Towards an index of relative Indigenous socioeconomic disadvantage

Understanding geographic variations in the socioeconomic status of Indigenous peoples is of importance when developing policies aimed at reducing the level of Indigenous disadvantage. Knowledge of geographic variations in socioeconomic status provides an understanding of some of the underlying structural reasons and impediments to improving the socioeconomic status of Indigenous Australians. This paper explores how a variety of indicators of socioeconomic status that can be combined to form a composite index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) regional council areas. Data from the 1991 and 1996 Censuses, augmented with administrative data from ATSIC are used to construct an index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage for the 36 ATSIC regional council areas. The changes in relative socioeconomic disadvantage between 1991 and 1996 are also analysed. The estimates in this paper are the first for Indigenous Australians using 1996 Census data. The limitations of relative indexes of socioeconomic disadvantage, particularly with respect to Indigenous Australians, are discussed. Particular attention is paid to data limitations which are exacerbated when comparing relative socioeconomic disadvantage over time. However, in spite of the many limitations, carefully selected variables can be used to estimate a ranking of socioeconomic disadvantage of ATSIC regional council areas. This research paper is timely as the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) is conducting the Indigenous Funding Inquiry, measuring the relative need of Indigenous people in different geographic regions. In this context, an important contribution of this paper is an assessment of the usefulness of a composite index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage for the calculation of funding relativities. The conclusion reached is that relative indexes of socioeconomic disadvantage, such as the one documented in this paper, are of very limited use in calculating funding relativities

Towards an index of relative Indigenous socioeconomic disadvantage

Understanding geographic variations in the socioeconomic status of Indigenous peoples is of importance when developing policies aimed at reducing the level of Indigenous disadvantage. Knowledge of geographic variations in socioeconomic status provides an understanding of some of the underlying structural reasons and impediments to improving the socioeconomic status of Indigenous Australians. This paper explores how a variety of indicators of socioeconomic status that can be combined to form a composite index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) regional council areas. Data from the 1991 and 1996 Censuses, augmented with administrative data from ATSIC are used to construct an index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage for the 36 ATSIC regional council areas. The changes in relative socioeconomic disadvantage between 1991 and 1996 are also analysed. The estimates in this paper are the first for Indigenous Australians using 1996 Census data. The limitations of relative indexes of socioeconomic disadvantage, particularly with respect to Indigenous Australians, are discussed. Particular attention is paid to data limitations which are exacerbated when comparing relative socioeconomic disadvantage over time. However, in spite of the many limitations, carefully selected variables can be used to estimate a ranking of socioeconomic disadvantage of ATSIC regional council areas. This research paper is timely as the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) is conducting the Indigenous Funding Inquiry, measuring the relative need of Indigenous people in different geographic regions. In this context, an important contribution of this paper is an assessment of the usefulness of a composite index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage for the calculation of funding relativities. The conclusion reached is that relative indexes of socioeconomic disadvantage, such as the one documented in this paper, are of very limited use in calculating funding relativities

Shoe or stew? Balancing wants and needs in Indigenous households: A study of appropriate income support payments and policies for families

Can service delivery and program development accommodate cultural parameters? What bureaucratic mechanisms could encompass such accommodations in program delivery and/or policy stance? Such fundamental questions are addressed in this discussion paper by charting the process of undertaking field-based research on the effectiveness of government income support payments to Indigenous families for care of children. The paper details how the pilot study for the field investigation led firstly, to issues of appropriate research methodology and field practice, and secondly, required careful specification of the arenas of Indigenous domestic life which could, or should, give grounds to justify State intervention and scrutiny as an action in the 'best interests' of Indigenous people. An immediate outcome of the pilot study is that Aboriginal domestic circumstances and family life are far more complex and volatile than policy makers might expect, or than service deliverers may be able to accommodate. Ethnographic literature confirms this. It adds weight to the view argued here, that policy and program intervention must be carefully handled because many of the identified internal dynamics of Indigenous welfare-based households have yet to be fully understood. These dynamics relate to income poverty, patterns of household expenditure and wider issues of sociality as these are impacted upon by residential mobility and the differential demands of age and gender on household membership, stability and economic wellbeing. Arguably, the conclusions of the Kuranda pilot study project indicate that basic issues of infrastructure, namely, appropriate and adequate housing and access to public transport, remain core concerns for Indigenous households and the quality of life that they experience. Amelioration of these factors of service provision alone would directly enhance the circumstances in which welfare-reliant Indigenous families in Kuranda endeavour to care for their families' needs

