The accord: an economic and social success story.

From 1983, Australia operated an Incomes Policy - the Accord. Senator Peter Cook, Australian Industrial Relations Minister, gave a Centre for Economic Performance-sponsored public lecture on the Accord in June 1991. In view of the considerable worldwide interest in the Accord, Senator Cook''s lecture is reprinted as a Centre for Economic Performance Occasional Paper to reach a wider audience. Peter Cook looks at the ways in which the Accord process facilitated a major assault on the impediments to economic growth and social equity in Australia in the 1980s, and argues that economic management should be achieved by consensus policies supported by social wage and industrial policy measures rather than economic and social confrontation.

The evolutionary biology of dance without frills

Recently psychologists have taken up the question of whether dance is reliant on unique human adaptations, or whether it is rooted in neural and cognitive mechanisms shared with other species 1, 2. In its full cultural complexity, human dance clearly has no direct analog in animal behavior. Most definitions of dance include the consistent production of movement sequences timed to an external rhythm. While not sufficient for dance, modes of auditory-motor timing, such as synchronization and entrainment, are experimentally tractable constructs that may be analyzed and compared between species. In an effort to assess the evolutionary precursors to entrainment and social features of human dance, Laland and colleagues [2] have suggested that dance may be an incidental byproduct of adaptations supporting vocal or motor imitation — referred to here as the ‘imitation and sequencing’ hypothesis. In support of this hypothesis, Laland and colleagues rely on four convergent lines of evidence drawn from behavioral and neurobiological research on dance behavior in humans and rhythmic behavior in other animals. Here, we propose a less cognitive, more parsimonious account for the evolution of dance. Our ‘timing and interaction’ hypothesis suggests that dance is scaffolded off of broadly conserved timing mechanisms allowing both cooperative and antagonistic social coordination

Feasibility study for locating archaeological village sites by satellite remote sensing techniques

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Gravitational Coset Models

The algebra A(D-3)+++ dimensionally reduces to the E(D-1) symmetry algebra of (12-D)-dimensional supergravity. An infinite set of five-dimensional gravitational objects trivially embedded in D-dimensions is constructed by identifying the null geodesic motion on cosets embedded in the generalised Kac-Moody algebra A(D-3)+++. By analogy with supergravity these are bound states of dual gravitons. The metric interpolates continuously between exotic gravitational solutions generated by the action of the Geroch group but is not a continuously transforming solution of the Einstein-Hilbert action. We investigate mixed-symmetry fields in the brane sigma model, identify actions for the full interpolating bound state and understand the obstruction to the bound state being a solution of the Einstein-Hilbert action.Comment: 46 page

G+++ and Brane Solutions

We demonstrate that the very extended G+++ group element of the form $g_A=\exp(-{\frac{1}{(\beta,\beta)}\ln N}\beta \cdot H)\exp((1-N)E_\beta)$ describes the usual BPS, electric, single brane solutions found in G+++ theories.Comment: One new equation, added references, corrected typos and minor changes, 42 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX2

Should archaeologists care about 14C inter-comparisons? Why? A summary report on SIRI

Radiocarbon (14C) dating is used widely in many projects as a basis for the creation and testing of chronological constructs. 14C measurements are by their nature complex and the degree of sample pretreatment varies considerably depending on the material. Within the United Kingdom and Europe, there are a number of well-established laboratories and increasingly, archaeologists are not just commissioning new dates, but also using statistical modelling of assemblages of dates, perhaps measured in different laboratories, to provide formal date estimates for their sites. The issue of comparability of measurements (and thus bias, accuracy and precision of measurement) from the diverse laboratories is one which has been the focus of some attention both within the 14C community and the wider user communities for some time. As a result of this but also as part of laboratory benchmarking and quality assurance, the 14C community has undertaken a wide-scale, far-reaching, and evolving program of intercomparisons, to the benefit of laboratories and users alike. This paper summarizes the most recent exercise, the Sixth International Radiocarbon Intercomparison (SIRI)

Transport of Sellafield-derived C-14 from the Irish Sea through the North Channel

