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This paper theorizes the gendered consequences of refugee dispossession for social reproduction, focusing on Ethiopian refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. We analyze the Kenyan refugee regime as structured by colonial legacies of racialization and by neo-colonial global political economy strategies of managing ‘surplus’ populations. We demonstrate that refugees’ ongoing experiences of interpersonal and structural violence constitutes an attack on their capacity for social reproduction and argue the ‘feminization of refugee survival’ is an important gendered consequence. We identify two transnational displacements that produce a new form of racialized enclosure and the alienation of refugees from the means of social reproduction. The first transnational displacement occurs due to their dispossession from support infrastructure for social reproduction in their origin country, and in the host country. A second, invisible but racialized transnational displacement is the refusal of global North countries to take on the anticipated welfare costs of refugee social reproduction. Transformative and re-generative approaches to refugee social reproduction would need to address both forms of displacement. The paper thus urges IPE scholarship to recognize that the crisis of refugee social reproduction is not only produced by global capitalist regimes, but also deeply structured by gendered, racialized, and colonial hierarchies of inequality.

YouTube faces a global crisis with the dissemination of false information and hate speech. To counter these issues, YouTube has implemented strict rules against uploading content that includes false information or promotes hate speech. While numerous studies have been conducted to reduce offensive English-language content, there's a significant lack of research on Sinhala content. This study aims to address the aforementioned gap by proposing a solution to minimize the spread of violence and misinformation in Sinhala YouTube videos. The approach involves developing a rating system that assesses whether a video contains false information by comparing the title and description with the audio content and evaluating whether the video includes hate speech. The methodology encompasses several steps, including audio extraction using the Pytube library, audio transcription via the fine-tuned Whisper model, hate speech detection employing the distilroberta-base model and a text classification LSTM model, and text summarization through the fine-tuned BART-Large- XSUM model. Notably, the Whisper model achieved a 48.99\% word error rate, while the distilroberta-base model demonstrated an F1 score of 0.856 and a recall value of 0.861 in comparison to the LSTM model, which exhibited signs of overfitting.

Machine Transliteration provides the ability to transliterate a basic language into different languages in a computational way. Transliteration is an important technical process that has caught the attention most recently. The Sinhala transliteration has many constraints because of the insufficiency of resources in the Sinhala language. Due to these limitations, Sinhala Transliteration is highly complex and time-consuming. Therefore, the majority of the Sri Lankans uses non-formal texting language named 'Singlish' to make that process simple. This study has focused on the transliteration of the Singlish language at the word level by reducing the complication in the transliteration. A new approach of coding system has invented with the rule-based approach that can map the matching Sinhala words even without the vowels. Various typing patterns were collected by different communities for this. The collected data have analyzed with every Sinhala character and unique Singlish patterns related to them were generated. The system has introduced a newly initiated numeric coding system to use with the Singlish letters by matching with the recognized typing patterns. For the mapping process, fuzzy logic-based implementation has used. A codified dictionary has also implemented including unique numeric values. In this system, Each Romanized English letter was assigned with a unique numeric code that can construct a unique pattern for each word. The system can identify the most relevant Sinhala word that matches with the pattern of the Singlish word or it gives the most related word suggestions. For example, the word 'kiyanna,kianna, kynna, kynn, kiynna' have mapped with the accurate Sinhala word "kiyanna". These results revealed that the 'Swa Bhasha' transliteration system has the ability to enhance the Sinhala users' experience while conducting the texting in Singlish to Sinhala., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, 2 Tables, Presented at International Conference on Innovations in Info-business and Technology, Colombo, February 2022

Drawing on qualitative research, the authors analysed the care support experiences of older Ethiopian refugees resettled in Australia. In-depth interviews conducted with 12 Ethiopians revealed that older Ethiopians experienced language and cultural barriers in accessing formal care services, and that they often did not view these services as entitlements they were due as citizens. Findings demonstrated a significant familial orientation to expectations around, and provision of, care support to older Ethiopians, which may be under-recognised in the Australian social work context. The authors argue that given this familial orientation and the difficulty in accessing formal care services, the reconfiguration of care relationships post-resettlement has resulted in increased reliance on adult daughters’ attenuated capacity to meet the care needs of older parents, which raises serious concerns about the long-term viability and gender equity of such arrangements.

Autonomous robots operating in indoor and GPS denied environments can use LiDAR for SLAM instead. However, LiDARs do not perform well in geometrically-degraded environments, due to the challenge of loop closure detection and computational load to perform scan matching. Existing WiFi infrastructure can be exploited for localization and mapping with low hardware and computational cost. Yet, accurate pose estimation using WiFi is challenging as different signal values can be measured at the same location due to the unpredictability of signal propagation. Therefore, we introduce the use of WiFi fingerprint sequence for pose estimation (i.e. loop closure) in SLAM. This approach exploits the spatial coherence of location fingerprints obtained while a mobile robot is moving. This has better capability of correcting odometry drift. The method also incorporates LiDAR scans and thus, improving computational efficiency for large and geometrically-degraded environments while maintaining the accuracy of LiDAR SLAM. We conducted experiments in an indoor environment to illustrate the effectiveness of the method. The results are evaluated based on Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and it has achieved an accuracy of 0.88m for the test environment., Comment: accepted by the 2022 IEEE 18th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE)

