Bounding Stability Constants for Affinely Parameter-Dependent Operators

In this article we introduce new possibilities of bounding the stability constants that play a vital role in the reduced basis method. By bounding stability constants over a neighborhood we make it possible to guarantee stability at more than a finite number of points and to do that in the offline stage. We additionally show that Lyapunov stability of dynamical systems can be handled in the same framework.Comment: Accepted version (C. R. Math.), 6 pages, 3 figure

Swedish Firms Acquired by Foreigners: A Comparison of Before and After Takeover

Swedish firms acquired by foreigners were considerably larger than the average firms in their industries. They were relatively low in value added per employee at the time of takeover and before, a characteristic we take to indicate relatively low profitability, capital intensity, or efficiency,or some combination of these. However, they had been growing at least as fast as their industries over the longest periods we can measure.The takeovers tended to take place in years when the acquired firms did poorly relative to their industries and also relative to their own past performance with respect to the growth of employment, value of production,and value added. Thus the acquired firms seem to have been weak relative to others in their industries and had particularly suffered during the year in which the takeovers occurred.There were short-term recoveries after takeover from the misfortunes of the takeover year and a return to higher growth rates of employment and output, particularly the former. Over the longer run the acquired firms did not show the same relative employment gains as in the first year or two after takeover but seem to have increased their profitability or efficiency relative to their industries. The industries in which takeovers took place grew more rapidly after the takeovers than total manufacturing although they had grown less rapidly in the years before takeover.

The Foyle Fishery: Economic Aspects of Management. ESRI Memorandum Series No. 106 1975

The Atlantic salmon has been described by Netboy as "one of the noblest and most honoured (as well as the most harried) fishes known to man. Born in some humble river it tarries there for one to four years and having attained the size of a man's finger it vanishes into the ocean only to return to this same stream a few years later as a full grown adult. It provides sport for kings and its pink flesh is like no other." When man first inhabited Europe the salmon were plentiful in hundreds of coastal rivers. They were found in all Northern European countries including Western Russia. They occurred in Greenland and in all suitable waters on the North American side of the Atlantic ocean from Ungava Bay in the south to the most northern of the Canadian rivers

Social science policy in Norway. ESRI Memorandum series 112

I attended the above meeting on 25 February 1976. Most of the day was devoted to a confrontation meeting in which Social Science Policy in Norway was reviewed. In preparation for this meeting a Report on the subject had been prepared [SPT(75)8]. A copy of this Report is available and I give below a summary of its contents and a brief note on the discussion of the Report Which took place at the meeting. Because of the length of the documents involved, I have had to be very selective and have had to omit points which others would surely have found relevant. Interested readers are therefore advised to peruse the main documents which contain much valuable information about research generally

The Place of the Research Assistant in the Organization and Conduct of Research Projects. ESRI Memorandum Series No. 113 1975

In 1973 the Ford Foundation made available some money for economic and social research in Ireland. The grant was to cover a period of three years. In the first year, (1973), some 15 projects were funded while in the second year funds for a further four projects were sanctioned. The remainder of the money will be awarded - next year. As the total amount of money available was rather limited the amount which could be awarded for each project was relatively small - about sufficient to cover data collection and salaries of research assistants. Overhead costs, including the salaries of applicants, have to be borne by the institutions to which the applicants are attached. In these circumstances there is a danger that too much of the work will be delegated to the research assistants. The committee feel that if this happens the research will not of a good standard and accordingly the present meeting has been called to discuss in a general manner the best methods of dealing with research projects of the kind under review, and in particular with research assistants

Electrical and chemical characterisation of ultrathin transistor gate dielectric layers

