An economic approach to soil fertility management for wheat production in north-eastern Australia

Soil fertility decline and soil management for crop production are important economic issues for grain growers in north-eastern Australia. In that region, there is evidence of soil fertility decline which is attributed to past crop management practices. The questions addressed in this article are first, whether components of soil fertility can be improved by better management and second, by how much soil fertility would change. Soil fertility for crop production is considered in terms of soil organic carbon and nitrogen. A stochastic dynamic economic analysis of soil fertility management for wheat production is presented. A sequential analysis of first deriving the optimal nitrogen stock and application rates is followed by an assessment of tillage, stubble, and fertilizer strategies to obtain an optimal level of soil organic carbon. The recommended management practices are consistent with emerging management trends in the region. The derivation of optimal levels of soil fertility for agricultural purposes has other policy implications, which we discuss.     

A profile of the human fears of technological change

Workers often express a great deal of concern over managerial policies and tactics in introducing technological change. This article summarizes 11 concerns that workers in the telecommunications industry expressed about the changes they were experiencing. Many of these concerns arise from misunderstandings and miscommunications of managerial policies and are based on beliefs and expectations rather than fact and accurate information. It is argued that management should be concerned with these issues when implementing technological changes. Ideally, policies relating to the implementation of technological changes might be based on employee input and involvement. At a minimum, managers have an obligation to clarify policies regarding technological change so that rumors and false expectations do not dominate.     

Inequalities in Children's Experiences of Home Learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown in England*

This paper combines novel data on the time use, home-learning practices and economic circumstances of families with children during the COVID-19 lockdown with pre-lockdown data from the UK Time Use Survey to characterise the time use of children and how it changed during lockdown, and to gauge the extent to which changes in time use and learning practices during this period are likely to reinforce the already large gaps in educational attainment between children from poorer and better-off families. We find considerable heterogeneity in children's learning experiences – amount of time spent learning, activities undertaken during this time and availability of resources to support learning. Concerningly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, this heterogeneity is strongly associated with family income and in some instances more so than before lockdown. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that any impacts of inequalities in time spent learning between poorer and richer children are likely to be compounded by inequalities not only in learning resources available at home, but also in those provided by schools.     

QRA of chemical reaction systems: The state of the practice

This paper discusses a quantitative risk assessment (QRA) of an exothermic chemical process. Fault tree/event tree techniques were used to estimate the frequency of runaway reactions that could result in over-pressure and vessel rupture. The paper focuses on the current methodology used in performing this type of study, emphasizing analytical techniques that help avoid potential time-consuming pitfalls. The challenging problem of predicting how rare sequences of events (e.g., involving failure of several engineered control and safety systems) will develop is systematically modeled using fault trees/event trees, which makes the QRA process a unique and powerful analytical tool. The results of this study provided the guidance for selecting the most appropriate action(s) to implement from a set of various design options for improving the safety of this system. Use of QRA has enabled plant management to have confidence that they are selecting the most cost-effective safety improvement option.