Trade Openness: An Australian Perspective

Australia’s external trade is relatively low compared with the size of its economy. Indeed, Australia’s openness ratio (exports plus imports as a proportion of GDP) in 2002 was the third-lowest among the 30 OECD countries. This paper seeks to understand Australia’s low openness by analysing the empirical determinants of aggregate country trade. We begin by estimating a standard gravity model of bilateral trade. Although the model appears to fit the bilateral data very well, it does a relatively poor job at fitting countries’ aggregate trade levels, with different methodologies sometimes providing highly conflicting results. The focus of the paper is an equation for country openness. Our equation explains a substantial amount of the variation in how much countries trade using a small number of explanatory variables. We find that the most important determinants of openness are population and a measure of distance to potential trade partners. Countries with larger populations trade less, as do countries that are relatively more remote. Furthermore, after controlling for trade policy there is little evidence of a positive correlation between openness and economic development. While gravity models suggest Australia trades much more than expected, the openness equation suggests that its level of trade is relatively close to what would be expected. The most important factors in explaining Australia’s low openness ratio are its distance to the rest of the world, and to a lesser extent its large geographic size.trade; outward orientation; economic geography; trade liberalisation

Deconfinement Transition and Bound States in Frustrated Heisenberg Chains: Regimes of Forced and Spontaneous Dimerization

We use recently developed strong-coupling expansion methods to study the two-particle spectra for the frustrated alternating Heisenberg model, consisting of an alternating nearest neighbor antiferromagnetic exchange and a uniform second neighbor antiferromagnetic exchange. Starting from the limit of weakly coupled dimers, we develop high order series expansions for the effective Hamiltonian in the two-particle subspace. In the limit of a strong applied dimerization, we calculate accurately various properties of singlet and triplet bound states and quintet antibound states. We also develop series expansions for bound state energies in various sectors, which can be extrapolated using standard methods to cases where the external bond-alternation goes to zero. We study the properties of singlet and triplet bound states in the latter limit and suggest a crucial role for the bound states in the unbinding of triplets and deconfinement of spin-half excitations.Comment: 17 figures, revte

Irregular Input Data in Convergence Acceleration and Summation Processes: General Considerations and Some Special Gaussian Hypergeometric Series as Model Problems

Sequence transformations accomplish an acceleration of convergence or a summation in the case of divergence by detecting and utilizing regularities of the elements of the sequence to be transformed. For sufficiently large indices, certain asymptotic regularities normally do exist, but the leading elements of a sequence may behave quite irregularly. The Gaussian hypergeometric series 2F1 (a, b; c; z) is well suited to illuminate problems of that kind. Sequence transformations perform quite well for most parameters and arguments. If, however, the third parameter $c$ of a nonterminating hypergeometric series 2F1 is a negative real number, the terms initially grow in magnitude like the terms of a mildly divergent series. The use of the leading terms of such a series as input data leads to unreliable and even completely nonsensical results. In contrast, sequence transformations produce good results if the leading irregular terms are excluded from the transformation process. Similar problems occur also in perturbation expansions. For example, summation results for the infinite coupling limit k_3 of the sextic anharmonic oscillator can be improved considerably by excluding the leading terms from the transformation process. Finally, numerous new recurrence formulas for the 2F1 (a, b; c; z) are derived.Comment: 25 pages, 7 tables, REVTe

Spanning forests and the q-state Potts model in the limit q \to 0

We study the q-state Potts model with nearest-neighbor coupling v=e^{\beta J}-1 in the limit q,v \to 0 with the ratio w = v/q held fixed. Combinatorially, this limit gives rise to the generating polynomial of spanning forests; physically, it provides information about the Potts-model phase diagram in the neighborhood of (q,v) = (0,0). We have studied this model on the square and triangular lattices, using a transfer-matrix approach at both real and complex values of w. For both lattices, we have computed the symbolic transfer matrices for cylindrical strips of widths 2 \le L \le 10, as well as the limiting curves of partition-function zeros in the complex w-plane. For real w, we find two distinct phases separated by a transition point w=w_0, where w_0 = -1/4 (resp. w_0 = -0.1753 \pm 0.0002) for the square (resp. triangular) lattice. For w > w_0 we find a non-critical disordered phase, while for w < w_0 our results are compatible with a massless Berker-Kadanoff phase with conformal charge c = -2 and leading thermal scaling dimension x_{T,1} = 2 (marginal operator). At w = w_0 we find a "first-order critical point": the first derivative of the free energy is discontinuous at w_0, while the correlation length diverges as w \downarrow w_0 (and is infinite at w = w_0). The critical behavior at w = w_0 seems to be the same for both lattices and it differs from that of the Berker-Kadanoff phase: our results suggest that the conformal charge is c = -1, the leading thermal scaling dimension is x_{T,1} = 0, and the critical exponents are \nu = 1/d = 1/2 and \alpha = 1.Comment: 131 pages (LaTeX2e). Includes tex file, three sty files, and 65 Postscript figures. Also included are Mathematica files forests_sq_2-9P.m and forests_tri_2-9P.m. Final journal versio

