The Impact of Industry Collaboration on Academic Research Output: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of university knowledge and technology transfer activities on academic research output. Specifically, we study whether researchers with collaborative links with the private sector publish less than their peers without such links, once controlling for other sources of heterogeneity. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on researchers from two engineering departments in the UK between 1985 until 2006. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more than their peers. Academic productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement as compared to high levels

The Double-Edged Sword of Industry Collaboration: Evidence from Engineering Academics in the UK

This paper studies the impact of university-industry collaboration on academic research output. We report findings from a unique longitudinal dataset on all the researchers in all the engineering departments of 40 major universities in the UK for the last 20 years. We introduce a new measure of industry collaboration based on the fraction of research grants that include industry partners. Our results show that productivity increases with the intensity of industry collaboration, but only up to a certain point. Above a certain threshold, research productivity declines. Our results are robust to several econometric estimation methods, measures of research output, and for various subsamples of academics

Climbing the cosmic ladder with stellar twins

Distances to stars are key to revealing a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way, yet their determination is a major challenge in astronomy. Whilst the brightest nearby stars benefit from direct parallax measurements, fainter stars are subject of indirect determinations with uncertainties exceeding 30%. We present an alternative approach to measuring distances using spectroscopically-identified twin stars. Given a star with known parallax, the distance to its twin is assumed to be directly related to the difference in their apparent magnitudes. We found 175 twin pairs from the ESO public HARPS archives and report excellent agreement with Hipparcos parallaxes within 7.5%. Most importantly, the accuracy of our results does not degrade with increasing stellar distance. With the ongoing collection of high-resolution stellar spectra, our method is well-suited to complement Gaia.Comment: published online on MNRA

Tobacco Spending and its Crowd-Out of Other Goods

Smoking is an expensive habit. Smoking households spend, on average, more than $1000 annually on cigarettes. For households in which some members smoke, smoking expenditures crowd-out other purchases, which may affect other household members, as well as the smoker. We empirically analyze how expenditures on tobacco crowd out consumption of other goods, estimating the patterns of substitution between tobacco products and other expenditures. We use the Consumer Expenditure Survey (1995 to 2001), which we complement with regional price data, and state cigarette prices. We estimate a consumer demand system of expenditures on cigarettes, food, alcohol, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care and controls for socio-economic variables and other sources of observable heterogeneity. Descriptive data indicate that, compared to non-smokers, smokers spend less on housing. Results from the demand system indicate that as the price of cigarettes rises, households increase the quantity of food purchased, and, in some samples, reduce the quantity of apparel and housing purchased.

High-precision analysis of binary stars with planets. I. Searching for condensation temperature trends in the HD 106515 system

We explore the probable chemical signature of planet formation in the remarkable binary system HD 106515. The A star hosts a massive long-period planet with 9 MJup detected by radial velocity. We also refine stellar and planetary parameters by using non-solar-scaled opacities when modeling the stars. Methods. We carried out a simultaneous determination of stellar parameters and abundances, by applying for the first time non-solar-scaled opacities in this binary system, in order to reach the highest possible precision. Results. The stars A and B in the binary system HD 106515 do not seem to be depleted in refractory elements, which is different when comparing the Sun with solar-twins. Then, the terrestrial planet formation would have been less efficient in the stars of this binary system. Together with HD 80606/7, this is the second binary system which does not seem to present a (terrestrial) signature of planet formation, and hosting both systems an eccentric giant planet. This is in agreement with numerical simulations, where the early dynamical evolution of eccentric giant planets clear out most of the possible terrestrial planets in the inner zone. We refined the stellar mass, radius and age for both stars and found a notable difference of 78% in R compared to previous works. We also refined the planet mass to mp sini = 9.08 +/- 0.20 MJup, which differs by 6% compared with literature. In addition, we showed that the non-solar-scaled solution is not compatible with the classical solar-scaled method, and some abundance differences are comparable to NLTE or GCE effects specially when using the Sun as reference. Then, we encourage the use of non-solar-scaled opacities in high-precision studies such as the detection of Tc trends.[abridged]Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, A&A accepted. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1507.0812

A Discrete Choice Experiment to Elicit the Willingness to Pay for Health Insurance by the Informal Sector Workers in Sierra Leone

The current health care financing system in Sierra Leone is unsustainable and poses challenges ranging from increased in out of pocket health care expenditure to accessibility problems, particularly in rural areas where living standards are low and health care facilities are scarce. This paper investigates whether privately financed health Insurance can improve the accessibility to formal health care in Sierra Leone and mitigate the effects of OOPs on poor households. To do so, we estimate the Willingness To Pay (WTP) for health insurance among informal sector workers in Sierra Leone using a Discrete Choice Experiment approach. Eight informal sector activities were selected namely – petty trading, subsistence farming, commercial bike riding, cattle rearing, fishing, tailoring, mining and quarrying. A random effect logit model is used to estimate households’ WTP for an improvement in coverage, choice of health care provider and a reduction in waiting time. Our study reveals that households were WTP more to have better attributes (better coverage, less waiting time) and to go to a faith - based provider. Our findings also suggest that location – rural versus urban – matters in determining the WTP since urban households were WTP more for health insurance than their rural counterparts, (SLL 54,348 or $7.34) and (SLL 37,250.5 or$5.03), respectively

On the age of the magnetically active WW Psa and TX Psa members of the beta Pictoris association

There are a variety of different techniques available to estimate the ages of pre-main-sequence stars. Components of physical pairs, thanks to their strict coevality and the mass difference, such as the binary system analysed in this paper, are best suited to test the effectiveness of these different techniques. We consider the system WW Psa + TX Psa whose membership of the 25-Myr beta Pictoris association has been well established by earlier works. We investigate which age dating technique provides the best agreement between the age of the system and that of the association. We have photometrically monitored WW Psa and TX Psa and measured their rotation periods as P = 2.37d and P = 1.086d, respectively. We have retrieved from the literature their Li equivalent widths and measured their effective temperatures and luminosities. We investigate whether the ages of these stars derived using three independent techniques are consistent with the age of the beta Pictoris association. We find that the rotation periods and the Li contents of both stars are consistent with the distribution of other bona fide members of the cluster. On the contrary, the isochronal fitting provides similar ages for both stars, but a factor of about four younger than the quoted age of the association, or about 30% younger when the effects of magnetic fields are included. We explore the origin of the discrepant age inferred from isochronal fitting, including the possibilities that either the two components may be unresolved binaries or that the basic stellar parameters of both components are altered by enhanced magnetic activity. The latter is found to be the more reasonable cause, suggesting that age estimates based on the Li content is more reliable than isochronal fitting for pre-main-sequence stars with pronounced magnetic activity.Comment: Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics on December 13, 2016. 13 pages and 11 figure

100 MHz Amplitude and Polarization Modulated Optical Source for Free-Space Quantum Key Distribution at 850 nm

We report on an integrated photonic transmitter of up to 100 MHz repetition rate, which emits pulses centered at 850 nm with arbitrary amplitude and polarization. The source is suitable for free space quantum key distribution applications. The whole transmitter, with the optical and electronic components integrated, has reduced size and power consumption. In addition, the optoelectronic components forming the transmitter can be space-qualified, making it suitable for satellite and future space missions.Comment: 6 figures, 2 table