This work examines the suitability of both ultrathin Silicon Oxynitride (SiON) and Hafnium Silicate (HfSiON) layers to be used as high-permittivity gate dielectrics to serve as a replacement to silicon dioxide (Si0 2 )in future Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) technologies. The reason Si0 2 needs to be replaced is the extremely high levels of leakage current displayed in ultrathin layers required for sub-90nm CMOS. The main part of the thesis consists of an electrical characterisation section, where the layers are evaluated in terms of their electrical reliability when fabricated into MOS devices, so as to determine their maximum operating voltage and performance during expected device lifetime. Techniques used include constant voltage stress, constant current stress, ramped voltage stress, charge pumping to determine interface state densities and stress induced leakage current measurements. Conventional methods of determining reliability are also evaluated. Results show that these methods cannot be blindly applied in ultrathin regime, and that finding an alternative dielectric material is a major challenge. The second part of the thesis consists of a chemical characterisation section, where blanket layers of the materials are examined using a range of surface analysis techniques. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), synchrotron based photoemission and secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) are used to determine the chemical composition and chemical depth profile information of the layers and to probe the electronic structure of the valence bands and allow the valence band offsets to be determined

Time dependent dielectric breakdown and stress induced leakage current characteristics of 8Å EOT HfO2 N-MOSFETS

In this work we present the time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) characteristics of LaO capped HfO2 layers with an equivalent oxide thickness of 8Å. The layers show maximum operating voltages in excess of 1V. Such high reliability can be attributed to very high Weibull slopes. We examine the origin of the high slopes by a detailed study of the evolution of the stress induced leakage current with time, temperature and stress voltage

Characteristics of U.S. Manufacturing Companies Investing Abroad and their Choice of Production Locations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relations among characteristics of U.S. firms, their tendency to invest abroad, and their choice of production locations. The larger the firm, and the higher its profitability, capital intensity, technological Intensity, and the skill level ofits labor force, the higher the probability that it was a foreign investor.Some of these factors were largely associated with the industry the firm was in but size, R&D, and profitability were characteristics of investing firms within individual industries.Despite its importance in determining the probability that a firm would invest abroad, size of firm appeared to have no relation to the importance of foreign investment; among firms that invested at all, large firms did not produce a higher proportion of their output abroad than small firms. The concentration of manufacturing abroad in a small number of corn-panies is largely a reflection of the concentration within the United States. The influence of size, we conclude, reflects economies of scale not in production but in investing.We found no evidence that, in general, low-wage U.S. firms tended to invest in low-wage countries or that R&D - intensive firms tended to operate more in countries with highly sophisticated or educated labor. In fact,investors in developing countries, and particularly those in some Southeast Asian countries, tended to be more R&D intensive than investors in developed countries. There was some indication that in industries other than machinery R&D - intensive firms were more inclined than others to license technology, while in the machinery industries, R&D - intensive firms tended to license less:to exploit their technological capital in foreign markets by producing there rather than by licensing.

A Miéville Bestiary: Monsters as Commentary on the Hybridity of Real and Conceptual Landscapes in the Work of China Miéville.

To date, China Miéville has written: 12 novels; two short story collections; four volumes of non-fiction; graphic novels; roleplaying games and numerous essays and articles in a writing career spanning since the late 1990s. Miéville’s novels are celebrated for being distinctly different from each other yet there are three concepts of landscapes which Miéville keeps revisiting: genre landscapes, urban landscapes and socio-political landscapes. This thesis will explore the theoretical approaches Miéville utilises to explore these conceptual landscapes before using the form of the bestiary to highlight how these concepts are manifested in his novels. The most important of those fantastical elements at his disposal is the monster which naturally encourages an examination of hybridity and liminality. The Bestiary has existed in the form that is familiar to us for many centuries. The interweaving of morality and mysterious depictions of the natural world imbued historical bestiaries with a sense of the mythological. Their power as a device for world creation is particularly recognised by writers of fantasy fiction. This thesis will demonstrate that by using monsters as manifestations of these conceptual landscapes Miéville successfully utilises the hybridity and liminality of both monsters and fantastic fiction as a methodology to critique our own contemporary late-capitalist social landscape. Key Words: Miéville, monsters, bestiary, hybridity, genre, Weird, psychogeography, Marxism