Explaining Job Polarization in Europe: The Roles of Technology, Globalization and Institutions

This paper shows the employment structure of 16 European countries has been polarizing in recent years with the employment shares of managers, professionals and low-paid personal services workers increasing at the expense of the employment shares of middling manufacturing and routine office workers. To explain this job polarization, the paper develops and estimates a simple model to capture the effects of technology, globalization, institutions and product demand effects on the demand for different occupations. The results suggest that the routinization hypothesis of Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) is the single most important factor behind the observed shifts in employment structure. We find some evidence for offshoring to explain job polarization although its impact is much smaller. We also find that shifts in product demand are acting to attenuate the polarizing impact of routinization and that differences or changes in wage-setting institutions play little role in explaining job polarization in Europe.Labor Demand, Technology, Globalization, Institutions

Explaining job polarization: the roles of technology, offshoring and institutions.

This paper develops a simple and empirically tractable model of labor demand to explain recent changes in the occupational structure of employment as a result of technology, offshoring and institutions. This framework takes account not just of direct effects but indirect effects through induced shifts in demand for different products. Using data from 16 European countries, we find that the routinization hypothesis of Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) is the most important factor behind the observed shifts in employment but that offshoring does play a role. We also find that shifts in product demand are acting to attenuate the impacts of recent technological progress and offshoring and that changes in wage-setting institutions play little role in explaining job polarization in Europe.

Modality Makes Headlines: How Political Newspapers Talk About Climate Change

The current study investigated potential shifts in opinion due to modal verbs used in politically-sided newspaper articles on climate change. The political ideology (conservative or progressive) of the participants was measured as a way to explore opinion changes. Memory was also tested as it could have been an indicator for a major covariance for the study - bias and prior knowledge. College students (N = 85) took an ideology pretest and posttest, read articles manipulated to contain either should or must, and answered memory questions. Overall, results showed there was no significant change in opinion, with most participants responding as progressive. As for memory, there was a slight yet significant negative correlation between the strength of conservative response and memory; the more conservative they participant was the less likely he or she was to correctly remember information. The inconclusive and unexpected results are discussed, and possible explanations are considered

The Ultraviolet Attenuation Law in Backlit Spiral Galaxies

(Abridged) The effective extinction law (attenuation behavior) in galaxies in the emitted ultraviolet is well known only for actively star-forming objects and combines effects of the grain properties, fine structure in the dust distribution, and relative distributions of stars and dust. We use GALEX, XMM Optical Monitor, and HST data to explore the UV attenuation in the outer parts of spiral disks which are backlit by other UV-bright galaxies, starting with candidates provided by Galaxy Zoo participants. Our analysis incorporates galaxy symmetry, using non-overlapping regions of each galaxy to derive error estimates on the attenuation measurements. The entire sample has an attenuation law close to the Calzetti et al. (1994) form; the UV slope for the overall sample is substantially shallower than found by Wild et al. (2011), a reasonable match to the more distant galaxies in our sample but not to the weighted combination including NGC 2207. The nearby, bright spiral NGC 2207 alone gives accuracy almost equal to the rest of our sample, and its outer arms have a very low level of foreground starlight. This "grey" law can be produced from the distribution of dust alone, without a necessary contribution from differential escape of stars from dense clouds. The extrapolation needed to compare attenution between backlit galaxies at moderate redshifts, and local systems from SDSS data, is mild enough to allow use of galaxy overlaps to trace the cosmic history of dust. For NGC 2207, the covering factor of clouds with small optical attenuation becomes a dominant factor farther into the ultraviolet, which opens the possibility that widespread diffuse dust dominates over dust in star-forming regions deep into the ultraviolet. Comparison with published radiative-transfer models indicates that the role of dust clumping dominates over differences in grain populations, at this spatial resolution.Comment: In press, Astronomical Journa

Explaining job polarization: routine-biased technological change and offshoring

This paper documents the pervasiveness of job polarization in 16 Western European countries over the period 1993-2010. It then develops and estimates a framework to explain job polarization using routine-biased technological change and offshoring. This model can explain much of both total job polarization and the split into within- industry and between-industry components

