Outward FDI and the Investment Development Path of a Late-Industrialising Economy - Evidence from Ireland

The Investment Development Path (IDP) hypothesis holds that a country’s net outward direct investment position is systematically related to its level of economic development. Ireland is an interesting test case because of the importance of inward FDI over the last three decades, the country's rapid recent FDI-fuelled growth, and the recent increase in outward FDI by Irish-owned multinationals. We find empirical support for the IDP concept for the Irish case. Our sectoral analysis shows up important differences between Ireland's outward FDI and the bulk of FDI occurring in the world economy however. Ireland's outward FDI flows are as yet almost exclusively horizontal and they go largely into non-internationally-tradable manufacturing and services sectors. Also, the firmspecific assets of Irish multinationals lie neither in R&D nor in the type of product differentiation associated with high advertising expenditures.Outward FDI, Investment Development Path, Ireland

Design and Analysis of Electromagnetic Interference Filters and Shields

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is a problem of rising prevalence as electronic devices become increasingly ubiquitous. EMI filters are low pass filters intended to prevent the conducted electric currents and radiated electromagnetic fields of a device from interfering with the proper operation of other devices. Shielding is a method, often complementary to filtering, that typically involves enclosing a device in a conducting box in order to prevent radiated EMI. This dissertation includes three chapters related to the use of filtering and shielding for preventing electromagnetic interference. The first chapter deals with improving the high frequency EMI filtering performance of surface mount capacitors on printed circuit boards (PCBs). At high frequencies, the impedance of a capacitor is dominated by a parasitic inductance, thus leading to poor high frequency filtering performance. Other researchers have introduced the concept of parasitic inductance cancellation and have applied this concept to improving the filtering performance of volumetrically large capacitors at frequencies up to 100 MHz. The work in this chapter applies the concept of parasitic inductance cancellation to much smaller surface mount capacitors at frequencies up to several gigahertz. The second chapter introduces a much more compact design for applying parasitic inductance cancellation to surface mount capacitors that uses inductive coupling between via pairs as well as coplanar traces. This new design is suited for PCBs having three or more layers including solid ground and/or power plane(s). This design is demonstrated to be considerably more effective in filtering high frequency noise due to crosstalk than a comparable conventional shunt capacitor filter configuration. Finally, chapter 3 presents a detailed analysis of the methods that are used to decompose the measure of plane wave shielding effectiveness into measures of absorption and reflection. Textbooks on electromagnetic compatibility commonly decompose shielding effectiveness into what is called the Schelkunoff decomposition in this work with terms called penetration loss, reflection loss, and the internal reflections correction term. In experimentally characterizing the shielding properties of materials, however, other decompositions are commonly used. This chapter analyzes the relationships between these different decompositions and two-port network parameters and shows that other decompositions offer terms that are better figures of merit than the terms of the Schelkunoff decomposition in experimental situations

Dr. Ram’s triage

Triage is a process of categorizing potential health and guiding care. It is based on the idea that all bodies are equal while potential vitality is not. I examine the triage processes used by Indian physicians as they collaborated with global health researchers to identify patients for a free, cutting-edge tuberculosis test. As I argue, triage forms and reforms social difference within global health despite its aspirations of standardization and experimentality. Problematizing triage as part of global health’s ordinary affect of affordability reveals local biologies, class biopolitics, and clinical speculation in the field. I conclude by considering new avenues of ethnographic inquiry that are opened by attending to the practiced and depoliticized biopolitics that occurs within clinics as everyday, nonreflexive decisions about how to organize resources and speculate on vitalities

Population Genetics and Colony Breeding Structure of the Invasive Tawny Crazy Ant, Nylanderia fulva

Insects that have evolved to live socially are some of the most invasive species on the planet. Of these invaders, many are ant species whose overwhelming success in non-native habitats is possible due to several favorable attributes. Unicoloniality, a social structure adopted by many invasive ant species, is defined by the ability to form supercolonies (a group of individuals throughout a geographic area, where direct interaction of individuals from distant nests does not occur) which may span many kilometers. High queen densities within supercolonies affords an overpowering concentration of worker ants which intermix with members of adjacent colonies without intraspecific aggression, seemingly working together resulting in exponential colony growth. The tawny crazy ant, Nylanderia fulva (Mayr), was recently introduced into the southeastern United States from South America. These ants were first discovered in Texas in 2002 and were possibly introduced into Florida as early as the 1950s. Since then, this invasive ant pest has spread to all southeastern Gulf States where it outcompetes native species, reduces arthropod species diversity, and infests urban, agricultural, and natural areas. Colonies of this ant are believed to be unicolonial in invasive populations, but to date this has not been explicitly investigated. Through behavioral assays and genetic analyses, I tested the hypothesis that the tawny crazy ant is unicolonial in its invasive range and estimated the number of possible introductions into the United States. In this study, I conclude that the tawny crazy ant is, in fact, unicolonial throughout its invasive range. I found no evidence of population differentiation, even among populations hundreds of kilometers apart. I also found low levels of relatedness (r = 0) among nestmates, lack of inbreeding, and an absence of aggression between nonnestmates separated over hundreds of km. I also discovered evidence of weak isolation by distance across the Gulf States. These results show that N. fulva forms a single supercolony throughout the entire invasive range of the southeastern United States that is most likely the result of a single introduction, which then spread via human mediated dispersal and colony budding

Revisiting the Parameter Space of Binary Neutron Star Merger Event GW170817

Since the gravitational wave event GW170817 and gamma-ray burst GW170817A there have been numerous studies constraining the burst properties through analysis of the afterglow light curves. Most agree that the burst was viewed off-axis with a ratio of the observer angle to the jet angle ($\theta_{obs}/\theta_j$) between 4 - 6. We use a parameterized model and broadband synchrotron data up to $\sim 800$ days post-merger to constrain parameters of the burst. To reproduce the hydrodynamics of a gamma-ray burst outflow we use a two-parameter "boosted fireball" model. The structure of a boosted fireball is determined by the specific internal energy, $\eta_0$, and the bulk Lorentz factor, $\gamma_B(\sim 1/\theta_j)$ with shapes varying smoothly from a quasi-spherical outflow for low values of $\gamma_B$ to a highly collimated jet for high values. We run simulations with $\gamma_B$ in the range $1-20$ and $\eta_0$ in the range $2-15$. To calculate light curves we use a synchrotron radiation model characterized by $F_{peak}$, $\nu_m$, and $\nu_c$ and calculate millions of spectra at different times and $\theta_{obs}$ values using the \texttt{boxfit} radiation code. We can tabulate the spectral parameter values from our spectra and rapidly generate arbitrary light curves for comparison to data in MCMC analysis. We find that our model prefers a gamma-ray burst with jet energy $E_j\sim10^{50}$ ergs and with an observer angle of $\theta_{obs}=0.65^{+0.13}_{-0.14}$ radians and ratio to jet opening angle of ($\theta_{obs}/\theta_j$) = 5.4$^{+0.53}_{-0.38}$