Australian Government Balance Sheet Management

Since almost eliminating net debt, the Australian Government%u2019s attention has turned to the financing of broader balance sheet liabilities, such as public sector superannuation. Australia will be developing a significant financial asset portfolio in the %u2018Future Fund%u2019 to smooth the financing of expenses through time. This raises the significant policy question of how best to manage the government balance sheet to reduce risk. This paper provides a framework for optimal balance sheet management. The major conclusions are that: %u2013 fiscal sustainability depends on both the expected path of future taxation and the risks around that path; %u2013 optimal balance sheet management requires knowledge of how risks affect the balance sheet (and therefore volatility in tax rates); and %u2013 the government%u2019s financial investment strategy should reduce the risk to government finances from macroeconomic shocks that permanently affect the budget. Based on this framework, we find that a Future Fund portfolio that included (amongst other potential investments) domestic nominal securities and equities of selected countries would reduce overall balance sheet risk.

One Million Police Hours: Making 440,000 Marijuana Possession Arrests in New York City

A new report released today documents the astonishing number of hours the New York Police Department has spent arresting and processing hundreds of thousands of people for low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests during Mayor Bloomberg's tenure. The report finds that NYPD used approximately 1,000,000 hours of police officer time to make 440,000 marijuana possession arrests over 11 years. These are hours that police officers might have otherwise have spent investigating and solving serious crimes.The report was prepared by Dr. Harry Levine, Professor of Sociology at Queens College and recognized expert on marijuana possession arrests, at the request of members of the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature.Additionally, the report estimates that the people arrested by NYPD for marijuana possession have spent 5,000,000 hours in police custody over the last decade. The report includes a compendium of quotes from academics, journalists, law enforcement professionals and elected officials attesting to the wastefulness, consequences and racial disparities inherent in these arrests

Healthcare not Handcuffs: Putting the Affordable Care Act to Work for Criminal Justice and Drug Policy Reform

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) sets the stage for a new health-oriented policy framework to address substance use and mental health disorders. By dramatically expanding and funding healthcare coverage to millions of currently uninsured people, the ACA represents a remarkable opportunity for criminal justice and drug policy reform advocates to advance efforts for policies promoting safe and healthy communities, without excessive reliance on the criminal justice solutions that have become so prevalent under the War on Drugs. This paper is intended as a starting framework for criminal justice and drug policy advocates to navigate the ACA, and to take advantage of the conceptual and practical opportunities it offers for shifting the conversation and the landscape. Part One of this paper describes some of the major provisions of the ACA relevant to our work: the health insurance requirement; the places many people will buy insurance, called health exchanges; Medicaid expansion; insurance coverage requirements for substance use and mental health disorders; and opportunities for improved models of coordinated care. Part Two of this paper outlines a series of practical recommendations, including program and policy examples and suggested action steps, across three broad categories: ensuring access to healthcare, leveraging the ACA to reduce incarceration, and moving from a criminilization-based drug policy approach to one rooted in health

Discursive Elements in the (de)Banalisation of Nationalism. A Study of Speeches by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy.

International audienceThe paper offers a study of the contributions of Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown to a dominant culturalist discourse on identity in Europe. In recent years, issues about immigration and integration have been central across the European community, concurrent with a general feeling of cultural insecurity. In this paper, I argue that mainstream political discourse has shifted from common sense nationalism into an even more ambiguous discourse by also taking over aspects of national-populism. The aim of the paper is consequently to show that common sense representations of nationalism tend to go beyond 'banal nationalism'. I suggest how a culturalist shift has occurred in their more overt use of nationalist representations. Thus, despite the formal aim to render a new social cohesion, the cultural references inherent to nationalism seem to generate an exclusionary imaginary, which not only allows the reproduction of nationalism but also promotes forms of exclusions, which foster introverted assertions of identities

The Rule of the Sacred: Religion, Nationalism and Secularity

Interrogating the relationship between religion and nationalism ultimately means interrogating the relationship between culture and politics, or rather what is - in the modernist mindset - considered as the separate fields of culture and politics. Interrogating this relationship is also the predicament in the study of nationalism. Nationalism already posits the relation between culture and politics as fundamental - albeit problematic - for its (re)production and its critique. The historical importance of religious institutions (for our purpose, Christianity in the European context), the analogy between the Church and the institutions of secular states (E. Hobsbawm) points a finger to their elemental correlation. The quasi-religious discourse in E. Renan's "What is nation?" (the notion of sacrifice e.g.) already suggests, for instance, how nationalist myths are closely related to and perhaps of the same nature as religious myths. It is in terms of cultural hierarchies (understood as the organisation relative to "the rule of the sacred") that, in this paper, we approach the question of the relation between religion and nationalism. Re-examining the Aristotelian categories of "form" (eidos) and "matter" (hylè), the paper attempts to define the articulation between the two different cultural arrangements (G. Deleuze) represented by the institutions of the Church and of the secular State in Europe, and define their lines of concurrence and their lines of difference

