18,602 research outputs found
Foreign ownership and productivity: new evidence from the service sector and the R&D lab
This paper examines the relationship between foreign ownership and
productivity, paying particular attention to two issues neglected in the existing literature â
the role of multinationals in service sectors and the importance of R&D activity conducted
by foreign multinationals. We review existing theoretical and empirical work, which
largely focuses on manufacturing, before presenting new evidence using establishment level
data on production, service and R&D activity for the United Kingdom. We find that
multinationals play an important role in service sectors and that entry of foreign
multinationals by takeover is more prevalent than greenfield investment. We find that
British multinationals have lower levels of labour productivity than foreign multinationals,
but the difference is less stark in the service sector than in the production sector, and that
British multinationals have lower levels of investment and intermediate use per employee.
We also find that foreign-owned multinationals conduct a substantial amount of UK R&D.
We discuss the implications of these and other findings for the policy debate on incentives
to influence multinational firmsâ location choices
Canât Get Here from There: The Decision to Apply to a Selective Institution
Students from low-income families are greatly underrepresented at selective colleges and universities in the United States. In an attempt to increase applications from low-income students, some institutions have developed programs involving increased recruitment of and more attractive financial aid packages for students from low-income families. However, relatively little research has looked at the factors that are important in the college application decision-making process, and in particular how the importance of some factors may be different for low-income students. This paper uses data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort to analyze the factors influencing students\u27 college application decisions, with a focus on the decision to apply to a selective four-year institution. We analyze how the influence of distance from a studentâs home during high school to a selective college or university and average tuition levels at selective institutions located nearby vary with the a studentâs family income. Our results show that the further a student lives from a selective college, the less likely they are to apply to one, and this effect seems to be stronger than that of average tuition levels in the studentâs state. Although the effect of distance does not differ for low-income students, they are most heavily impacted due to the geographic mismatch of low-income students and selective institutions. Personal, family (in particular, parentâs education) and high school characteristics also prove to be very influential when students are deciding whether or not to apply to a selective institution
Experimental inhibition of a key cellular antioxidant affects vocal communication
1. There is substantial interest of evolutionary ecologists in the proximate mechanisms that modulate vocal communication. In recent times, there has been growing interest in the role of oxidative stress as a mediator of avian song expression.
2. Here, we tested whether the experimental inhibition of the synthesis of a key cellular antioxidant (glutathione) reduces song rate metrics of male European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). We measured the effect of our treatment on total song rate and on its two components, undirected and nest-box-oriented song, outside the breeding season.
3. Treated males that did not own a nest-box (subordinate males likely to be of lower quality) suffered increased oxidative stress relative to untreated males, while treated males that owned a nest-box (dominant males likely to be of higher quality) did not. Treated non-owners also reduced their undirected song rate, whereas treated nest-box owners did not suffer any reduction in song rate.
4. Our results revealed that inhibition of a key cellular antioxidant results in decreased vocal communication in a social vertebrate, and that this effect is dependent on its social status (nest-box owner vs. non-owner).
5. This work provides support for the hypothesis that acoustic signals may honestly convey information about the individual oxidative status and capacity to regulate the oxidative balance. Our findings raise the possibility of hitherto unexplored impacts of oxidative stress on fitness traits in social species
Kondo resonance line-shape of magnetic adatoms on decoupling layers
The zero-bias resonance in the dI/dV tunneling spectrum recorded using a
scanning tunneling microscope above a spin-1/2 magnetic adatom (such as Ti)
adsorbed on a decoupling layer on metal surface can be accurately fitted using
the universal spectral function of the Kondo impurity model both at zero field
and at finite external magnetic field. Excellent agreement is found both for
the asymptotic low-energy part and for the high-energy logarithmic tails of the
Kondo resonance. For finite magnetic field, the nonlinear fitting procedure
consists in repeatedly solving the impurity model for different Zeeman energies
in order to obtain accurate spectral functions which are compared with the
experimental dI/dV curves. The experimental results at zero field are
sufficiently restraining to enable an unprecedented reliability in the
determination of the Kondo temperature, while at finite fields the results are
more ambiguous and two different interpretations are proposed
Ciproxifan, an H~3~ Receptor Antagonist, Improves Learning and Memory in the APP Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease
Mice that express the mutant form of the human amyloid precursor gene associated with early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease demonstrate memory deficits and amyloid plaques. We show here that ciproxifan, a prototypical antagonist of H~3~-type histamine receptors, alleviates two types of learning and memory impairments in such mice. These data support the idea that modulation of H~3~ receptors represents a viable therapeutic strategy in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease
Spin state transition in LaCoO3 by variational cluster approximation
The variational cluster approximation is applied to the calculation of
thermodynamical quantities and single-particle spectra of LaCoO3. Trial
self-energies and the numerical value of the Luttinger-Ward functional are
obtained by exact diagonalization of a CoO6 cluster. The VCA correctly predicts
LaCoO3 as a paramagnetic insulator and a gradual and relatively smooth increase
of the occupation of high-spin Co3+ ions causes the temperature dependence of
entropy and magnetic susceptibility. The single particle spectral function
agrees well with experiment, the experimentally observed temperature dependence
of photoelectron spectra is reproduced satisfactorily. Remaining discrepancies
with experiment highlight the importance of spin orbit coupling and local
lattice relaxation.Comment: Revtex file with 10 eps figure
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