3,155 research outputs found

    Export and innovation activities in the German service sector: empirical evidence at the firm level

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    In this paper we analyse the relationship between export and innovation activities of German service sector companies using data from the 1997 wave of the Mannheim Innovation Panel in the Service Sector. There is a lot of support for the Schumpeterian hypothesis of export activities being mainly driven by innovation activities. Factor endowment theories are only partially supported. While human capital significantly improves export performance, labour costs hamper it only in selected branches. Moreover, allowing for simultaneity we find that export activities do not enforce innovation activities. --exports,innovation,service sector,firm behaviour,applied microeconometrics

    Combining semantic and syntactic generalization in example-based machine translation

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    In this paper, we report our experiments in combining two EBMT systems that rely on generalized templates, Marclator and CMU-EBMT, on an English–German translation task. Our goal was to see whether a statistically significant improvement could be achieved over the individual performances of these two systems. We observed that this was not the case. However, our system consistently outperformed a lexical EBMT baseline system

    Economic Rationality, Risk Presentation, and Retirement Portfolio Choice.

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    This research studies the propensity of individuals to violate implications of expected utility maximization in allocating retirement savings within a compulsory de- �ned contribution retirement plan. The paper develops the implications and describes the construction and administration of a discrete choice experiment to almost 1200 members of Australias mandatory retirement savings scheme. The experiment �nds overall rates of violation of roughly 25%, and substantial variation in rates, depend- ing on the presentation of investment risk and the characteristics of the participants. Presentations based on frequency of returns below or above a threshold generate more violations than do presentations based on the probability of returns below or above thresholds. Individuals with low numeracy skills, assessed as part of the ex-periment, are several times more likely to violate implications of the conventional expected utility model than those with high numeracy skills. Older individuals are substantially less likely to violate these restrictions, when risk is presented in terms of event frequency, than are younger individuals. The results pose significant questions for public policy, in particular compulsory de�ned contribution retirement schemes, where the future welfare of participants in these schemes depends on quantitative decision-making skills that a signi�cant number of them do not possess.discrete choice; retirement savings; investment risk; household finance; financial literacy

    Trace elements in the sea surface microlayer : rapid responses to changes in aerosol deposition

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    © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Elementa Science of the Anthropocene 5 (2017): 42, doi:10.1525/elementa.237.Natural and anthropogenic aerosols are a significant source of trace elements to oligotrophic ocean surface waters, where they provide episodic pulses of limiting micronutrients for the microbial community. However, little is known about the fate of trace elements at the air-sea interface, i.e. the sea surface microlayer. In this study, samples of aerosols, sea surface microlayer, and underlying water column were collected in the Florida Keys during a dusty season (July 2014) and non-dusty season (May 2015) and analyzed for the dissolved and particulate elements Al, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Pb. Microlayer samples were collected using a cylinder of ultra-pure SiO2 (quartz glass), a novel adaptation of the glass plate technique. A significant dust deposition event occurred during the 2014 sampling period which resulted in elevated concentrations of trace elements in the microlayer. Residence times in the microlayer from this event ranged from 12 to 94 minutes for dissolved trace elements and from 1.3 to 3.4 minutes for particulate trace elements. These residence times are potentially long enough for the atmospherically derived trace elements to undergo chemical and biological alterations within the microlayer. Characterizing the trace element distributions within the three regimes is an important step towards our overall goals of understanding the rates and mechanisms of the solubilization of trace elements following aeolian dust deposition and how this might affect microorganisms in surface waters.NSF OCE-1357140 (to WML)

    Relaxation dynamics of an isolated large-spin Fermi gas far from equilibrium

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    A fundamental question in many-body physics is how closed quantum systems reach equilibrium. We address this question experimentally and theoretically in an ultracold large-spin Fermi gas where we find a complex interplay between internal and motional degrees of freedom. The fermions are initially prepared far from equilibrium with only a few spin states occupied. The subsequent dynamics leading to redistribution among all spin states is observed experimentally and simulated theoretically using a kinetic Boltzmann equation with full spin coherence. The latter is derived microscopically and provides good agreement with experimental data without any free parameters. We identify several collisional processes, which occur on different time scales. By varying density and magnetic field, we control the relaxation dynamics and are able to continuously tune the character of a subset of spin states from an open to a closed system.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

    Engineering spin waves in a high-spin ultracold Fermi gas

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    We report on the detailed study of multi-component spin-waves in an s=3/2 Fermi gas where the high spin leads to novel tensorial degrees of freedom compared to s = 1/2 systems. The excitations of a spin-nematic state are investigated from the linear to the nonlinear regime, where the tensorial character is particularly pronounced. By tuning the initial state we engineer the tensorial spin-wave character, such that the magnitude and sign of the counterflow spin-currents are effectively controlled. A comparison of our data with numerical and analytical results shows excellent agreement.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

    The Value of Comparative Animal Research : Krogh’s Principle Facilitates Scientific Discoveries

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    There are no conflicts of interest to declare. This paper developed from the 2016 Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences to TJS. TJS has received funding from The Leverhulme Trust. FJPE is in receipt of funding from the BBSRC (BB/M001555/1). The National Institutes of Health has funded RDF (NS 034950, NS093277, NIMH 087930), AGO (HD079573, IOS-1354760) and AMK (HD081959). BAA is an Arnold O. Beckman postdoctoral fellow.Peer reviewedPostprin

    Export and innovation activities in the German service sector: empirical evidence at the firm level

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    In this paper we analyse the relationship between export and innovation activities of German service sector companies using data from the 1997 wave of the Mannheim Innovation Panel in the Service Sector. There is a lot of support for the Schumpeterian hypothesis of export activities being mainly driven by innovation activities. Factor endowment theories are only partially supported. While human capital significantly improves export performance, labour costs hamper it only in selected branches. Moreover, allowing for simultaneity we find that export activities do not enforce innovation activities
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