Basic Needs, Government Debt and Economic Growth

This paper investigates the relationships between basic needs and economic growth where the interactions between output, health, nutrition and education are explicitly simultaneous. We find a unidirectional relationship that improving basic welfare contributes strongly to labour productivity change, but a clear reverse causation only from growth to nutrition. There are substantial differences in the patterns of simultaneous interactions at different income and welfare levels. There are strong self-reinforcing effects of literacy and debt service on poverty, making it difficult for poor countries to rectify their situation. Channelling resources towards improving health, education and nutrition could bring dramatic economic returns.Income, Health, Education, Nutrition, Government debt, Womens’ education

Young but not so restless: trends in the age-specific rate of offending

Aim: To describe and discuss trends in age-specific rates of offending for property crime, robbery and serious assault. Method: Descriptive statistics and graphical displays. Results: The number of people apprehended by police for property crime and robbery has fallen sharply since around 2001 and is much lower now than it was 15 years ago. The decline has been most pronounced among adolescent and young adult offenders (aged 15-20 years). The rate at which people in this age group were apprehended for robbery first rose and fell between 1995 and 2004 and then rose and fell (again) between 2005 and 2012. The rate at which 21-24 year olds were apprehended for robbery declined between 1999 and 2012. A similar but less pronounced pattern is seen for 25-29 year olds. The rate at which people were apprehended for serious assault remained fairly stable for all age groups up until around 2003. Thereafter the rate rose rapidly for 15-20 year olds, peaking at around 2008 and then falling from 2009 to 2012. The rate at which older age groups have been apprehended by police for assault remained fairly steady since 1999 but over the last three years has slowly declined. Conclusion: It is impossible to be certain but there is good reason to expect a continuation of the downward trend in rates of property crime and robbery in NSW. The future course of trends in serious assault will likely depend on whether the current fall in alcohol misuse by young people continues

Automatic discovery of optimal classes

A criterion, based on Bayes' theorem, is described that defines the optimal set of classes (a classification) for a given set of examples. This criterion is transformed into an equivalent minimum message length criterion with an intuitive information interpretation. This criterion does not require that the number of classes be specified in advance, this is determined by the data. The minimum message length criterion includes the message length required to describe the classes, so there is a built in bias against adding new classes unless they lead to a reduction in the message length required to describe the data. Unfortunately, the search space of possible classifications is too large to search exhaustively, so heuristic search methods, such as simulated annealing, are applied. Tutored learning and probabilistic prediction in particular cases are an important indirect result of optimal class discovery. Extensions to the basic class induction program include the ability to combine category and real value data, hierarchical classes, independent classifications and deciding for each class which attributes are relevant

Minimizing Use of Aquaculture Ponds by Double-Crested Cormorants Phalacrocorax Auritus and Other Fish-Eating Birds

Methods used to minimize abundance of double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), great blue herons (Ardea herodias), and great egrets (Arded alba) at aquaculture facilities have limited success because of the birds\u27 ability to habituate to the applied technique. The primary objectives of this study were to evaluate and quantify the effects of overhead lines on minimizing number of cormorants, egrets and herons. We measured the long-term (01 December 2000 to 14 April 2001) effectiveness of exclusion barriers positioned every 30 m at 8 aquaculture ponds in southeastern Arkansas and the post-removal of the barrier effects from 15 April to 31 May 2001. The exclusion barrier limited the number of cormorants landing on treatment ponds significantly (P \u3c 0.001, by 10-fold), had a greater effect on herons (P \u3c 0.001, by 19-fold), and completely excluded egrets. Over 200 hours of observations with the barriers installed and an additional 90 hours of post-treatment observation resulted in 23,200 cormorant observations at the site. Eight treatment ponds averaged 429 cormorant landings (1.9 birds per hour) compared to 4,240 cormorant s landings (15.6 birds per hour) on 8 control ponds. Although the physical barrier did not exclude all cormorants and other fish-eating birds from a pond, this technique offers a nonlethal, cost-efficient, easy installation and removal, and low maintenance method to minimize depredation at aquaculture ponds