Objective Evaluation of Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation using a Data Management and Processing Infrastructure

We present a study of multiple sclerosis segmentation algorithms conducted at the international MICCAI 2016 challenge. This challenge was operated using a new open-science computing infrastructure. This allowed for the automatic and independent evaluation of a large range of algorithms in a fair and completely automatic manner. This computing infrastructure was used to evaluate thirteen methods of MS lesions segmentation, exploring a broad range of state-of-theart algorithms, against a high-quality database of 53 MS cases coming from four centers following a common definition of the acquisition protocol. Each case was annotated manually by an unprecedented number of seven different experts. Results of the challenge highlighted that automatic algorithms, including the recent machine learning methods (random forests, deep learning, …), are still trailing human expertise on both detection and delineation criteria. In addition, we demonstrate that computing a statistically robust consensus of the algorithms performs closer to human expertise on one score (segmentation) although still trailing on detection scores

Anxiety Levels in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder:A Meta-Analysis

The aim of the current study was to meta-analytically examine whether anxiety levels in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are elevated. A total of 83 articles were selected from a systematic literature search and were included in the meta-analyses. Results demonstrated that children with ASD had higher anxiety levels compared to typically developing children, and this difference increased with IQ. Youth with ASD also tended to have higher anxiety levels compared to clinically referred children, and this difference increased with age. Children with ASD had higher anxiety levels compared to youth with externalizing or developmental problems, but not when compared to youth with internalizing problems. The study findings highlight the importance of more research in order to fully understand the nature and development of anxiety in children with ASD. More specifically, the results suggest that especially high-functioning adolescents with ASD may be at risk for developing anxiety disorders. Therefore, it seems important to carefully follow and monitor children with ASD transcending to adolescenc

The origin of thoughts on peace

Nadrabin dr Simon Guttmann smatra da još od najstarijih vremena u svetskoj kulturnoj istoriji pitanje rata i mira zauzima jedno od najvažnijih mesta. Suština pitanja je šta je rat? Da li je rat neodvojivi deo ljudskog života ili je moguće i takvo stanje čovečanstva, u kom bi mogućnost ratovanja bila sasvim isključena. Ovoj temi se pristupalo sa filozofskog, političkog i etičkog gledišta. Dr Guttmann u tekstu o "Poreklu misli o miru" razmatra jevrejski moralni pogled na svet na osnovu biblijskih priča i zakona i na osnovu literarnih učenja posle Biblije. Kroz analizu o misli i duhu mira, o proročkoj i pesničkoj književnosti, a potom i o književnosti posle Biblije autor smatra da je Biblija knjiga čovečanstva čija učenja o težnji za mirom trebaju da prožimaju celokupno čovečanstvo. Kao rezultat dosadašnjeg istraživanja naglašava da je misao o miru vodeća misao Biblije i verske književnosti posle Biblije.Senior rabbi Dr. Simon Guttmann believes that the question of war and peace has occupied one of the most important places in the world's cultural history since the earliest times. The essence of the question is what is war? Is war an inseparable part of human life, or is such a state of humanity possible, in which the possibility of war would be completely ruled out. This topic was approached from a philosophical, political, and ethical point of view. In his text on the "Origin of the Thought of Peace," Dr. Guttmann discusses the Jewish moral view of the world based on biblical stories and laws and on literary teachings after the Bible. Through the analysis of the thought and spirit of peace, of prophetic and poetic literature, and then of literature after the Bible, the author believes that the Bible is a book of humanity whose teachings on the pursuit of peace should permeate all humanity. As a result of the research so far, he emphasizes that the thought of peace is the leading thought of the Bible and religious literature after the Bibl