Here, we present the results of our field survey in Sri Lanka and describe ten new species of Sericini: Selaserica fabriziae sp. nov., Sel. sororinitida sp. nov., Neoserica pophami sp. nov., Maladera haniel sp. nov., M. kishi sp. nov., M. windy sp. nov., M. karunaratnae sp. nov., M. hiyarensis sp. nov., M. dambullana sp. nov., and M. deenstana sp. nov. All seven of the newly described species of Maladera belong to the M. fistulosa species group, which is an endemic radiation on the island that is characterized by entirely reduced or fused parameres. An updated key to the Maladera fistulosa group is provided. Further, new locality records for 23 already known species are given. The genitalia and habitus of all new species are illustrated, the distribution of the new species is shown with maps.

This study provides a quantitative assessment of the willingness to pay to avoid water use restrictions taking into account psychological, attitudinal and behavioural influences. We analyse determinants of households’ willingness to pay to ensure a continuous water supply in Brisbane, Australia. The results show that in addition to socio-economic variables, attitudinal and behavioural factors-including values, norms, and beliefs-influence residents’ valuation. They also underscore the importance of accounting for socio-economic variables and pertinent psychological and behavioural aspects when implementing policies to manage and conserve urban water.

The air that surrounds us is the cardinal source of respiration of all life-forms. Therefore, it is undoubtedly vital to highlight that balanced air quality is utmost important to the respiratory health of all living beings, environmental homeostasis, and even economical equilibrium. Nevertheless, a gradual deterioration of air quality has been observed in the last few decades, due to the continuous increment of polluted emissions from automobiles and industries into the atmosphere. Even though many people have scarcely acknowledged the depth of the problem, the persistent efforts of determined parties, including the World Health Organization, have consistently pushed the boundaries for a qualitatively better global air homeostasis, by facilitating technology-driven initiatives to timely detect and predict air quality in regional and global scales. However, the existing frameworks for air quality monitoring lack the capability of real-time responsiveness and flexible semantic distribution. In this paper, a novel Internet of Things framework is proposed which is easily implementable, semantically distributive, and empowered by a machine learning model. The proposed system is equipped with a NodeRED dashboard which processes, visualizes, and stores the primary sensor data that are acquired through a public air quality sensor network, and further, the dashboard is integrated with a machine-learning model to obtain temporal and geo-spatial air quality predictions. ESP8266 NodeMCU is incorporated as a subscriber to the NodeRED dashboard via a message queuing telemetry transport broker to communicate quantitative air quality data or alarming emails to the end-users through the developed web and mobile applications. Therefore, the proposed system could become highly beneficial in empowering public engagement in air quality through an unoppressive, data-driven, and semantic framework., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) enables autonomous robots to navigate and execute their tasks through unknown environments. However, performing SLAM in large environments with a single robot is not efficient, and visual or LiDAR-based SLAM requires feature extraction and matching algorithms, which are computationally expensive. In this paper, we present a collaborative SLAM approach with multiple robots using the pervasive WiFi radio signals. A centralized solution is proposed to optimize the trajectory based on the odometry and radio fingerprints collected from multiple robots. To improve the localization accuracy, a novel similarity model is introduced that combines received signal strength (RSS) and detection likelihood of an access point (AP). We perform extensive experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed similarity model and collaborative SLAM framework., Comment: Accepted by 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, Sanya, China

Shavini Athukorala,1 Neal Kansara,2 Erik Lehman,3 Seth M Pantanelli1 1Department of Ophthalmology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA; 2Department of Ophthalmology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; 3Department of Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USACorrespondence: Seth M PantanelliDepartment of Ophthalmology, Penn State College of Medicine, 500 University Drive, HU19, Hershey, PA, 17033-0850, USATel +1 717-531-5690Fax +1 717-531-5009Email spantanelli@pennstatehealth.psu.eduPurpose: To investigate the relationship between measured anterior, posterior, and total keratometric astigmatism and post-operative refractive astigmatism (RA) after cataract surgery.Patients and Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of eyes that consecutively underwent pre-operative measurements of keratometric astigmatism with a swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT)-based optical biometer and dual-Scheimpflug/Placido disc corneal topographer, cataract surgery with implantation of a monofocal intraocular lens, and post-operative manifest refraction. The difference between post-operative refractive astigmatism and keratometric astigmatism measured using four different ways [Keratometry (K), Simulated Keratometry (SimK), Total Keratometry (TK), and Total Corneal Power (TCP)] was calculated.Results: For all 118 eyes, a smaller mean vector difference between post-operative refractive astigmatism and measured keratometric astigmatism was realized with TK (0.08 @ 151) vs TCP2 (0.30 @ 174; p < 0.0006), as well as with K (0.26 @ 173) vs SimK (0.52 @ 177; p = 0.036). The mean vector difference between post-operative refractive astigmatism and TK astigmatism was 0.31 @ 097, 0.21 @ 163, and 0.69 @ 179 in eyes with against-the rule (ATR), oblique, and with-the-rule (WTR) anterior corneal astigmatism, respectively (p < 0.0006). On the other hand, posterior corneal astigmatism did not significantly change with the o

