The Quest for Security and Welfare in New Zealand 1938–1956

This paper, largely written in the mid-1950s, appraises the implications of the policies followed by the first Labour Government from 1935 to 1949 and the National Government that succeeded it between 1949 and 1957. They were fortunate that, through most of the period, favourable market conditions prevailed, especially in Britain, for New Zealand’s major pastoral exports. This provided a good basis for the expansion of the volume of goods and services available for a rapidly growing population. The emphasis of policy was on full employment, – it was an era of considerable shortage of labour – on redistribution through monetary benefits, free education and health services and state housing, and on a regulated stabilisation policy aiming at “fair shares” among producers. The paper discusses the implementation of these policies and their effects on the rate and pattern of growth and on the capacity of the New Zealand economy to develop in the less favourable external environment that was emerging

The Rocky Road to CER

This paper is a history of discussions, debates and arrangements leading up to the Australia New Zealand Closer Economic Relationship (CER), which was launched 20 years ago. While a large volume to celebrate the anniversary has been published by the Australian and New Zealand governments, in fact the events covered by this official publication were preceded by another 20 years or so of negotiations, debates and discussions, some unofficial and some official, on both sides of the Tasman. While the author of this policy paper was never an official negotiator, he was a major driving force behind the arguments for a regional free trade area, and this account of what led up to CER has not only historical validity and depth of detail but also personal acuity and insight

Working Together for New Zealand's Development

New Zealand is having serious drffrculty in sustaining the living standards, public services and benefits, and opportunities to work which our people have come to expect. A major reason for this is that the outside world is not treating us as kindly as it did In the first 25 years after the war. Each unit of goods we export now buys only about three-quarters of the imports which it would, on average, during that golden period. This adverse movement in our terms of trade has exposed more clearly the consequences of the inefficiencies with which we use many of the resources with which we have been endowe

A Study of the Heat Effects at Electrodes During Electrolysis

Temperature difference measurements were made during the electrolysis of aqueous copper sulfate between copper electrodes. The temperature differences measured were those between the cathode and the anode, the cathode solution, and the anode and the solution. These values were obtained as a function of the time of the electrolysis. The variation of these differences with time and their magnitudes were explained in terms of the entropy changes occurring at the electrodes, resistance, and polarization. The effect of some inert electrolytes on these temperature differences was determined as was the effect of gelatin. Explanations for these effects were given in terms of polarization and the thermodynamics of irreversible processes as applied to thermocells. It was found that these temperature differences were extremely dependent on, and had a definite relationship to, the concentration of the copper sulfate solutions. Accordingly, a method was proposed whereby such temperature differences could be used as an analytical method. This method was given the name, Thermal Electroanalysis. A theoretical analysis was made of the quantity of heat evolved by an electrochemical reaction during electrolysis. This analysis was made from the standpoint of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes and its relationship to classical thermodynamics was indicated. A calorimetric method was developed which made it possible to measure the amount of heat liberated at a single electrode during an electrochemical reaction. It was also possible to measure the total amount of heat liberated by the same electrochemical reaction. These data, coupled with the theoretical analysis, made it possible t calculate the enthalpy change for the total reaction as well as the entropy change occurring at each electrode. This was done for the copper-aqueous copper-sulfate-copper and silver-aqueous silver nitrate-silver systems at three different concentrations of electrolyte for each system. The values obtained for these systems were compared with the existing literature data where possible. Certain differences were pointed out in the case of the entropy values, especially their variation with concentration. Explanations were postulated for these differences and further work was proposed to clarify these points. In order to test the calorimetric technique and to prove the validity of the method, the enthalpy change for the decomposition of water was measured by this combination of calorimetric and electrochemical techniques. The values obtained were in very good agreement with the accepted value for this quantity. This was considered to be sufficient proof that this technique is a valuable tool for obtaining thermodynamic data which is extremely difficult to obtain by other means

A logic boosting approach to inducing multiclass alternating decision trees

The alternating decision tree (ADTree) is a successful classification technique that combine decision trees with the predictive accuracy of boosting into a ser to interpretable classification rules. The original formulation of the tree induction algorithm restricted attention to binary classification problems. This paper empirically evaluates several methods for extending the algorithm to the multiclass case by splitting the problem into several two-class LogitBoost procedure to induce alternating decision trees directly. Experimental results confirm that this procedure is comparable with methods that are based on the original ADTree formulation in accuracy, while inducing much smaller trees

Data mining in bioinformatics using Weka

The Weka machine learning workbench provides a general purpose environment for automatic classification, regression, clustering and feature selection-common data mining problems in bioinformatics research. It contains an extensive collection of machine learning algorithms and data exploration and the experimental comparison of different machine learning techniques on the same problem. Weka can process data given in the form of a single relational table. Its main objectives are to (a) assist users in extracting useful information from data and (b) enable them to easily identify a suitable algorithm for generating an accurate predictive model from it

EnsembleSVM: A Library for Ensemble Learning Using Support Vector Machines

EnsembleSVM is a free software package containing efficient routines to perform ensemble learning with support vector machine (SVM) base models. It currently offers ensemble methods based on binary SVM models. Our implementation avoids duplicate storage and evaluation of support vectors which are shared between constituent models. Experimental results show that using ensemble approaches can drastically reduce training complexity while maintaining high predictive accuracy. The EnsembleSVM software package is freely available online at http://esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ensemblesvm.Comment: 5 pages, 1 tabl

Electrochemical detection of TNT at cobalt phthalocyanine mediated screen-printed electrodes and application to detection of airborne vapours

We describe the use of cobalt phthalocyanine as a mediator to improve the sensitivity for the electrochemical detection of TNT. Commercial screen-printed electrodes containing cobalt phthalocyanine were employed for determination of TNT. Improved sensitivities compared to screen-printed carbon electrodes without phthalocyanine were observed, current response for cyclic voltammetric measurements at modified electrodes being at least double that of unmodified electrodes. A synergistic effect between oxygen and TNT reduction was also observed. Correlation between TNT concentrations and sensor output was observed between 0–200 µM TNT. Initial proof-of-concept experiments combining electrochemical determinations, with the use of an air-sampling cyclone, are also reported

Weka: A machine learning workbench for data mining

The Weka workbench is an organized collection of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms and data preprocessing tools. The basic way of interacting with these methods is by invoking them from the command line. However, convenient interactive graphical user interfaces are provided for data exploration, for setting up large-scale experiments on distributed computing platforms, and for designing configurations for streamed data processing. These interfaces constitute an advanced environment for experimental data mining. The system is written in Java and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License