Inactivation of cloned Na channels expressed in Xenopus oocytes

This study investigates the inactivation properties of Na channels expressed in Xenopus oocytes from two rat IIA Na channel cDNA clones differing by a single amino acid residue. Although the two cDNAs encode Na channels with substantially different activation properties (Auld, V. J., A. L. Goldin, D. S. Krafte, J. Marshall, J. M. Dunn, W. A. Catterall, H. A. Lester, N. Davidson, and R. J. Dunn. 1988. Neuron. 1:449-461), their inactivation properties resemble each other strongly but differ markedly from channels induced by poly(A+) rat brain RNA. Rat IIA currents inactivate more slowly, recover from inactivation more slowly, and display a steady-state voltage dependence that is shifted to more positive potentials. The macroscopic inactivation process for poly(A+) Na channels is defined by a single exponential time course; that for rat IIA channels displays two exponential components. At the single-channel level these differences in inactivation occur because rat IIA channels reopen several times during a depolarizing pulse; poly(A+) channels do not. Repetitive stimulation (greater than 1 Hz) produces a marked decrement in the rat IIA peak current and changes the waveform of the currents. When low molecular weight RNA is coinjected with rat IIA RNA, these inactivation properties are restored to those that characterize poly(A+) channels. Slow inactivation is similar for rat IIA and poly(A+) channels, however. The data suggest that activation and inactivation involve at least partially distinct regions of the channel protein

Maximizing phonon thermal conductance for ballistic membranes

At low temperatures, phonon scattering can become so weak that phonon transport becomes ballistic. We calculate the ballistic phonon conductance G for membranes using elasticity theory, considering the transition from three to two dimensions. We discuss the temperature and thickness dependence and especially concentrate on the issue of material parameters. For all membrane thicknesses, the best conductors have, counter-intuitively, the lowest speed of sound.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings to phonons 2007 conferenc

Heat capacity of a thin membrane at very low temperature

We calculate the dependence of heat capacity of a free standing thin membrane on its thickness and temperature. A remarkable fact is that for a given temperature there exists a minimum in the dependence of the heat capacity on the thickness. The ratio of the heat capacity to its minimal value for a given temperature is a universal function of the ratio of the thickness to its value corresponding to the minimum. The minimal value of the heat capacitance for given temperature is proportional to the temperature squared. Our analysis can be used, in particular, for optimizing support membranes for microbolometers

Heat transport in ultra-thin dielectric membranes and bridges

Phonon modes and their dispersion relations in ultrathin homogenous dielectric membranes are calculated using elasticity theory. The approach differs from the previous ones by a rigorous account of the effect of the film surfaces on the modes with different polarizations. We compute the heat capacity of membranes and the heat conductivity of narrow bridges cut out of such membranes, in a temperature range where the dimensions have a strong influence on the results. In the high temperature regime we recover the three-dimensional bulk results. However, in the low temperature limit the heat capacity, $C_V$, is proportional with $T$ (temperature), while the heat conductivity, $\kappa$, of narrow bridges is proportional to $T^{3/2}$, leading to a thermal cut-off frequency $f_c=\kappa/C_V\propto T^{1/2}$.Comment: 6 pages and 6 figure

