Employers' Use of Lockouts under the Employment Contracts Act 1991: A New Balance of Power?

Since May 1991 lockouts have become a more familiar feature of New Zealand's industrial relations environment, and have been used to powerful effect by employers on a number of well-publicised occasions. It has been argued that the Employment Contracts Act is not responsible for this development. This argument rests primarily on the fact that the ECA's lockout provisions were inherited from the Labour Relations Act. This paper examines the case law on lockouts under the ECA, and argues that the bargaining environment created by the ECA has made the lockout a more powerful, and the~efore more attractive, weapon than was the case under the LRA

Large-scale security constrained optimal reactive power flow for operational loss management on the GB electricity transmission network

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Engineering Doctorate and awarded by Brunel University, 22/12/2010.The transmission of power across the GB transmission system, as operated by National Grid, results in inevitable loss of electrical power. Operationally these power losses cannot be eliminated, but they can be reduced by adjustment of the system voltage profile. At present the minimisation of active power losses relies upon a lengthy manually based iterative adjustment process. Therefore the system operator requires the development of advanced optimisation tools to cope with the challenges faced over the next decade, such as achieving the stringent greenhouse gas emission targets laid down by the UK government, while continue to provide an economical, secure and efficient service. To meet these challenges the research presented in this thesis has developed optimisation techniques that can assist control centre engineers by automatically setting up voltage studies that are low loss and low cost. The proposed voltage optimisation techniques have been shown to produce solutions that are secured against 800 credible contingency cases. A prototype voltage optimisation tool has been deployed, which required the development of a series of novel approaches to extend the functionality of an existing optimisation program. This research has lead to the development of novel methods for handling multi-objectives, contradictory shunt switching configurations and selecting all credible contingencies. Studies indicate that a theoretical loss saving of 1.9% is achievable, equivalent to an annual emissions saving of approximately 64,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. A novel security constrained mixed integer non-linear optimisation technique has also been developed. The proposed method has been shown to be superior to several conventional methods on a wide range of IEEE standard network models and also on a range of large-scale GB network models. The proposed method manages to further reduce active power losses and also satisfies all security constraints.EPSRC and National Gri

Changes and continuations: the post-penal settlement of Tasman Peninsula

The history of Tasman Peninsula during the initial post-penal period from 1877- 1914 is presented and discussed. Settlement of the peninsula after the closure of Port Arthur prison resulted in two distinct communities - one providing recreation facilities and services to tourists and the other dependent on farming, orcharding, logging and fishing. During this period Tasmanians began to come to terms with the convict history represented by Port Arthur, with Eaglehawk Neck and Port Arthur becoming foci for the developing tourism industry

Focal symptoms in general paralysis

The opening years of the twentieth century have proved to be an exceedingly fruitful period for the study of general paralysis of the insane In the nineteenth century general paralysis was early recognized by the French school to be a more or less independent disease - with a well -defined syrrptomatolegy and characteristic course (Esquirol, Bayle, Calmeìl) . The etiological importance cf syphilis gradually won recognition on statistical grounds; the unsatisfactory nature of this form of proof, however, was sufficiently clear from the extraordinary divergence cf the statistics furnished by the various authors. The pathological anatomy of the disease r °ave rise. to much controversy from an early date

Proposed shunt rounding technique for large-scale security constrained loss minimization

The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 IEEE.Optimal reactive power flow applications often model large numbers of discrete shunt devices as continuous variables, which are rounded to their nearest discrete value at the final iteration. This can degrade optimality. This paper presents novel methods based on probabilistic and adaptive threshold approaches that can extend existing security constrained optimal reactive power flow methods to effectively solve large-scale network problems involving discrete shunt devices. Loss reduction solutions from the proposed techniques were compared to solutions from the mixed integer nonlinear mathematical programming algorithm (MINLP) using modified IEEE standard networks up to 118 buses. The proposed techniques were also applied to practical large-scale network models of Great Britain. The results show that the proposed techniques can achieve improved loss minimization solutions when compared to the standard rounding method.This work was supported in part by the National Grid and in part by the EPSRC. Paper no. TPWRS-00653-2009

A thermodynamic study of large tetraaza ligands and their Cu (II) complexes

Six macrocyclic (L1-L6) and ten non-cyclic (L7-L16) tetraaza ligands containing only secondary nitrogen atoms were synthesised and characterised. A further tetramine ligand (L17) with two primary and two secondary nitrogen atoms was obtained commercially. The stepwise protonation constants of all these ligands and the Cu(II) complex stability constants of all but three of the ligands (L10-L12) were determined by potentiometric titration. The Cu(II) complex formation enthalpies of L¬1¬-L9 and L13-L17 were determined using a batch microcalorimetric technique. The enthalpies of solution of L1-L17 were determined by isoperibolic calorimetry and the enthalpies of vaporisation of L1-L9, L16 and L17 determined using a custom built vapour pressure-weight loss apparatus. The data for the ligands L1-L17 and for a number of macrocyclic and noncyclic tetraaza and tetramine ligands with smaller macrocyclic and/or chelate ring sizes (L(I)-L(XVIII)) has been examined to determine the effect of increasing macrocyclic and/or chelate ring size on the thermodynamic properties described above, and to determine the thermodynamic origins of the macrocyclic effect, the observed increase in stability of a macrocyclic ligand relative to that of an analogous non-cyclic ligand, and to determine the effect of increasing ligand size on the macrocyclic effect. The enthalpy contribution to the macrocyclic effect has been shown to be equal to the difference between the hydration enthalpy of the free macrocyclic and non-cyclic ligands. Differences in complex hydration appear to be small. The entropy contribution appears to be due to the greater loss of conformational entropy of the non-cyclic ligand on copper complex formation. The magnitude of the macrocyclic effect appears to be independent of ligand size but is dependent on the non-cycllic ligand chosen as a model for the macrocyclic ligand