Determinants of ICT adoption: Evidence from firm-level data. ESRI WP204. July 2007

We analyse factors driving ICT adoption at firm level using data from Irish manufacturing firms over the period 2001-2004. Our results indicate that the adoption of ICT has been uneven across firms, industries and space. On average, other things equal, firms with more skilled workers, firms operating in ICT-producing and ICT-using industries, and firms located in the capital city region have been relatively more successful in adopting and using ICT. We find positive technology spillovers from firms that have adopted ICT located in the same region and industry. To a certain extent, patterns of ICT adoption are different for domestic and foreign-owned firms, in particular with respect to the effects of international competitive pressure and firm size

EU Enlargement and Migration: Assessing the Macroeconomic Impacts. WP203. June 2007

The expansion of the EU in May 2004 to include 10 New Member States (NMS) made it possible for workers in some Central and Eastern European countries to take up work in the EU-15. Some East to West migration was anticipated as a consequence of EU enlargement due to the income gap between most EU-15 and NMS countries. However, the pattern of immigration across the EU-15 has turned out differently from expected; in part because of transitional restrictions on labour mobility imposed in many of the EU-15 countries (see e.g. Boeri and Brücker, 2005). Here we illustrate the potential macroeconomic impacts of the migration flows that are likely to have come as a result of EU enlargement. Clearly it is difficult to measure what migration might have happened had the EU enlargement in May 2004 not taken place, and hence to measure the change in migration from EU enlargement. This is for two reasons. First, there are relatively few data available on migration post enlargement to be able to disentangle an explicit EU enlargement effect. Second, the data that exist are not necessarily comparable, across countries and time, or comprehensive

THE INTERNET IN PERSPECTIVE

Podstawową hipotezą niniejszego artykułu jest to, że Internet nie jest rewolucyjnym wynalazkiem, a jest zaledwie ostatnim w serii technologicznych innowacji ostatnich dwóch stuleci, a wszystkie one udoskonaliły przesyłanie informacji. Regularnie kursujący dyliżans dostarczający listy i gazety przyczynił się do wzrostu prędkości w przekazywaniu informacji. Począwszy od lat 1830-tych kolej podwoiła prędkość przekazywania informacji i następnie w latach 40-tych XIX wieku telegraf umożliwił natychmiastowy przekaz sygnałów na duże odległości. Do roku 1862 długość połączeń telegraficznych na świecie wzrosła do 240000 km a w roku 1866 kabel telegraficzny położony został na dnie Atlantyku łącząc Europę z Ameryka Północną. Informacja która drogą listowną z Chin do Europy docierała w ciągu 6 tygodni teraz mogła być przekazana w ciągu kilku minut. Elektryczny telegraf wywarł zatem znacznie większy wpływ na międzynarodową wymianę handlową i międzynarodową kontrole polityczną niż Internet. Okazało się nagle, że istnieje możliwość porównywania cen towarów na rynkach międzynarodowych, co powodowało wzrost konkurencji i spadek cen. Telegraf umożliwił imperiom kolonialnym ścisłą kontrolę nad dominiami i ich rozwój. Wynalezienie telefonu przez Bella w 1886 roku było kontynuacją wynalazku jakim był telegraf. Natomiast osiągnięcia Marconiego w zakresie przesyłania informacji drogą sygnałów radiowych sięgnęły kulminacji w roku 1901 kiedy to przesłano pierwszy sygnał radiowy przez Atlantyk. Internet jest kolejnym udoskonaleniem w przekazywaniu informacji wspomagającym wszystkie sektory ekonomiczne i indywidualnych użytkowników, którzy mogą pozwolić sobie na zakup komputera. Za dużo jednak przypisuje się Internetowi, a czynią to szczególnie ci, dla których historia technologii nie posiada znaczenia

Heritage Tourism: Typology and Supply Side Issues

W celu sklasyfikowania środków, poprzez które turyści mogą doświadczać dziedzictwa kulturowego, autor prezentuje typologię na pięciu poziomach: budynki, zbiory muzealne, skanseny, muzea aktywne oraz przedstawienia teatralne. Następnie dyskutowane są niektóre problemy podaży, wobec których staje turystyka zorientowana na poznanie dziedzictwa narodowego w Wielkiej Brytanii: autentyczność, eduacja a rozrywka, inscenizacje, chlubne i trudne dziedzictwo oraz wytwarzanie dochodu. We wnioskach stwierdza się, iż większość, jeśli nie całość, dziedzictwa jest odpowiedzialnie podawana turystom.In order to classify the means by whlch tourists are able to experience heritage, a five tier typology ls presented: bulldings, museum collections, open alr museums, working museums, and the performing arts. Some supply-side lssues facing heritage tourism in the UK are then dlscussed. These are: authenticity, educatlon versus entertalnment, re-enaetment, glorious and dlfflcult heritage, and the generatlon of Income. It ls concluded that much, If not all, heritage is presented responsibly to the tourist