Relative localization between autonomous robots without infrastructure is crucial to achieve their navigation, path planning, and formation in many applications, such as emergency response, where acquiring a prior knowledge of the environment is not possible. The traditional Ultra-WideBand (UWB)-based approach provides a good estimation of the distance between the robots, but obtaining the relative pose (including the displacement and orientation) remains challenging. We propose an approach to estimate the relative pose between a group of robots by equipping each robot with multiple UWB ranging nodes. We determine the pose between two robots by minimizing the residual error of the ranging measurements from all UWB nodes. To improve the localization accuracy, we propose to utilize the odometry constraints through a sliding window-based optimization. The optimized pose is then fused with the odometry in a particle filtering for pose tracking among a group of mobile robots. We have conducted extensive experiments to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach., Comment: Accepted by the 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2021), Prague, Czech Republic

Humanoid robots that act as human-robot interfaces equipped with social skills can assist people in many of their daily activities. Receptionist robots are one such application where social skills and appearance are of utmost importance. Many existing robot receptionist systems suffer from high cost and they do not disclose internal architectures for further development for robot researchers. Moreover, there does not exist customizable open-source robot receptionist frameworks to be deployed for any given application. In this paper we present an open-source robot receptionist intelligence core -- "DEVI"(means 'lady' in Sinhala), that provides researchers with ease of creating customized robot receptionists according to the requirements (cost, external appearance, and required processing power). Moreover, this paper also presents details on a prototype implementation of a physical robot using the DEVI system. The robot can give directional guidance with physical gestures, answer basic queries using a speech recognition and synthesis system, recognize and greet known people using face recognition and register new people in its database, using a self-learning neural network. Experiments conducted with DEVI show the effectiveness of the proposed system., Comment: Published in: 2019 IEEE 4th International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Mechatronics (ICARM)

Background Phoma stem canker or black leg disease is one of the most important disease affecting the oil seed rape worldwide. The disease is caused by the two pathogen species Leptosphaeria maculans and L. biglobosa. In this study genomic information of L. maculans and L. biglobosa was used to determine their presence in materials collected in the county of Sk ne, southern Sweden in 2020. The second part was carried out to understand if timothy is susceptible to pathogens that also cause disease on red clover. Sclerotinia trifoliorum, Fusarium avenaceum and F. graminearum were used to score their pathogenicity on timothy. Results The results showed that L. maculans and L. biglobosa co-existed in the oilseed rape stem master samples from the five fields analyzed. Pathogenicity observations showed that F. avenaceum and F. graminearum can cause symptoms similar to crown rot and root rot diseases seen on other crops whereas S. trifoliorum did not incite any disease. Conclusion This work should be seen as first preliminary data on potential disease problems in Sweden. Leptosphaeria maculans and L. biglobosa are now established in southern part of the country. These fungal pathogens constitute a potential future threat to Brassica crops particularly in light of climate change. Fusarium avenaceum and F. graminearum cause symptoms on timothy similar to root rot and crown rot on red clover and cereals. If the results could be further validated, they call for new efforts on resistance breeding.

Cancer immunotherapy is a rapidly advancing and viable approach to treating cancer along with more traditional forms of therapy. Real-time cell analysis technologies that examine the dynamic interactions between cancer cells and the cells of the immune system are becoming more important for assessment of novel therapeutics. In this report, we use the IncuCyte® imaging system to study the killing potential of various immune cells on cancer cell lines. The IncuCyte® system tracks living cells, labeled by a red fluorescent protein, and cell death, as indicated by the caspase-3/7 reagent, which generates a green fluorescent signal upon activation of apoptotic pathways. Despite the power of this approach, obtaining commercially fluorescent cancer cell lines is expensive and limited in the range of cell lines that are available. To overcome this barrier, we developed an inexpensive method using a lentiviral construct expressing nuclear localized mKate2 red fluorescent protein to stably label cancer cells. We demonstrate that this method is effective in labeling a wide variety of cell lines, allowing for analyses of different cancers as well as different cell lines of the same type of cancer.

Cancer immunotherapy is a rapidly advancing and viable approach to treating cancer along with more traditional forms of therapy. Real-time cell analysis technologies that examine the dynamic interactions between cancer cells and the cells of the immune system are becoming more important for assessment of novel therapeutics. In this report, we use the IncuCyte® imaging system to study the killing potential of various immune cells on cancer cell lines. The IncuCyte® system tracks living cells, labeled by a red fluorescent protein, and cell death, as indicated by the caspase-3/7 reagent, which generates a green fluorescent signal upon activation of apoptotic pathways. Despite the power of this approach, obtaining commercially fluorescent cancer cell lines is expensive and limited in the range of cell lines that are available. To overcome this barrier, we developed an inexpensive method using a lentiviral construct expressing nuclear localized mKate2 red fluorescent protein to stably label cancer cells. We demonstrate that this method is effective in labeling a wide variety of cell lines, allowing for analyses of different cancers as well as different cell lines of the same type of cancer.

