Does Foreign Direct Investment Stimulate New Firm Creation? In Search of Spillovers through Industrial and Geographical Linkages

This paper examines the spillover effects of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on the entrepreneurial activities of new firm creation through both industrial and geographical linkages. Using a dataset of 44,434 newly created small firms in 234 regions of South Korea in 2000–2004, this study finds that while the spillover impacts of FDI in the low-tech industry are positive and significant across almost all four possible combinations of the intra-/inter-regional and intra-/inter-sectoral channels, the impacts in the high-tech industry are largely intra-sectoral within the host region and across neighboring regions. Moreover, all statistically significant spillover effects follow an inverted ‘U’-shaped curvilinear trend

Africa and the global carbon cycle

The African continent has a large and growing role in the global carbon cycle, with potentially important climate change implications. However, the sparse observation network in and around the African continent means that Africa is one of the weakest links in our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Here, we combine data from regional and global inventories as well as forward and inverse model analyses to appraise what is known about Africa's continental-scale carbon dynamics. With low fossil emissions and productivity that largely compensates respiration, land conversion is Africa's primary net carbon release, much of it through burning of forests. Savanna fire emissions, though large, represent a short-term source that is offset by ensuing regrowth. While current data suggest a near zero decadal-scale carbon balance, interannual climate fluctuations (especially drought) induce sizeable variability in net ecosystem productivity and savanna fire emissions such that Africa is a major source of interannual variability in global atmospheric CO(2). Considering the continent's sizeable carbon stocks, their seemingly high vulnerability to anticipated climate and land use change, as well as growing populations and industrialization, Africa's carbon emissions and their interannual variability are likely to undergo substantial increases through the 21st century

Mammalian prions: Tracking the infectious entities

Protein misfolding is central to the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative disorders. Among these disorders, prion diseases are unique because they are transmissible. The conversion of the host-encoded GPI-anchored PrP protein into a structurally altered form is crucially associated with the infectious and neurotoxic properties of the resulting abnormal PrP. Many lines of evidence indicate that distinct aggregated forms with different size and protease resistance are produced during prion multiplication. The recent isolation of various subsets of abnormal PrP, along with the improved biochemical tools and infectivity detection assays have shed light on the diversity of abnormal PrP protein and may give insights into the features of the more infectious subsets of abnormal PrP