Making history beyond neoliberalism: Response to Roper

Roper (2011a, p. 39) sums up his account of neoliberalism in New Zealand with the following conclusion: “In the absence of a major upsurge in working class and social movement struggle, the neoliberal policy regime is likely to remain firmly in place.” The bulk of his article lends weight to this conclusion in the course of offering a detailed analysis of National’s neoliberalism and New Zealand’s social inequality. In his final assessment Roper turns to list mid-range factors that underpin his conclusion. In particular, he refers to structural constraints resulting from the neoliberalisation of New Zealand’s financial regime; neoliberalisation of the outlooks of successive New Zealand Governments since 1984; and the balance of class forces in favour of capital (pp.37-8). This response focuses, first, on building a sympathetic analysis of these mid-range factors which are linked here with the form and dynamic of the ‘neoliberal model of development’ (Neilson, 2011). In his conclusion Roper also states that if there is an upsurge in social movement and working class politics ‘then the question of alternatives to neoliberalism will come to the forefront of New Zealand politics’ (Roper, 2011a, p. 39). The second theme of this essay is linked to an exploratory discussion of why this might or might not happen and how more specifically a ‘counter-hegemonic project’ could be more consciously constructed and actively pursued

Identification of a suspect before being charged: legitimate freedom of speech or a threat to a fair trial?

Identification of a person suspected of a heinous crime before being charged risks prejudicing a fair trial. Present laws place this type of publicity outside the reach of sub judice contempt. This thesis argues there should be a change in the law of sub judice contempt making it an offence for the media to publish the fact that a person is under investigation until the person has been charged

Homework and performance for time-constrained students

Most studies of homework effectiveness relate time spent on homework to test performance, and find a nonmonotonic relationship. A theoretical model shows that this can occur even when additional homework helps all students because of the way in which variables are defined. However, some students are time-constrained, limiting the amount of homework they can complete. In the presence of time constraints, additional homework can increase the spread between the performance of the best and worst students, even when homework would reduce the spread in the unconstrained case.

Victory and Defeat in a Model of Behavior in Games and Toward Risk

The standard expected utility model is augmented by allowing individuals to receive additional utility in states in which they consider themselves victorious and to lose a utility increment in which they consider themselves defeated. The resulting event-dependent expected utility model is used to explain behavior in games and toward risk. In games, players consider themselves defeated when their monetary payoffs are low compared to their opponents' payoffs, and they consider themselves victorious when their payoffs are high, but not too high, compared to their opponents' payoffs. Under these conditions the model can accommodate behavior that has been interpreted elsewhere as inequity aversion, as well as cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma and in public good provision games. In situations of risk, individuals consider themselves victorious (defeated) when they receive an unlikely, avoidable, high (low) outcome. Under these conditions the model can accommodate such behavior as the Allais paradox, boundary effects, and simultaneous gambling and insurance. Consequently, the model uses a single framework to discuss evidence from two distinct branches of the literature.

CHINA'S ACCESSION TO WTO: IMPLICATIONS FOR US AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Full Issue 10.3

Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Co.The original of this document is in the Stevens Family Papers, #1210, at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York 14853

The period change of the Cepheid Polaris suggests enhanced mass loss

Polaris is one of the most observed stars in the night sky, with recorded observations spanning more than 200 years. From these observations, one can study the real-time evolution of Polaris via the secular rate of change of the pulsation period. However, the measurements of the rate of period change do not agree with predictions from state-of-the-art stellar evolution models. We show that this may imply that Polaris is currently losing mass at a rate of $\dot{M} \approx 10^{-6} M_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$ based on the difference between modeled and observed rates of period change, consistent with pulsation-enhanced Cepheid mass loss. A relation between the rate of period change and mass loss has important implications for understanding stellar evolution and pulsation, and provides insight into the current Cepheid mass discrepancy.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, compiled using emulateapj, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. Fixed correction in titl

The Effect of School Construction on Test Scores, School Enrollment, and Home Prices

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of school construction projects on home prices, academic achievement, and public school enrollment. Taking advantage of the staggered implementation of a comprehensive school construction project in a poor urban district, we find that, by six years after building occupancy, $10,000 of per-student investment in school construction raised reading scores for elementary and middle school students by 0.027 standard deviations. For a student receiving the average treatment intensity this corresponds to a 0.21 standard deviation increase. School construction also raised home prices and public school enrollment in zoned neighborhoods.school construction, test scores, home prices

Alleviation of unbalanced rotor loads by single blade controllers

A novel approach to reducing the unbalance rotor loads by pitch control is presented in this paper. Each blade has its own actuator, sensors and controller. These localised blade control systems operate in isolation without need of communication with each other. This single blade control approach to regulation of unbalanced rotor loads has several advantages including being straightforward to design and easy to tune. Furthermore, it does not affect the operation of the central controller and the latter need not be re-designed when used in conjunction with the single blade controllers. Their performance is assessed using BLADED simulations