Markets - Water Markets: Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin and the US Southwest

Worldwide supplies of fresh water are increasingly scarce relative to demand. This problem is likely to be exacerbated with climate change. In this paper, we examine water markets in both Australia’s Murray Darling Basin and the western US and their prospects for addressing water scarcity. The two regions share a number of important similarities including: climate variability that requires investment in reservoirs to make water available in low-rainfall periods; the need for internal and cross-border (state) water management; an historical major allocation of water to irrigators; increasing competition among different uses (agricultural, environmental and recreational in situ uses, urban demand); and the potential for water trading to more smoothly and quickly allocate water across these competing uses. A comparison of the two regions provides important insights about how economic factors can encourage more efficient water allocation, market structure and government regulation.

Exact zero-point energy shift in the e⊗(n E)e\otimes (n~E), t⊗(n H)t\otimes (n~H) many modes dynamic Jahn-Teller systems at strong coupling

We find the exact semiclassical (strong coupling) zero-point energy shifts applicable to the $e\otimes (n E)$ and $t\otimes (n H)$ dynamic Jahn-Teller problems, for an arbitrary number $n$ of discrete vibrational modes simultaneously coupled to one single electronic level. We also obtain an analytical formula for the frequency of the resulting normal modes, which has an attractive and apparently general Slater-Koster form. The limits of validity of this approach are assessed by comparison with O'Brien's previous effective-mode approach, and with accurate numerical diagonalizations. Numerical values obtained for $t\otimes (n H)$ with $n =8$ and coupling constants appropriate to C$_{60}^-$ are used for this purpose, and are discussed in the context of fullerene.Comment: 20 pages, 4 ps figure

Water Scarcity and Water Markets: A Comparison of Institutions and Practices in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia and the Western US

Water markets in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and the US west are compared in terms of their ability to allocate scarce water resources among competing uses. Both locations have been in the forefront of the development of water markets with defined water rights and conveyance structures to assist in the reallocation of water across competing demands. They also share the challenge of managing water with climate variability and climate change. As these two markets occur in developed, wealthy countries, their experiences in water markets with different water rights (appropriative, riparian and statutory rights) provide ‘best-case’ scenarios of what institutional arrangements work best, indicate which are less effective, and demonstrate what might be possible for greater use of water markets elsewhere in the world. The paper finds that the gains from trade in the MDB is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in per year, total turnover in water rights exceeds $2 billion per year and the volume of trade accounts for over 20$4.3 billion (2008 $) spent or committed by urban buyers between 1987 and 2008. Despite the clear benefits of water markets in both locations, there are on-going restrictions to trade that limit the potential gains and also third-party effects from use that require resolution.

Thermal radio emission from novae & symbiotics with the Square Kilometre Array

The thermal radio emission of novae during outburst enables us to derive fundamental quantities such as the ejected mass, kinetic energy, and density profile of the ejecta. Recent observations with newly-upgraded facilities such as the VLA and e-MERLIN are just beginning to reveal the incredibly complex processes of mass ejection in novae (ejections appear to often proceed in multiple phases and over prolonged timescales). Symbiotic stars can also exhibit outbursts, which are sometimes accompanied by the expulsion of material in jets. However, unlike novae, the long-term thermal radio emission of symbiotics originates in the wind of the giant secondary star, which is irradiated by the hot white dwarf. The effect of the white dwarf on the giant's wind is strongly time variable, and the physical mechanism driving these variations remains a mystery (possibilities include accretion instabilities and time-variable nuclear burning on the white dwarf's surface). The exquisite sensitivity of SKA1 will enable us to survey novae throughout the Galaxy, unveiling statistically complete populations. With SKA2 it will be possible to carry out similar studies in the Magellanic Clouds. This will enable high-quality tests of the theory behind accretion and mass loss from accreting white dwarfs, with significant implications for determining their possible role as Type Ia supernova progenitors. Observations with SKA1-MID in particular, over a broad range of frequencies, but with emphasis on the higher frequencies, will provide an unparalleled view of the physical processes driving mass ejection and resulting in the diversity of novae, whilst also determining the accretion processes and rates in symbiotic stars.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, in proceedings of "Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array", PoS(AASKA14)116, in pres

