Study on the Impact of the Euro on Trade and Foreign Direct Investment

The introduction of the euro was the world's largest economic ‘experiment.' This experiment opens the door to a major advance in our understanding of how a  common currency affects economic activity. When it comes to the euro's trade effects the first contribution of this report is to refine “the numberâ€. Using the latest data and best empirical methodology, we confirm the received wisdom that the euro has promoted trade significantly, with the aggregate impact being in the range of 5% or so. The second main contribution of this report was to advance and refine our understanding of exact how the euro was boosting trade. The euro boosted trade inside the Eurozone since it lowered the relative price of traded goods coming from the Eurozone. The second main channel is the newly-trade goods channel. The third main contribution of the report concerns the euro's pro-FDI effects.Economic and Monetary Union, trade, FDI, euro, Baldwin, DiNino, Fontagn�, De Santis,Taglioni

The Third World Professional and Collective Self?Reliance—Towards the Barefoot Accountant?

Summary The economic recession of the last few years has reduced the volume of migration of Third World professionals, affording an opportunity to consider the underlying question: the nature of the professions and of professional training in and for less developed countries. The professions as they stand are quite functional in relation to effective demand as expressed in the market place, but would become disfunctional if an attempt were made to shift to a system based on satisfying needs. Any government seriously committed to moving towards collective self?reliance would need to embark at an early stage on remoulding the professions, which at the moment constitute an important potential obstacle to such a strategy. Resume L'autonomie professionnelle et collective dans le Tiers Monde—verrons?nous les comptables pieds nus? La récession économique de ces dernières années a entrainé une diminution du volume de l'émigration des professions libérales des pays du Tiers Monde, ce qui permet d'examiner la question fondamentale, à savoir, la nature des professions et de la formation professionnelle dans les pays moins développés ou pour eux. Les professions libérales telles qu'elles sont à l'heure actuelle sont assez fonctionnelles en ce qu'elles répondent à la demande réelle telle qu'elle s'exprime sur le marché, mais elles deviendraient vite inadaptées si l'on s'avisait de passer à un systême visant à satisfaire les besoins. Tout gouvernement ayant pris sérieusement l'engagement de promouvoir l'autonomie collective devrait entreprendre suffisamment tôt la restructuration des professions libérales, qui, telles qu'elles sont à l'heure actuelle, constituent un obstacle en puissance à une telle stratégie. Resumen El Profesional del Tercer Mundo y la Autosuficiencia Colectiva: ¿hacia el contable descalzo? La recesión económica de los últimos años ha reducido el volumen de emigración de profesionales del Tercer Mundo, proporcionando la oportunidad de estudiar la cuestión de fondo: el carácter de las profesiones y de la formación profesional en los países menos desarrollados y para ellos. Las profesiones, según su situación actual, son bastante funcionales en relación con la demande efectiva, expresada en el mercado, pero dejaría de ser funcional si se intentase el movimiento hacia un sistema basado en la satisfacción de las necesidades. Cualquier gobierno seriamente comprometido a avanzar hacia la autosuficiencia colectiva necesitaría embarcarse, en una fase bastante temprana, en remodelar las profesiones, que de momento constituyen un obstáculo importante potencial de una estrategia de esta índole

Acute oral sodium propionate supplementation raises resting energy expenditure and lipid oxidation in fasted humans

Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), produced from fermentation of dietary fibre by the gut microbiota, have been suggested to modulate energy metabolism. Previous work using rodent models have demonstrated that oral supplementation of the SCFA propionate raises resting energy expenditure (REE) by promoting lipid oxidation. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of oral sodium propionate on REE and substrate metabolism in humans. Eighteen healthy volunteers (9 females and 9 males; Age: 25±1 y; Body Mass Index: 24.1±1.2 kg/m2) completed two study visits following an overnight fast. Tablets containing a total of 6845mg sodium propionate or 4164mg sodium chloride were provided over the 180 min study period in a random order. REE and substrate oxidation was assessed by indirect calorimetry. Oral sodium propionate administration increased REE (0.045±0.020 kcal/min; P=0.036) accompanied with elevated rates of whole-body lipid oxidation (0.012 ± 0.006 g/min; P=0.048) and independent of changes in glucose and insulin concentrations. Future studies are warranted to determine whether the acute effects of oral sodium propionate on REE translate into positive improvements in long-term energy balance in humans

Amalgamation, absoluteness, and categoricity

"Vegeu el resum a l'inici del document del fitxer adjunt"

Cone Spacing Correlates With Retinal Thickness and Microperimetry in Patients With Inherited Retinal Degenerations.

