7,511 research outputs found

    The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in Asia and Latin America

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    Physiological Consequences of Compensatory Growth: A Look at Snake Species Exhibiting Differential Sexual Size Dimorphism

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    Although many life-history traits are inflexible, extrinsic factors are likely responsible for variation in attributes such as growth rates and ultimately adult body size. Nutritional stress during natal periods, in particular, has significant long-term consequences for adult characteristics. It is thought that poor natal nutrition leads to either the diversion of subsequent energy intake into compensatory growth or delayed maturation. Diversion of energy, to achieve compensation, however does not come without consequence; immune defense is a resource-demanding activity, which can trade- off with traits such as growth. Relatively little is known about the intra- or interspecific variation in immunological capabilities, especially in the context of the effects of stress on immune function. Stress induced levels of glucocorticoids (corticosterone) cause a shift in physiological parameters such that self-maintenance and survival processes are prioritized; by redirecting resources, corticosterone and thus stress especially at chronic levels is generally considered immunosuppressive. I looked at the effects of poor natal nutrition and the potential for compensation on types of immune defense and corticosterone levels in checkered garter and corn snakes, species with different sexual dimorphisms. The effects of accelerated growth rates, following a period of suppressed growth, on immunological function and stress were negligible. This suggests that either snakes are robust animals that can maintain health at low levels of food intake, or that immune function parameters are not downgraded when excess energy is allocated towards compensation (partial or complete). Immune function is thus suggested to be evolutionarily adapted to be maintained during periods of stress

    Changing Midwifery: Working Conditions and the Quality of Care

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    Maternity units have been expected to achieve, within constrained resources, significant improvements in the quality and continuity of care as required by government policy. While significant advances have been made, these have been achieved by drawing upon the professionalism and vocational commitment of midwives, and at the expense of their working conditions and sense of wellbeing. While this approach has, in the short term, served the purpose of increasing midwifery output within existing resource constraints, the quality of care has suffered. The increasing problems of recruitment, retention, and falling morale within the profession suggest that it is not sustainable. In the longer term, if the improvements in care achieved thus far are to be sustained, there is a need to reform midwives' working conditions and working environment. This is not to imply that the answer to the ongoing dilemmas facing the maternity services lies solely in improvements in the pay levels or pay structure for midwives. The solution is also dependent on the extent to which midwives are afforded the enhanced status and autonomy recognised as necessary for the improvement of maternity services. Furthermore, strong representation of midwives, alongside improvements in management structures and systems of communication in NHS trusts, are necessary if midwives are to be enabled to participate in decision-making and thereby effectively contribute to improvements in the quality of care.

    How do NMS immigrants fare within the enlarged EU labour market? The case of Ireland

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    This paper explores the relationship between occupational downgrading and the wages of NMS immigrants to Ireland by taking advantage of two data sources, the Irish Census and the Survey on Income and Living Conditions. The study identifies biases in SILC that dampen the estimated earnings disadvantage of NMS immigrants. Correcting population weights that match SILC against the Census are suggested. These have a significant impact on results for NMS immigrants, increasing both the size of their wage penalty and the extent to which their wage gap can be explained by occupational downgrading. The corrected wage penalties identified for Ireland are comparable to recently published results for the UK.

    Cross-layer based erasure code to reduce the 802.11 performance anomaly : when FEC meets ARF

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    Wireless networks have been widely accepted and deployed in our world nowadays. Consumers are now accustomed to wireless connectivity in their daily life due to the pervasive- ness of the 802.11b/g and wireless LAN standards. Specially, the emergence of the next evolution of Wi-Fi technology known as 802.11n is pushing a new revolution on personal wireless communication. However, in the context of WLAN, although multiple novel wireless access technologies have been proposed and developed to offer high bandwidth and guarantee quality of transmission, some deficiencies still remain due to the original design of WLAN-MAC layer. In particular, the performance anomaly of 802.11 is a serious issue which induces a potentially dramatic reduction of the global bandwidth when one or several mobile nodes downgrade their transmission rates following the signal degradation. In this paper, we study how the use of adaptive erasure code as a replacement of the Auto Rate Feedback mechanism can help to mitigate this performance anomaly issue. Preliminary study shows a global increase of the goodput delivered to mobile hosts attached to an access point

    Are Sons and Daughters Substitutable? A Study of Intra-household Allocation of Resources in Contemporary Japan

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    Gender inequality in educational attainment remains a salient feature of contemporary Japanese society. This inequality lies not at the high school level but at the university level. Equal numbers of men and women advance to high school, but a significantly lower proportion of women advance to four-year universities relative to men. Starting from government statistics which report that Japanese parents aspire to university education more for their sons than for their daughters, I argue that the gender gap in the university advancement rate in Japan stems in part from differences in how parents allocate resources within the household depending on the gender of their children. From the individuals' perspective, the gender composition of their siblings should therefore alter the ways in which resources are allocated to them. Using a 1995 cross-sectional sample of men and women between the ages of 20 and 70 in Japan, I test the null hypothesis that the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between an additional brother versus an additional sister with respect to the probability that an individual advances to university or not is equal to unity, i.e. MRS = 1 implies that brothers and sisters are perfectly substitutable and that parents allocate resources equally amongst their sons and daughters. My results show that the null hypothesis is rejected for women but cannot be rejected for men: It is not sibship size per se that depresses women's likelihood of university advancement, but the number of brothers in the household. My findings lend support to the position that intra-household resources in Japan are likely to be allocated in favor of sons and away from daughters.human capital formation; economics of the family; quality-quantity tradeoff of children; gender inequality
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