The fine control of molecular arrangements using intermolecular interactions is essential for the reliable formation of complex materials. The predictable directionality of supramolecular forces is a key aspect that allows bottom-up design of such architectures. Here we describe a way to quantify the linearity of intermolecular halogen bonds and show that pyridyl halogen bond acceptors are more reliable than equivalent nitrile systems in forming predictable assemblies. A new parameter is presented to more accurately describe the linearity of halogen bonds.

The Eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris), a passerine bird in the family Meliphagidae (honeyeaters), a dominant group of birds in Australia and New Guinea. The aim of this study was to sequence the complete mitochondrial genome of the Eastern spinebill and use its sequence to better define the phylogeny of this species. The complete mitogenome sequence of A. tenuirostris was circular and 16,614 bp in length, and its architecture was conserved in comparison to other mitogenome sequences under the family Meliphagidae. The Eastern spinebill mitogenome had the highest sequence identity with mitogenome sequences of two other honeyeaters, the white eared honeyeater, Nesoptilotis leucotis, (84.9%) and the white-plumed honeyeater, Ptilotula penicillata (85.5%). The maximum-likelihood topology distinctly discriminated the Eastern spinebill sequence against all other species of the Meliphagidae with significant bootstrap supports. We suggest the widespread sampling and complete mitogenome sequencing would be valuable in establishing the most accurate phylogenetic taxonomy of the family Meliphagidae.

Resourcing the wide availability of diving equipment and training, terrorists can exploit the sub-surface domain to sabotage naval fleet units, which are prominent state assets, when berthed at harbors. An evaluation of the capabilities and limitations related to sub-surface domain operations reveals that saboteurs endeavor to minimize physical and physiological constraints, domain dynamics, and navigation challenges by operating in shallow waters, seeking the advantage of tidal flow effect, and using reference navigation whenever possible. Common harbor defense countermeasures are not sufficient to thwart such attacks; however, Sri Lankan Navy harbor defenses have employed a combination of countermeasures concentrated on saboteur target-seeking approaches. The analysis of case studies in this thesis reveals a pattern in target seeking for sub-surface saboteur attacks. System dynamic modeling is then used to simulate likely saboteur approaches and domain dynamics (tidal dynamics) to determine the success or failure of the attack. In the simulation, countermeasure effectiveness is taken as the main feedback loop. This thesis recommends that commanding officers of ships berthed at harbor can mitigate sub-surface saboteur attacks by implementing technical and physical countermeasures based on an understanding of the saboteur’s approach., http://archive.org/details/mitigationofsubs1094564006, Captain, Sri Lanka Navy, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This book is prepared during a pivotal period in Sri Lanka’s history—one of historic opportunity but also of daunting challenges. The country is now at peace. The peace dividend can be very large. Defense expenditure can be wound back, as it has been in recent years, and the funds so released invested in badly needed education, health, infrastructure, and rural development projects. Investors, domestic and foreign alike, can look to the future with greater optimism. Intercommunal harmony and trust can be restored. Sri Lanka can reenter the regional and international mainstream, politically and commercially. Moreover, although global economic growth is sluggish, Sri Lanka is favorably located in the most dynamic region of the world. India is now the world’s fastest growing major economy. Growth in the People’s Republic of China is slowing, but the annual increment to its gross domestic product (GDP) is as large as it was a decade ago during the period of hypergrowth. Several medium-sized economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) continue to grow strongly

One of the most prominent casualties of a natural disaster is the property market. The private and social costs from such events typically run into millions of dollars. In this chapter we use a dataset to examine the impact of natural disasters on residential house prices using a hedonic property (HP) values approach. Data before and after both a wildfire and floods, which affected Rockhampton in central coastal part of the state of Queensland, Australia are used. The data is unique because one of Rockhampton’s suburb was affected by wildfires and another by floods. For the analysis, three suburbs namely Frenchville, Park Avenue and Norman Gardens are used. Frenchville was significantly affected by wildfires in the latter part of 2009 and to a lesser extent in 2012, while Park Avenue was affected by floods at the end of 2010, January 2011, 2012 and 2013. Norman Gardens, which was relatively unaffected, is used as a control site. This enables us to examine the before and after effects on residential property values in the three suburbs. The results confirm that in the aftermath of a natural disaster property prices in affected areas decrease even though the large majority of individual houses remain unaffected. Furthermore, the results indicate that while prices in largely unaffected suburbs may gain immediately after a natural disaster, this gain may disappear if natural disasters continue to occur in the area/region due to a flood prone stigma being created. The results have several important policy decision and welfare implications which are briefly discussed in the chapter.

