Is the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 fit for purpose?

This article considers the context in which the Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 was enacted, looks at the content of the Act, goes on to consider the environment at the time of its enactment and finally considers whether the Act is now fit for purpose

Test of shell-model interactions for nuclear structure calculations

The binding energy and excitation spectra of 6Li are calculated in a no-core shell-model space giving encouraging results. The results of this calculation are then treated as a theoretical experiment, against which different effective-interaction approximations are compared. In this way insight into the perturbation expansion for the effective interaction is obtained

The Complex Links Between Governance and Biodiversity

We argue that two problems weaken the claims of those who link corruption and the exploitation of natural resources. The first is conceptual. Studies that use national level indicators of corruption fail to note that corruption comes in many forms, at multiple levels, and may or may not affect resource use. Without a clear causal model of the mechanism by which corruption affects resources, one should treat with caution any estimated relationship between corruption and the state of natural resources. The second problem is methodological: Simple models linking corruption measures and natural resource use typically do not account for other important causes and control variables pivotal to the relationship between humans and natural resources. By way of illustration of these two general concerns, we demonstrate that the findings of a well known recent study that posits a link between corruption and decreases in forests, elephants, and rhinoceros are fragile to simple conceptual and methodological refinements

Universality of Decay out of Superdeformed Bands in the 190 Mass Region

Superdeformed nuclei in the 190 mass region exhibit a striking universality in their decay-out profiles. We show that this universality can be explained in the two-level model of superdeformed decay as related to a strong separation of energy scales: a higher scale related to the nuclear interactions, and a lower scale caused by electromagnetic decay. Furthermore, we present the results of the two-level model for all decays for which sufficient data are known, including statistical extraction of the matrix element for tunneling through the potential barrier.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. v2: some minor clarifications, minor correction to Fig.

The Fallacy of Nearby Contract Commodity Futures Price Analysis: Intramarket Futures Contracts are not Identically Distributed

Marketing,

LIVESTOCK PRICING IN THE NORTHERN KENYAN RANGELANDS

This paper uses detailed, transactions-level data and a structural-heteroskedasticity-in-mean model to identify the determinants of livestock producer prices for pastoralists in the drylands of northern Kenya. The empirical results confirm the importance of animal characteristics, periodic events that predictably shift local demand or supply, and especially rainfall on the prices pastoralists receive for animals. Price risk premia are consistently negative in these livestock markets. The imposition of quarantines has a sharp negative effect on expected producer prices in the pastoral areas, revealing a distributionally regressive approach to animal disease control in Kenya.Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

Manifestation of three-body forces in f7/2-shell nuclei

The traditional nuclear shell model approach is extended to include many-body forces. The empirical Hamiltonian with a three-body force is constructed for the identical nucleons on the 0f7/2 shell. Manifestations of the three-body force in spectra, binding energies, seniority mixing, particle-hole symmetry, electromagnetic and particle transition rates are investigated. It is shown that in addition to the usual expansion of the valence space within the tranditional two-body shell model, the three-body component in the Hamiltonian can be an important part improving the quality of the theoretical approach.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

The complex links between governance and biodiversity

We argue that two problems weaken the claims of those who link corruption and the exploitation of natural resources. The first is conceptual. Studies that use national level indicators of corruption fail to note that corruption comes in many forms, at multiple levels, and may or may not affect resource use. Without a clear causal model of the mechanism by which corruption affects resources, one should treat with caution any estimated relationship between corruption and the state of natural resources. The second problem is methodological: Simple models linking corruption measures and natural resource use typically do not account for other important causes and control variables pivotal to the relationship between humans and natural resources. By way of illustration of these two general concerns, we demonstrate that the findings of a well known recent study that posits a link between corruption and decreases in forests, elephants, and rhinoceros are fragile to simple conceptual and methodological refinements.Environmental Economics and Policy,