Onboard multichannel demultiplexer/demodulator

An investigation performed for NASA LeRC by COMSAT Labs, of a digitally implemented on-board demultiplexer/demodulator able to process a mix of uplink carriers of differing bandwidths and center frequencies and programmable in orbit to accommodate variations in traffic flow is reported. The processor accepts high speed samples of the signal carried in a wideband satellite transponder channel, processes these as a composite to determine the signal spectrum, filters the result into individual channels that carry modulated carriers and demodulate these to recover their digital baseband content. The processor is implemented by using forward and inverse pipeline Fast Fourier Transformation techniques. The recovered carriers are then demodulated using a single digitally implemented demodulator that processes all of the modulated carriers. The effort has determined the feasibility of the concept with multiple TDMA carriers, identified critical path technologies, and assessed the potential of developing these technologies to a level capable of supporting a practical, cost effective on-board implementation. The result is a flexible, high speed, digitally implemented Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) bulk demultiplexer/demodulator

Biodiversity of types of ectomycorrhizae in fagus stands in differently polluted forest research plots

V obdobju od 1998 do 2001 smo z mikobioindikacijsko metodo analizirali tipe ektomikorize in določili njihovo raznovrstnost v standardnih volumnih tal različno onesnaženih gozdnih raziskovalnih ploskev bukovih sestojev. Gozdne raziskovalne ploskve so bile izbrane v bližini termoenergetskih objektov (onesnaženo območje: Zavodnje - Prednji vrh in Zasavje - Dobovec) in v okoliciKočevske Reke (referenčno, neonesnaženo območje: Preža in Moravške gredice). Identificirali smo 88 različnih tipov ektomikorize iz skupnega števila 95.044 kratkih korenin. Izračunali smo biodiverzitetne indekse (Shannon-Weaverjev indeks, indeks vrstnega bogastva in indeks izenačenosti) inugotovili, da raznovrstnost tipov ektomikorize v talnih vzorcih onesnaženih ploskev ni bistveno zmanjšana, kar povezujemo z vitalnostjo bukovih sestojev.Types of ectomycorrhizae were identified by the mycobioindication method and biodiversity was assessed in soil cores from differently polluted beech forestresearch plots in the period 1998 - 2001. Forest research plots were situated in the vicinity of thermal power plants (polluted plots: Zavodnje - Prednji vrh and Zasavje - Dobovec) and in unpolluted areas (in the vicinity ofKočevska Reka: Preža and Moravške gredice). Eighty-eight different types of ectomycorrhizae were determined from a total of 95,044 root tips. Biodiversityindices (Shannon- Weaver index of diversity, species richness and equitability) were estimated. In soil cores from polluted areas no decrease inbiodiversity was determined. Consequently, it can be concluded that high biodiversity reflects good health status of beech forest in Slovenia

T-cell co-stimulatory blockade in kidney transplantation: back to the bench

It is believed that blocking positive T-cell co-stimulatory pathways should lead to long-term graft acceptance. Despite the exciting initial achievements in experimental animal models, targeting co-stimulatory pathways has shown to be much more complex in the clinic. In addition to multiple binding partners, some co-stimulatory interactions have been found to be inhibitory in nature, whereas others were demonstrated to be important in the development of regulatory T cells. Moreover, memory T cells have been shown to be resistant to co-stimulation blockade. Herein we focus on the B7:CD28 pathway and describe the evolution of targeting this pathway with cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4-Ig from bench to clinic. We also attempt to address possible causes for the unexpected high rejection rate observed in the phase III clinical trials with belatacept, using experimental data obtained from basic science research

Uncertainty propagation from the cell transmission traffic flow model to emission predictions: a data-driven approach

Road traffic exhaust emission predictions are used to inform transport policy and investment decisions aimed at reducing emissions and achieving sustainable mobility. Emission predictions are also used as inputs when modeling air quality and human exposure to traffic-related air pollutants. To be effective, such policies and/or integration must be based on robust models that not only provide point-based predictions but also inform these with an interval of confidence that properly accounts for the propagation of uncertainties through the complex chain of models involved. This paper develops a data-driven methodological framework that enables calculating the uncertainty in average speed–based emission predictions induced by uncertainty in its traffic data inputs, which are most often predictions (or outputs) of traffic flow models. An ensemble-based optimisation approach is used to estimate both calibration and validation errors arising from uncertainty in the structure and parameterisation of the cell transmission model, a discretised first-order macroscopic traffic flow model that is often integrated with average speed–based emission models. A Monte Carlo sampling approach is proposed to propagate the uncertainty in traffic flow inputs to emission predictions. To ensure transferability of findings, this methodology has been tested using multiple real data sets on three motorway road networks, one of which operates under variable speed limits