This paper examines residential demand for electricity in Sri Lanka using survey data collected over a five-year period between 2011 and 2015. The study finds that the major determinants of demand for residential electricity are the result of price or market distortions (i.e. subsidies), socioeconomic variables and energy saving technology. The effects of these variables are particularly relevant to competition policy. Estimated elasticities with respect to average price, subsidies under marginal cost pricing, subsidies under average cost pricing and income are found to be −0.015, 0.021, 0.036 and 0.046 respectively. We find that demand for electricity is inelastic and is categorised as a normal good. However, elasticities with respect to subsidy variables are found to be higher than the price variable. This implies, that under an increasing block rate system any price change used as a policy measure to control electricity consumption will not be effective. This is because price changes could alter the subsidy received by the consumer and therefore reverse the objective of the price change. Further, results of this study find that price and elasticities with respect to subsidy variables are relatively higher for low income groups while income elasticity is relatively larger for high income groups.

There is a wide array of empirical work on the use of monetary and non-monetary measures to manage residential water consumption. However, there has been little focus on exploring the ability to change human attitudes and behavior through offering consumers sustainable resource management. This research helps bridge this gap, through an experimental trial in Brisbane, Australia. Choices of different monetary and non-monetary incentives for managing water demand are offered to survey participants. A structural behavioral model is then developed to identify direct and indirect impacts of attitudes and behavior and which can be compared between separate groups drawn from the survey's participants. Our results suggest that both monetary and non-monetary incentives offered to households significantly reduce water consumption, which is especially so for those holding pro-environmental attitudes/behavior. Importantly, the impact is higher for non-monetary incentives. The results therefore provide valuable insight for the development of long-term sustainable resource management policies.

Bushfires are a common occurrence and are an inevitable natural event in many regions of Australia in most years. Despite the dangers of such bushfires to nearby properties and human life, humans continue to live in close proximity to bushfire prone areas. The pertinent questions asked in this study are whether residents are aware of the dangers of living in such areas- and if so, is it reflected in lower property values? Such residents have the choice of either discounting the risks of bushfires in their neighbourhoods or deciding to pay more to live in bushfire areas for the positive amenity values afforded by forested bushland settings. Buyers paying a premium price to live in close proximity to green space are well documented in hedonic property (HP) values studies. We examine this phenomenon using data available for forested bushfire prone areas in the immediate environs of the city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia using an HP values approach. For this study sales data of 1028 houses in four suburbs are used. The regression results clearly show that residents in fact are paying more to be close to green space (forested areas) which is also clearly identified as bushfire prone areas. The threat of bushfires may have an effect on property prices but it is dominated by the desire to live close to green spaces.

The level of public response to extreme catastrophes is considerably greater than concern over climate change. This research compares the public’s responses to extreme disasters and climate change when governments intervene to mitigate long-term climate change impacts. To do so we examine the property market behaviour in response to beach erosion and cyclone damage in Queensland, Australia. The results show that the impact on the property market of the public’s response to the negative impact of cyclones is more marked than its response to the negative impact of beach erosion. The relative non-responsiveness to beach erosion can be seen as a product of both local government intervention strategies and the recreational and aesthetic attractions of beaches. This study, therefore, provides useful insights for the development of sustainable coastal development strategies.

The level of public response to extreme catastrophes is considerably greater than concern over climate change. This research compares the public's responses to extreme disasters and climate change when governments intervene to mitigate long-term climate change impacts. To do so we examine the property market behaviour in response to beach erosion and cyclone damage in Queensland, Australia. The results show that the impact on the property market of the public's response to the negative impact of cyclones is more marked than its response to the negative impact of beach erosion. The relative non-responsiveness to beach erosion can be seen as a product of both local government intervention strategies and the recreational and aesthetic attractions of beaches. This study, therefore, provides useful insights for the development of sustainable coastal development strategies.

Residential water demand management using price and non-price measures to conserve water has gained considerable international attention from water utilities over the last few decades. The objective of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of different pricing schemes on water conservation. In this study, we compare the ‘conservation-orientedness’ of two pricing schemes. These are a uniform pricing scheme and an increasing block tariff scheme (IBT) structure. A quasiexperimental method is used for this purpose involving 150 suburbs in the Brisbane City Council (BCC) in Queensland, Australia for a 4-year period between 2005 and 2008. Our results show there are more conservation benefits associated with an IBT pricing scheme than a uniform pricing scheme.

The growing public pressure against the spread of cell phone towers in urban areas has created a need to understand their impact on adjacent house prices. A few existing studies are, however, controversial in their methodology and inconclusive in their results. Therefore, our study on the effect of cell phone towers on house prices is designed to avoid these deficiencies. Property transaction data collected from two suburbs within the Brisbane City Council were analysed adopting the spatial hedonic property valuation model. The estimated models were statistically significant and were largely in line with theoretical expectations. The results revealed that proximity to cell phone towers negatively affects house values, decreasing as the distance from the tower increases. A suitable compensation programme for nearby property owners is, therefore, suggested as being an appropriate policy response.

