Infant Perception of Surface Texture and Relative Height as Distance Information: A Preferential‐Reaching Study

Two preferential‐reaching experiments explored 5‐ and 7‐month‐olds’ sensitivity to pictorial depth cues. In the first experiment, infants viewed a display in which texture gradients, linear perspective of the surface contours, and relative height in the visual field provided information that two objects were at different distances. Five‐ and 7‐month‐old infants reached preferentially for the apparently nearer object under monocular but not binocular viewing conditions, indicating that infants in both age groups respond to pictorial depth cues. In the second experiment, texture gradients and linear perspective of the surface contours were eliminated from the experimental display, making relative height the sole pictorial depth cue. Seven‐month‐olds again reached more often for the apparently nearer object under monocular, but not binocular viewing conditions. By contrast, the 5‐month‐olds’ reaching behavior did not differ between viewing conditions. These results indicate that 7‐month‐olds respond to the depth cue of relative height but provide no evidence of responsiveness to relative height in 5‐month‐olds. Both age groups responded more consistently to pictorial depth in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2.     

Exchange Rate Policy in Serbia

In August 2006, Serbia adopted an inflation targeting regime as its monetary regime. The initial period of implementation of this regime was characterized by an extremely high capital inflow and appreciation of the exchange rate of the dinar. Under such conditions, the selected monetary policy regime functioned well. However, at the end of 2008, when the global financial crisis caused the outflow of foreign capital, deterioration of foreign borrowing conditions and an increase in inflationary expectations, the dinar lost about 25 per cent of its value within a relatively short period, despite the interventions of the National Bank of Serbia in the foreign exchange market. Therefore, the authors of this paper raise a dilemma whether Serbia conducts an adequate policy of the exchange rate of the dinar. The authors point out that, at the moment, the policy of a free floating exchange rate is not adequate for Serbia. As an alternative, a two nominal-anchor regime—inflation and the exchange rate—is proposed.     

Automated statistical methods for measuring the strength of block ciphers

A block cipher is one of the most common forms of algorithms used for data encryption. This paper describes an efficient set of statistical methods for analysing the security of these algorithms under the black-box approach. The procedures can be fully automated, which provides the designer or user of a block cipher with a useful set of tools for security analysis.     

北京市新材料产业发展状况调查与思考

新材料创新基地建设是北京市“二、四、八重大创新工程”的重要组成部分。其发展思路和布局对全国新材料产业整体的发展有很好的借鉴作用。通过对北京市新材料产业的情况调查 ,我们认为在新材料基地建设上应坚持“双高一大”原则 ,在政府宏观指导下以企业化的运作模式 ,走传统产业与高新技术产业结合的道路。     

Building Social Capability for Economic Catch-up: The Experience and Prospects of the Post-socialist Countries

The post-socialist countries are, by the standards of the EU, poor countries. The major developmental task facing these countries is, therefore, that of catching up with their more prosperous neighbours. The scope for catch-up is defined in terms of the levels of social capability exhibited by these societies and their capacity to establish technological congruence with the leading firms from the advanced industrial economies. S&T systems in the broadest sense are shown to be key factors in relation to both social capability and technological congruence. Detailed analysis of the transition countries indicates that the catch-up process is hampered across the board by specific gaps in social capability and elements of technological incongruence. These can in turn be traced to specific structural trends, in particular in relation to foreign investment, and to specific weaknesses of institutional development, cutting across the public/private dividing line, notably in relation to R&D systems and banking systems. Consideration of all these factors suggests that there can be no assumption that the transition countries will automatically catch up with western Europe, and that some disfavoured transition countries may, indeed, continue to fall behind.     

Adaptive Flood Risk Management Under Climate Change Uncertainty Using Real Options and Optimization

It is well recognized that adaptive and flexible flood risk strategies are required to account for future uncertainties. Development of such strategies is, however, a challenge. Climate change alone is a significant complication, but, in addition, complexities exist trying to identify the most appropriate set of mitigation measures, or interventions. There are a range of economic and environmental performance measures that require consideration, and the spatial and temporal aspects of evaluating the performance of these is complex. All these elements pose severe difficulties to decisionmakers. This article describes a decision support methodology that has the capability to assess the most appropriate set of interventions to make in a flood system and the opportune time to make these interventions, given the future uncertainties. The flood risk strategies have been explicitly designed to allow for flexible adaptive measures by capturing the concepts of real options and multiobjective optimization to evaluate potential flood risk management opportunities. A state‐of‐the‐art flood risk analysis tool is employed to evaluate the risk associated to each strategy over future points in time and a multiobjective genetic algorithm is utilized to search for the optimal adaptive strategies. The modeling system has been applied to a reach on the Thames Estuary (London, England), and initial results show the inclusion of flexibility is advantageous, while the outputs provide decisionmakers with supplementary knowledge that previously has not been considered.     

Two-dimensional Kolmogorov-type goodness-of-fit tests based on characterisations and their asymptotic efficiencies

In this paper, new two-dimensional goodness-of-fit tests are proposed. They are of supremum type and are based on two different types of characterisations. The first type are those that involve functional equations that the distribution function satisfies, while the second type uses independence of some statistics. The asymptotics of the statistics is studied and Bahadur efficiencies of the tests against some close alternatives are calculated. In the process, a theorem on large deviations of Kolmogorov-type statistics has been extended to the multidimensional case.