Policy Agendas in Australian Politics: The Governor-General's Speeches, 1945–2008

The Policy Agendas Project collects and organises data from official documents to trace changes in the policy agenda and outputs of national, sub-national and supranational governments. In this paper we use the policy agendas method to analyse the changing contents of those Australian Governor-General's speeches delivered on behalf of incoming governments between 1945 and 2008. We suggest that these speeches provide an important insight into how the executive wishes to portray its policy agenda as it starts a new term of government. In mapping the changing agenda in this way we address four questions: which issues have risen or fallen in importance? When and in relation to what issues have there been policy ‘punctuations’? How stable is the Australian policy agenda? How fragmented is the policy agenda? We find evidence of a number of policy punctuations and one turning-point: the election of the Whitlam government.     

Are the home values and property tax burdens of permanent homeowners affected by growth in housing rentals and second homes: Evidence based on big data from Florida

Homeowners who make their homes their primary residence have resisted the entry of rentals into their neighborhoods and cities. Possible reasons underlying this resistance are that rentals reduce the property values, increase the property tax burdens, and raise the price of public services for these homeowners. We relate the market values of single-family homes occupied by permanent homeowners, the effective property tax rate of these homeowners, and the tax price they pay for public services to shifts in their city's housing units toward a variety of different types of rentals and second homes. Our analysis is based on large panels of Florida homes containing hundreds of thousands and millions of observations. Our results show that increases in the share of a city's housing units used as rentals or second homes reduce the home values, increase the property tax burdens, and raise the public services prices of homeowners who permanently reside in single-family homes. Impacts vary in magnitude among single-family, condominium, and mobile homes used as rentals and second homes. Estimated impacts are the strongest for share increases in single-family rentals and second homes.     

Septic bone changes in leprosy: A clinical,radiological and palaeopathological review

Infective lesions of bone in leprosy are of two types. In the rhinomaxillary syndrome, superficial infective changes in the bones of the maxilla are due to the presence of Mycobacterium leprae. Lytic foci in the medulla or the outer cortical surface may be due to Mycobacterium leprae at the site as granulomatous lesions. The most frequent infective bone changes in leprosy are, however, sequelae of regional anaesthesia and soft tissue ulceration. The bone lesions are due to pyogenic bacteria and the nature of these infective lesions is similar to that in non-leprous conditions. The pyogenic lesions in leprosy are restricted to the bones of the hands, feet and lower legs.     

Otosclerosis and stapedial footplate fixation in archaeological material

A total of 1164 temporal bones from various cemetery sites in England were examined using a fibre optic endoscope. Eight bones were found to have evidence of otosclerosis in which proliferative new bone fixes the footplate of the stapes into the oval window, causing deafness. A prevalence of 0.9 per cent in this study is comparable with the incidence found in modern white populations and with that found in a study of 2760 Lithuanian temporal bones of various periods.