Increasing awareness of architectural heritage in Singapore has led to greater shared responsibility in preserving the urban fabric. There is now widespread public acceptance of conservation guidelines and the gazetting of listed buildings as part of the planning process. However, conservation efforts are hindered by gaps in our knowledge of historic buildings materials and architectural finishes. This is certainly the case with historic paint and colour schemes in Singapore. If urban planning authorities are to advise building owners on historically appropriate colour schemes, it is vital to understand what colours and finishes were used in the past. This paper examines how image processing, machine learning and computer-aided visualisation can complement more established colour research procedures such as paint analysis to fill the gaps in our knowledge. This project utilises colour photographs of historic streetscapes in the Urban Redevelopment Authority's collection, taken as part of a heritage survey conducted from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, to complement conventional paint and plaster sampling to further our understanding of historic architectural colour schemes in Singapore. As colour photographs deteriorate over time, controlled digital restoration is necessary to provide more accurate colour information from the time when these images were captured. With further refinement, these processes, used in tandem with more conventional paint sampling techniques, could be of some use for researching and dating historic architectural colour schemes. It is hoped that this paper will provide a starting point for further discussion into these digital research techniques.

The government of Sri Lanka has embraced free trade agreements (FTAs) as a key focus of the national trade and development strategy. This paper examines the rationale of this policy choice by analysing the trade outcomes of Sri Lanka’s FTAs with India and Pakistan and the expected gains from the FTA recently signed with Singapore. The analysis is informed by the existing body of knowledge on the role of FTAs as an alternative to multilateral and unilateral liberalisation. There is strong evidence that trade gains from FTAs has been vastly exaggerated by the proponents in the Sri Lankan trade policy debate. FTAs are essentially preferential trade deals the actual trade effect of which is conditioned by the commodity coverage normally dictated by political considerations and lobby group pressure, and the ‘rules of origin’ relating to the eligibility for the tariff concessions offered. Even then, potential trade gains depend crucially on supply-side reforms needed to improve the country’s capability to reap gains from market opening and compatibility of its trade patterns with the partner countries. Therefore the failure of the process of multilateral trade liberation under the WTO does not make a valid case for a country giving priority to FTAs. The more effective and time-honoured alternative is to undertake its own (unilateral) trade reforms needed for effectively integrating the country in the global economy combined with appropriate supply-side reforms

Highlights - This paper develops GIS based SDSS for predicting residential water demand. - The paper discusses the determinants of water demand. - The developed model is flexible for spatial and temporal changes. - The paper provides capacity to analyse alternative policies. Abstract Managing water resources and the need to adapt both supply and demand side policies to a changing environment has become a priority in both developed and developing countries. This research demonstrates the application of the geographic information system (GIS) in modelling residential water demand in order to develop a spatial decision support system (SDSS). Household level survey data covering 90suburbs within the Brisbane City Council (BCC), Queensland, Australia, are used for the analysis. First, residential water demand was estimated and the most significant variables found to predict high water use at the suburban level. These variables included household size, presence of a swimming pool, income and people over 65 years of age. By integrating this model with an SDSS, a spatial decision support system for residential water demand (SDSS-RWD) is developed. By producing maps which clearly display the different factors affecting residential water demand, the benefit of the SDSS-RWD is found in its use as a policy making tool for manipulating and evaluating effective water management strategies. In particular, the flexibility of the SDSS-RWD offers in evaluating changing determinants of residential water demand creates the capacity for local government bodies to analyse a range of alternative policies.

The non-uniform hardness distribution, metallurgy and ratchetting behaviour of head-hardened Australian rail steel (AS60 HH) are studied. In a bid to extrapolate material properties across the rail head continuum, a unified material model of the rail head has been developed, in which only the hardness of the material is variable. This simplification is shown to enable the material model to reasonably describe ratchetting behaviour across the rail head for heat-treated pearlitic steels. Finally, homogeneous material ratchetting models are used to study the evolution of plastic strain deformation under realistic rail-wheel contact conditions. The results show that non-uniform material properties may compromise ratcheting response with wear progression, thus impacting lifetime of AS60 HH rail steel and re-railing frequency.

Flake-like particles represent a common type of wear debris generated during the rolling contact fatigue wear test using a twin-disc test rig. It is argued that these flake-like particles are generated during the delamination process due to plastic shear strain accumulation at the wearing surfaces. This hypothesis has been developed in the last decades to explain the particle generation mechanism, yet it has not been proven conclusively. This research provides strong experimental evidence of the creation processes of wear debris propagation, aggregation, transfer, and compaction, therefore confirming the existing hypothesis and enhancing the understanding of wear mechanisms in the rolling contact interface.

This paper examines the emerging patterns and economic implications of Indian overseas direct investment (ODI) from a historical perspective. The novelty of the analysis lies in its specific focus on the implications of the liberalization reforms initiated in the early 1990s and the resultant changes in the overall investment climate for the internationalisation of domestic companies. The findings cast doubts on the popular perception that the recent surge in ODI from India is an unmixed economic blessing, a sign of “coming of age” of Indian companies in global business. Given the remaining distortion in the domestic investment climate, the net national gains from these investments could be much less than what the reported absolute numbers suggest.

