THE DETERMINANTS OF HAPPINESS AMONG RACE GROUPS IN SOUTH AFRICA

This paper tests for happiness differences among race groups in South Africa and also investigates the determinants of happiness for each race group. Using data from the 2008 National Income Dynamics Survey, the results indicate that reported happiness differs substantially among race groups, with Blacks being the least happy. The determinants of happiness also differ between race groups. While Whites attached greater importance to physical health, employment status and absolute income matter greatly for Blacks. For Coloureds and Blacks, relative income is an important determinant of happiness, with religious importance significantly contributing to the happiness of Indians/Asians.Happiness, race, determinants, South Africa, Health Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Public Economics, I31, D60,

Procreate and cherish: A note on Australia’s abrupt shift to Pro-Natalism

After a long history of arguing that Australian governments do not intervene in the bedrooms of the nation, in 2004 the Howard Government did exactly that. Under the enthusiastic choreographing of then Treasurer Peter Costello, it implemented an explicit and indirect fertility policy in the form of a maternity payment, commonly known as the ‘Baby Bonus’. Rising fertility in Australia since that time has been widely claimed as evidence of the policy’s success. Hailed as a mini ‘baby boom’, Costello was moved to describe the policy as a shift from ‘population or perish’ to ‘procreate and cherish’. Despite arguing against it while in Opposition, the policy has been continued with only a few changes by the incumbent Rudd Government, seemingly on the grounds that it may indeed be responsible for the recent ‘nudging up’ of birth rates. This paper traces the policy shift and concludes with a brief analysis of Australian trends across the period of the Baby Bonus (2004-2008), showing that one quarter of the increase in numbers is due to cohort size, but noting that fertility has also risen in many developed countries across the same period and thus trends in Australia may just be part of a broader trend – and/or in part an artifact of the index used to measure fertility. It also draws attention to the collateral effect of an increased dependency ratio, with the mini ‘boom’ reaching school age at the very moment the post war baby boomers reach retirement age – as forewarned by Costello in 2002 when initially rejecting the idea of a Baby Bonus

On anisotropy function in crystal growth simulations using Lattice Boltzmann equation

In this paper, we present the ability of the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) equation, usually applied to simulate fluid flows, to simulate various shapes of crystals. Crystal growth is modeled with a phase-field model for a pure substance, numerically solved with a LB method in 2D and 3D. This study focuses on the anisotropy function that is responsible for the anisotropic surface tension between the solid phase and the liquid phase. The anisotropy function involves the unit normal vectors of the interface, defined by gradients of phase-field. Those gradients have to be consistent with the underlying lattice of the LB method in order to avoid unwanted effects of numerical anisotropy. Isotropy of the solution is obtained when the directional derivatives method, specific for each lattice, is applied for computing the gradient terms. With the central finite differences method, the phase-field does not match with its rotation and the solution is not any more isotropic. Next, the method is applied to simulate simultaneous growth of several crystals, each of them being defined by its own anisotropy function. Finally, various shapes of 3D crystals are simulated with standard and non standard anisotropy functions which favor growth in -, - and -directions

PDP4XL2: Personal Development Planning for Cross-Institutional Lifelong Learning. Final Report.

This collaborative project PDP4XL2 built on the strengths and successful outcomes of PDP4Life and took as its principal focus the use of personal development planning and e-portfolios to develop and sustain favourable learner attitudes towards lifelong learning and to understand the role that technology plays in supporting that process. Project objectives included identifying student and employer attitudes to and usage of PDP and e-portfolios in the creative industries and health cares. This final report documents the outcomes of the project

The Galaxy and its stellar halo: insights on their formation from a hybrid cosmological approach

We use a series of high-resolution simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo coupled to semi-analytic methods to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. The physical properties of our model Milky Way, as well as the age and metallicity distribution of stars in the different components, are in relatively good agreement with observational measurements. Assuming that the stellar halo builds up from the cores of the satellite galaxies that merged with the Milky Way over its life-time, we are able to study the physical and structural properties of this component. In agreement with previous work, we find that the largest contribution to the stellar halo should come from a few relatively massive (10^8 - 10^10 Msun) satellites, accreted at early times. Our "stellar halo" does not exhibit any clear metallicity gradient, but higher metallicity stars are more centrally concentrated than stars of lower abundance. This indicates that the probability of observing low-metallicity halo stars increases with distance from the Galactic centre. We find that the proposed "dual" nature of the Galactic stellar halo can be explained in our model as a result of a mass-metallicity relation imprinted in the building blocks of this component.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures. Minor revisions to match version accepted to MNRAS. Version with high-resolution figures available at: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~lucia/astro-ph/mw_delucia_rev.pd