Vanishing treasures : year end report Fiscal year ... and proposed activities for FY ... /

Description based on: Fiscal year 2001; title from cover.

Science and technology report; annual report to the Congress, submitted in accordance with the National science and technology policy, organization and priorities act of 1976

"Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology."

Federal aid for education. Hearings before the Committee on education and labor, U. S. Senate, 79th Congress, 1st session, on S. 181, a bill to authorize the appropriation of funds to assist the states and territories in more adequately financing their systems of public education during emergency, and in reducing the inequalities of educational opportunities through public elementary and secondary schools...

James E. Murray, chairman.

Australia's Security and the threat of Islamic Extremism in Southeast Asia

Australian foreign and security policy confronts a series of difficult challenges in coping with the emergence of an Islamic extremist threat in Southeast Asia. Australian policy makers are being drawn into unfamiliar linkages with moderate Islam, and into closer cooperation with Indonesia, the most populous Islamic nation in the world, in an attempt to offset Islamic extremists. Further, they must achieve those objectives at a time when important interests are at stake beyond Southeast Asia, when bipartisan agreement about the direction of foreign policy is waning, and when divisions over the appropriate trajectory of Australian security policy are intense. A delicacy almost unprecedented in Australian foreign policy will be required.

The promotion and disruption of community service delivery systems

In this paper, we report data drawn from a larger project on the functioning of the Queensland community service delivery system, particularly that providing services to people with disabilities. Our reasoning for focusing at this level is that, from the service user's perspective, support is derived from the service delivery system, not just individual service providers. Defining the service delivery system as formal services and informal support networks, we undertook interviews and focus groups with service providers in six areas in Queensland: inner urban, outer urban, rural and remote. The period on which we report is one in which considerable reform activity had been undertaken by funding bodies of the Commonwealth and State governments. We report on those factors we identified which promote the integrated functioning of the service delivery system, as well as those factors that disrupt it. We conclude with a brief evaluative analysis of the current status of the system.

Adult mental health needs and expenditure in Australia

Background Relatively little international work has examined whether mental health resource allocation matches need. This study aimed to determine whether adult mental health resources in Australia are being distributed equitably. Method Individual measures of need were extrapolated to Australian Areas, and Area-based proxies of need were considered. Particular attention was paid to the prevalence of mental health problems, since this is arguably the most objective measure of need. The extent to which these measures predicted public sector, private sector and total adult mental health expenditure at an Area level was examined. Results In the public sector, 41.6% of expenditure variation was explained by the prevalence of affective disorders, personality disorders, cognitive impairment and psychosis, as well as the Area's level of economic resources and State/Territory effects. In the private sector, 72.4% of expenditure variation was explained by service use and State/Territory effects (with an alternative model incorporating service use and State/Territory supply of private psychiatrists explaining 69.4% of expenditure variation). A relatively high proportion (58.7%) of total expenditure variation could be explained by service utilisation and State/Territory effects. Conclusions For services to be delivered equitably, the majority of variation in expenditure would have to be accounted for by appropriate measures of need. The best model for public sector expenditure included an appropriate measure of need but had relatively poor explanatory power. The models for private sector and total expenditure had greater explanatory power, but relied on less appropriate measures of need. It is concluded that mental health services in Australia are not yet being delivered equitably.

The WOMAC knee and hip osteoarthritis indices: Development, validation, globafization and influence on the development of the AUSCAN hand osteoarthritis indices

Clinical measurement in both clinical research and clinical practice requires tools and techniques that are valid, reliable and responsive. Patient-centred self-reported measures provide opportunity to evaluate consequences of osteoarthritis, that are important and relevant to patients with the condition. The WOMAC and AUSCAN Indices are health status measurement questionnaires that are valid, reliable and responsive, easy to complete, simple to score and available in multiple language forms and scaling formats. They provide opportunities to capture patient relevant information, relating to the impact of interventions, in clinical research and clinical practice environments. WOMAC data have also contributed to the development of proposed definitions for responder criteria and state-attainment criteria in osteoarthritis.