'The Great Meeting Place': A Study of Bradford's City Park

noCity Park opened in early 2012 and despite some on-going criticism, during the summer the site drew thousands of people to the heart of Bradford and was the scene of much relaxed and good natured conviviality amongst socially diverse groups. As a new and unique public space in Bradford and a focal point for the city, a number of staff from the Centre for Applied Social Research believed researching City Park to be a fruitful endeavour to help promote a dialogue with the public and other sectors about living together in Bradford

The anomalous effect of high-intensity ultrasound on paper fibre-filler combinations

The purpose of this paper is to explore the previously unreported phenomenon in which changes occur to the particle size distributions of calcium carbonate fillers, used in papermaking, when exposed to high intensity ultrasound. Commercial paper pulps sonicated at a frequency of 20kHz are found to produce aggregates of their mineral filler constituents. The effects of sonication on isolated long and short fibre, and ground and precipitated calcium carbonate filler systems are also investigated both with and without the presence of dispersants. The findings are supported by particle size analysis and scanning electron microscopy of the sonicated systems. It is clearly shown that exposure to high intensity ultrasound induces filler aggregation. However, the effect only occurs when paper fibres and fillers coexist and is not apparent for suspensions of filler only or fibre only slurries. Furthermore, the treatment overrides the effect of dispersants used to keep filler in suspension during the manufacturing process. An accompanying fall in pH with increasing sonication times is also noted and is linked to these changes. It is proposed that radical species produced in the slurries during sonication may explain the observed phenomenon. The role of pH is not clearly understood and needs further study. The findings may be of interest in paper manufacture where uniform dispersal of fillers throughout the pulp is of significant importance. The phenomenon described in this paper has not previously been reported or explored. Further studies may add to knowledge of filler dispersions and their behaviour in papermaking. Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the previously unreported phenomenon in which changes occur to the particle size distributions of calcium carbonate fillers, used in papermaking, when exposed to high intensity ultrasound. Design/methodology/approach – Commercial paper pulps sonicated at a frequency of 20?kHz are found to produce aggregates of their mineral filler constituents. The effects of sonication on isolated long and short fibre, and ground and precipitated calcium carbonate filler systems are also investigated both with and without the presence of dispersants. The findings are supported by particle size analysis and scanning electron microscopy of the sonicated systems. Findings – It is clearly shown that exposure to high intensity ultrasound induces filler aggregation. However, the effect only occurs when paper fibres and fillers coexist and is not apparent for suspensions of filler only or fibre only slurries. Furthermore, the treatment overrides the effect of dispersants used to keep filler in suspension during the manufacturing process. An accompanying fall in pH with increasing sonication times is also noted and is linked to these changes. It is proposed that radical species produced in the slurries during sonication may explain the observed phenomenon. Research limitations/implications – The role of pH is not clearly understood and needs further study. Practical implications – The findings may be of interest in paper manufacture where uniform dispersal of fillers throughout the pulp is of significant importance. Originality/value – The phenomenon described in this paper has not previously been reported or explored. Further studies may add to knowledge of filler dispersions and their behaviour in papermaking

Water resources of west Cape Cod : an investigation of water supply and demand planning

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-95).by Jill Anna Manning.M.Eng

Susceptibility to unconscious influences is unaffected by a challenging inhibitory task or mental exhaustion

Unconscious influences have been demonstrated in a variety of behavioural contexts, however, a key question remains – to what extent do such influences vary with our changing mental states? We examine whether a prior inhibitory challenge increases susceptibility to subliminal priming in a stem completion task employing neutral (Experiment 1) and reward salient terms (Experiment 2). Results show stem completions to be significantly influenced by unconscious priming, and the challenging inhibitory task (the Stroop) to be significantly more mentally exhausting than the control task. However, neither the degree of inhibitory challenge, trait self-control, nor task-related mental exhaustion significantly influenced unconscious priming. Bayesian analysis provides strong evidence that prior inhibitory challenge does not affect susceptibility to unconscious priming. The study supports the conclusion that unconscious processing can be independent of consciously experienced mental states and provides reassurance that inhibitory impairment, common to mood disorders, should not increase susceptibility to unconscious influences