Civil wars cause considerable harm to the local community, with large adverse spill-overs on the neighbourhood and the broader international community (World Bank 2011). The cessation of conflict offers the opportunity for economic revival. The window of peace provides the space for the birth and growth of enterprises that would not have emerged otherwise. However, the contribution of private enterprises in socio-economic revival following the cessation of conflict has received little attention in the extant literature. Also, little is known about the motivations for, and the constraints to, growth of private enterprise. This study uses the case of post-conflict Sri Lanka to investigate the entrepreneurs’ motivations for starting a business and the contributions of such enterprises to the socio-economic revival of the conflict-afflicted community. This is the first such study of the revival of private enterprise in post-conflict Sri Lanka. The study uses data collected in 2012 via a purpose-designed survey administered to 243 emerging entrepreneurs. The data was gathered from the two cities of Jaffna and Kilinochchi in northern Sri Lanka and analysed to: (i) examine the differences between ‘employer entrepreneurs’ and ‘solo self-employed entrepreneurs’ to decipher the motivations for starting a business; (ii) explore the differences between ‘necessity-motivated’ and ‘opportunity-motivated’ entrepreneurs, employing a probit model; and (iii) investigate the dynamics of embryonic enterprises, using least absolute deviation (LAD) and ordinary least square (OLS) regressions. The six major findings are: (i) some 80% of entrepreneurs are necessity driven, triggered mainly by unemployment; (ii) the relationship between education and entrepreneurship is an inverse U-shape; (iii) financial constraints constitute a major obstacle to entrepreneurial activity; (iv) inter-ethnic trade with the south improves the likelihood of becoming an employer entrepreneur; (v) faster growth w

We use information retrieval (IR) systems to meet a broad range of information needs, from simple ones involving day-to-day decisions to complex and imprecise information needs that cannot be easily formulated as a question. In consideration of these diverse goals, search activities are commonly divided into two broad categories: lookup and exploratory. Lookup searches begin with precise search goals and end soon after reaching of the target, while exploratory searches center on learning or investigation activities with imprecise search goals. Although exploration is a prominent life activity, it is naturally challenging for users because they lack domain knowledge; at the same time, information needs are broad, complex, and subject to constant change. It is also rather difficult for IR systems to offer support for exploratory searches, not least because of the complex information needs and dynamic nature of the user. It is hard also to conceptualize exploration distinctly. In consequence, most of the popular IR systems are targeted at lookup searches only. There is a clear need for better IR systems that support a wide range of search activities. The primary objective for this thesis is to enable the design of IR systems that support exploratory and lookup searches equally well. I approached this problem by modeling information search as a rational adaptation of interactions, which aids in clear conceptualization of exploratory and lookup searches. In work building on an existing framework for examination of adaptive interaction, it is assumed that three main factors influence how we interact with search systems: the ecological structure of the environment, our cognitive and perceptual limits, and the goal of optimizing the tradeoff between information gain and time cost. This thesis contributes three models developed in research proceeding from this adaptive interaction framework, to 1) predict evolving information needs in exploratory searches, 2) distinguish bet, Tiedonhakujärjestelmiä käytetään monenlaisiin tarkoituksiin, niin vastausten hakemiseen yksinkertaisiin arkipäivän kysymyksiin kuin laajemman ja monipuolisen tiedon etsimisen aiheista, joita ei voida helposti esittää hakulausekkeen muodossa. Kun otetaan huomioon nämä käyttäjien erilaisten tiedon etsintätarpeet, voidaan tiedon etsintä yleisesti jakaa yleisesti kahteen laajempaan luokkaan: täsmähakuihin ja tutkivaan hakuun. Täsmähauissa tiedon etsijällä on alusta lähtien olemassa selkeä hakutavoite, ja tiedon etsintä päättyy, kun hän löytää haluamansa tiedon. Tutkivassa haussa käyttäjä taas keskittyy asioiden oppimiseen ja selvittämiseen ilman tuollaista täsmällistä tavoitetta. Vaikka tutkiva haku on hyvin merkittävä osa käyttäjien toimintaa, se on heille luonnollisesti hyvin haastavaa, koska heillä ei ole entuudestaan riittävästi tietoa tarkasteltavasta aihepiiristä . Toisaalta samaan aikaan heidän tiedontarpeensa ovat laajoja ja monimutkaisia, ja ne myös muuttuvat koko ajan. Käyttäjän avustaminen tutkivassa haussa ei myöskään tiedonhakujärjestelmissä ole helppoa juuri siksi, että käyttäjien tiedontarpeet ovat niin monimuotoisia ja heidän toimintansa niin dynaamista. Lisäksi tutkivan haun täsmällinen määritteleminen käsitteellisesti on hyvin vaikeaa. Sen vuoksi useimmat suositut tiedonhakujärjestelmät soveltuvat hyvin vain täsmähakuihin. Koska tiedon etsintätapoja kuitenkin on niin monenlaisia, tarvitaan selvästi parempia tiedonhakujärjestelmiä, jotka tukevat tiedonhakua eri tavoin. Tämän väitöskirjatyön ensisijaisena tavoitteena on ollut mahdollistaa sellaisten tiedonhakujärjestelmien suunnitteleminen, jotka tukevat käyttäjää yhtä hyvin sekä täsmähauissa että tutkivassa haussa. Tätä ongelmaa lähestyttiin mallintamalla tiedon etsintää rationaalisesti mukautuvana vuorovaikutuksena, joka auttaa määrittelemään käsitteellisesti selkeämmin sekä tutkivan haun että täsmähaut. Tässä työssä, joka pohjautuu mukautuvan vuorovaikutuksen tutkimiseen aiemmin laadittuun kehikkoon