Delivering demons punishing wives: False imprisonment, exoricism and other matrimonial duties in a late 20th-century manslaughter case

This article provides an analysis of R v Vollmer and Others, Australia’s most famous ‘exorcism-manslaughter’ case, in which a woman, Joan Vollmer, underwent an ‘exorcism’ performed by four people, resulting in her death. We examine how taken-for-granted distinctions were collapsed during the resulting trial - distinctions between crime and punishment, exorcism and punishment, church and state, the past and the present, law and religion, reason and unreason and between a demon and a woman. We show how the defence argument for the reality of demonic possession normalized the bizarre, while simultaneously exoticizing the mundane or ‘traditional’ criminal case involving a husband defendant and a dead wife. The apparent assumption on the part of the police and the media that this case was bizarre serves to veil the fact of its relative ordinariness. A wife is killed, and the lethal punishing violence inflicted on her body downplayed, to be reinterpreted in the legal context as somehow a consequence of something she herself precipitated. Our analysis of the Vollmer case provides a novel perspective on that always intriguing conundrum of crime and punishment.

Selective processing of masked and unmasked verbal threat material in anxiety: Influence of an immediate acute stressor

Attentional biases for threat were investigated using a computerised version of the emotional Stroop task. The study examined the influence of state and trait anxiety by employing a student sample assigned to high trait anxious (HTA; n = 32) or low trait anxious (LTA; n = 32) groups on the basis of questionnaire scores, and state anxiety was manipulated within participants through the threat of electric shock. Threatening words that were either unrelated (e.g., cancer, danger) or related to the threat of shock (e.g., electrocute, shock) were presented to participants both within and outside of awareness. In the latter condition a backward masking procedure was used to prevent awareness and exposure thresholds between the target and mask were individually set for each participant. For unmasked trials the HTA group showed significant interference in colour naming for all threat words relative to control words when performing under the threat of shock, but not in the shock safe condition. For the masked trials, despite chance performance in being able to identify the lexical status of the items, HTA participants showed facilitated colour naming for all threat words relative to control items when performing under threat of shock, but this effect was not evident in the shock safe condition. Neither valence of the items nor the threat of shock influenced colour naming latencies in either exposure mode for the LTA group.

Whither the responsibility to protect? Humanitarian intervention and the 2005 World Summit

At the 2005 World Summit, the world's leaders committed themselves to the "responsibility to protect", recognizing both that all states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and that the UN should help states to discharge this responsibility using either peaceful means or enforcement action. This declaration ostensibly marks an important milestone in the relationship between sovereignty and human rights but its critics argue that it will make little difference in practice to the world's most threatened people. The purpose of this article is to ask how consensus was reached on the responsibility to protect, given continuing hostility to humanitarian intervention expressed by many (if not most) of the world's states and whether the consensus will contribute to avoiding future Kosovos (cases where the Security Council is deadlocked in the face of a humanitarian crises) and future Rwandas (cases where states lack the political will to intervene). It suggests that four key factors contributed to the consensus: pressure from proponents of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, its adoption by Kofi Annan and the UN's High Level Panel, an emerging consensus in the African Union, and the American position. Whilst these four factors contributed to consensus, each altered the meaning of the responsibility to protect in important ways, creating a doctrine that many states can sign up to but that does little to prevent future Kosovos and Rwandas and may actually inhibit attempts to build a consensus around intervention in future cases.

The political control of orthodoxy in the construction of the Romanian State, 1859-1918

This article analyses the relationship between Orthodoxy and state from the unification of the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859 to the creation of Greater Romania in 1918. Examining the attitudes of political leaders towards the dominant religion, this article argues that during the reigns of Prince Cuza and King Carol I the Church became a state institution closely connected to the development of political regimes. It is suggested that by claiming doctrinal religious connections with Constantinople and independence from foreign intervention in the Church’s affairs, religious and political leaders from 1859 to 1918 amplified the construction of Romanian national mythology which contributed towards the political unity of the state.

