It's Public Knowledge: The National Digital Archive of Datasets

This article describes the history and development of the National Digital Archive of Datasets, a service run by the University of London Computer Centre for the National Archives of England. It discusses the project in light of the context in which it emerged in the 1990s, its departure in approach from traditional data archives, and the range of archival functions. Finally, it offers reflections on the project as whole. Cet article décrit l’histoire et le développement du National Digital Archive of Datasets, un service offert par le centre informatique de l’Université de Londres pour les Archives nationales de l’Angleterre. L’auteure présente le contexte dans lequel le projet a émergé dans les années 1990, son approche qui diffère de celle des archives de données informatiques traditionnelles, ainsi que la gamme de ses fonctions archivistiques. Finalement, elle offre des réflexions sur le projet dans son ensemble

Adult Equivalence Scales, Inequality and Poverty

This paper examines the sensitivity of inequality and poverty measures to the adult equivalence scale and the unit of analysis. Comparisons are made using parametric equivalence scales, and income units include individuals, equivalent adults and households. The role of the correlation between equivalent income and household size, and the weight attached to children, is examined analytically. Empirical results are based on New Zealand Household Expenditure Survey (HES) data for total expenditure. Further results using a variety of equivalence scales, for New Zealand,Australia, the UK and the OECD, are examined.Inequality; poverty; equivalence scales; living standard; income unit

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reductions in New Zealand: A Minimum Disruption Approach

Reductions in carbon dioxide emissions can come from (among other things) changes to the structure of final demands, changes in the use of fossil fuels by industry, and changes to the structure of inter-industry transactions. This paper examines the nature of the least disruptive changes, that is the minimum changes to these three components which are consistent with specified overall reductions in carbon dioxide in New Zealand. In examining the minimum changes needed, constraints are imposed on the corresponding changes in GDP growth and aggregate employment.Carbon Dioxide; Minimum Disruption; Carbon Intensities; New Zealand

Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reductions in New Zealand : A Minimum Disruption Approach

Reductions in carbon dioxide emissions can come from (among other things) changes to the structure of final demands, changes in the use of fossil fuels by industry, and changes to the structure of inter-industry transactions. This paper examines the nature of the least disruptive changes, that is the minimum changes to these three components which are consistent with specified overall reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in New Zealand. In examining the minimum changes needed, constraints are imposed on the corresponding changes in GDP growth and aggregate employment.Carbon Diozide; Minimum Disruption; Carbon Intensities; New Zeland

Sending your research material into the future

A leaflet offering practical guidance for researchers on how to preserve their digital research material/data. This is one of the outputs of the JISC SHARD project, investigating research data preservation for history researchers, and related projects in the 2011-2012 JISC Digital Preservation programme

Pile-up solutions for some systems of conservation laws modelling dislocation interaction in crystals

Some continuum models for dislocation interactions in a simple crystal geometry are studied. The simplest models are mixed systems of conservation laws which are shown to exhibit singularities and instabilities. These are then regularized, leading to parabolic free-boundary problems. In both cases, solutions describing the formation of structures such as dislocation pile-ups are discussed

