Promoting investment in the water sector

Australian governments are the primary investors, infrastructure owners and operators in the Australian water sector. Population growth, historic underinvestment in water infrastructure, water security, climate change and increasing environmental and public health regulation mean that considerable investment in the sector is needed in the future. Significant capital expenditure is required to renew ageing assets and expand networks. Given the challenging fiscal environment for governments in the short to medium term, now is an opportune time for governments to consider where public investment in the water sector is most needed, where efficiency gains can be made and whether additional private investment in the sector could usefully free up current public investment for application in other sectors such as health and education. This paper examines a number of the regulatory barriers to greater private sector participation in the sector. It includes a set of recommendations to governments to facilitate increased private sector investment in the short term and broader reform in the medium to long term

Stratigraphy and Geochemistry of Paleocene-Aged Bauxites from North Mississippi

Bauxite is a heavily-mined aluminum ore that forms through the relative depletion of silica to aluminum. In North Mississippi, bauxite occurring within the Upper Midway and Lower Wilcox groups has been the subject of study for over a century. Despite the abundance and duration of research, controversy surrounds the subjects of bauxite genesis and economic value. The last detailed study of North Mississippi bauxite was in the 1980’s, so the goal of this project is to apply newly available technologies and modern hypotheses on bauxite formation to refine and obtain new data. Fieldwork observations yielded pisoliths, horizonation, and possible rhizoliths, which support a lateritic genesis at the most well exposed outcrop, which is located in Pontotoc County and mapped as the Upper Midway Group. Additionally, stratigraphic trends in percentages of SiO2, Al2O3, and Fe2O3 at this location closely resembled that of a typical lateritic bauxite profile reflecting the depletion of SiO2 and enrichment of Fe2O3 upsection. Abundances of chromium (Cr) and nickel (Ni) as well as percentages of zirconium (Zr), gallium (Ga), and chromium (nickel) (Cr(Ni)) determined the bauxite protolith was acidic and/or sedimentary and that bauxites were of the high-iron lateritic variety. This aligned with the occurrence of siderite (iron carbonate) in the interpreted protolith as well as ratios of lanthanum to yttrium that indicated an acidic paleoenvironment throughout the section. Lastly, stable isotope data confirmed prior hypotheses of a warm paleoclimate and indicated subaerial exposure of the interpreted parent material. A comparison with the reworked bauxite of the Lower Wilcox Group found that pisoliths were different in regards to structure and chemistry, supporting the hypothesis that these originated in a separate event or under different conditions

The Effects of Facial Expression on Out-Group Discrimination

The current paper sought to test the hypothesis that the facial expression of smiling would mitigate the effects of out-group discrimination. Study 1 examined the influence of facial expression (smiling or frowning), gender (man or woman), and race (Black or White) on resource allocation decisions. Participants were shown arrays of facial photographs. The arrays all contained eight photographs and were counterbalanced to contain all combinations of the variables of interest (i.e., each group had a smiling man of each race, a smiling woman of each race, a frowning man of each race, and a frowning woman of each race). The participants were asked to imagine that the photographs were taken of other college students. They were then asked to allocate hypothetical extra credit points among the photographs. The Black participants tended to show out-group discrimination regardless of the facial expression of the photographs. The White participants demonstrated no form of discrimination when the targets were smiling, but actually favored the frowning Black targets over the frowning White targets. In Study 2, a second group of participants rated the photographs used in Study 1 across 15 different attributes. The number of points allocated to each photograph in Study 1 and the ratings from Study 2 were then explored though bivariate correlations. All of the attributes with the exception of Dominance were highly correlated with the number of points the photographs received in Study 1. The results are discussed in terms of halo effects and cultural display rules for emotions

An Interview with W.C. Jefferson (part one)

