Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and microscopy on single dye molecules with15 nm resolution

Our recently developed approach of UHV-tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy permits us to acquire Raman spectra of a few single brilliant cresyl blue (BCB) molecules and even a single one adsorbed on a Au(111) surface. This is substantiated by simultaneously recorded STM images. Furthermore, due to the reduced photobleaching in UHV, the time frame for spectral acquisition is sufficiently extended to allow tip-enhanced Raman imaging of a single BCB molecule with a lateral resolution of 15 nm

Second-harmonic generation in graded metallic films

We study the effective second-harmonic generation (SHG) susceptibility in graded metallic films by invoking the local field effects exactly, and further numerically demonstrate that the graded metallic films can serve as a novel optical material for producing a broad structure in both the linear and SHG response and an enhancement in the SHG signal.Comment: 10 pages, 2 EPS figures. Minor revision

Labour supply and skills demands in fashion retailing

If, as Adam Smith once famously suggested, Britain was a nation of shopkeepers then it is now a nation of shopworkers. Retail is now a significant part of the UK economy, accounting for £256 billion in sales and one-third of all consumer spending (Skillsmart, 2007). It is the largest private sector employer in the UK, employing 3m workers, or 1 in 10 of the working population. For future job creation in the UK economy retail is also similarly prominent and the sector is expected to create a further 250,000 jobs to 2014 (Skillsmart, 2007). The centrality of retail to economic success and job creation is apparent in other advanced economies. For example, within the US, retail sales is the occupation with the largest projected job growth in the period 2004-2014 (Gatta et al., 2009) and in Australia retail accounts for 1 in 6 workers (Buchanan et al., 2003). Within the UK these workers are employed in approximately 290,000 businesses, encompassing large and small organizations and also a number of sub-sectors. This variance suggests that retail should not be regarded as homogenous in its labour demands. Hart et al. (2007) note how skill requirements and the types of workers employed may differ across the sector. This chapter further opens up this point, providing an analysis of the labour supply and skills demands for the sub-sectors of clothing, footwear and leather goods, which are described by Skillsmart (2007: 48) as being 'significant categories in UK retailing'

Top-down and bottom-up approach to competence management implementation: A case of two central banks Abordagem top-down (de cima para baixo) e bottom-up (de baixo para cima) para a implementação de gestão de competências: O caso de dois bancos centrais

Abstract The primary aim of this paper is to evaluate the contribution that competence based approaches to staff management can and ought to make to the overall effectiveness of organisations. The importance of competencies and their proper management is broadly acknowledged in the literature, and the first part of the paper is a literature review. This is followed with a comparison of the design and implementation of two competence management projects that were introduced in two central banks, one of a western European nation, and the other of a central European nation. There is a brief presentation of two fundamental approaches to competence management implementation in organization (top-down (directive) and bottom-up (participative)), and this is juxtaposed with the actual implementation of competence management model that took place in two central banks. What ensues from the comparison is the identification of potential threats to the implementation of competence management models in organizations, accompanied by suggestions on how to counteract them. Keywords: Strategic HRM, competencies, competence management, organisation development, HR development strategies. Resumo O objetivo principal deste trabalho é avaliar o contributo que as abordagens baseadas nas competências na gestão do pessoal pode e deve dar para a eficácia global das organizações. A primeira parte do artigo faz uma revisão da literatura, na qual a importância das competências e da sua correta gestão é amplamente reconhecida. Segue-se uma comparação entre o desenho e implementação de dois projetos de gestão de competências que foram introduzidas em dois bancos centrais, um de um país da Europa Ocidental e outro de um país da Europa Central. Há uma breve apresentação de duas abordagens fundamentais para a implementação da gestão de competências numa organização (topdown (diretiva) e bottom-up (participativa)), sendo isto justaposto com a implementação do modelo de gestão de competências que ocorreu em dois bancos centrais

Starting school:Educational development as a function of age of entry and prematurity

