From surround to true 3-D

To progress from surround sound to true 3-D requires an updating of the psychoacoustical theories which underlie current technologies. This paper shows how J.J.Gibson’s ecological approach to perception can be applied to audio perception and used to derive 3-D audio technologies based on intelligent pattern recognition and active hypothesis testing. These technologies are suggested as methods which can be used to generate audio environments that are believable and can be explored

Leading the Party:Coordination, Direction, and Communication

Party activists face a coordination problem: a critical mass (a barrier tocoordination) must advocate a single policy alternative if the party is tosucceed. The need for direction is the degree to which the merits of thealternatives respond to the underlying mood of the party. An individual'sability to assess the mood is his sense of direction. These factors combine toform an index of both the desirability and the feasibility of leadership: wecall this index Michels' Ratio. A sovereign party conference gives way toleadership by an individual or oligarchy if and only if Michels' Ratio issufficiently high. Leadership enhances the clarity of intra-partycommunication, but weakens the response of policy choices to the party'smood.

The Qualities of Leadership:Direction, Communication, and Obfuscation

Party activists wish to (i) advocate the best policy and yet (ii) unify behind a commonparty line. An activist's understanding of his environment is based on the speeches ofparty leaders. A leader's influence, measured by the weight placed on her speech,increases with her judgement on policy (sense of direction) and her ability to conveyideas (clarity of communication). A leader with perfect clarity of communication enjoysgreater influence than one with a perfect sense of direction. Activists can choose howmuch attention to pay to leaders. A necessary condition for a leader to monopolize theagenda is that she is the most coherent communicator. Sometimes leaders attract moreattention by obfuscating their messages. A concern for party unity mitigates thisincentive; when activists emphasize following the party line, they learn more about theirenvironment.

The New Theory of Strategic Voting

This is an analysis of strategic voting under qualified majority voting. Existing formal analyses of the plurality rule predict complete coordination of strategic voting: a strict interpretation of Duverger's Law. This conclusion is rejected. Unlike previous models, the popular support for each option is not commonly certain. Agents base their vote on both public and private signals of popular support. When private signals are the main source of information, the uniquely stable equilibrium entails only limited strategic voting and hence partial coordination. This is due to the surprising presence of negative feedback --- strategic voting is a self-attenuating phenomenon. The theory leads to the conclusion that multi-candidate support in a plurality electoral system is perfectly consistent with rational voting behaviour.

Student perceptions of the undergraduate research experience: what do they think they really gain and how much influence does it have?

This paper explores the benefits that undergraduate science students perceive as a result of participating in an undergraduate research experience (URE) and explores the possible influences that UREs have on the future career directions of students. Authentic undergraduate research experiences in science play an important role in providing context to student learning and providing a sense of being a 'scientist'. There has been, however, some concern over the validity of the claims made relating to the extent of the impact that research experiences have on undergraduate students. This paper focuses on a new Summer Research Scholarship experience and reports on some of the findings from a 2008/2009 pilot study that investigated student perceptions of their undergraduate research experiences as 2nd year students studying within science

Inflation in Australia: Causes, Inertia and Policy

This paper examines the determination of inflation in Australia and its four major trading partners – Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Also examined is the degree of inertia in the inflation rate i.e. the extent to which observed inflation deviates from its equilibrium rate. We find that, in each country, nominal wage growth clearly dominates the growth rate of money as the fundamental cause of inflation. We also detect the presence of substantial inflation inertia. For Australia, these findings have two implications for policy. The first is that a policy to reduce the inflation will have the desired effect only after the elapse of a considerable period of time. The second is that such a policy can succeed only if aggregate nominal wage growth is reduced commensurately.