Changing social contracts in climate-change adaptation

Risks from extreme weather events are mediated through state, civil society and individual action 1 , 2 . We propose evolving social contracts as a primary mechanism by which adaptation to climate change proceeds. We use a natural experiment of policy and social contexts of the UK and Ireland affected by the same meteorological event and resultant flooding in November 2009. We analyse data from policy documents and from household surveys of 356 residents in western Ireland and northwest England. We find significant differences between perceptions of individual responsibility for protection across the jurisdictions and between perceptions of future risk from populations directly affected by flooding events. These explain differences in stated willingness to take individual adaptive actions when state support retrenches. We therefore show that expectations for state protection are critical in mediating impacts and promoting longer-term adaptation. We argue that making social contracts explicit may smooth pathways to effective and legitimate adaptation

What Should EDA Fund? Developing a Model for Pre-Assessment of Economic Development Investments

This paper describes the completion of a “comprehensive study of regionalism” that was conducted by a joint team of economists and economic development specialists for the Economic Development Administration (EDA). The project consisted of two main activities: an examination of the factors associated with economic development success and the creation of a practical interactive tool for EDA project assessment and comparison. Findings from surveys, interviews, and project case studies are discussed in terms of their support for a positive relationship between successful economic development efforts and factors such as leadership and private investment. Also, the authors discuss the creation of a quantitative assessment model utilizing well-known approaches such as economic impact multipliers and cluster theory. The primary contribution of this work to the existing body of EDA-focused research and evaluation literature is introducing a means of using standardized scores, also known as z-scores, to compare and assess economic development projects across both industries and regions.regional economic development, economic impact, assessment model, EDA, z-score

Towards predicting post-editing productivity

Machine translation (MT) quality is generally measured via automatic metrics, producing scores that have no meaning for translators who are required to post-edit MT output or for project managers who have to plan and budget for transla- tion projects. This paper investigates correlations between two such automatic metrics (general text matcher and translation edit rate) and post-editing productivity. For the purposes of this paper, productivity is measured via processing speed and cognitive measures of effort using eye tracking as a tool. Processing speed, average fixation time and count are found to correlate well with the scores for groups of segments. Segments with high GTM and TER scores require substantially less time and cognitive effort than medium or low-scoring segments. Future research involving score thresholds and confidence estimation is suggested

XMM-Newton observations of Nova Sgr 1998

We report on X-ray observations of Nova Sagittarius 1998 (V4633 Sgr), performed with XMM-Newton at three different epochs, 934, 1083 and 1265 days after discovery. The nova was detected with the EPIC cameras at all three epochs, with emission spanning the whole energy range from 0.2 to 10 keV. The X-ray spectra do not change significantly at the different epochs, and are well fitted for the first and third observations with a multi-temperature optically thin thermal plasma, while lower statistics in the second observations lead to a poorer fit. The thermal plasma emission is most probably originated in the shock heated ejecta, with chemical composition similar to that of a CO nova. However, we can not completely rule out reestablished accretion as the origin of the emission. We also obtain upper limits for the temperature and luminosity of a potential white dwarf atmospheric component, and conclude that hydrogen burning had already turned-off by the time of our observations.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures. Accepted in Astrophysical Journa

Optimal search strategies for hidden targets

What is the fastest way of finding a randomly hidden target? This question of general relevance is of vital importance for foraging animals. Experimental observations reveal that the search behaviour of foragers is generally intermittent: active search phases randomly alternate with phases of fast ballistic motion. In this letter, we study the efficiency of this type of two states search strategies, by calculating analytically the mean first passage time at the target. We model the perception mecanism involved in the active search phase by a diffusive process. In this framework, we show that the search strategy is optimal when the average duration of "motion phases" varies like the power either 3/5 or 2/3 of the average duration of "search phases", depending on the regime. This scaling accounts for experimental data over a wide range of species, which suggests that the kinetics of search trajectories is a determining factor optimized by foragers and that the perception activity is adequately described by a diffusion process.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Energy and eventhood: the infrastructural set piece

‘Energy and Eventhood’ considers the relationship between infrastructure and the cinematic set piece. It proposes a working definition of the set piece as a distinctly (and perhaps excessively) effortful passage or sequence, and reflects on the tendency for narrative films to incorporate infrastructural sites and structures—such as bridges, dams and pipelines—into such set pieces. A number of writers on infrastructure, as both a cultural phenomenon and a representational object, have noted the aesthetic challenge of rendering it as visible and locatable; this article examines how that difficulty becomes manifest in the infrastructural set piece. It takes as its case studies Unstoppable (2010) and Night Moves (2013), two films noted for their distinctive rhythmic expressiveness, and each one deploying the convention of the set piece in ways which exemplify and reflect on the resistance of infrastructure to narrative containment