Using Behavioral Realism to Estimate Presence: A Study of the Utility of Postural Responses to Motion Stimuli

We recently reported that direct subjective ratings of the sense of presence are potentially unstable and can be biased by previous judgments of the same stimuli (Freeman et al., 1999). Objective measures of the behavioral realism elicited by a display offer an alternative to subjective ratings. Behavioral measures and presence are linked by the premise that, when observers experience a mediated environment (VE or broadcast) that makes them feel present, they will respond to stimuli within the environment as they would to stimuli in the real world. The experiment presented here measured postural responses to a video sequence filmed from the hood of a car traversing a rally track, using stereoscopic and monoscopic presentation. Results demonstrated a positive effect of stereoscopic presentation on the magnitude of postural responses elicited. Posttest subjective ratings of presence, vection, and involvement were also higher for stereoscopically presented stimuli. The postural and subjective measures were not significantly correlated, indicating that nonproprioceptive postural responses are unlikely to provide accurate estimates of presence. Such postural responses may prove useful for the evaluation of displays for specific applications and in the corroboration of group subjective ratings of presence, but cannot be taken in place of subjective ratings

Effects of Sensory Information and Prior Experience on Direct Subjective Ratings of Presence

We report three experiments using a new form of direct subjective presence evaluation that was developed from the method of continuous assessment used to assess television picture quality. Observers were required to provide a continuous rating of their sense of presence using a handheld slider. The first experiment investigated the effects of manipulating stereoscopic and motion parallax cues within video sequences presented on a 20 in. stereoscopic CRT display. The results showed that the presentation of both stereoscopic and motion parallax cues was associated with higher presence ratings. One possible interpretation of Experiment 1 is that CRT displays that contain the spatial cues of stereoscopic disparity and motion parallax are more interesting or engaging. To test this, observers in Experiment 2 rated the same stimuli first for interest and then for presence. The results showed that variations in interest did not predict the presence ratings obtained in Experiment 1. However, the subsequent ratings of presence differed significantly from those obtained in Experiment 1, suggesting that prior experience with interest ratings affected subsequent judgments of presence. To test this, Experiment 3 investigated the effects of prior experience on presence ratings. Three groups of observers rated a training sequence for interest, presence, and 3-Dness before rating the same stimuli as used for Experiments 1 and 2 for presence. The results demonstrated that prior ratings sensitize observers to different features of a display resulting in different presence ratings. The implications of these results for presence evaluation are discussed, and a combination of more-refined subjective measures and a battery of objective measures is recommended

National Educators' Workshop: Update 1996

This document contains a collection of experiments presented and demonstrated at the National Educators' Workshop: Update 96, held at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico on October 27-30, 1996. The experiments related to the nature and properties of engineering materials and provided information to assist in teaching about materials in the education community

Monitoring fitness of horses by heart rate

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

ADP study of gamma-ray bursts

This grant supported study of cyclotron scattering lines in the spectra of gamma-ray bursts through analysis of Ginga and HEAO-1 archival data, and modeling of the results in terms of radiation transfer calculations of cyclotron scattering in a strong magnetic field. A Monte Carlo radiation transfer code with which we are able to calculate the expected properties of cyclotron scattering lines in the spectra of gamma-ray bursts was developed. The extensive software necessary in order to carry out fits of these model spectra to gamma-ray burst spectral data, including folding of the model spectra through the detector response functions was also developed. Fits to Ginga satellite data on burst GB880205 were completed and fits to Ginga satellite data on burst GB870303 are being carried out. These fits have allowed us to test our software, as well as to garner new scientific results. This work has demonstrated that cyclotron resonant scattering successfully accounts for the locations, strengths, and widths of the observed line features in GB870303 and GB880205. The success of the model provides compelling evidence that these gamma-ray bursts come from strongly magnetic neutron stars and are galactic in origin, resolving longstanding controversies about the nature and distance of the burst sources. These results were reported in two papers which are in press in the proceedings of the Taos Workshop on Gamma-Ray Bursts, and in a paper submitted for publication