Since the early 1950s, the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Northwest England has released radio-carbon into the Irish Sea in a mainly inorganic form as part of its authorized liquid effluent discharge. In contrast to the trend in which the activities of most radionuclides in the Sellafield liquid effluent have decreased substantially, C-14 discharges have increased since 1994-95. This has largely been due to a policy change favoring marine discharges over atmospheric discharges. C-14 is radiologically important due to its long half life, mobility in the environment, and propensity for entering the food chain. Current models for radionuclide dispersal in the Irish Sea are based on a reversible equilibrium distribution coefficient (k(d)), an approach which has been shown to be inadequate for C-14. Development of predictive models for the fate of Sellafield-derived C-14 requires a thorough understanding of the biogeochemical fluxes between different carbon reservoirs and the processes controlling the net flux of C-14 out of the Irish Sea, through he North Channel. In this study., both an empirical and a halving time approach indicate that close to 100% of the C-14 that is discharged from Sellafield is dispersed beyond the Irish Sea on a time-scale of months in the form of DIC, with little transfer to the PIC, POC, and DOC fractions, indicating that the "dilute and disperse" mechanism is operating satisfactorily. This is consistent with previous research that indicated little transfer of C-14 to Irish Sea sediments, While significant C-14 enhancements have been observed in the biota of the Irish Sea, this observation is not necessarily in conflict with either of the above as the total biomass has to be taken into account in any calculations of C-14 retention within the Irish Sea

Sources of anthropogenic C-14 to the North Sea

The Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant on the northwest coast of England is the largest source of anthropogenic radiocarbon to the UK coastal environment. In a mid-1990s study of C-14 distribution around the UK coast, the pattern of dilution with increasing distance from Sellafield appeared to be perturbed by anomalously high C-14 activities in marine biota in the coastal environment of northeast England. This present study was undertaken during 1998 and 1999 to determine whether this C-14 enhancement was due to Sellafield or the nuclear power plants on the east coast. Seawater, seaweed (Fucus sp.), and mussel (Mytilus edulis) samples that were collected from the vicinity of the Torness and Hartlepool advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) nuclear power stations were all enhanced above the contemporary regional background activity derived from natural production and atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. We used previously published dilution factors and transfer times for Tc-99 between Sellafield and various points on the UK coast to determine likely Sellafield- derived C-14 contributions to the activities at the nuclear power plant sites. The results suggest that the activities observed at Torness, which are only marginally enhanced above the natural background activity, are possibly due to discharges from Sellafield; however, the significant C-14 enhancements at Hartlepool are not Sellafield-derived. Furthermore, since both reactors have the same fundamental design, the low activities at the Torness AGR imply that the activities at Hartlepool are not from the AGR, suggesting that there is an input of C-14 to the marine environment in the vicinity of Hartlepool which is probably non-nuclear-power related. However, there is no other authorized site in the area that could account for the observed C-14 enrichments; therefore, further research is required to ascertain the source of this C-14

The fifth international radiocarbon intercomparison (VIRI): An assessment of laboratory performance in stage 3

Proficiency testing is a widely used, international procedure common within the analytical chemistry community. A proficiency trial (which VIRI is) often follows a standard protocol, including analysis that is typically based on zscores, with one key quantity, σp. From a laboratory intercomparison (sometimes called a proficiency trial), we hope to gain an assessment of accuracy (in this case, from dendro-dated samples), laboratory precision (from any duplicate samples), and generally, an overall measure of performance, including measurement variability and hence realistic estimates of uncertainty. In addition, given our stated aim of creating an archive of reference materials, we also gain a determination of consensus values for new reference materials. VIRI samples have been chosen to deliver these objectives and the sample ages included in the different stages, by design, spanned modern to background. With regard to pretreatment, some samples required intensive pretreatment (e.g. bone), while others required none (e.g. cellulose and humic acid). Sample size was not optimized, and indeed some samples were provided solely for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurement. In this sense, VIRI presented a more challenging exercise than previous intercomparisons, since by its design in stages, one can explore improvements (or deteriorations) over time in laboratory performance. At each stage, more than 50 laboratories have participated, with an increasing demographic shift towards more AMS and fewer radiometric laboratories