Job Creation, Job Destruction and the Contribution of Small Businesses: Evidence for UK Manufacturing

We use the ARD micro level data set for UK manufacturing to document job creation and job destruction (JC&D). Due to data limitations, previous UK studies were unable to use entry and exit in calculations of JC&D and/or were are at the firm rather than establishment/plant level and/or used data that understate the number of small businesses in the economy. Our data can overcome these problems being based on plant and establishment-level data from the UK Census of Production. We compute JC&D levels and rates and the contribution of small businesses for UK manufacturing between 1980 and 1991 and compare our findings with previous UK studies and other countries. We find: a) establishment (plant) job creation and destruction rates of 10.0% and 13.5% (11.2% and 14.7%) respectively, higher than other studies; b) large establishments (plants) are responsible for about 60% (55%) of job destruction; and c) small establishments (plants) are responsible for between 50% and 68% (57% and 70%) of job creation, depending on calculation method.Small firms, Job creation and destruction

An Alternative Model for Analyzing the Physician-Hospital Relationship in Rural Areas

We introduce a modeling framework called Transaction Cost Economics to help decision makers in rural health care markets choose among alternative organizational relationships in order to more cost-effectively deliver healthcare services. In particular, the hospital-physician relationship is analyzed and the transactional attributes, institutional environment, and market characteristics are identified as key variables influencing the organizational relationship between hospital and physician. As asset specfic investments are made by either the hospital or physician, vertically integrated relationships are more likely to occur. The degree of remoteness of rural areas is also considered to affect the impact of these asset-specific investments.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Health Economics and Policy,

EFFECTS OF NORTH AMERICAN GINSENG ON SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN MALE RATS

Two North American ginseng extracts were used to test sexual behavior in healthy rats and pre-diabetic rats, with erectile dysfunction, after four weeks of oral administration. Behavioral tests assessed sexual performance while animal tissues were used to examine eNOS and nNOS protein and mRNA in central and peripheral sites known to control erectile function. Results show an improvement in erectile function during copulation in healthy rats with chronic treatment of ethanol extract of NA ginseng but not aqueous extract. In addition, eNOS and nNOS mRNA was increased in penile tissue and nNOS staining was increased in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus with acute treatment of ethanol extract. For pre-diabetic rats, ethanol extract improved erectile function during mating and penile reflex tests. Also, nNOS was increased in penile tissue with chronic treatment and eNOS with acute treatment. The results show NA ginseng ethanol extract can improve erectile function

Growth and Oxidation of Graphene and Two-Dimensional Materials for Flexible Electronic Applications

The non-volatile storage of information is becoming increasingly important in our data-driven society. Limitations in conventional devices are driving the research and development of incorporating new materials into conventional device architectures to improve performance, as well as developing an array of emerging memory technologies based on entirely new physical processes. The discovery of graphene allowed for developing new approaches to these problems, both itself and as part of the larger, and ever-expanding family of 2D materials. In this thesis the growth and oxidation of these materials is investigated for implementing into such devices, exploiting some of the unique properties of 2D materials including atomic thinness, mechanical flexibility and tune-ability through chemical modification - to meet some challenges facing the community. This begins with the growth of graphene by chemical vapour deposition for a high quality flexible electrode material, followed by oxidation of graphene for use in resistive memory devices. The theme of oxidation is then extended to another 2D material, HfS2, which is selectively oxidised for use as high-k dielectric in Van der Waals heterostructures for FETs and resistive memory devices. Lastly, a technique for fabrication of graphene-based devices directly on the copper growth substrate is demonstrated for use in flexible devices for sensing touch and humidity

Unavoidable Immersions and Intertwines of Graphs

The topological minor and the minor relations are well-studied binary relations on the class of graphs. A natural weakening of the topological minor relation is an immersion. An immersion of a graph H into a graph G is a map that injects the vertex set of H into the vertex set of G such that edges between vertices of H are represented by pairwise-edge-disjoint paths of G. In this dissertation, we present two results: the first giving a set of unavoidable immersions of large 3-edge-connected graphs and the second on immersion intertwines of infinite graphs. These results, along with the methods used to prove them, are analogues of results on the graph minor relation. A conjecture for the unavoidable immersions of large 3-edge-connected graphs is also stated with a partial proof

Separation brings analysts and their graphs together

The recent addition of support for the CMYK colour model to Stata 8 allows graphs from Stata to be used where colour separation is required for printing. This paper outlines work being done at the Office for National Statistics to use Stata for graphics in our flagship "Economic Trends" publication. This work aims to reduce the burden on our design teams, allow later deadlines and ensure that analysts have more control over the appearance of their graphics in the final publication.

Using Stata at the Office for National Statistics: an overview

We describe the use of Stata in the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS). We give examples of projects Stata has been used for that have fed into UK official statistics. In addition we show some of the longer term research under way at ONS that is using Stata to analyse linked business data sets. Results from such work are fed into the evidence base for government policy. Primarily we discuss work in the Economic Analysis and Satellite Accounts Division of the Economic Statistics Directorate within ONS.

Spotting Radio Transients with the help of GPUs

Exploration of the time-domain radio sky has huge potential for advancing our knowledge of the dynamic universe. Past surveys have discovered large numbers of pulsars, rotating radio transients and other transient radio phenomena; however, they have typically relied upon off-line processing to cope with the high data and processing rate. This paradigm rules out the possibility of obtaining high-resolution base-band dumps of significant events or of performing immediate follow-up observations, limiting analysis power to what can be gleaned from detection data alone. To overcome this limitation, real-time processing and detection of transient radio events is required. By exploiting the significant computing power of modern graphics processing units (GPUs), we are developing a transient-detection pipeline that runs in real-time on data from the Parkes radio telescope. In this paper we discuss the algorithms used in our pipeline, the details of their implementation on the GPU and the challenges posed by the presence of radio frequency interference.Comment: 4 Pages. To appear in the proceedings of ADASS XXI, ed. P.Ballester and D.Egret, ASP Conf. Serie