Quantum chaos in nanoelectromechanical systems

We present a theoretical study of the electron-phonon coupling in suspended nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and investigate the resulting quantum chaotic behavior. The phonons are associated with the vibrational modes of a suspended rectangular dielectric plate, with free or clamped boundary conditions, whereas the electrons are confined to a large quantum dot (QD) on the plate's surface. The deformation potential and piezoelectric interactions are considered. By performing standard energy-level statistics we demonstrate that the spectral fluctuations exhibit the same distributions as those of the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE) or the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble (GUE), therefore evidencing the emergence of quantum chaos. That is verified for a large range of material and geometry parameters. In particular, the GUE statistics occurs only in the case of a circular QD. It represents an anomalous phenomenon, previously reported for just a small number of systems, since the problem is time-reversal invariant. The obtained results are explained through a detailed analysis of the Hamiltonian matrix structure.Comment: 14 pages, two column

Lattice thermal conductivity of freestanding gallium nitride nanowires

aip Publishers Publications Topics | Librarians Authors Your access is provided by: Eastern Illinois University Register to create your user account, or sign in if you have an existing account Additional sign in Sign in via Shibboleth/Athens My cart Export citations Add to my favorites Recommend to library Subscribe to email alerts Submit an article Reprints & Permissions Subscribe to RSS Access Key Free Content Open Access Content Subscribed Content Free Trial Content Home \u3e Publishers \u3e AIP Publishing \u3e Journal of Applied Physics \u3e Volume 108, Issue 3 \u3e Article banner image F Lattice thermal conductivity of freestanding gallium nitride nanowires Download PDF Jie Zou1,a) + View Affiliations a) Electronic mail: [email protected]. J. Appl. Phys. 108, 034324 (2010); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3463358 Previous Article Table of Contents Next Article Back to Search Results facebook twitter Share this page separator email print this page Abstract Full Text References (28) Cited By (8) Data & Media Metrics Related We report detailed calculations of the lattice thermal conductivity of freestanding gallium nitride(GaN)nanowires with diameters ranging from 20 to 140 nm. Results are compared with experimental data on GaNnanowires grown by thermal chemical vapor deposition(CVD). Calculations are based on the Boltzmann transport equation and take into account the change in the nonequilibrium phonon distribution in the case of diffuse scattering at the surfaces. Phonon dispersion relation is obtained in the elastic continuum approximation for each given nanowire. For valid comparisons with the experimental data, simulations are performed with a dopant concentration and impurity profile characteristic of thermal CVDGaNnanowires. Our results show that the room-temperature thermal conductivity of the nanowires has very low values, ranging from 6.74 W/m K at 20 nm to 16.4 W/m K at 140 nm. The obtained results are in excellent agreement with the experimental data. We have also demonstrated that in addition to impurity scattering, boundary scattering, and phonon confinement, the change in the nonequilibrium phonon distribution leads to a further reduction in the thermal conductivity of the nanowires and has to be taken into account in the calculations. Our conclusion is different from that of an earlier study which attributed the very low thermal conductivity to the unusually large mass-difference scattering in the nanowires

Cosmic Calibration: Constraints from the Matter Power Spectrum and the Cosmic Microwave Background

Several cosmological measurements have attained significant levels of maturity and accuracy over the last decade. Continuing this trend, future observations promise measurements of the statistics of the cosmic mass distribution at an accuracy level of one percent out to spatial scales with k~10 h/Mpc and even smaller, entering highly nonlinear regimes of gravitational instability. In order to interpret these observations and extract useful cosmological information from them, such as the equation of state of dark energy, very costly high precision, multi-physics simulations must be performed. We have recently implemented a new statistical framework with the aim of obtaining accurate parameter constraints from combining observations with a limited number of simulations. The key idea is the replacement of the full simulator by a fast emulator with controlled error bounds. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of the methodology and extend the framework to include joint analysis of cosmic microwave background and large scale structure measurements. Our framework is especially well-suited for upcoming large scale structure probes of dark energy such as baryon acoustic oscillations and, especially, weak lensing, where percent level accuracy on nonlinear scales is needed.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure