Liberating labour: The New Zealand employment contracts act

Between 1984 and 1991, New Zealand converted its economic system from the most heavily regulated to the least regulated in OECD. The public sector was restructured to separate core administrative functions from government-owned production activities. The latter were corporatised, and many privatised. Product markets were deregulated and opened to international competition. Virtually all producer subsidies were abolished. Foreign trade was liberalised. Financial and capital markets were liberalised and foreign investment and immigration were made welcome. Labour markets were freed up, and workers were given the right to associate freely. In the process, a formerly inwardlooking, slow-moving economy with rising unemployment was turned into a flexible, globally competitive, high-growth economy with price stability, above-average job creation and small, effective government. New Zealand had long been known internationally for its system of centralised wage fixing and arbitration. Since 1991, however, it has become equally known for the new Employment Contracts Act (ECA), which was the capstone of the comprehensive economic and social reform programme. The ECA converted a centralist, corporatist industrial relations system into a decentralised 'market order. Freely negotiated labour contracts are now the basis for responsive, diverse labour markets. The effects of the Act can only be understood as an integral part of all-round liberalisation and New Zealand's reinvention of government. Previously antagonistic industrial relations have given way to cooperation between employers and workers, flexible adjustment to competitive conditions and an enhanced competitiveness of New Zealand workplaces and firms in a rapidly changing, internationally open economy. The new workplace relationship has led to profound attitude changes which have been inspired by the discipline of open, competitive product markets and the withdrawal of several labour-supply disincentives in the form of public-welfare supports. The main effect of the labour reforms has been to assist in making the supply-side of the New Zealand economy fairly price elastic. This has been underpinned by a price-level target for independent monetary policy and by fiscal downsizing, privatisation and public debt reduction. Employers and most employees have welcomed the freedoms under the new contracts system. In many sectors, productivity has risen steeply, reflecting more rational work practices. Managers are now able to effectively manage the human resources that firms hire. Real wages have risen, but slowly, reflecting productivity gains. Union membership and the number of union officials have fallen, as many workers now use bargaining agents to negotiate employment contracts. The frequency of strikes and lockouts has fallen considerably. The ECA and the other reforms have created a Kiwi job-creation machine, which has increased aggregate employment by over 10 percent during the long upswing of 1991- 95. It has nearly halved the overall unemployment rate within less than two years - in contrast to earlier upturns in the New Zealand cycle and the pattern in Australia. As labour shortages are emerging in the present cyclical upswing, many long-term unemployed, the young and Maori are being drawn back into gainful employment. Labour market deregulation has also increased the market premia for skills and reduced transaction costs in operating about markets. Most observers predict a period of sustained, inflation-free growth and further drops in unemployment (March 1995: 6.6%) as New Zealand - despite a strengthening currency - is now seen as an internationally highly competitive exporter and an attractive location to internationally mobile capital and enterprise.

Experimental combustor study program

Advanced combustor concepts are evaluated as a means of accommodating possible future broad specification fuels. The three advanced double annular combustor concepts consisted of (1) a concept employing high pressure drop fuel nozzles for improved atomization, (2) a concept with premixing tubes in the main stage, and (3) a concept with the pilot stage on the inside and the main stage on the sideout, which is the reverse of the other two concepts. All of the advanced concepts show promise for reduced sensitivity to fuel hydrogen content. Some hardware problems were encountered, but these problems could be quickly resolved if refinement tests were conducted. The design with the premixing main stage was selected for a parametric test because of its low NOx emissions level, carbon free dome, and very low dome temperatures which were essentially independent of fuel type. The other advanced designs also had low done temperatures. The premixing dome design liner temperatures exhibited less sensitivity to fuel type than did the base-line combustor, although more sensitivity than observed for concept 1. The inner liner hot spot and the observed smoke results for the premixing design suggest that the fuel-air mixture was not as uniform as desired

Are periodic solar wind number density structures formed in the solar corona?

[1] We present an analysis of the alpha to proton solar wind abundance ratio (AHe) during a period characterized by significant large size scale density fluctuations, focusing on an event in which the proton and alpha enhancements are anti-correlated. In a recent study using 11 years (1995–2005) of solar wind observations from the Wind spacecraft, N. M. Viall et al. [2008] showed that periodic proton density structures occurred at particular radial length-scales more often than others. The source of these periodic density structures is a significant and outstanding question. Are they generated in the interplanetary medium, or are they a relic of coronal activity as the solar wind was formed? We use AHe to answer this question, as solar wind elemental abundance ratios are not expected to change during transit. For this event, the anti-phase nature of the AHe variations strongly suggests that periodic solar wind density structures originate in the solar corona