PurposeTo determine whether high-resolution retinal imaging measures of macular structure correlate with visual function over 36 months in retinal degeneration (RD) patients and normal subjects.MethodsTwenty-six eyes of 16 RD patients and 16 eyes of 8 normal subjects were studied at baseline; 15 eyes (14 RD) and 11 eyes (6 normal) were studied 36 months later. Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO) was used to identify regions of interest (ROIs) with unambiguous cones at baseline to measure cone spacing. AOSLO images were aligned with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and fundus-guided microperimetry results to correlate structure and function at the ROIs. SD-OCT images were segmented to measure inner segment (IS) and outer segment (OS) thickness. Correlations between cone spacing, IS and OS thickness and sensitivity were assessed using Spearman correlation coefficient ρ with bootstrap analyses clustered by person.ResultsCone spacing (ρ = 0.57, P < 0.001) and macular sensitivity (ρ = 0.19, P = 0.14) were significantly correlated with eccentricity in patients. Controlling for eccentricity, cone spacing Z-scores were inversely correlated with IS (ρ = -0.29, P = 0.002) and OS thickness (ρ = -0.39, P < 0.001) in RD patients only, and with sensitivity in normal subjects (ρ = -0.22, P < 0.001) and RD patients (ρ = -0.38, P < 0.001). After 36 months, cone spacing increased (P < 0.001) and macular sensitivity decreased (P = 0.007) compared to baseline in RD patients.ConclusionsCone spacing increased and macular sensitivity declined significantly in RD patients over 36 months. High resolution images of cone structure correlated with retinal sensitivity, and may be appropriate outcome measures for clinical trials in RD

Optical spectroscopy of faint gigahertz peaked spectrum sources

We present spectroscopic observations of a sample of faint Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum (GPS) radio sources drawn from the Westerbork Northern Sky Survey (WENSS). Redshifts have been determined for 19 (40%) of the objects. The optical spectra of the GPS sources identified with low redshift galaxies show deep stellar absorption features. This confirms previous suggestions that their optical light is not significantly contaminated by AGN-related emission, but is dominated by a population of old (>9 Gyr) and metal-rich (>0.2 [Fe/H]) stars, justifying the use of these (probably) young radio sources as probes of galaxy evolution. The optical spectra of GPS sources identified with quasars are indistinguishable from those of flat spectrum quasars, and clearly different from the spectra of Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) quasars. The redshift distribution of the GPS quasars in our radio-faint sample is comparable to that of the bright samples presented in the literature, peaking at z ~ 2-3. It is unlikely that a significant population of low redshift GPS quasars is missed due to selection effects in our sample. We therefore claim that there is a genuine difference between the redshift distributions of GPS galaxies and quasars, which, because it is present in both the radio-faint and bright samples, can not be due to a redshift-luminosity degeneracy. It is therefore unlikely that the GPS quasars and galaxies are unified by orientation, unless the quasar opening angle is a strong function of redshift. We suggest that the GPS quasars and galaxies are unrelated populations and just happen to have identical observed radio-spectral properties, and hypothesise that GPS quasars are a sub-class of flat spectrum quasars.Comment: LaTeX, 13 pages. Accepted by MNRAS. For related papers see http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~snelle

Observation of a One-Dimensional Spin-Orbit Gap in a Quantum Wire

Understanding the flow of spins in magnetic layered structures has enabled an increase in data storage density in hard drives over the past decade of more than two orders of magnitude1. Following this remarkable success, the field of 'spintronics' or spin-based electronics is moving beyond effects based on local spin polarisation and is turning its attention to spin-orbit interaction (SOI) effects, which hold promise for the production, detection and manipulation of spin currents, allowing coherent transmission of information within a device. While SOI-induced spin transport effects have been observed in two- and three-dimensional samples, these have been subtle and elusive, often detected only indirectly in electrical transport or else with more sophisticated techniques. Here we present the first observation of a predicted 'spin-orbit gap' in a one-dimensional sample, where counter-propagating spins, constituting a spin current, are accompanied by a clear signal in the easily-measured linear conductance of the system.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, supplementary informatio

The effects of molecular weight, evaporation rate and polymer concentration on pillar formation in drying poly(ethylene oxide) droplets

Typically, when droplets of dilute suspensions are left to evaporate the final dry deposit is the familiar coffee-ring stain, with nearly all the solute deposited at the initial contact line. Contrastingly, in previous work we have shown that sessile droplets of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) solutions form tall central pillars (or monoliths) during a 4-stage drying process. We show that a dimensionless Péclet-type number Pe, a ratio of the competing advective and diffusive motion of the dissolved polymer, which incorporates the effects of evaporation rate, initial concentration c0 and the polymer diffusion coefficient, to determine whether the droplet will form a pillar or a flat deposit. In this work we vary concentration up to c0 = 0.5 and molecular weight Mw between 3.35 kg/mol and 600 kg/mol and find that in ambient conditions with c0 = 0.1 pillars only form for a limited range, 35 ≤ Mw ≤ 200 kg/mol. This observation is in contrast to the the Péclet argument in which high molecular weight polymers with a slow self-diffusion should still form pillars. We present various experimental measurements attempting to resolve this discrepancy: crossover time-scale for viscoelastic behaviour; fast diffusion of an entangled network; and droplet viscosity or contact line friction

Slit and integral-field optical spectroscopy of the enigmatic quasar HE0450-2958

Interest in the quasar HE0450-2958 arose following the publication of the non-detection of its expected massive host, leading to various interpretations. This article investigates the gaseous and stellar contents of the system through additional VLT/FORS slit spectra and integral field spectroscopy from VLT/VIMOS. We apply our MCS deconvolution algorithm on slit spectra for the separation of the QSO and diffuse components, and develop a new method to remove the point sources in Integral Field Spectra, allowing extraction of velocity maps, narrow-line images, spatially resolved spectra or ionization diagrams of the surroundings of HE0450-2958. The whole system is embedded in gas, mostly ionized by the QSO radiation field and shocks associated with radio jets. The observed gas and star dynamics are unrelated, revealing a strongly perturbed system. Despite longer spectroscopic observations, the host galaxy remains undetected.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, in press in A&