The Institutions-Growth Nexus: Stages of Development

The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of institutions on the economic growth and examine whether the ultimate impact differs at various stages of development among 24 Asian countries over the period 1996-2008 using a dynamic panel data analysis model based on the SYS-GMM estimation procedure. The overall analysis of this study shows that institutions indeed are important in determining the long-run economic growth. However, the impact of the institutions on economic growth varies across the regions and depends upon the existence level of development. This study concludes that the institutions are more effective in developed region as compared to developing region. More specially, control over corruption, rule of law and regulatory quality are highly effective in promoting long rum economic growth in East Asia than South Asia. Different countries require different set of institutions to promote long run economic growth.Institutions, Economic Growth, Stages of Development

Young people's voices on cyber bullying: what can age comparisons tell us

This is a report of a youth-led research study, commissioned by the Diana Award. It illuminates contemporary experiences of and attitudes towards cyber bullying, with a particular focus on age comparisons between older and younger youth. This is the largest survey carried out on cyber bullying in England to date that has been steered by young people themselves. It consisted of: one large survey, two online surveys and four focus groups, carried out from September 2009 to July 2011. In total, it encompassed the views of 1,512 young people in England (consisting of 1490 pupils who completed the surveys and 22 who designed the research). It provides a a clearer understanding of the nature and prevalence of cyber bullying among young people and recommends effective ways to strengthen preventative action

Adult oral health and dental visiting in Australia: results from the National Dental Telephone Interview Survey 2010

This publication reports on the oral health, dental visiting and dental treatment needs of Australian adults as self-reported in the National Dental Telephone Interview Survey (NDTIS) 2010. Time series data across all NDTISs conducted since 1994 are also presented to provide a picture of how key measures have changed over this period. International comparisons are also included.Oral health In 2010, the majority of Australian adults reported good oral health. However, 37% reported that they had experienced an oral health issue in the previous 12 months, including 15% who experienced toothache, 25% who felt uncomfortable with their dental appearance and 17% who had avoided certain foods. Adults who were from low-income households or held an Australian Government concession card were more likely to report having \u27fair\u27 or \u27poor\u27 oral health and to have experienced toothache than adults from high-income households or non-cardholders. There was no significant change over time in these measures.Dental visiting Around 60% of adults made a dental visit in the previous 12 months and the majority of these visited for a check-up (60%). Adults in the lowest income group (51%) and cardholders (those who hold an Australian Government concession card) (53%) were less likely than those in the highest household income group (65%) and non-cardholders (64%) to have made a dental visit in the previous 12 months. Adults from Major cities were more likely than those from all other areas to have made a dental visit and to have visited for a check-up.Barriers to dental care use Around 38% of adults experienced a financial barrier or hardship associated with dental visits. Overall, 31% avoided or delayed making a dental visit due to cost. Of those who did visit, around 11% of adults reported that dental visits in the previous 12 months were a large financial burden. Adults from the lowest income households were seven times as likely to report difficulty paying a $150 dental bill than those from high-income households.International comparisons Australian adults reported oral health similar to their Canadian counterparts but generally better than that of New Zealanders. Fewer Australians than New Zealanders had no natural teeth. However, Australians were more likely than their New Zealand counterparts to have made a dental visit in the previous 12 months but less likely than those in Canada to do so. Australian adults were more likely at all ages than Canadian adults to report that they had avoided or delayed visiting due to cost. However, they were less likely to have avoided or delayed due to cost than New Zealanders in all age groups up to 45-54 years and less likely to report that they currently needed dental care

Optimal Net-Load Balancing in Smart Grids with High PV Penetration

Mitigating Supply-Demand mismatch is critical for smooth power grid operation. Traditionally, load curtailment techniques such as Demand Response (DR) have been used for this purpose. However, these cannot be the only component of a net-load balancing framework for Smart Grids with high PV penetration. These grids can sometimes exhibit supply surplus causing over-voltages. Supply curtailment techniques such as Volt-Var Optimizations are complex and computationally expensive. This increases the complexity of net-load balancing systems used by the grid operator and limits their scalability. Recently new technologies have been developed that enable the rapid and selective connection of PV modules of an installation to the grid. Taking advantage of these advancements, we develop a unified optimal net-load balancing framework which performs both load and solar curtailment. We show that when the available curtailment values are discrete, this problem is NP-hard and develop bounded approximation algorithms for minimizing the curtailment cost. Our algorithms produce fast solutions, given the tight timing constraints required for grid operation. We also incorporate the notion of fairness to ensure that curtailment is evenly distributed among all the nodes. Finally, we develop an online algorithm which performs net-load balancing using only data available for the current interval. Using both theoretical analysis and practical evaluations, we show that our net-load balancing algorithms provide solutions which are close to optimal in a small amount of time.Comment: 11 pages. To be published in the 4th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys 17) Changes from previous version: Fixed a bug in Algorithm 1 which was causing some min cost solutions to be misse

Investigating the Effectiveness of Dispersants for Graphitic Carbon Black Suspensions

