The world economy [December 1992]

In the second quarter of 1992 GDP/GNP growth averaged 0.5% in the main four world economies. The position of the USA, Germany and France improved but growth slowed dramatically in Japan. This brief analysis sets out growth rates for each country and provides a provisional estimate for the major industrial economies during the second quarter

Outlook and appraisal [March 1993]

The end of the recession is at hand, but the size and timing of proposed tax increases may limit the speed of recovery and so reduce further the prospects for the three million unemployed in Britain

Outlook and appraisal [June 1993]

First quarter GDP figures signal the end of the recession. Recent falls in unemployment and rising house prices should stimulate greater expenditure from consumers now that the threat of redundancy has receded

The Scottish economy [March 1993]

Our previous forecast of a small fall in the seasonally adjusted output index for Scottish production industries (Divisions 1 to 4 of the 1980 SIC) for the third quarter last year was not borne out by the actual outcome. This is mainly due to a large under-reporting of the index for the second quarter last year in the previous official data release. It is now clear that the prolonged recession, and particularly the substantial fall in output in the second quarter contributed significantly to the deterioration of business confidence as reported in the previous Scottish Chambers' business surveys (which should also affect the early official recording of the second quarter's output). This under-reporting leads our model to predict a further fall, although small, in the following quarter. However, the actual outcome of industrial output, total volume of sales and new orders in the third quarter turned out to be not as bad as we had been expecting (see also the following business survey section). Nevertheless, as data reveal in this paper, we are expecting a large fall in production for 1992 as a whole. There will be a further marked reduction in Scottish industrial output

Special article : Quarterly Economic Commentary: Volume 10-18

The Fraser ofAllander Institute has, since its inception, sought to promote debate and research into the Scottish economy. One way in which we have done this is to publish, every quarter, a collection of views and results from those who conduct research in this area. In the current volume J McGilvray presents a review of the responses to the government's consultation paper on water and sewerage in Scotland. In previous volumes, a large number of articles appeared and addressed a wide variety of subjects. Articles which appeared in volumes 10 - 18 are documented on the following pages and those wishing to obtain backcopies can do so, through the Institute, by contacting the editor. Articles appear by volume & number and are labelled according to whether they were a Feature Article (FA), Briefing Paper (BP), Economic Perspective (EP) or a Special Article (SA

Energy gain of wetted-foam implosions with auxiliary heating for inertial fusion studies

Low convergence ratio implosions (where wetted-foam layers are used to limit capsule convergence, achieving improved robustness to instability growth) and auxiliary heating (where electron beams are used to provide collisionless heating of a hotspot) are two promising techniques that are being explored for inertial fusion energy applications. In this paper, a new analytic study is presented to understand and predict the performance of these implosions. Firstly, conventional gain models are adapted to produce gain curves for fixed convergence ratios, which are shown to well-describe previously simulated results. Secondly, auxiliary heating is demonstrated to be well understood and interpreted through the burn-up fraction of the deuterium-tritium fuel, with the gradient of burn-up with respect to burn-averaged temperature shown to provide good qualitative predictions of the effectiveness of this technique for a given implosion. Simulations of auxiliary heating for a range of implosions are presented in support of this and demonstrate that this heating can have significant benefit for high gain implosions, being most effective when the burn-averaged temperature is between 5 and 20 keV

Crop updates 2006 - Farming Systems

This session covers nineteen papers from different authors: SOIL AND NUTRIENT MANAGEMENT 1. Inve$tigating fertili$er inve$tment, Wayne Pluske, Nutrient Management Systems 2. KASM, the potassium in Agricultural System Model,Bill Bowden and Craig Scanlan, DAWA Northam and UWA, School of Earth and Geographical Sciences 3. Long term productivity and economic benefits of subsurface acidity management from surface and subsurface liming, Stephen Davies, Chris Gazey and Peter Tozer, Department of Agriculture 4. Furrow and ridges to prevent waterlogging, Dr Derk Bakker, Department of Agriculture 5. Nitrous oxide emissions from a cropped soil in Western Australia, Louise Barton1, David Gatter2, Renee Buck1, Daniel Murphy1, Christoph Hinz1and Bill Porter2 1School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 2Department of Agriculture GROWER DECISIONS 6. Managing the unmanageable, Bill Bowden Department of Agriculture 7. Review of climate model summaries reported in Department of Agriculture’s Season Outlook, Meredith Fairbanks, Department of Agriculture 8. Mapping the frost risk in Western Australia, Nicolyn Short and Ian Foster, Department of Agriculture 9. .35 kg/ha.day and other myths, James Fisher, Doug Abrecht and Mario D’Antuono, Department of Agriculture 10. Gaining with growers – Lessons from a successful alliance of WA Grower Groups, Tracey M. Gianatti, Grower Group Alliance 11. WA Agribusiness Trial Network Roundup – 2005, Paul Carmody, Local Farmer Group Network, UWA 12. Drivers of no-till adoption, Frank D’Emdenabc, Rick Llewellynabdand Michael Burtonb,aCRC Australian Weed Management; bSchool of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UWA. cDepartment of Agriculture, dCSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Adelaide PRODUCTION SYSTEMS, PRECISION AGRICULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY 13. Maintaining wheat and lupin yields using phase pastures and shielded sprayers to manage increasing herbicide resistance, Caroline Peek, Nadine Eva, Chris Carter and Megan Abrahams, Department of Agriculture 14. Analaysis of a wheat-pasture rotation in the 330mm annual rainfall zone using the STEP model, Andrew Blake and Caroline Peek, Department of Agriculture 15. Response to winter drought by wheat on shallow soil with low seeding rate and wide row spacing, Paul Blackwell1, Sylvain Pottier2and Bill Bowden1 1 Department of Agriculture; 2Esitpa (France) 16. How much yield variation do you need to justify zoning inputs? Michael Robertson and Greg Lyle, CSIRO Floreat, Bill Bowden, Department of Agriculture; Lisa Brennan, CSIRO Brisbane 17. Automatic guidance and wheat row position: On-row versus between-row seeding at various rates of banded P fertilisers, Tony J. Vyn1, Simon Teakle2, Peter Norris3and Paul Blackwell4,1Purdue University, USA; 2Landmark; 3Agronomy for Profit; 4 Department of Agriculture 18. Assessing the sustainability of high production systems (Avon Agricultural Systems Project), Jeff Russell and James Fisher, Department of Agriculture, Roy Murray-Prior and Deb Pritchard, Muresk Institute; Mike Collins, ex WANTFA, 19. The application of precision agriculture techniques to assess the effectiveness of raised beds on saline land in WA, Derk Bakker, Greg Hamilton, Rob Hetherington, Andrew Van Burgel and Cliff Spann, Department of Agricultur

Layered control architectures in robots and vertebrates

We revieiv recent research in robotics, neuroscience, evolutionary neurobiology, and ethology with the aim of highlighting some points of agreement and convergence. Specifically, we com pare Brooks' (1986) subsumption architecture for robot control with research in neuroscience demonstrating layered control systems in vertebrate brains, and with research in ethology that emphasizes the decomposition of control into multiple, intertwined behavior systems. From this perspective we then describe interesting parallels between the subsumption architecture and the natural layered behavior system that determines defense reactions in the rat. We then consider the action selection problem for robots and vertebrates and argue that, in addition to subsumption- like conflict resolution mechanisms, the vertebrate nervous system employs specialized selection mechanisms located in a group of central brain structures termed the basal ganglia. We suggest that similar specialized switching mechanisms might be employed in layered robot control archi tectures to provide effective and flexible action selection