Two quantative scenarios for the future of manufacturing in Europe

This paper presents two scenarios for the future of manufacturing in Europe with varying trends in globalisation, technological progress and energy efficiency. From these scenarios, we conclude that the trend towards a services economy is likely to continue with employment shifting away from manufacturing towards services. However, manufacturing production still grows and is important for trade in Europe. The sectors which are already the most open ones for international trade are also the ones mostly affected by this trend. These include chemicals, rubber and plastics, the combined machinery and equipment sectors, textiles and wearing apparel, and wood and other manufacturing. R&D policies and internal market policies in Europe can have strong positive impact on manufacturing. These policies do not alter the trend that Europe's share in global production and trade will continue to decline, but they do mitigate the overall decline, in particular in the chemicals, rubber and plastics, and combined machinery and equipment sectors.

Phonon-affected steady-state transport through molecular quantum dots

We consider transport through a vibrating molecular quantum dot contacted to macroscopic leads acting as charge reservoirs. In the equilibrium and nonequilibrium regime, we study the formation of a polaron-like transient state at the quantum dot for all ratios of the dot-lead coupling to the energy of the local phonon mode. We show that the polaronic renormalization of the dot-lead coupling is a possible mechanism for negative differential conductance. Moreover, the effective dot level follows one of the lead chemical potentials to enhance resonant transport, causing novel features in the inelastic tunneling signal. In the linear response regime, we investigate the impact of the electron-phonon interaction on the thermoelectrical properties of the quantum dot device.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, FQMT11 Proceeding

Web based methodologies and techniques to monitor electronic resources use in university libraries

The aim of this paper is to measure user satisfaction and the quality of the electronic resources consultation services offered by the Milano Bicocca University Library

Scottish academic publications implementing an effective networked service (SAPIENS) project

This article describes the aims and continuing progress of the Scottish Academic Periodicals Implementing an Effective Networked Service (SAPIENS) project which has been running at the University of Strathclyde's Centre for Digital Library Research since September 2001. Initially funded for two years, the project has been extended until October 2004. The rationale behind SAPIENS is the concern that small Scottish publishers, operating on limited budgets, are in danger of finding themselves marginalised in the modern information environment. The project's primary objectives are to explore the viability of, and launch, an electronic publishing service to assist small-scale Scottish publishers of academic and cultural periodicals to publish online. It has achieved these aims by implementing a demonstration service which is gradually moving into an operational mode, delivering current journals

Electronic Books in the USA - their numbers and development and a comparison to Germany.

This article will provide data to specify the problem of low e-book-supply. First the total number of commercially available English-speaking e-books in the US-market is stated. Then the growth of the title supply over the last twenty years is reviewed. Third the growth of the publishing-activities in the e-book-market is set in relation to the developments in the hardcover-market. Finally these numbers of the English-speaking market are compared to the numbers for the German-speaking market

Statistics of Lead Changes in Popularity-Driven Systems

We study statistical properties of the highest degree, or most popular, nodes in growing networks. We show that the number of lead changes increases logarithmically with network size N, independent of the details of the growth mechanism. The probability that the first node retains the lead approaches a finite constant for popularity-driven growth, and decays as N^{-phi}(ln N)^{-1/2}, with phi=0.08607..., for growth with no popularity bias.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 2 column revtex format. Minor changes in response to referee comments. For publication in PR

Leadership Statistics in Random Structures

The largest component (``the leader'') in evolving random structures often exhibits universal statistical properties. This phenomenon is demonstrated analytically for two ubiquitous structures: random trees and random graphs. In both cases, lead changes are rare as the average number of lead changes increases quadratically with logarithm of the system size. As a function of time, the number of lead changes is self-similar. Additionally, the probability that no lead change ever occurs decays exponentially with the average number of lead changes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure