The Offshoring of Production Activities in European Manufacturing

We investigate production offshoring – the relocation of production activities to locations abroad – of European firms. The analysis employs data from the European Manufacturing Survey (EMS). Offshoring activity is declining across most countries, sectors, and firm sizes between the periods 2004/06 and 2007/09. Regression analysis reveals that this decline is also significant after controlling for firm characteristics. Long-term data for Germany indicate that this decrease is part of a longer trend which already started in 2003. Despite the general decrease in offshoring, far-shoring to Asia in general and to China in particular has increased. In contrast, near-shoring to EU member states in Middle and Eastern Europe (EU-12) became less attractive. The EU-12, however, is still the most important target region for offshoring activities of European firms. The dominant motive for offshoring is the wish to reduce labour costs. Expected labour cost reductions explain offshoring to the EU-12, Asia and China in particular. Vicinity to customers and market expansion follow as a motive with a wide margin. However, in contrast to the EU-12, where the offshoring decision is solely dominated by potential labour cost savings, offshoring activities to Asia and China are also significantly related to market expansion motives

On some formulas for the K-analogue of appell functions and generating relations via K-fractional derivative

Our present investigation is mainly based on the k-hypergeometric functions which are constructed by making use of the Pochhammer k-symbol Diaz et al. 2017, which are one of the vital generalizations of hypergeometric functions. We introduce k-analogues of F2 and F3 Appell functions denoted by the symbols F2,k and F3,k, respectively, just like Mubeen et al. did for F1 in 2015. Meanwhile, we prove integral representations of the k-generalizations of F2 and F3 which provide us with an opportunity to generalize widely used identities for Appell hypergeometric functions. In addition, we present some important transformation formulas and some reduction formulas which show close relation not only with k-Appell functions but also with k-hypergeometric functions. Finally, employing the theory of Riemann–Liouville k-fractional derivative from Rahman et al. 2020, and using the relations which we consider in this paper, we acquire linear and bilinear generating relations for k-analogue of hypergeometric functions and Appell functions. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Electrophysiological Subtypes And Prognostic Factors Of Childhood Guillain-Barre Syndrome

Introduction: We assessed the clinical, epidemiologic, electrophysiological and prognostic characteristics of childhood Guillain-Barre Syndrome admitted to 13 pediatric neurology centers in Turkey. Method: Using a standard data recording form age, sex, duration of symptoms, distribution of weakness at onset, cranial nerve involvement, cerebrospinal fluid findings, electrophysiological findings, duration of hospitalization, requirement of ventilation, treatment and clinical evaluation scale at onset, discharge and 1, 3, 6. and 12 months after discharge were recorded. Results: Among the 236 children with a median age of 6.8 years there was a male to female ratio of 13. Based on the electrophysiological features; 84 patients were classified as acute inflammatory demyelinating polyrediculoneuropathy (AIDP), 61 as acute motor axonal neumpathy (AMAN), 21 as acute motor-sensory axonal neuropathy (AMSAN). The incidence of cranial nerve involvement was 16%, and was related to lower clinical scores at discharge and 6 months after discharge. Clinical scale scores between axonal and demyelinating subgroups did not show statistically significant difference except for admission (p<0.05). Conclusion: Electrophysiological subtypes are not important in prognosis in our series. However, duration of weakness, duration of hospitalization and ventilation requirement can affect prognosis negatively.Wo