Book review: Sanctuaries of the city: lessons from Tokyo

How do we find calm in dense heaving cities such as Tokyo, London, or New York? In Sanctuaries of the City, Anni Greve explores how places such as market squares, arts venues, and religious sites offer sociospatial capacities that enable the development of skills for coping with modern forms of living. From its empirical analysis of sanctuaries in Tokyo, this book develops a theory about mega-cities, urban sociability and identity. Rebecca Litchfield finds that although the density of this text may not appeal to all readers, the book’s methodological approach should appeal to scholars across a broad spectrum of disciplines

Evaluating the economic feasibility of thermal screens in New Zealand using a mathematical model : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Horticultural Science in Horticultural Engineering at Massey University

A mathematical model of the greenhouse environment was developed to ascertain the annual savings in heating expenditure achieved by thermal screens. Thirteen materials with thermal screening potential were investigated. Each material was modelled within glass, Agphane, and twin skin Agphane covered greenhouses, 300m2 and 1000m2 in floor area, heated with diesel, coal, electricity, natural gas, or L.P.G., to set points of 15°C and 20°C, in Auckland and Christchurch. The model consisted of two phases. Phase 1 was a steady state model of the greenhouse environment based on a series of energy and mass balances. The temperatures within the greenhouse and the quantity of heat required to hold the house at a specified set point were predicted by solving these balances simultaneously. This process enabled the average U-value for each greenhouse to be estimated. In Phase 2 of the model the annual heat load for combinations of each house size and type, cover, screen, set point, and location were estimated using average U-values from Phase 1 and meterological data indicative of Auckland and Christchurch. Using current fuel prices, annual heat loads were converted into annual heating expenditures. Using annual heating expenditure, screen life expectancy, and screen installation cost an economic analysis was conducted using internal rate of return as a measure of thermal screen feasibility. In terms of savings in heating expenditure, Black Polythene, Infrane, and Clear Polythene recorded the highest internal rate of return. It was decided that before a formal recommendation could be made further research was required to evaluate screens as summer shading or photoperiod control devices and to consider the practical problems associated with some of the screens. It was shown that returns from thermal screening were greater in Christchurch than Auckland, greater at a 20°C set point than at a 15°C set point, greater for a 1000m2 house than a 300m2 house, greatest with diesel heating in Auckland, and greatest with diesel and L.P.G. heating in Christchurch

Status of the AlCap experiment

The AlCap experiment is a joint project between the COMET and Mu2e collaborations. Both experiments intend to look for the lepton-flavour violating conversion $\mu + A \rightarrow e + A$, using tertiary muons from high-power pulsed proton beams. In these experiments the products of ordinary muon capture in the muon stopping target are an important concern, both in terms of hit rates in tracking detectors and radiation damage to equipment. The goal of the AlCap experiment is to provide precision measurements of the products of nuclear capture on Aluminium, which is the favoured target material for both COMET and Mu2e. The results will be used for optimising the design of both conversion experiments, and as input to their simulations. Data was taken in December 2013 and is currently being analysed.Comment: Presented at NuFact 2014, 25-30 August, University of Glasgow, U

Poverty in Kagera, Tanzania: Characteristics, Causes and Constraints

This paper analyses the determinants of household welfare in the Northwest region of Tanzania using microlevel cross section data. Despite having gone through a series of structural adjustment programs in the late-1980s, Tanzania is still considered one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper argues that the determinants of household welfare are numerous and complex, ranging from individual and household to community and social characteristics, but that the relative importance of these factors varies across the welfare distribution. Using quantile regressions, we find that human, social and physical capital all play a significant role in improving households’ living standards, but that the relatively poor are harmed more by weather shocks because they face more constraints in diversifying out of agriculture. Our results also reveal subtle insights into the relationships between gender and poverty.Poverty, inequality, quantile regression, gender, rainfall, shocks, agriculture, vulnerability, Kagera, Tanzania.

Estimating the value to the UK of education exports

London Economics is one of Europe's leading specialist economics and policy consultancies and has its head office in London. We also have offices in Brussels, Dublin, Cardiff and Budapest, and associated offices in Paris and Valletta. We advise clients in both the public and private sectors on economic and financial analysis, policy development and evaluation, business strategy, and regulatory and competition policy. Our consultants are highly-qualified economists with experience in applying a wide variety of analytical techniques to assist our work, including cost-benefit analysis, multi-criteria analysis, policy simulation, scenario building, statistical analysis and mathematical modelling. We are also experienced in using a wide range of data collection techniques including literature reviews, survey questionnaires, interviews and focus groups

Welfare in Vietnam During the 1990s: Poverty, Inequality and Poverty Dynamics

During the 1990s, Vietnam’s economy was transformed through a series of economic, social and political reforms, resulting in an average growth rate over the decade in excess of 6% per annum. This strong growth performance was accompanied by a dramatic fall in the incidence of consumption per capita poverty. This paper examines the changes in poverty and poverty dynamics over the 1990s using a nationally representative panel of households surveyed in 1992-93 and 1997-98. We analyse how robust the reduction in poverty is to the methods used to measure poverty. We find that regardless of where the poverty line is drawn, consumption poverty fell between 1992-93 and 1997-98, but that the extent of this fall is sensitive to the choice of poverty line. We also examine changes in the distribution of living standards over time, finding that the fall in poverty was accompanied by a rise in inequality, with some subgroups of the population failing to share equally in the strong growth of the country. Finally, we examine rural poverty dynamics, presenting transition matrices of movements in and out of poverty over time and estimating a model of consumption change. We find that regional differences are important, as are access to key institutions and infrastructure, and education. We also find that shifts in employment and production patterns, especially of rice, which we argue to be induced by the economic reform process, are strongly related to changes in living standards over time.Poverty, growth, dominance, economic reform, Vietnam

Improved apparatus for continuous culture of hydrogen-fixing bacteria

Improved apparatus permits the continuous culture of Hydrogenomonas eutropha. System incorporates three essential subsystems - /1/ environmentally isolated culture vessel, /2/ analytical system with appropriate sensors and readout devices, /3/ control system with feedback responses to each analytical measurement

An anatomy of male labour market earnings inequality in Serbia – 1996 to 2003

This study uses a regression-based framework to identify the key factors that determine the level and changes in main job earnings inequality for men. A number of different inequality measures are used in our work. The analysis uses data for Serbia drawn from eight annual labour force surveys, which cover both the early episode of sluggish transition and a more recent concerted phase of economic reform. It thus provides some useful insights on the evolution of labour earnings inequality through an uneven transitional process and identifies factors likely to retain an influence on earnings inequality as the market reform processes take greater hold