Experienced Major Changes Research Articles

Winning in the emerging energy services business

The energy services industry is about to experience major changes, driven largely by new customer needs and the push by existing players and new entrants to respond to those needs. The experience of other industries that have gone through similar changes suggests that initiative and prompt action in developing strategies and capabilities will pay off handsomely.

Long-Term Variability of the Internal and External Geomagnetic Field

The magnetic fields of the Earth, the planets and the sun, provide a basis for the basic structure of our solar system. The geomagnetic field has been explored and measured for centuries, and it is known that it experiences major changes on time scales ranging from seconds to millions of years. These changes are associated with the internal source of the geomagnetic field, which is not completely understood. Measurements conducted by spacecraft during the last few decades, have explored the geomagnetic field and revealed details about both internal and external sources. The external sources are associated with the complex system of currents that flows in the “comet-like” configuration of the distant geomagnetic field called the magnetosphere, which is produced by the solar wind. The magnetic fields due to the external sources can vary with time scales from a few seconds to several years, related to solar cycle activity. The study of these phenomena span scientific disciplines extending from the geophysics of the Earth's core to solar and space plasma physics. A crucial element of this study is the continuous and accurate monitoring of the geomagnetic field and the appropriate means to archive this important data set.

U. S. Education and the Constrained Economy: from the melting pot to the excluder?

A linkage between education and the economy is generally accepted, with the latter seen as of primary significance and education expected to reflect the general activity of the economy. Thus in western capitalist societies the 'needs' of the economy for differentiated labour are held to account for the hierarchically differentiated product of schooling. Similarly, when the economy experiences major changes, as from growth to slowdown in recent years, then major implications for schooling can be expected. A general point of concern in the study on which this paper reports is with the nature of that relationship. As commonly depicted, it is essentially an impersonal and mechanistic one, with the implication that individuals and groups exercise little influence. In contrast, the thrust of the argument explored here is that they are at the heart of the relationship, but differentially significant according to power exercised and the senses of justice upheld by more powerful individuals and groups. This general thesis derives from assumptions that people, as individuals and in groups, are very much concerned with achieving such goals or interests as personal and group development and autonomy, together with wealth, status, power and other forms of aggrandisement. Further, concern with such goals is held to underlie economic, political and other forms of social activity. Thus, it has been in the relatively ruleless or undoctrinaire 'capitalist' societies, where economic goals or interests are given primacy, and in a period when resources were judged to be virtually unlimited and 'markets' far from satiated, that productive activity has been most vigorously pursued, with steadily increasing production or an expanding 'economic cake' being associated with relatively widespread 'trickle down' of benefits. Because the consequences relate closely to the distribution of power and associated senses of justice [1], however, one should not expect an even distribution of the effects of economic slowdown. Rather, a more realistic expectation is that the more powerful will seek to maintain the rates of improvement in the circumstances to which they have become accustomed, and possibly continue to improve them, even if to do so is at the expense of less powerful individuals and