An institutional perspective on managing migrant workers in the North of England

Despite advances made in our understanding of migrant worker issues, analysis of the literature reveals disconnections between the policy and practice of 'managed migration' across three fundamental levels of the state (e.g. public institutions at the EU, national and regional levels), corporate (e.g. employers and unions) and community (e.g. migrant social networks) levels. Consequently, this has implications on corporate and community aspects that often escape deeper analytical scrutiny. Concomitantly, the literature often assumes that policy decisions at the state level are necessarily homogeneous, and fails to account for the local specificities that could exist in this area. This research therefore sought to investigate the interplay between state, corporate and community levels in managing migrant workers across three regions in the North of England, and explore its implications on managing migrant worker employment in construction. The key research questions examined include the critical issues confronted by state, corporate and community actors in terms of framing migrant worker issues, and the nature of existing interactions between these stakeholders in terms of managing migrant workers in each of the three regions. Cross-regional comparisons were also considered in this research. Through interviewing key participants, it was found that subtle differences exist in regional government actors' response to the impacts of migration through their policy formation. It was also noted that interactions between the three levels vary substantially cross the three regions, and the tendency for stronger relationships to be forged between government and corporate actors where economic imperatives are concerned, with weaker and more ad hoc connections made between stakeholders across the three levels where social policy is concerned. It was concluded that any migration policy cannot be viewed as stand-alone, since empirical analysis across the three regions demonstrate the intertwining dimensions of linking migration policy with social and employment concerns

Mechanisms for the Oxonolysis of Ethene and Propene: Reliability of Quantum Chemical Predictions

Reactions of ozone with ethene and propene leading to primary ozonide (concerted and stepwise ozonolysis) or epoxide and singlet molecular oxygen (partial ozonolysis) are studied theoretically. The mechanism of concerted ozonolysis proceeds via a single transition structure which is a partial diradical. The transition structures and intermediates in the stepwise ozonolysis and partial ozonolysis mechanisms are singlet diradicals. Spin-restricted and unrestricted density functional methods are employed to calculate the structures of the closed-shell and diradical species. Although the partial diradicals exhibit moderate to pronounced instability in their RDFT and RHF solutions, RDFT is required to locate the transition structure for concerted ozonolysis. Spin projected fourth-order Møller–Plesset theory (PMP4) was used to correct the DFT energies. The calculated pre-exponential factors and activation energies for the concerted ozonolysis of ethene and propene are in good agreement with experimental values. However, the PMP4//DFT procedure incorrectly predicts the stepwise mechanism as the favored channel. UCCSD(T) predicts the concerted mechanism as the favored channel but significantly overestimates the activation energies. RCCSD(T) is found to be more accurate than UCCSD(T) for the calculation of the concerted mechanism but is not applicable to the diradical intermediates. The major difficulty in accurate prediction of the rate constant data for these reactions is the wide range of spin contamination for the reference UHF wave functions and UDFT solutions across the potential energy surface. The possibility of the partial ozonolysis mechanism being the source of epoxide observed in some experiments is discussed

Vietnam's New Environmental Tax Law: What Will It Cost? Who Will Pay?

We examine the effects of a proposed environmental tax in a small open developing economy, using an applied general equilibrium model linked to a household survey database. The burden of the tax, applied primarily to fossil fuels, is passed forward by non-traded industries and backward by industries selling into the world market. It causes efficiency and competitiveness losses equivalent to those of a real exchange rate appreciation, and since export industries are in general highly labor-intensive, is regressive and thus poverty-increasing. The budget-neutral use of increased tax revenues to raise spending on anti-poverty programs can offset most of the losses of poor households, but does not create new jobs. The extent of overall losses and their distribution is sensitive to some parameters, such as labor supply response, about which little is currently known in a developing-country context.

