Income Ranking and convergence with physical and human capital and income equality

This paper presents an overlapping generations model with physical and human capital and income inequality. It shows that inequality impedes output growth by directly harming capital accumulation and indirectly raising the ratio of physical to human capital. The convergence speed of output growth equals the lower of the convergence speeds of the relative capital ratio and inequality, and varies with initial states. Among economies with the same balanced growth rate but different initial income levels, the ranking of income can switch in favor of those starting from low inequality and a low ratio of physical to human capital, particularly if the growth rate converges slowly. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Long-run effects of unfunded social security with earnings-dependent benefits

This paper examines the effects of unfunded social security with bequests, fertility and human capital by considering a mix of earnings-dependent and universal social security benefits. We show that social security is more likely to promote growth by reducing fertility and increasing human capital investment if its benefits are more dependent on individuals' own earnings. Through simulations, we find that the differences in the effects of social security resulting from variations in the benefit formula can be too substantial to be ignored. We also investigate the welfare effect in calibrated economies. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Rising longevity, education, savings, and growth

This paper examines the impact of declines in adult mortality on growth in an overlapping generations model. With public education and imperfect annuity markets, a decline in mortality affects growth through three channels. First, it raises the saving rate and thereby increases the rate of physical capital accumulation. Second, it reduces accidental bequests, lowers investment, and thereby lowers the rate of physical capital accumulation. Third, it may lead the median voter to increase the tax rate for public education initially but lower the tax rate in a later stage. Starting from a high mortality rate as found in many Third World populations, the net effect of a decline in mortality is to raise the growth rate. However, starting from a low mortality rate such as is found in most industrial populations, the net effect of a further decline in mortality is to reduce the growth rate. The findings appear consistent with recent empirical evidence. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.

Health investment, saving, and public policy

This paper develops an overlapping-generations model in which agents invest in health to prolong life in both working and retirement periods. It explores how unfunded social security with or without health subsidies affects life expectancy, economic growth, and welfare. In particular, by extending life at a possible cost of capital accumulation, health subsidies and a pay-as-you-go pension can improve welfare, especially in the short run.

Identifying causes for N2O accumulation in a lab-scale sequencing batch reactor performing simultaneous nitrification, denitrification and phosphorus removal

The recently described process of simultaneous nitrification, denitrification and phosphorus removal (SNDPR) has a great potential to save capital and operating costs for wastewater treatment plants. However, the presence of glycogen-accumulating organisms (GAOs) and the accumulation of nitrous oxide (N2O) can severely compromise the advantages of this process. In this study, these two issues were investigated using a lab-scale sequencing batch reactor performing SNDPR over a 5-month period. The reactor was highly enriched in polyphosphate-accumulating organisms (PAOs) and GAOs representing around 70% of the total microbial community. PAOs were the dominant population at all times and their abundance increased, while GAOs population decreased over the study period. Anoxic batch tests demonstrated that GAOs rather than denitrifying PAOs were responsible for denitrification. NO accumulated from denitrification and more than half of the nitrogen supplied in a reactor cycle was released into the atmosphere as NO. After mixing SNDPR sludge with other denitrifying sludge, N2O present in the bulk liquid was reduced immediately if external carbon was added. We therefore suggest that the N2O accumulation observed in the SNDPR reactor is an artefact of the low microbial diversity facilitated by the use of synthetic wastewater with only a single carbon source. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Street elevation, Q House, Chelmer, Brisbane

View to house from street. Existing house gable roof on right.

Street elevation, White Residence, Brisbane

South-west elevation, as seen from street.

Street elevation, Goetz Residence, Buderim, Sunshine Coast

North-West elevation, as seen from street.

Street elevation, Prasser House, Buderim

South-West elevation, as seen from street.

Street elevation, Office and Shops Boroko

As seen from adjacent street corner.

Street elevation, Office and Shops Boroko

As seen from road.

On the threshold of forgetting: Amnesiac identities and the Brazilian capital

Centuries after Locke asserted the importance of memory to identity, Freudian psychology argued that what was forgotten was of equal importance as to what was remembered. The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a rising interest in the nature of forgetting, resulting in a reassessment and newfound distrust of the long revered faculty of memory. The relationship between memory and identity was inverted, seeing forgetting also become a means for forging identity. This newfound distrust of memory manifested in the writings of Nietzsche who in 1874 called for society to learn to feel unhistorically and distance itself from the past - in what was essentially tantamount to a cultural forgetting. Following the Nietzschean call, the architecture of Modernism was also compelled by the need to 'overcome' the limits imposed by history. This paper examines notions of identity through the shifting boundaries of remembering and forgetting, with particular reference to the construction of Brazilian identity through the ‘repression’ of history and memory in the design of the Brazilian capital. Designed as a forward-looking modernist utopia, transcending the limits imposed by the country's colonial heritage, the design for Brasilia exploited the anti-historicist agenda of modernism to emancipate the country from cultural and political associations with the Portuguese Empire. This paper examines the relationship between place, memory and forgetting through a discussion of the design for Brasilia.