Geographical variation in bill size across bird species provides evidence for Allen's rule

Allen’s rule proposes that the appendages of endotherms are smaller, relative to body size, in colder climates, in order to reduce heat loss. Empirical support for Allen’s rule is mainly derived from occasional reports of geographical clines in extremity size of individual species. Interspecific evidence is restricted to two studies of leg proportions in seabirds and shorebirds. We used phylogenetic comparative analyses of 214 bird species to examine whether bird bills, significant sites of heat exchange, conform to Allen’s rule. The species comprised eight diverse taxonomic groups—toucans, African barbets, Australian parrots, estrildid finches, Canadian galliforms, penguins, gulls, and terns. Across all species, there were strongly significant relationships between bill length and both latitude and environmental temperature, with species in colder climates having significantly shorter bills. Patterns supporting Allen’s rule in relation to latitudinal or altitudinal distribution held within all groups except the finches. Evidence for a direct association with temperature was found within four groups (parrots, galliforms, penguins, and gulls). Support for Allen’s rule in leg elements was weaker, suggesting that bird bills may be more susceptible to thermoregulatory constraints generally. Our results provide the strongest comparative support yet published for Allen’s rule and demonstrate that thermoregulation has been an important factor in shaping the evolution of bird bills.

Re-discovering Wardell’s Chantry Chapel for Lord Petre : a crumbling fabulation

In January 2009 The Times reported that the Historic Chapels Trust (HCT) was undertaking the preservation and conservation of the Chantry Chapel of Thorndon Hall, near Brentwood, Essex, England, once the seat of the Petre family, one of England’s oldest Catholic families. The chapel has lain severely neglected for many years with missing and loose tiles, blocked gutters, and heavily eroded stonework. In spite of its desperate need of repair, inside, glimpses of the richly carved and lavishly decorated interior remain, witness to exquisite craftsmanship. Because of its quality Nikolas Pevsner had attributed the building to A W N Pugin. More recent research has established that in fact William Wardell was the architect.

By 1854, when Lord Petre commissioned this mausoleum for his estate, Wardell would have been especially known for his London curvilinear decorated churches at Greenwich, Clapham and Hammersmith. Wardell produced three complete sets of drawings for the Chantry Chapel. Drawings for all three designs are extant, and give valuable insights into Wardell's design methods and the evolution of his design thinking. They raise questions about Early Victorian and High Victorian Gothic sensibilities and establish Wardell’s architectural and design credentials beyond a doubt. This paper explores Wardell’s debt to Pugin, posits the Chantry Chapel as a rival to Pugin’s St Giles Church, Cheadle, and considers the question of patronage.

Now acknowledged to be ‘of outstanding architectural and historic interest ‘ by HCT and English Heritage, the Chantry chapel - a crumbling fabulation - is the subject of major heritage considerations. Questions about authenticity in rebuilding and reconstruction are currently overridden by the urgent need to secure the structure from collapse.

An entrenched bill of rights : a protection for the rights of minorities

This paper is concerned with the question of whether Australia would be better served by the inclusion of an entrenched Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. In particular, attention will focus on the abuses of minorities that are all but certain to arise in any society that is based on majoritarian rule. This paper will also examine the question of whether an entrenched Bill of Rights would serve as an effective safeguard against such abuses, especially where the rights of unpopular minorities are involved. The analysis to follow is undertaken against the backdrop of the efficacy, or the lack thereof, of the Constitution of the United States in preventing such abuses, and particularly that portion of the American Constitution that is known as the Bill of Rights.

Triple bill of choreographic radiance

Review of 3 choreographers : George Balanchine, Jii Kylian and Wayne McGregor

Submission to the New Zealand Parliamentary Inquiry : New Zealand Convention Centre Bill 2013

The Bill outlines the overarching purpose of the NZICC Agreement ‘to provide economic benefits to New Zealanders’. It is really a form of PPP (Public Private Partnership) where the beneficiaries are said to be the Crown and SkyCity but the real payment comes from the losses of the (mainly) community members who will gamble on the expanded facilities outlined in the Agreement. The Howeth International Convention and Exhibition Centre study (2009) established a clear business case for an international convention centre; with an optimistic benefit-cost ratio of 1.433 (which translates into a benefit to the economy of $1.433
for ever $1 spent). Aside from the short-term stimulus to jobs of the construction phase, a convention centre with capacity for 1000 delegates would create about 800 new jobs and attract up to 35 additional conferences of between 150 and 2500 delegates per year (an additional 22,000 additional international visitors and more than 200,000 extra visitor days, worth approximately $85.4 million in tourism-related expenditure per year15. It is therefore questionable as to why this venture needs to be captured by gambling interests, which will also dictate the location. This points to the efficacy of a non-casino provider being able to tender for establishment of an International Convention Centre that could be run profitably without being part of the for-profit model based on expanded gambling machines/revenue.

Least squares learning and the US Treasury bill rate

Understanding how agents formulate their expectations about Fed behavior is important for market participants because they can potentially use this information to make more accurate estimates of stock and bond prices. Although it is commonly assumed that agents learn over time, there is scant empirical evidence in support of this assumption. Thus, in this paper we test if the forecast of the three month T-bill rate in the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) is consistent with least squares learning when there are discrete shifts in monetary policy. We first derive the mean, variance and autocovariances of the forecast errors from a recursive least squares learning algorithm when there are breaks in the structure of the model. We then apply the Bai and Perron (1998) test for structural change to a forecasting model for the three month T-bill rate in order to identify changes in monetary policy. Having identified the policy regimes, we then estimate the implied biases in the interest rate forecasts within each regime. We find that when the forecast errors from the SPF are corrected for the biases due to shifts in policy, the forecasts are consistent with least squares learning. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.