A study of purely astrometric selection of extragalactic point sources with Gaia

Selection of extragalactic point sources, e.g. QSOs, is often hampered by significant selection effects causing existing samples to have rather complex selection functions. We explore whether a purely astrometric selection of extragalactic point sources, e.g. QSOs, is feasible with the ongoing Gaia mission. Such a selection would be interesting as it would be unbiased in terms of colours of the targets and hence would allow selection also with colours in the stellar sequence. We have analyzed a total of 18 representative regions of the sky by using GUMS, the simulator prepared for ESAs Gaia mission, both in the range of $12\le G \le 20$ mag and $12\le G \le 18$ mag. For each region we determine the density of apparently stationary stellar sources, i.e. sources for which Gaia cannot measure a significant proper motion. The density is contrasted with the density of extragalactic point sources, e.g. QSOs, in order to establish in which celestial directions a pure astrometric selection is feasible. When targeting regions at galactic latitude $|b| \ge 30^\mathrm{o}$ the ratio of QSOs to apparently stationary stars is above 50\% and when observing towards the poles the fraction of QSOs goes up to about $\sim80$\%. We show that the proper motions from the proposed Gaia successor mission in about 20 years would dramatically improve these results at all latitudes. Detection of QSOs solely from zero proper motion, unbiased by any assumptions on spectra, might lead to the discovery of new types of QSOs or new classes of extragalactic point sources.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, sent in and accepted for publishing to A&

Heterotic T-Duality and the Renormalization Group

We consider target space duality transformations for heterotic sigma models and strings away from renormalization group fixed points. By imposing certain consistency requirements between the T-duality symmetry and renormalization group flows, the one loop gauge beta function is uniquely determined, without any diagram calculations. Classical T-duality symmetry is a valid quantum symmetry of the heterotic sigma model, severely constraining its renormalization flows at this one loop order. The issue of heterotic anomalies and their cancelation is addressed from this duality constraining viewpoint.Comment: 17 pages, Late

Experimental evaluation of combustor concepts for burning broad property fuels

A baseline CF6-50 combustor and three advanced combustor designs were evaluated to determine the effects of combustor design on operational characteristics using broad property fuels. Three fuels were used in each test: Jet A, a broad property 13% hydrogen fuel, and a 12% hydrogen fuel blend. Testing was performed in a sector rig at true cruise and simulated takeoff conditions for the CF6-50 engine cycle. The advanced combustors (all double annular, lean dome designs) generally exhibited lower metal temperatures, exhaust emissions, and carbon buildup than the baseline CF6-50 combustor. The sensitivities of emissions and metal temperatures to fuel hydrogen content were also generally lower for the advanced designs. The most promising advanced design used premixing tubes in the main stage. This design was chosen for additional testing in which fuel/air ratio, reference velocity, and fuel flow split were varied

Co-Destiny: A Conceptual Goal for Parental Bereavement and the Call for a “Positive Turn” in the Scientific Study of the Parental Bereavement Process.

Parental bereavement is a unique form of bereavement and is widely considered the most intense and severe of all bereavement processes. The systematic study of bereavement initially was based on the psychoanalytic approach and concentrated on the alleviation of the negative affective symptoms associated with grief in the bereaved. The current literature in this field has identified meaning and its different construals to be important aspects in the positive adaptive processes in bereaved parents and found that meaning reconstruction in this population can promote growth and increased well-being. I believe this represents the beginning of a positive turn in the field of bereavement research. Through my own experience as a bereaved father and my formal education in positive psychology, I have devised the theoretical construct of “co-destiny.” This paper presents the theoretical and empirical evidence that represents the foundation of the concept of co-destiny. It calls for researchers and therapists within the field of parental bereavement to embrace positive psychology and to change the goal of therapy to growth and increased well-being

Shock waves in a one-dimensional Bose gas: from a Bose-Einstein condensate to a Tonks gas

We derive and analyze shock-wave solutions of hydrodynamic equations describing repulsively interacting one dimensional Bose gas. We also use the number-conserving Bogolubov approach to verify accuracy of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in shock wave problems. We show that quantum corrections to dynamics of shocks (dark-shock-originated solitons) in a Bose-Einstein condensate are negligible (important) for a realistic set of system parameters. We point out possible signatures of a Bose-Einstein condensate -- Tonks crossover in shock dynamics. Our findings can be directly verified in different experimental setups.Comment: 10 pages, small corrections with respect to the last submission, version accepted in Phys. Rev.

Two-point functions in AdS/dCFT and the boundary conformal bootstrap equations

We calculate the leading contributions to the connected two-point functions of protected scalar operators in the defect version of N=4 SYM theory which is dual to the D5-D3 probe-brane system with k units of background gauge field flux. This involves several types of two-point functions which are vanishing in the theory without the defect, such as two-point functions of operators of unequal conformal dimension. We furthermore exploit the operator product expansion (OPE) and the boundary operator expansion (BOE), which form the basis of the boundary conformal bootstrap equations, to extract conformal data both about the defect CFT and about N=4 SYM theory without the defect. From the knowledge of the one- and two-point functions of the defect theory, we extract certain structure constants of N=4 SYM theory using the (bulk) OPE and constrain certain bulk-bulk-to-boundary couplings using the BOE. The extraction of the former relies on a non-trivial, polynomial k dependence of the one-point functions, which we explicitly demonstrate. In addition, it requires the knowledge of the one-point functions of SU$(2)$ descendant operators, which we likewise explicitly determine.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figure