To estimate the impact on early development of prematurity and summer birth and the potential a € double disadvantage' created by starting school a year earlier than anticipated during pregnancy, due to being born preterm. Design, setting and patients We investigated the impact of gestational and school-entry age on the likelihood of failing to achieve a a € Good Level of Development' (GLD) on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile in 5-year-old children born moderate-to-late preterm using data from the Born in Bradford longitudinal birth cohort. We used hierarchical logistic regression to control for chronological maturity, and perinatal and socioeconomic factors. Results Gestational age and school-entry age were significant predictors of attaining a GLD in the 10 337 children who entered school in the correct academic year given their estimated date of delivery. The odds of not attaining a GLD increased by 1.09 (95% CI 1.06 to 1.11) for each successive week born early and by 1.17 for each month younger within the year group (95% CI 1.16 to 1.18). There was no interaction between these two effects. Children starting school a year earlier than anticipated during pregnancy were less likely to achieve a GLD compared with (1) other children born preterm (fully adjusted OR 5.51 (2.85-14.25)); (2) term summer births (3.02 (1.49-6.79)); and (3) preterm summer births who remained within their anticipated school-entry year (3.64 (1.27-11.48)). Conclusions These results confirm the developmental risks faced by children born moderate-to-late preterm, and - for the first time - illustrate the increased risk associated with a 'double disadvantage'.</p

The New ‘Hidden Abode’: Reflections on Value and Labour in the New Economy

In a pivotal section of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976: 279) notes that, in order to understand the capitalist production of value, we must descend into the ‘hidden abode of production’: the site of the labour process conducted within an employment relationship. In this paper we argue that by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism. We examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new ‘hidden abode’ outside employment, for example in the ‘production of organization’ and in consumption. Although they can open up this new ‘hidden abode’, without LPT's fine-grained analysis of control/resistance, indeterminacy and structured antagonism, these theorists risk succumbing to empirically naive claims about the ‘new economy’. Through developing an expanded conception of a ‘new hidden abode’ of production, the paper demarcates an analytical space in which both LPT and Autonomist Marxism can expand and develop their understanding of labour and value production in today's economy. </jats:p

Work and intimacy: reassessing the career/couple norm through a narrative case approach

It is argued that ‘career’, as linear progression through one industry or two, and ‘coupledom’, as hetero, cohabitive, and moving towards marriage, have both been undermined by alternate arrangements for work and intimacy. In the face of these changes, this article considers how the hallmarks of coupling and the tenets of career manifest themselves in everyday interactions within partnerships. The article uses a narrative case approach to explore these interactions in depth. It reveals not only the persistence of normative assumptions within couple relationships but also how the ‘work’ of couple relationships draw on particular expectations surrounding what it means to negotiate a successful ‘career’. The paradigm of progress transects career/couple narratives, blurring the already opaque boundaries between productive and personal realms. This entanglement presents challenges for individuals, limiting prescriptions for what are considered ‘acceptable’ narratives of work and intimacy

Prime beef cuts : culinary images for thinking 'men'

The paper contributes to scholarship theorising the sociality of the brand in terms of subject positions it makes possible through drawing upon the generative context of circulating discourses, in this case of masculinity, cuisine and celebrity. Specifically, it discusses masculinity as a socially constructed gender practice (Bristor and Fischer, 1993), examining materialisations of such practice in the form of visualisations of social relations as resources for 'thinking gender' or 'doing gender'. The transformative potential of the visualisations is illuminated by exploring the narrative content choreographed within a series of photographic images positioning the market appeal of a celebrity chef through the medium of a contemporary lifestyle cookery book. We consider how images of men 'doing masculinity'are not only channelled into reproducing existing gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in the service of commercial ends, but also into disrupting such enduring stereotyping through subtle reframing. We acknowledge that masculinity is already inscribed within conventionalised representations of culinary culture. In this case we consider how traces of masculinity are exploited and reinscribed through contemporary images that generate resources for rethinking masculine roles and identities, especially when viewed through the lens of stereotypically feminised pursuits such as shopping, food preparation, cooking, and the communal intimacy of food sharing. We identify unsettling tensions within the compositions, arguing that they relate to discursive spaces between the gendered positions written into the images and the popular imagination they feed off. Set against landscapes of culinary culture, we argue that the images invoke a brand of naively roughish "laddishness" or "blokishness", rendering it in domesticated form not only as benign and containable, but fashionable, pliable and, importantly, desirable. We conclude that although the images draw on stereotypical premeditated notions of a feral, boisterous and untamed heterosexual masculinity, they also set in motion gender-blending narratives