The dispersability of graphitic carbon black (Monarch 1000) selected as a model for carbon nanotubes has been investigated in aqueous and non aqueous media using rheological, conductivity measurements and atomic force microscopy. The effectiveness of eight dispersants used for water was investigated namely polyethylene oxide polypropylene oxide ABA copolymers (PE/F 103 with 2x16 ethylene oxide units and PE/F 108 with 2x148 ethylene oxide units), Triton X100 and Triton X405 which contains an alkyl (octyl) phenol group with 10 and 40 ethylene oxide groups attached respectively, Lugalvan BNO12 which is a Naphthol Ethoxylate with 12 ethylene oxide units, sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) an anionic surfactant with a tail of 12 carbon atoms and sulphate group attached to the tail and Sodium dedecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) which contains benzene ring in its anchoring group and NPE1800 (nonyl phenyl polypropylene oxide-polyethylene oxide with 27 ethylene oxide units). While for non polar organic solvents three dispersants namely polyhydroxystearic acid (Hypermer LP1), PEG 30-dipolyhydroxystearic acid (Hypermer B246) and polyisobutylene succinimide (OLOA 11000) were used. Hypermer LP1 is homopolymer and Hypermer B246 is polyhydroxystearic acid/polyethylene oxide/polyhydroxystearic acid ABA block copolymer while OLOA 11000 has polar head group (polyamine) attached to a hydrocarbon chain (polyisobutylene). Two non polar organic solvents decalin and xylene were selected. Decalin is aliphatic in nature while xylene is aromatic and it was observed that dispersing carbon black in xylene was relatively easy but there was not much difference in results for either media, which showed that the role of aromaticity of medium in dispersing graphitic carbon black is not significant. Adsorption isotherms of all dispersants were studied. The adsorption isotherms of PE/F 103 in comparison with PE/F 108 and Triton X100 in comparison with Triton X405 revealed that in molar terms the adsorption decreases with increasing number of ethylene oxide units indicating that adsorption is governed by the size of PEO (polyethylene oxide) chain length. Triton X100, Triton X405, Lugalvan BNO12 and NPE 1800 contain aromatic rings in their anchor group and adsorbed more strongly and proved to be much more efficient stabilizers. SDBS also showed higher adsorption than SDS due to п-п interaction with the graphitic carbon black. In non aqueous media, adsorption is a minimum in molar terms for homopolymer Hypermer LP1 as compared to other polymers. As the whole polymer molecule has affinity to adsorb onto the surface and by consequence the whole molecule may lay flat onto the surface giving smaller adsorption amounts. While Hypermer B246 and OLOA 11000 both dispersants consist of an anchoring group which strongly adsorbs on the surface and stabilising chain which has good solubility in the solvent and extends sufficiently in the solvent to import stability. The relative viscosity-effective volume fraction curves were compared with the theoretical curves for the hard sphere dispersions calculated using Krieger-Dougherty equation and showed that Triton X100, Triton X405, Lugalvan BNO12, NPE 1800, SDS and SDBS dispersions could be prepared at much higher solid fraction than those dispersions stabilized by PE/F 103 and PE/F 108. The results indicate that the presence of aromatic groups in the hydrophobic group and sufficient number of ethylene oxide units in adsorbed layer of the surfactants is desirable in producing the stable dispersions for these graphitic carbon black dispersions and would be sensible choices in stabilising carbon nanotubes. In non aqueous media, Hypermer LP1 did not show good agreement with the Krieger-Dougherty equation; the viscosities were all slightly higher than that predicted by that equation. The other two dispersants Hypermer B246 and OLOA 11000 proved to be good stabilizers for crystalline graphitic carbon black as they made dispersions of lower viscosities. That means homopolymer Hypermer LP1 may be more suitable for polar particles but not effective for hydrophobic surfaces. For hydrophobic surfaces a dispersant with block copolymer structure is required rather than homopolymer. Oscillatory shear measurements showed high values of storage and loss modulus at high volume fractions indicating strong repulsive interactions between the carbon black particles. The effectiveness of all dispersants was investigated by measuring the electrical conductivity measurements of carbon black dispersions prepared by using polymers at their optimum concentrations. PE series and Hypermer LP1 produced flocculated dispersions of much higher electrical conductivity as compared to other polymers which might be due to less number of ethylene oxide units in adsorbed layer. The performance of polymers was also measured by atomic force microscopy which is a characterizing technique to evaluate the effectiveness of polymers by measuring the interaction forces (attractive or repulsive forces) between particles in the presence and in the absence of polymers. Spherical glassy carbon black (2-12 micron size) was used to model Monarch 1000 because a larger size carbon black particle was required in AFM and similar results were observed except PE/F 108. PE/F 108 showed repulsive forces on approach and separation which indicated it an effective stabilizer which was a contradiction with rheology and conductivity experiments. However PE/F 103 and Hypermer LP1 showed an attraction on approach and separation

Braid groups in complex spaces

We describe the fundamental groups of ordered and unordered $k-$point sets in the n-dimensional complex space $C^n$ generating an affine subspace of fixed dimension