So what it is, is that we\u27re not all born equal, but what we all should have is a chance to be the best we can be. -- Jeff Jefferson ------------------------------------ The first part of Jefferson’s oral history took place via Zoom on September 26, 2023. Jefferson started by discussing his undergraduate education at Central State in Ohio, where he participated in ROTC. Afterwards, he joined the army and completed two tours in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He then discussed starting law school and how he balanced work and family during his 1L year. Jefferson described a meeting with then-Dean James Whyte, and the effort to recruit more Black students that resulted from it. The last bit of the interview touched on law school facilities, class and faculty, and the namesake of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA).https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/oralhist_all/1006/thumbnail.jp

An Interview with Timothy J. Sullivan

If you know from whence we came, let\u27s just say from 1920, to where we are today, it\u27s an extraordinary story. -- Tim Sullivan. ------------------------------------ The interview of Timothy J. Sullivan, Dean Emeritus of William & Mary Law School and President Emeritus of the College of William & Mary in Virginia, occurred on Tuesday, March 28, 2023, from approximately 2:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. in the Media Center of Swem Library. The interview concerned Timothy Sullivan’s tenure at the law school, beginning with his time as a member of the faculty in the early 1970s and continuing to the conclusion of his time as dean of from 1985 to 1992.https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/oralhist_all/1000/thumbnail.jp

On the impact of powder cohesion on the bulk properties of a powder bed in Additive Manufacturing using Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations

In powder based Additive Manufacturing (AM) a uniform and compact spread of particles is required which can then be accurately fused layer by layer to form final products. As powders are spread, several parameters control the quality of the final powder bed layer; namely, spreader type, powder grain shape, powder characteristics and ambient manufacturing conditions. Utilising discrete element method (DEM) simulations this paper investigates the effect of cohesion on the quality of the powder bed post spreading. However, only cohesion due to the formation of liquid bridges as a result of moisture content of the powder is considered in this work. Simulations are run with a realistic spreader (geometry of which was created from data points from manufacturing equipment used within industry), alongside realistic particle shapes created via Multi-Sphere Approximations (MSA) of models derived from powder X-ray microtomography images, see Figure 1. A random selection of powder particles is chosen and used within simulations, with the resolution of these particles being controlled via a surface smoothing factor [1] to ensure an acceptable balance of accuracy and computational cost. Simulations are run with an appropriate subset of the total number of particles to yield a statistically accurate representation of the grain population to identify the effects of cohesion on the final quality of the powder bed layer. In this paper for the first time, the relationship between the moisture content and powder bed quality is investigated and the simulation results indicate that the cohesion has a strong effect on the powder bed quality which is quantified via a surface roughness parameter and powder's bulk density

Search for the Higgs boson via the H → b¯b decay mode, in the boosted regime on the ATLAS experiment

This thesis presents details of the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson, in the low mass region (100 ≤ MH < 150 GeV), with the ATLAS detector at CERN. In this range, a Higgs boson may be produced in association with a W or Z-boson and decay predominantly to two b-quarks (H → b¯b). Specifically events having large Higgs boson transverse momentum (pT > 200 GeV) and large recoiling W- boson transverse momentum (pT > 200 GeV) are considered as a means to reduce the contribution from background processes. In this high pT (boosted) regime, novel jet-substructure techniques are applied to the reconstructed jets resulting from the Higgs boson decay. In order to use these jet-substructure techniques, b-tagging efficiency scale factors in the jet-substructure regime have also been derived for the first time. Details of their derivation are presented for many b- tagging algorithms, with 14.3 fb¯¹ of ATLAS proton-proton collision data in 2012 at √s = 8 TeV. These, and their associated systematic uncertainties, are then applied to the Higgs boson search. No significant measurement of Higgs boson production was made, based on 20.4 fb¯¹ of ATLAS proton-proton collision data in 2012 at √s = 8 TeV. For a Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV, an exclusion limit of 6.12 x σSM was found at the 95% confidence level, and a signal strength of 0:93 ± 2:63 was measured, consistent with both background-only and signal (Standard Model Higgs boson) plus background hypotheses