THE HEAVY ENGINEERING ADJUSTMENT AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM: ORIGINS, PROCESS AND OUTCOMES

Abstract: An industry-specific plan for the heavy engineering industry was introduced by the federal Labor government in 1986. It is an important subject for several reasons. Heavy engineering is a vital industry but receives little publicity. The manner of the plan's introduction is representative of Labor's priorities in its first period of office. The plan's character was exemplary in its forward-looking emphasis on reconstruction. Finally, the adverse bureaucratic environment in which the plan operated provides salutary lessons for cost-efficient and workable industry policy in the future.     

Trends in explosive contamination

This study sought to assign a rough order of magnitude for the amount of explosive residue likely to be available in real-world searches for clandestine explosives. A variety of explosives (TNT, TATP, HMX, AN, RDX, PETN) in various forms (powder, flake, detonating cord, plastic) were carefully weighed or cut into containers, and the amount of residue inadvertently remaining on the work area, hands, or containers was quantified. This was used to evaluate the spillage potential of each explosive. The adhesion of each explosive to a glass surface was quantified from amount of explosive adhering to the inside of a glass vial into which the explosive had been placed and then removed by vigorous tapping. In powdered form, most of the explosives--TNT, PETN, RDX, HMX, and TATP--exhibited similar spillage and adhesion to glass. However, PETN as sheet explosive and plasticized RDX (C-4), showed very little potential to contaminate surfaces, either by spillage or adhesion to glass.     

Child Sexual Abuse Perpetrated by Women: Case Series and Review of the Literature

The literature on child sexual abuse (CSA) perpetrated by female sexual offenders (FSOs) is exiguous, and many studies have focused on judicial databases. The present retrospective study, instead, analyzed clinical and judicial data of a group of both victims and alleged FSOs, to additionally include women who have not been convicted by the criminal justice system, but who hold strong clinical suspicions of being perpetrators of CSA. The medical records and the Court files of 11 children and their eight suspected FSOs have been collected and critically reviewed in light of the literature to date. This approach allowed for a deeper understanding of the relationship between child and FSO. The authors hypothesize that the victims’ severe psychopathological outcomes were a result of a failure to develop appropriate attachments with their prospective caregivers, which could have been damaged by the pathological relationship with FSOs, who were the victims’ caregivers.     

Policy learning and the public inquiry

Can public inquiries learn lessons in ways which can reduce the likelihood of future failure? Political science research has consistently stated that the answer to this question should be an emphatic no and defined the public inquiry as an ineffectual lesson-learning mechanism. This article, however, contends that this conventional wisdom needs to be revisited. Drawing upon policy learning research for its theory, and 100 interviews across four international cases for its evidence, this article returns to the question above and finds that inquiries regularly produce ‘instrumental’ and ‘cognitive organisational’ forms of learning, which propel substantive reform agendas. By contrasting these outcomes against the types of learning that inquiries struggle to produce, the article delivers a nuanced evaluation that indicates that we need to reconsider what we think we know about these important institutions.

     

An Empirical Study of Patent Grant Rates as a Function of Race and Gender

In this article we examine the rate at which patent applications are granted as a function of the inventor's race and gender. Empirical analysis of more than 3.9 million U.S. applications finds minority and women applicants are significantly less likely to secure a patent relative to the balance of inventors. Further analysis indicates that a portion of this bias is introduced during prosecution at the Patent Office, independent of the quality of the application. Mechanisms underlying these disparities are explored. The article concludes with a discussion of our results and their interaction with patent law, innovation policy, and employment trends.