Is academic economics withering in Australia?

Abstract: Departments of economics in Australia have not fared well recently. Many have been closed, merged or relocated, their staff made redundant while economics degrees and majors have been eliminated. This article tries to understand why academic economics appears to be withering in this country, or at least increasingly concentrated in Group of Eight (Go8) universities, and what if anything can still be done to preserve what is left

Self-assembled hexagonal double fishnets as negative index materials

We show experimentally the successful use of colloidal lithography for the fabrication of negative index metamaterials in the near-infrared wavelength range. In particular, we investigated a specific implementation of the widely studied double fishnet metamaterials, consisting of a gold-silica-gold layer stack perforated by a hexagonal array of round holes. Tuning of the hole diameter allows us to tailor these self-assembled metamaterials both as single- ({\epsilon} < 0) and double ({\epsilon} < 0 and {\mu} < 0) negative metamaterials

Service network design for an intermodal container network with flexible due dates/times and the possibility of using subcontracted transport

An intermodal container transportation network is being developed between Rotterdam and several inland terminals in North West Europe: the EUROPEAN GATEWAY SERVICES (EGS) network. This network is developed and operated by the seaports of EUROPE CONTAINER TERMINALS (ECT). To use this network cost-efficiently, a centralized planning of the container transportation is required, to be operated by the seaport. In this paper, a new mathematical model is proposed for the service network design. The model uses a combination of a path-based formulation and a minimum flow network formulation. It introduces two new features to the intermodal network-planning problem. Firstly, overdue deliveries are penalized instead of prohibited. Secondly, the model combines self-operated and subcontracted services. The service network design considers the network-planning problem at a tactical level: the optimal service schedule between the given network terminals is determined. The model considers self-operated or subcontracted barge and rail services as well as transport by truck. The model is used for the service network design of the EGS network. For this case, the benefit of using container transportation with multiple legs and intermediate transfers is studied. Also, a preliminary test of the influence of the new aspects of the model is done. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed model is suitable for the service network design in modern intermodal container transport networks. Also, the results suggest that a combined business model for the network transport and terminals is worth investigating further, as the transit costs can be reduced with lower transfer costs

Impact and relevance of transit disturbances on planning in intermodal container networks

__Abstract__ An intermodal container transportation network is being developed between Rotterdam and several inland terminals in North West Europe: the European Gateway Services network. This network is developed and operated by the sea terminals of Europe Container Terminals (ECT). To use this network cost-efficiently, centralised planning by the sea terminal of the container transportation is required. For adequate planning it is important to adapt to occurring disturbances. In this paper, a new mathematical model is proposed: the Linear Container Allocation model with Time-restrictions (LCAT). This model is used for determining the influence of three main types of transit disturbances on the network performance: early departure, late departure, and cancellation of inland services. The influence of a disturbance is measured in two ways. The impact measures the additional cost incurred by an updated planning in case of a disturbance. The relevance measures the cost difference between a fully updated and a locally updated plan. With the results of the analysis, key service properties of disturbed services that result in a high impact or high relevance can be determined. Based on this, the network operator can select focus areas to prevent disturbances with high impact and to improve the planning updates in case of disturbances with high relevance. In a case study of the EGS network, the impact and relevance of transit disturbances on all network services are assessed

Boosting the Figure Of Merit of LSPR-based refractive index sensing by phase-sensitive measurements

Localized surface plasmon resonances possess very interesting properties for a wide variety of sensing applications. In many of the existing applications only the intensity of the reflected or transmitted signals is taken into account, while the phase information is ignored. At the center frequency of a (localized) surface plasmon resonance, the electron cloud makes the transition between in- and out-of-phase oscillation with respect to the incident wave. Here we show that this information can experimentally be extracted by performing phase-sensitive measurements, which result in linewidths that are almost one order of magnitude smaller than those for intensity based measurements. As this phase transition is an intrinsic property of a plasmon resonance, this opens up many possibilities for boosting the figure of merit (FOM) of refractive index sensing by taking into account the phase of the plasmon resonance. We experimentally investigated this for two model systems: randomly distributed gold nanodisks and gold nanorings on top of a continuous gold layer and a dielectric spacer and observed FOM values up to 8.3 and 16.5 for the respective nanoparticles

Peter Stuyvesant’s leadership of New Netherland

My thesis focuses on the director general of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant. In my thesis I study in what kind of manner did he lead New Netherland and how was his relationship with the settlers of the colony. To find these answers I compare him to the previous director generals and also to his correspondence with the rulers of Amsterdam. In the thesis I reach the conclusion that Peter Stuyvesant was in fact almost a dictator. He had great amount of power and authority, way more than any of his predecessor. He used this power to rule the colony with an iron fist, and managed to grow the colony and make it quite successful. But because of his dictator like governing style the settlers did not like him. His relationship with the settlers was very rough which lead to the settlers mocking him with a cruel nickname and even protests being lead against him.Tutkielmani keskittyy Uuden Hollannin johtajaan Peter Stuyvesant:iin ja siihen millainen johtaja hän oli. Tutkimuksessa pyrin saamaan vastauksen kysymyksiin: millainen johtaja Stuyvesant oli ja millainen hänen suhteensa siirtokunnan asukkaisiin oli? Tuloksena Peter Stuyvesant oli lähes diktaattori joka johti siirtokuntaa vahvalla otteella ja hänen siirtokuntansa asukkaat vihasivat häntä

Location of high-degree vertices in weighted recursive graphs with bounded random weights and the random recursive tree

We study the asymptotic growth rate of the label size of high-degree vertices in weighted recursive graphs (WRG) when the weights are i.i.d. almost surely bounded random variables, and as a result confirm a conjecture by Lodewijks and Ortgiese. WRGs are a generalisation of the random recursive tree (RRT) and directed acyclic graph model (DAG), in which vertices are assigned vertex-weights and where new vertices attach to $m\in\mathbb N$ predecessors, each selected independently with a probability proportional to the vertex-weight of the predecessor. Prior work established the asymptotic growth rate of the maximum degree of the WRG model and here we show that there exists a critical exponent $\mu_m$, such that the typical label size of the maximum degree vertex equals $n^{\mu_m(1+o(1))}$ almost surely as $n$, the size of the graph, tends to infinity. These results extend and improve on the asymptotic behaviour of the location of the maximum degree, formerly only known for the RRT model, to the more general weighted multigraph case of the WRG model. Moreover, for the Weighted Recursive Tree (WRT) model, that is, the WRG model with $m=1$, we prove the joint convergence of the rescaled degree and label of high-degree vertices under additional assumptions on the vertex-weight distribution, and also extend results on the growth rate of the maximum degree obtained by Eslava, Lodewijks and Ortgiese. Finally, in the particular case of the RRT model, we prove the joint convergence of the degree, depth (distance to the root) and label of high-degree vertices, which extends earlier results by Eslava that cover the joint convergence of the degree and depth but do not include the label.Comment: 59 pages, 2 figure