Developing Integrated Waste Management Systems: Information Needs and the Role of Locally Based Data

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Quantitative relations between corruption and economic factors

We report quantitative relations between corruption level and economic factors, such as country wealth and foreign investment per capita, which are characterized by a power law spanning multiple scales of wealth and investments per capita. These relations hold for diverse countries, and also remain stable over different time periods. We also observe a negative correlation between level of corruption and long-term economic growth. We find similar results for two independent indices of corruption, suggesting that the relation between corruption and wealth does not depend on the specific measure of corruption. The functional relations we report have implications when assessing the relative level of corruption for two countries with comparable wealth, and for quantifying the impact of corruption on economic growth and foreign investments.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

A legacy handbook for manufacturing

Legacy Handbook reviewing emda's experience of manufacturing activity. Identifies key achievements and draws out lessons learned that may be relevant to successor bodies active in this area

The combinatorics of tastes and humours in classical Indian medicine and mathematics

This paper explores some combinatoric problems which are treated in the Sanskrit literature of both ayurveda (medicine) and of jyothsastra (mathematics)

Reviews

Peter Jarvis, Universities and Corporate Universities: The Higher Education Industry in Global Society, London: Kogan Page, 2001. ISBN: 0–7494–3404‐X. Softback, x + 166 pages, £19.99

Phonographic neighbors, not orthographic neighbors, determine word naming latencies

The orthographic neighborhood size (N) of a word—the number of words that can be formed from that word by replacing one letter with another in its place—has been found to have facilitatory effects in word naming. The orthographic neighborhood hypothesis attributes this facilitation to interactive effects. A phonographic neighborhood hypothesis, in contrast, attributes the effect to lexical print-sound conversion. According to the phonographic neighborhood hypothesis, phonographic neighbors (words differing in one letter and one phoneme, e.g., stove and stone) should facilitate naming, and other orthographic neighbors (e.g., stove and shove) should not. The predictions of these two hypotheses are tested. Unique facilitatory phonographic N effects were found in four sets of word naming mega-study data, along with an absence of facilitatory orthographic N effects. These results implicate print-sound conversion—based on consistent phonology—in neighborhood effects rather than word-letter feedback

Dialogue scene detection in movies using low and mid-level visual features

This paper describes an approach for detecting dialogue scenes in movies. The approach uses automatically extracted low- and mid-level visual features that characterise the visual content of individual shots, and which are then combined using a state transition machine that models the shot-level temporal characteristics of the scene under investigation. The choice of visual features used is motivated by a consideration of formal film syntax. The system is designed so that the analysis may be applied in order to detect different types of scenes, although in this paper we focus on dialogue sequences as these are the most prevalent scenes in the movies considered to date

Long period polytype boundaries in silicon carbide

A significant gap in our understanding of polytypism exists, caused partly by the lack of experimental data on the spatial distribution of polytype coalescence and knowledge of the regions between adjoining polytypes. Few observations, Takei & Francombe (1967) apart, of the relative location of different polytypes have been reported. A phenomenological description of the boundaries, exact position of one-dimensional disorder (1DD) and long period polytypes (LPP’s) has been made possible by synchrotron X-ray diffraction topography (XRDT)

MAXIMISING PROFITS FROM PASSENGER TRANSPORT SERVICE USING TRANSPORTATION MODEL ALGORITHM (PART 2) - The Advantage of Shadow Pricing

The diversity and complexity of the different types of passenger transportations in operation today invokes the need for an efficient transport service management system. Existing transportation models tend towards proffering solution for finding the least cost combination for delivering cargoes from various depots to known remote customer destinations. This paper which is the second part of the same title adopts shadow pricing to modify the existing model for use in the management of passenger transport services. It uses a case study approach to investigate the effect of non-application of a scientific based approach to vehicle capacity assignment management technique in the Nigerian private transport sector. Using worked examples the paper clearly suggests that adopting the transportation model algorithm for assigning and reassigning vehicle to routes especially during peak periods of activity, holidays or festivities will optimize operational decisions