The impact of economic and supply chain trends on British warehousing

Purpose: Warehouses are key nodes in many supply chains and typically represent over 20% of logistics costs. However, other than property market studies, there has been relatively little research on warehousing, particularly as regards how trends in warehouses may relate to changes in such parameters as wider economic and supply chain factors. The purpose of this paper is to examine this area in order to explore how trends in warehousing may relate to existing warehousing and supply chain theory so as to facilitate further research into the relationship between warehousing and "smarter" logistics strategies and efficient supply chain performance. Research approach: The paper is based on a longitudinal study examining the take-up (i.e. occupation) of new large warehouses in Great Britain over the past 16 years covering some 700 records. For the purposes of this study, large warehouses are classified as those over 100,000 square feet (9,290 square metres) in area. These trends, together with those of total warehouse stock, are then related to national statistics, warehouse surveys, supply chain changes and other relevant data over that period. Findings and Originality: This is a rare longitudinal study of this subject. It is found that, until the recent recession, the total warehouse stock, as well as the take-up of large warehouses, has been increasing and this can be associated with such factors as economic growth, retail spending and globalisation. Both the footprint and height of large warehouses has been rising and this may be due to such factors as network economies and warehouse technology. The locations of warehouses are becoming more dispersed, possibly due to the growth in e-commerce and port-centric logistics. In addition, it was found that large warehouses have been increasingly taken up by retailers and manufacturers rather than logistics companies. Research impact: This paper examines the possible influence of economic and supply chain trends on warehousing in Great Britain. As well as testing existing theories, the data provides a sound foundation for future research. For example, there have been conflicting evidence in previous research regarding economies and diseconomies of scale and this discussion can now be set against trends in warehouse footprint and height. Practical impact: The paper provides a better understanding and basis for decision making by planners, developers, funding corporations, operators and end users. For example, topics such as size and height of buildings are examined, as well as trends in port-centric logistics, rail connections and e-fulfilment. The changing nature of warehouse designs in terms of wider economic and supply chain trends is particularly important for practitioners as warehousing costs are to a large extent determined at the design phase and have a major impact on the effectiveness of the overall supply chain of which they are a part

Excise Taxation in New Zealand

In New Zealand, excise taxes are levied on three commodity groups: alcohol, tobacco and petrol. The 2001 Tax Review, published by the New Zealand Treasury, argued that excises are inequitable and inefficient, and advised that these taxes should be removed and the revenue replaced by raising the standard rate of GST. This paper provides an empirical examination of these issues. First, the efficiency of New Zealand’s current system of indirect taxes is examined. The welfare and redistributive effects resulting from the revenue-neutral removal of excise taxes are then examined. Welfare and redistributive measures are computed for a range of demographic groups and total weekly expenditure levels. While the largest efficiency gains and reductions in inequality are observed for households with at least one smoker, the overall distributional implications of the proposed reforms are found to be small.Indirect taxation; equivalent variations; excess burdens; inequality;tax reform

The role of ontologies in creating and maintaining corporate knowledge: a case study from the aero industry

The Designers’ Workbench is a system, developed to support designers in large organizations, such as Rolls-Royce, by making sure that the design is consistent with the specification for the particular design as well as with the company’s design rule book(s). The evolving design is described against a jet engine ontology. Currently, to capture the constraint information, a domain expert (design engineer) has to work with a knowledge engineer to identify the constraints, and it is then the task of the knowledge engineer to encode these into the Workbench’s knowledge base (KB). This is an error prone and time consuming task. It is highly desirable to relieve the knowledge engineer of this task, and so we have developed a tool, ConEditor+ that enables domain experts themselves to capture and maintain these constraints. The tool allows the user to combine selected entities from the domain ontology with keywords and operators of a constraint language to form a constraint expression. Further, we hypothesize that to apply constraints appropriately, it is necessary to understand the context in which each constraint is applicable. We refer to this as “application conditions”. We show that an explicit representation of application conditions, in a machine interpretable format, along with the constraints and the domain ontology can be used to support the verification and maintenance of constraints

Deadjectival human nouns : conversion, nominal ellipsis, or mixed category?

Whereas deadjectival nouns referring to humans such as the Germans have been analyzed as the result of morphological conversion, the human construction the rich in English has been analyzed as a special case of nominal ellipsis. In this paper counterarguments are presented against the ellipsis analysis, mainly focusing on the human construction in Dutch, which has mixed adjectival and nominal properties. Traditionally, deadjectival human nouns ending in the suffix –e are analyzed as the result of morphological derivation. In the ellipsis analysis the suffix –e is analyzed as an inflectional suffix rather than a derivational one, licensing an empty noun. The plural suffix –n and the determiner would provide the human interpretation. In this paper an analysis in the framework of Distributed Morphology is proposed, which is a combination of the ellipsis analysis (without an empty noun) and the traditional derivational/conversion analysi