Mathematical modelling and control of agitated extraction columns

Liquid-liquid extraction has long been known as a unit operation that plays an important role in industry. This process is well known for its complexity and sensitivity to operation conditions. This thesis presents an attempt to explore the dynamics and control of this process using a systematic approach and state of the art control system design techniques. The process was studied first experimentally under carefully selected. operation conditions, which resembles the ranges employed practically under stable and efficient conditions. Data were collected at steady state conditions using adequate sampling techniques for the dispersed and continuous phases as well as during the transients of the column with the aid of a computer-based online data logging system and online concentration analysis. A stagewise single stage backflow model was improved to mimic the dynamic operation of the column. The developed model accounts for the variation in hydrodynamics, mass transfer, and physical properties throughout the length of the column. End effects were treated by addition of stages at the column entrances. Two parameters were incorporated in the model namely; mass transfer weight factor to correct for the assumption of no mass transfer in the. settling zones at each stage and the backmixing coefficients to handle the axial dispersion phenomena encountered in the course of column operation. The parameters were estimated by minimizing the differences between the experimental and the model predicted concentration profiles at steady state conditions using non-linear optimisation technique. The estimated values were then correlated as functions of operating parameters and were incorporated in·the model equations. The model equations comprise a stiff differential~algebraic system. This system was solved using the GEAR ODE solver. The calculated concentration profiles were compared to those experimentally measured. A very good agreement of the two profiles was achieved within a percent relative error of ±2.S%. The developed rigorous dynamic model of the extraction column was used to derive linear time-invariant reduced-order models that relate the input variables (agitator speed, solvent feed flowrate and concentration, feed concentration and flowrate) to the output variables (raffinate concentration and extract concentration) using the asymptotic method of system identification. The reduced-order models were shown to be accurate in capturing the dynamic behaviour of the process with a maximum modelling prediction error of I %. The simplicity and accuracy of the derived reduced-order models allow for control system design and analysis of such complicated processes. The extraction column is a typical multivariable process with agitator speed and solvent feed flowrate considered as manipulative variables; raffinate concentration and extract concentration as controlled variables and the feeds concentration and feed flowrate as disturbance variables. The control system design of the extraction process was tackled as multi-loop decentralised SISO (Single Input Single Output) as well as centralised MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) system using both conventional and model-based control techniques such as IMC (Internal Model Control) and MPC (Model Predictive Control). Control performance of each control scheme was. studied in terms of stability, speed of response, sensitivity to modelling errors (robustness), setpoint tracking capabilities and load rejection. For decentralised control, multiple loops were assigned to pair.each manipulated variable with each controlled variable according to the interaction analysis and other pairing criteria such as relative gain array (RGA), singular value analysis (SVD). Loops namely Rotor speed-Raffinate concentration and Solvent flowrate Extract concentration showed weak interaction. Multivariable MPC has shown more effective performance compared to other conventional techniques since it accounts for loops interaction, time delays, and input-output variables constraints.

Hidden state models for time series

Amongst all the objectives in the study of time series, uncovering the dynamic law of its generation is probably the most important. When the underlying dynamics are not available, time series modelling consists of developing a model which best explains a sequence of observations. In this thesis, we consider hidden space models for analysing and describing time series. We first provide an introduction to the principal concepts of hidden state models and draw an analogy between hidden Markov models and state space models. Central ideas such as hidden state inference or parameter estimation are reviewed in detail. A key part of multivariate time series analysis is identifying the delay between different variables. We present a novel approach for time delay estimating in a non-stationary environment. The technique makes use of hidden Markov models and we demonstrate its application for estimating a crucial parameter in the oil industry. We then focus on hybrid models that we call dynamical local models. These models combine and generalise hidden Markov models and state space models. Probabilistic inference is unfortunately computationally intractable and we show how to make use of variational techniques for approximating the posterior distribution over the hidden state variables. Experimental simulations on synthetic and real-world data demonstrate the application of dynamical local models for segmenting a time series into regimes and providing predictive distributions.

Status and professional association councils. Available in 4 volumes.

This thesis examines the predictive value of a conceptual distinction between status-seeking associations and status-maintaining associations for enhancing understanding of ten selected professional associations and of the attitudes, values, behaviour and policies of their governing organs. Thirty four specific hypotheses have been tested by such research methods as questionnaires administered to individuals and associations, participant observation and an examination of association minutes and publications. Certain hypotheses have been found to be valid for particular matched pairs and/or groups of associations. The findings of the study suggest that the present conceptualisation of profession, the individual professional, professionalism, professionalisation, professional status and that relating to the role of the professions in society needs to be refined and modified in varying degrees in application to accounting associations, business graduate associations and management associations. The concept of the `ideal type' profession is shown to be of limited value in understanding certain aspects of the activities of business graduate and management associations. The findings of the study suggest that in future the professional associations examined may attach less importance to their qualifying role and lay more stress upon their representational role. The professional association faces a managerial challenge to adjust and adapt to a range of `external' pressures and `internal' demands from members and may increasingly need to be regarded as an organisation that possesses certain combinations or sets of characteristics rather than as a type of organisation that possesses a particular or relatively exclusive set. With a blurring of the distinction between the professional and state sector vocational education, and a growing customer/market orientation associated with the changing nature of work, membership of a professional association may, in future, come to be associated rather more with securing access to a relevant range of services and less with qualification for a particular career.