Four-part differential leukocyte count using μflow cytometer

This paper reports the four-part differential leukocyte count (DLC) of human blood using a MEMS microflow (μflow) cytometer. It is achieved with a two-color laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection scheme. Four types of leukocytes including neutrophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes and monocytes are identified in blood samples, which are stained by fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and propidium iodide (PI). The DLC results show good correlation with the count from a commercial hematology analyzer. The whole system is also implemented into a portable instrument for space application

Forecasting U.S. Trade in Services

This paper provides a set of forecasts of United States international trade in services, both at the aggregate level and for four subcategories. These sectors are: travel, which is mostly tourist expenditures; passenger fares, which is mostly passenger air transportation; transportation, other than passenger transportation; and other private services, including education, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, and business, professional and technical services. A forecasting model is constructed and estimated, based on conventional economic forces of supply and demand, dependent on cost variables and income variables as well as relative prices. For forecasting purposes, these variables are taken from the Michigan Quarterly Econometric Model of the U.S. Economy, a macroeconomic forecasting model with forecasts provided regularly by the University of Michigan Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics. The equations of the services trade model are reported and discussed, and the performance of the estimated equations is evaluated. The quarterly forecast paths are provided for both aggregate and sectoral services trade, including exports and imports, through the end of 2001. Results indicate that imports will continue to rise over the forecast period, while exports, after remaining nearly stationary for several quarters in some sectors in 1999, will resume their rise thereafter. This forecasting work is to be continued, and it is suggested, in addition, that future research would be useful to explore the determinants of the production and sales of foreign services affiliates of U.S. parent companies.Services, International Trade

Comparing foreign policy and development in Malta and Singapore after 1964 : between surviving, thriving and taking risks

Malta and Singapore attained full independence nearly a year apart: 21 September 1964 and 9 August 1965 respectively. Yet today, despite being self-classified as small states, Singapore has been treated as a developed economy by the OECD and is widely acknowledged to be a ‘behind the scenes’ helmsman of the regional security architecture in the Asia-Pacific. Malta, in contrast, appears to be a relative diplomatic bystander enunciating its own principles of sovereign difference, calling for EU and Mediterranean regional forums to address non- traditional security issues, and focussing heavily on growing a service economy in finance, tourism, electronics and freight transhipment. Singapore’s growth trajectory takes on these areas as well, but also experiments with designs to establish itself as a transportation and communications hub for Asia. This preliminary comparison of Malta and Singapore as small states will proceed through three categories of examination: stabilising the geopolitical environment for growth; experiments in integration into a global economy; and the idea of a globally branded small state.peer-reviewe

The Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson Hypothesis: Real Exchange Rates and their Long-Run Equilibrium

Frictionless, perfectly competitive traded-goods markets justify thinking of purchasing power parity (PPP) as the main driver of exchange rates in the long-run. But differences in the traded/non-traded sectors of economies tend to be persistent and affect movements in local price levels in ways that upset the PPP balance (the underpinning of the Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis, HBS). This paper uses panel-data techniques on a broad collection of countries to investigate the long-run properties of the PPP/HBS equilibrium using novel local projection methods for cointegrated systems. These semi-parametric methods isolate the long-run behavior of the data from contaminating factors such as frictions not explicitly modelled and thought to have effects only in the short-run. Absent the short-run effects, we find that the estimated speed of reversion to long-run equilibrium is much higher. In addition, the HBS effects means that the real exchange rate is converging not to a steady mean, but to a slowly to a moving target. The common failure to properly model this effect also biases the estimated speed of reversion downwards. Thus, the so-called "PPP puzzle" is not as bad as we thought.

Nanometer gaps by feedback-controlled electromigration

Nanometer-sized gap (or nanogap) is one of the most fundamental devices in the nanotechnology field. Park et. al., first proposed the open-circuit electromigration method to fabricate nanogaps, but the process is only repeatable if Au film is thinner than 20 nm. To overcome these drawbacks, we develop the feedback-controlled electromigration process and find that not only repeatable nanogaps can be created in thicker film (up to 120 nm or thicker in our experiments), but superior gap size control and topology are obtained. Moreover, we develop two new approaches to make free-standing nanogaps. The tunneling current between the nanogap electrodes was used to demonstrate a sensitive pressure and/or temperature sensor. Finally, we also develop a simple thermal-expansion method to measure the gap size without needing delicate instrument

Foreign policy in global information space: Actualising soft power.

The contemporary practice of the internal-external divide in foreign policy is being challenged by globalization's non-territorial logic. This challenge is reformulated as information globalization; a border-crossing trend of social exposure to alternative ideas jointly precipitated by the global reach of information and communication technologies, global capitalism, and post-Cold War geopolitical fluidity. The agents and processes associated with it confound any orderly delineation of 'the foreign'. This can be understood as an ideational threat to the nation-state in terms of generating a public 'global information space' that reopens all borders to political struggle. For the nation-state to survive in this space, a reformulation of foreign policy as discourse is needed. This thesis argues that the ideational, in the form of information, is endowed with power relations in spite of its abstraction, hence creating a tangible enough 'target' for 'offence/defence' by foreign policy. In this regard, information is defined as the socially patterned relationship of events and symbols capable of politically inducing action, identity or community. Thus 'soft power', or the ability to produce outcomes through attraction instead of coercion, becomes a central focus of this examination of informational challenges to statist foreign policy. Two central research questions are posed. Firstly, how can foreign policy defend or project statist political communities using soft power within a global information space. Secondly, does soft power, when exercised in turn by non-state actors, affect foreign policy by undermining statist community within the same global information space. An answer to the first question is to actualise soft power through forms of Leadership, whether from 'Inside-Out' or 'Outside-In', which are derived from domestically proven communitarian discourses worthy of emulation abroad. Alternatively soft power can be exercised by non-state actors to the detriment of state interests trough processes I label the 'Intermestic Correlation of Forces', 'Socialisation' and the 'Demonstration of Ideas'. In this second hypothesis, foreign policy retains relevance by learning to accommodate itself to the demands of external parties with interests in the welfare of domestic political constituencies. Exercising soft power in the sense in a conflation of the international and the domestic (intermestic) spheres. The case studies of Singaporean and Chilean foreign policies respectively provide analytical illustrations of both hypotheses