Income Related Loans for Drought Relief

There is arguably a consensus that the current approach to drought relief is in need of reform and possibly replacement with an improved government financial assistance mechanism. Grants to farmers, in the form of interest rate subsidies, have several difficulties, which in summary are as follows: i. There are typically too few financial resources to be drawn from government to address adequately and equitably the needs of farms in a dire drought situation. ii. The rationing arising from (i) means that access to assistance requires complex eligibility criteria, resulting in application and administrative processes that are complex and thus expensive for both farmers and government. iii. Grants for drought relief are financed by contributions from all taxpayers, and it is very likely to be the case that this is regressive. Average taxpayers will be less wealthy and have fewer other economic advantages than the majority of farmers assisted through drought relief. This paper outlines the potential advantages and challenges associated with the implementation of income related loan arrangements for drought relief as a possible alternative to the existing interest rate subsidy scheme. The conceptual basis of income related loans is explained, and reference is made to the application of policies of this type in other areas of government financial intervention. The paper addresses the administrative challenges associated with such a policy reform, with reference to the idiosyncrasies of agricultural financing. An illustrative example is offered of what an income related loan applied to drought assistance might mean for the time stream of both revenue for the Commonwealth budget and repayment obligations for farms differing by economic size.income related loans, drought policy, agricultural subsidies

The Experience of Unemployment in Ireland: A Thematic Analysis

This paper reports on the results of 13 semi-structured focus groups carried out with unemployed respondents across Ireland in 2010. The purpose of the research is to examine the subjective experience of unemployment across a wide range of dimensions. 15 overarching themes emerged from a detailed thematic analysis of the texts of the interviews. The themes highlight a wide range of aversive psychological states associated with unemployment. The themes examine: perceptions of the economic boom; reactions to the recession; attitudes toward media coverage; gender differences in experiences of unemployment; financial worries relating to unemployment; perceptions of the position of young people; uncertainty about the future; lack of structure and routine associated with unemployment; health issues associated with unemployment; identity challenges; the social context of unemployment; issues surrounding reentering employment; attitudes toward social protection payments; social comparison effect and perceptions of training services. This paper concludes with a brief discussion of the psychological impact of unemployment.

Using infrared spectral features to probe circumstellar dust shells around cool stars

IRAS observations of cool stars provide low resolution spectra in the mid-infrared and also give fluxes at four wavelength bands from which color-color diagrams are constructed. The later have been used to study the evolution of these stars: as an O-rich star evolves to become a C-rich star and its detached dust shell moves further away, its evolution can be tracked on a color-color diagram. A major factor in determining the position of either C-rich or O-rich stars on the 12-25-60 micron color-color diagram is the presence of spectral features in the mid-IR. O-rich stars show a 9.8 micron silicate feature, while C-rich stars have a SiC feature at 11.2 microns. IRAS observations indicate that the SiC feature is quite narrow and uniform in shape showing little variation from star to star. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) is 1.6 + or - 0.15 microns. On the other hand, the shape of the silicate feature varies widely among the O-rich stars, with a FWHM ranging from 2 to 3 microns. The characteristics of circumstellar dust shells should manifest themselves both in the flux spectrum and in the details of the spectral features. To provide a coherent interpretation for these IRAS observations, models were constructed (using a radiative transfer code) of dust shells around O-rich and C-rich stars. Realistic grain opacities were used which include spectral features of varying intrinsic widths (e.g., Gaussian features at 10 microns with half width at half maximum of 0.5 and 1.0 microns)

Habitat and Interspecific Interactions Affect Mesocarnivore Occupancy in the Eastern U.S.

Interspecific competition is important to carnivore communities because of the propensity of carnivores toward aggressive interactions. Interactions among members of the eastern U.S.A. mesocarnivore community have been impacted by the loss of top predators and urbanization. Changes to interspecific interactions and habitat result in changes in many populations of mesocarnivores. Interactions between these two factors further explain contrasting patterns among the members of the mesocarnivore community. These patterns have been studied at scales from the effects of microhabitat to landscape scale factors on mesocarnivore occupancy, however they have not been studied throughout multiple independent landscapes in the eastern U.S.A. Here, we used presence absence data from camera traps across the eastern U.S.A. to test the effects of habitat and interspecific interactions on members of the mesocarnivore community. We used single- and two-species occupancy models to estimate the contribution of urbanization and competition with coyotes to declines in gray fox populations. We found that increasing coyote abundance was negatively related to gray fox occupancy, but gray foxes did not respond to urban features. Additionally, we used multi-species occupancy models to investigate the effect of habitat on interspecific interactions among five mesocarnivores. We found that increased urbanization reduced the strength of potential intraguild predation on some mesocarnivores. Collectively, our results suggest that neither interspecific interactions nor habitat alone are capable of explaining patterns in the mesocarnivore guild. However, the inability of mesocarnivores to avoid competition with intraguild predators may contribute to declines in some species. While urbanization may have direct negative impacts, urban areas may be important because of reduced competition in more urbanized landscapes. Given the continued urbanization of the eastern U.S.A., these data provide valuable insight into how habitat may impact interspecific interactions, and, ultimately, how interspecific interactions may affect mesocarnivore occupancy

The Effects of Physical and Mental Foci on Self-Regulatory Persistence

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Psychology, 2015Given the tendency for humans to dichotomize phenomena into mental and physical categories, the present work explored the consequences of this dichotomization within the domain of self-control exertion. In particular, these studies develop an individual difference of mental-physical interactionism, manipulate situational features promoting a focus on mental or physical phenomena, and examine how these factors influence perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral responding in self-control contexts. Results show that these factors show independent and interactive effects on metrics of task construal, subjective pain, and overall self-control exertion. Such findings warrant future inquiry on the role of metaphysical representations within the domain of self-control, as well as within other domains of psychological and physiological science

An investigation into the use of genetic algorithms for shape recognition

The use of the genetic algorithm for shape recognition has been investigated in relation to features along a shape boundary contour. Various methods for encoding chromosomes were investigated, the most successful of which led to the development of a new technique to input normalised 'perceptually important point' features from the contour into a genetic algorithm. Chromosomes evolve with genes defining various ways of 'observing' different parts of the contour. The normalisation process provides the capability for multi-scale spatial frequency filtering and fine/coarse resolution of the contour features. A standard genetic algorithm was chosen for this investigation because its performance can be analysed by applying schema analysis to the genes. A new method for measurement of gene diversity has been developed. It is shown that this diversity measure can be used to direct the genetic algorithm parameters to evolve a number of 'good' chromosomes. In this way a variety of sections along the contour can be observed. A new and effective recognition technique has been developed which makes use of these 'good' chromosomes and the same fitness calculation as used in the genetic algorithm. Correct recognition can be achieved by selecting chromosomes and adjusting two thresholds, the values of which are found not to be critical. Difficulties associated with the calculation of a shape's fitness were analysed and the structure of the genes in the chromosome investigated using schema and epistatic analysis. It was shown that the behaviour of the genetic algorithm is compatible with the schema theorem of J. H. Holland. Reasons are given to explain the minimum value for the mutation probability that is required for the evolution of a number of' good' chromosomes. Suggestions for future research are made and, in particular, it is recommended that the convergence properties of the standard genetic algorithm be investigated