Lateral Shift Makes a Ground-Plane Cloak Detectable

We examine the effectiveness of the ground-plane invisibility cloak generated from quasiconformal mapping of electromagnetic space. This cloak without anisotropy will generally lead to a lateral shift of the scattered wave, whose value is comparable to the height of the cloaked object, making the object detectable. This can be explained by the fact that the corresponding virtual space is thinner and wider than it should be. Ray tracing on a concrete model shows that for a bump with a maximum height of 0.2 units to be hidden, the lateral shift of a ray with 45 degree incidence is around 0.15 units

Detection of prostate cancer using multi-parametric magnetic resonance

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 26-28).A multi-channel statistical classifier to detect prostate cancer was developed by combining information from 3 different MR methodologies: T2-weighted, T2-mapping, and Line Scan Diffusion lmaging(LSDI). From these MR sequences, 4 sets of image intensities were obtained: T2-weighted(T2W) from T2-weighted imaging, Apparent Diffusion Coefficient(ADC) from LSDI, and Proton Density (PD) and T2 (T2Map) from T2-mapping imaging. Manually- segmented tumor labels from a radiologist were validated by biopsy results to serve as tumor "ground truth." Textural features were derived from the images using co-occurrence matrix and discrete cosine transform. Anatomical location of voxels was described by a cylindrical coordinate system. Statistical jack-knife approach was used to evaluate our classifiers. Single-channel maximum likelihood(ML) classifiers were based on 1 of the 4 basic image intensities. Our multi-channel classifiers: support vector machine (SVM) and fisher linear discriminant(FLD), utilized 5 different sets of derived features. Each classifer generated a summary statistical map that indicated tumor likelihood in the peripheral zone(PZ) of the gland. To assess classifier accuracy, the average areas under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were compared. Our best FLD classifier achieved an average ROC area of 0.839 (±0.064) and our best SVM classifier achieved an average ROC area of 0.761 (±0.043). The T2W intensity maximum likelihood classifier, our best single-channel classifier, only achieved an average ROC area of 0.599 (± 0.146). Compared to the best single-channel ML classifier, our best multi-channel FLD and SVM classifiers have statistically superior ROC performance with P-values of 0.0003 and 0.0017 respectively from pairwise 2-sided t-test. By integrating information from the multiple images and capturing the textural and anatomical features in tumor areas, the statistical summary maps can potentially improve the accuracy of image-guided prostate biopsy and enable the delivery of localized therapy under image guidance.by Ian Chan.M.Eng

Maternal Vitamin D Status Related to Triacylglycerol in Early Pregnancy and Subsequent Risk for Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes

Research has suggested roles of vitamin D in health beyond its action on calcium homeostasis and bone health. Recent studies revealed a high proportion of pregnant women having low vitamin D status. This may lead to increased risks for preeclampsia, gestational diabetes (GDM), and cesarean delivery. Findings on the effects of vitamin D on these adverse pregnancy outcomes have been inconsistent. To our knowledge, no studies have examined maternal vitamin D status with circulating triacylglycerol (TAG) concentrations. This study was conducted to assess the effects of maternal vitamin D status on subsequent risk for pregnancy complications and to determine the effectiveness of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] to TAG ratio to indicate vitamin D status. We measured the plasma 25(OH)D and TAG concentrations of 299 pregnant women in their 8th to 20th week of gestation, and examined the association between 25(OH)D concentrations, 25(OH)D/TAG ratios and the risk of preeclampsia, GDM, and cesarean delivery. Of the 299 subjects, five developed preeclampsia, 15 developed GDM, and 89 delivered their infants by cesarean section. Women diagnosed with preeclampsia or GDM had significantly lower 25(OH)D/TAG ratios than women without these complications. Women with 25(OH)D concentrations and 25(OH)D/TAG below medians had increased odds of preeclampsia (OR, 4.05; 95% CI, 0.45-36.71 and OR, 4.05; 95% CI, 0.45-36.71 respectively) and GDM (OR, 2.12; 95% CI, 0.71-6.38 and OR, 2.96, 95% CI, 0.92-9.55 respectively). These results were not statistically significant because of the small number of affected women, but the association between 25(OH)D/TAG and GDM risk was close to significant (P = 0.07). Women with 25(OH)D concentrations and 25(OH)D/TAG below medians also had reduced odds for cesarean delivery (OR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.32-0.89 and OR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.45-1.22 respectively), but only the association between 25(OH)D concentration and risk of cesarean delivery was statistically significant. This study suggested increased preeclampsia and GDM risks in women with low vitamin D status. Few cases of these events compromised the statistical significance of results. The increased risk of cesarean delivery in women with higher vitamin D status shown has to be reevaluated because reasons for cesarean delivery were not included in the analysis