66,361 research outputs found
Inward foreign direct investment and constitutional change in Scotland
Purpose - To undertake an analysis of the implications of potential Scottish independence for inward foreign direct investment (FDI), multinational enterprise strategies, and the local economy.<p></p>
Design/methodology/approach - Takes a multidisciplinary approach drawing upon literature and evidence in the international business and management, political economy, and economic geography fields to analyze the role and impact of inward FDI in Scotland following possible Scottish independence.<p></p>
Findings - Scotland continues as an attractive location for FDI, with greater diversity than hitherto. While the country’s comparative advantages in immobile natural resources provide some protection from uncertainty, weak embeddedness is a risk factor irrespective of independence. A range of transition costs of independence are identified, which could be high and of indeterminate duration, and some will be sector-specific. There are also new possibilities for tailoring of policies, and potential reindustrialization opportunities in renewable technologies. The foreign investors most vulnerable to political risks and uncertainties are those whose market scope is the rest of the UK (rUK) either as exporters or value chain integrators, in addition to the high political risk industries of energy, banking, and financial services and defence. Scottish subsidiaries’ significance within their parent MNE groups will also be a major factor in determining responses to political risks and uncertainties.<p></p>
Originality/value - Specific focus upon the impact of potential independence on the foreign-owned sector as a major contributor to the Scottish economy.<p></p>
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Do arsenic levels in rice pose a health risk to the UK population?
Consumption of rice and rice products can be a significant exposure pathway to inorganic arsenic (iAs), which is a group 1 carcinogen to humans. The UK follows the current European Commission regulations so that iAs concentrations must be 0.1 mg kg-1 were selected for As speciation using HPLC-ICP-MS. Based on the average concentration of iAs of our samples, we calculated values for the Lifetime Cancer Risk (LCR), Target Hazard Quotient (THQ) and Margin of Exposure (MoE). We found a statistically significant difference between organically and non-organically grown rice. We also found that brown rice contained a significantly higher concentration of iAs compared to white or wild rice. Notably, 28 rice samples exceeded the iAs maximum limit stipulated by the EU (0.1 mg kg-1) with an average iAs concentration of 0.13 mg kg-1; therefore consumption of these rice types could be riskier for infants than adults. Based on the MoE, it was found that infants up to 1 year must be restricted to a maximum of 20 g per day for the 28 rice types to avoid carcinogenic risks. We believe that consumers could be better informed whether the marketed product is fit for infants and young children, via appropriate product labelling containing information about iAs concentration
Deep Near-Infrared Surface Photometry and Properties of Local Volume Dwarf Irregular Galaxies
We present deep H-band surface photometry and analysis of 40 Local Volume
galaxies, a sample primarily composed of dwarf irregulars in the Cen A group,
obtained using the IRIS2 detector at the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope. We
probe to a surface brightness of ~25 mag arcsec, reaching a 40 times
lower stellar density than the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Employing
extremely careful and rigorous cleaning techniques to remove contaminating
sources, we perform surface photometry on 33 detected galaxies deriving the
observed total magnitude, effective surface brightness and best fitting
S\'ersic parameters. We make image quality and surface photometry comparisons
to 2MASS and VISTA Hemispheric Survey (VHS) demonstrating that deep targeted
surveys are still the most reliable means of obtaining accurate surface
photometry. We investigate the B-H colours with respect to mass for Local
Volume galaxies, finding that the colours of dwarf irregulars are significantly
varied, eliminating the possibility of using optical-NIR colour transformations
to facilitate comparison to the more widely available optical data sets. The
structure-luminosity relationships are investigated for our `clean' sample of
dwarf irregulars. We demonstrate that a significant fraction of the Local
Volume dwarf irregular population have underlying structural properties similar
to both Local Volume and Virgo Cluster dwarf ellipticals. Linear regressions to
structure-luminosity relationships for the Local Volume galaxies and Virgo
Cluster dwarf ellipticals show significant differences in both slope and
scatter around the established trend lines, suggesting that environment might
regulate the structural scaling relationships of dwarf galaxies in comparison
to their more isolated counterparts.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures, 5 table
Quasiparticle Trapping in Microwave Kinetic Inductance Strip Detectors
Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) are thin-film, superconducting resonators, which are attractive for making large detector arrays due to their natural frequency domain multiplexing at GHz frequencies. For X-ray to IR wavelengths, MKIDs can provide high-resolution energy and timing information for each incoming photon. By fabricating strip detectors consisting of a rectangular absorber coupled to MKIDs at each end, high quantum efficiency and spatial resolution can be obtained. A similar geometry is being pursued for phonon sensing in a WIMP dark matter detector. Various materials have been tested including tantalum, tin, and aluminum for the absorbing strip, and aluminum, titanium, and aluminum manganese for the MKID. Initial Ta/Al X-ray devices have shown energy resolutions as good as 62 eV at 6 keV. A Ta/Al UV strip detector with an energy resolution of 0.8 eV at 4.9 eV has been demonstrated, but we find the coupling of the MKIDs to the absorbers is unreliable for these thinner devices. We report on progress probing the thicknesses at which the absorber/MKID coupling begins to degrade by using a resonator to inject quasiparticles directly into the absorber. In order to eliminate the absorber/MKID interface, a modified design for implanted AlMn/Al UV strip detectors was developed, and results showing good transmission of quasiparticles from the absorber to MKID in these devices are presented
Devroye Inequality for a Class of Non-Uniformly Hyperbolic Dynamical Systems
In this paper, we prove an inequality, which we call "Devroye inequality",
for a large class of non-uniformly hyperbolic dynamical systems (M,f). This
class, introduced by L.-S. Young, includes families of piece-wise hyperbolic
maps (Lozi-like maps), scattering billiards (e.g., planar Lorentz gas),
unimodal and H{\'e}non-like maps. Devroye inequality provides an upper bound
for the variance of observables of the form K(x,f(x),...,f^{n-1}(x)), where K
is any separately Holder continuous function of n variables. In particular, we
can deal with observables which are not Birkhoff averages. We will show in
\cite{CCS} some applications of Devroye inequality to statistical properties of
this class of dynamical systems.Comment: Corrected version; To appear in Nonlinearit
Finite Temperature and Dynamical Properties of the Random Transverse-Field Ising Spin Chain
We study numerically the paramagnetic phase of the spin-1/2 random
transverse-field Ising chain, using a mapping to non-interacting fermions. We
extend our earlier work, Phys. Rev. 53, 8486 (1996), to finite temperatures and
to dynamical properties. Our results are consistent with the idea that there
are ``Griffiths-McCoy'' singularities in the paramagnetic phase described by a
continuously varying exponent , where measures the
deviation from criticality. There are some discrepancies between the values of
obtained from different quantities, but this may be due to
corrections to scaling. The average on-site time dependent correlation function
decays with a power law in the paramagnetic phase, namely
, where is imaginary time. However, the typical
value decays with a stretched exponential behavior, ,
where may be related to . We also obtain results for the full
probability distribution of time dependent correlation functions at different
points in the paramagnetic phase.Comment: 10 pages, 14 postscript files included. The discussion of the typical
time dependent correlation function has been greatly expanded. Other papers
of APY are available on-line at http://schubert.ucsc.edu/pete
Analysis of the extraterrestrial life detection problem
Analysis of extraterrestrial life detection proble
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