstruct current practices of catastrophe modelling and its history since it emerged as a boutique risk management practice in the 1980s. Ultimately, it has become embedded in the calculative practices of some of the largest insurance and financial companies in the world and underpinning a specialist disaster securities market. Adding conceptual depth and fine-grained empirical detail to literature on the financialisation-Anthropocene nexus, the dissertation asks us to reconsider the boundaries between economic representations of the world and the meaning and occurrence of catastrophes in market societies. In an age of anthropogenic climate change, the thesis also serves as an analytical and historical underpinning of epistemic practices in climate finance in the emerging, even more encompassing, ‘financial ontology of the Anthropocene’
Inscribing markets, shaping policy: a sociological investigation into the yield curve
No full textThis thesis investigates the central mediating role of a device, the yield curve, in the enactment of sociomaterial agencements in and around the secondary market for sovereign bonds. In part 1, it traces the historical developments by which the yield curve came to sit within the arrangements constituting government bond markets and later central banks, and the market and policy practices which it engendered. In part 2, it studies the contemporary organising of social order in the interaction between financial markets and central banks, and the perpetual reassembling of arrangements as a response to crises. The thesis relies primarily on a set of 51 elite and in-depth interviews with buy-side fund managers and traders, investment bankers, arbitrage traders in hedge funds, and central bankers, across Edinburgh, London, Frankfurt, and New York. Additionally, a set of primary and secondary documents from various sources, including the Bank of England and stockbroking firms, informs the historical analysis of the rise of government bond markets (UK and US) and the architecture of monetary governance in the UK.
The findings in Part 1’s chapter 3 and chapter 4 follow a performativity argument to show how, as the yield curve became a core part of government bond markets, it shaped those very same markets which it was purported to represent. By assisting in the development of a novel set of evaluation practices in stockbroking firms in the City of London, it led to the consolidation of the gilt market. It was also a crucial component of the sociomaterial arrangements of investment banks in the US through which derivatives emerged and via which the risk-neutral world of ‘no-arbitrage’ was established. In turn, the yield curve was itself shaped as it came to sit within multiple sociomaterial arrangements and practices - from derivatives desks to arb desks and central banks – and thus took on multiple ontologies, from an object with which to extract value, to a risk management object, and from a mathematical universe to be solved via calculation, to a representation of market expectations. Chapter 5 elaborates on how the sociomaterial agencement of inflation-targeting central banking in the 1990s was the outcome of a long and complex process of reconfigurations of the alignments between central banks and bond markets, in the context of processes of financialisation and liberalisation of markets, that ultimately put the yield curve at the centre of the central bank’s sociomaterial arrangements and practices.
Part 2’s chapter 6 switches gears and turns the focus on the ways in which, rather than leading to chaos or social disorder, the multiplicity of agencements explored in the previous chapters render order by way of a set of routinised and institutionalised practices. As a mutable mobile, the yield curve acts as a coordinating device around which fictional expectations and ‘arbitrage’ practices revolve, thus exhibiting a level of universality that transcends the locality of specific sociomaterial arrangements and, even more crucially, connects them. Nevertheless, chapter 7 shows how fragile this social order is as a set of crises threaten to disrupt it. As a response, the various sociomaterial arrangements reconfigured and reassembled ‘the social’ in order to weather the crises’s threats and to re-establish social order
Central bank power without central bank autonomy?
No full textLeon Wansleben’s new book, The Rise of Central Banks, explains how central banks have emerged as powerful monetary governors over the past half century. Yet the book’s recognition that central banks cannot extricate themselves from quantitative easing and market bailouts begs the question: what does it mean for central banks to be dominant but captive? In this commentary piece, I identify the book’s ambiguities with the concept of infrastructural power the book draws from Michael Mann. Unless the dynamics of state-market interdependence are well-specified, giving due attention to the sources of both public and private power, it is unclear what kind of agency central bankers are exercising if they lack sufficient autonomy to act in the public interest
The democratic dangers of central bank planning
No full textEric Monnet makes the case that central banks should introduce welfare-oriented credit policies and suggests legitimating these new powers through the establishment of deliberative credit councils. In this article, I argue that Monnet fails to consider how his model of central bank planning might insulate rather than democratize central banking. With low trust in experts and no society-wide consensus about how best to respond to wicked problems such as climate change, the principal danger is that Monnet’s credit councils may allow political actors to pursue agendas they do not feel they can get past electorates. Indeed, political actors may see shaping central banks’ credit policies as preferable to engaging the contentious fiscal policy domain precisely because the effects of credit policies cannot be easily held to account by voters. I suggest that credit councils are unlikely to provide a democratic channel for redressing these problems because they will inevitably privilege the voices of experts from the financial sector, industry, and (non-)governmental organisations – a de facto epistocracy – over the lay publics subject to their decisions
What do stress tests test? Experimentation, demonstration, and the sociotechnical performance of regulatory science
No full textAfter their successful introduction during the 2007–2009 financial crisis, central bank stress tests were adopted as a fixture of international banking supervision. However, in recent years a new normal has emerged where banks are expected to pass the tests, raising questions about the tests’ usefulness and legitimacy. Combining a dramaturgical interpretation of regulatory science with the idea of performativity in the sociology of finance, this article understands stress tests as a sociotechnical Goffmanian performance. With a focus on the Bank of England’s program, the paper argues that the Bank’s decision to make their tests “predictable” is an attempt to shore up central bank legitimacy by constraining regulatory discretion. This is accomplished through the use of calculative and procedural stage management techniques which allow the Bank to control the contingency of the testing process while demonstrating its objectivity. Nevertheless, the conclusion suggests that in the context of low levels of trust in central banks, routine declarations of “all clear” may undermine public confidence in the tests’ credibility and necessity. The study draws on 20 interviews with high‐level regulators, financial practitioners and other stakeholders in the Bank of England’s stress tests
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