Jobseekers Regime and Flexible New Deal, the Six Month Offer and Support for the Newly Unemployed evaluations: An early process study

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Łódź: Transformation einer altindustriellen Stadt in der postsozialistischen Periode

In the 19th century, Łódź grew within a few decades from being an insignificant rural town to become the leading textile city in Eastern Europe. Until the present day, the Łódź region has remained the primary centre of the Polish textile industry. The transformation process in the city industry in Eastern Europe is connected with decisive changes in the organisation of the city centres. In comparison to western cities, the double problems of a simultaneous transformation become apparent: transformation from a planned economy to regional structures of a free market economy, as well as transformation from old industrial to post-industrial structures. The article examines the changes in the regional structures of the city centre of the old industrial city of Łódź in the course of the transformation process. If a temporal delay is given consideration, the location development of the industrial sector in Łódź corresponds in its basic structures to the western patterns. City centre production plants were given up at the start of the nineties in favour of suburban locations. A deviation from western patterns is the prevalence of small companies in city centre locations. In retail trade as well, development tendencies towards western European patterns can also be recognised. Large retail trade outlets are settling increasingly around the cities. The large open markets are one dissimilar element. The dynamic of the quaternary sector and the concentration of office use in the city centre, which goes hand in hand with this, reveal a clear convergence to the developments in western cities. In a summarised sense, we can state that the signs for a convergence to western European regional structure patterns are considerably more pronounced as those which would suggest the emergence of divergent regional structures. The revitalisation of Łódź has made considerable progress in the last few years. The successes are relative in comparison to other Polish cities. This reveals the problems of old industrial structures and the relative proximity of Łódź to the primate city Warsaw

Tunable Self-Assembled Peptide Structure: A Novel Approach to Design Dual-Use Biological Agents

Micro/nanostructures based naturally occurring building blocks have attracted much attention as potential materials in the field of bio-nanotechnology. In this context, peptides are ideal naturally occurring materials for tissue regeneration, scaffolding, and drug delivery. Herein we report an initial study of fabrication of spherical and tubular structures by self-assembly process using butoxy carbonyl (Boc)-diphenylalanine as a naturally occurring peptides under different solvent conditions in the presence and absence of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIONs) core. The novel nanocomposites have been characterized using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) and Magnetic Hyperthermia under Alternating Magnetic Field (AMF)

Two years of satellite-based carbon dioxide emission quantification at the world's largest coal-fired power plants

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from combustion sources are uncertain in many places across the globe. Satellites have the ability to detect and quantify emissions from large CO2 point sources, including coal-fired power plants. In this study, we routinely made observations with the PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa (PRISMA) satellite imaging spectrometer and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) instrument aboard the International Space Station at over 30 coal-fired power plants between 2021 and 2022. CO2 plumes were detected in 50 % of the acquired PRISMA scenes, which is consistent with the combined influence of viewing parameters on detection (solar illumination and surface reflectance) and unknown factors (e.g., daily operational status). We compare satellite-derived emission rates to in situ stack emission observations and find average agreement to within 27 % for PRISMA and 30 % for OCO-3, although more observations are needed to robustly characterize the error. We highlight two examples of fusing PRISMA with OCO-2 and OCO-3 observations in South Africa and India. For India, we acquired PRISMA and OCO-3 observations on the same day and used the high-spatial-resolution capability of PRISMA (30 m spatial/pixel resolution) to partition relative contributions of two distinct emitting power plants to the net emission. Although an encouraging start, 2 years of observations from these satellites did not produce sufficient observations to estimate annual average emission rates within low (&lt;15 %) uncertainties. However, as the constellation of CO2-observing satellites is poised to significantly improve in the coming decade, this study offers an approach to leverage multiple observation platforms to better quantify and characterize uncertainty for large anthropogenic emission sources.</p