Introduction Industrialisation1 is an important driver of employment growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. At the early stage of transition from an agrarian economy to a modern economy, the manufacturing sector in the typical developing economy has greater potential to absorb surplus labour compared to the services sector, which in the typical low-income country is dominated by informal services. While it is feasible to move unskilled workers from agriculture into better-paid jobs in manufacturing activities, it is not feasible to move them into the formal services sector. Formal services sectors such as banking, insurance, finance, communications, and information technology are characterised by relatively low employment elasticity and also employment in these sectors requires education to at least upper secondary school level. Unskilled workers can find employment only in informal services such as retail trade and distribution, passenger transport and construction, where wages and productivity are often low. By contrast, employment in manufacturing, particularly in traditional labourintensive industries such as clothing and footwear, require mostly on-the-job training.

This paper documents and analyzes emerging trade patterns in Asia, with special reference to the implications of global production sharing with a view to informing the policy debate on forming the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The analysis reveals that the degree of dependence of RCEP countries on this new form of global division of labour is much larger compared to Europe and North America. Global production sharing has certainly strengthened economic interdependence among the countries in the region, but the dynamism of the regional cross-border production networks depends inexorably on global, rather than regional, trade in final goods. The findings of this paper make a strong case for a global, rather than a regional, approach to trade and investment policy making.

One of the most evident casualties of a natural disaster is the property market. The private and social costs from such events run into millions of dollars. In this paper, we use a unique dataset to examine the impact on residential house prices affected by natural disasters using a hedonic property (HP) values approach. For this purpose, we use data before and after a wildfire and floods from Rockhampton in central Queensland, Australia. The data is unique because one suburb was affected by wildfires and another was affected by floods. For the analysis, three suburbs namely Frenchville, Park Avenue and Norman Gardens are used. Frenchville was significantly affected by wildfires in the latter part of 2009 and to a lesser extent in 2012, while Park Avenue was affected by floods at the end of 2010, January 2011–2013. Norman Gardens, which was relatively unaffected, is used as a control site. This enables us to examine the before and after effects on property values in the three suburbs. The results confirm that soon after a natural disaster property prices in affected areas decrease even though the large majority of individual houses remain unaffected. Furthermore, the results indicate that the largely unaffected suburb may gain immediately after a natural disaster but this gain may disappear if natural disasters continue to occur in the area/region due to the stigma created. The results have several important policy decision and welfare implications which are briefly discussed in the paper.

This paper aims to trace surface evolution in the wheel-rail interface using data obtained from a twin-disc testing machine and the surface replication technique. Changes in the surface profile of the rail testing disc are explicitly analysed according to the wear mechanism, which helps elaborate a better understanding of the attrition of asperities during the wearing-in process of surface modification. The surface profile amplitude was seen to decrease during the initial running-in phase of the experiment cycle, and after reaching a saturation value, the profile amplitude then increased. Ultimately the results show that grinding will roughen the rail surface and the wheel-rail contact conditions will then remove this surface damage to some saturation value of the profile height. The variation in the rail surface profile beyond this point is then only dependant on the contact conditions which exist between the wheel and rail during normal operation.

The work in this thesis comprehensively investigates the effects of non-uniform material behaviour exhibited by head-hardened Australian rail steel on ratcheting, wear and rolling-contact fatigue. As a result, this research develops novel approaches to characterising rolling-contact fatigue utilising wear debris and surface replication. Furthermore, calibration of material parameters was conducted to obtain a unified material model to elucidate the non-uniform mechanical behaviour of rail steel. All these methods draw attention to the need to refine track maintenance and re-railing practices related to Australian rail steel.

Particle analysis methodology is presented, together with the morphology of the wear debris formed during rolling contact fatigue. Wear particles are characterised by their surface topography and in terms of wear mechanism. Rail-wheel materials are subjected to severe plastic deformation as the contact loading progresses, which contributes to a mechanism of major damage in head-hardened rail steel. Most of the current methodologies involve sectioning of the rail-wheel discs to trace material damage phenomena such as crack propagation and plastic strain accumulation. This paper proposes methodology to analyse the development of the plastically deformed layer by sectioning wear particles using the focussed ion beam (FIB) milling method. Moreover, it highlights the processes of oxidation and rail surface delamination during unlubricated rolling contact fatigue.

The end of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka in 2009 generated widespread expectations of a period of sustained economic growth, building on the achievements of the liberalization reforms over the three previous decades. However, recent developments have dampened that optimism, rekindling fears that Sri Lanka's tale of missed opportunities may continue. The analysis in this paper suggests that the return to the failed past policies of inward-oriented development strategies offers no viable solutions for the economic problems confronting Sri Lanka.