International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom

This paper investigates empirically the link between international outsourcing and the skill structure of labour demand in the United Kingdom. It is the first detailed study of this issue for the UK. Outsourcing is calculated using import-use matrices of input-output tables for manufacturing industries for the period 1982 to 1996. Estimating a system of variable factor demands, our main results show that international outsourcing has had a strong negative impact on the demand for unskilled labour. Hence, international outsourcing is an important component in explanations of the changing skill structure of manufacturing industries in the United Kingdom.Outsourcing; Fragmentation; Trade; Wages; Skill-biased technological change

Rotor response for transient unbalance changes in a nonlinear simulation

Transient unbalance shifts were determined not to excite a rotor instability in the high pressure turbomachinery of the Space Shuttle Main Engine using the current rotor dynamic models. Sudden unbalance changes of relatively small magnitudes during fast-speed ramps showed stable nonsynchronous motion depending on the resultant unbalance distribution at subsequent high speed dwells. Transient moment unbalance may initiate a limit cycle subsynchronous response that shortly decays, but a persistent subsynchronous with large amplitudes was never achieved. These limit cycle subsynchronous amplitudes appear to be minimized with lower unbalance magnitudes, which indicates improved rotor balancing would sustain synchronous motion only. The transient unbalance phenomenon was determined to be an explanation for synchronous response shifts often observed during engine tests

Tracing potential energy surfaces of electronic excitations via their transition origins: application to Oxirane

We show that the transition origins of electronic excitations identified by quantified natural transition orbital (QNTO) analysis can be employed to connect potential energy surfaces (PESs) according to their character across a widerange of molecular geometries. This is achieved by locating the switching of transition origins of adiabatic potential surfaces as the geometry changes. The transition vectors for analysing transition origins are provided by linear response time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) calculations under the Tamm-Dancoff approximation. We study the photochemical CO ring opening of oxirane as an example and show that the results corroborate the traditional Gomer-Noyes mechanism derived experimentally. The knowledge of specific states for the reaction also agrees well with that given by previous theoretical work using TDDFT surface-hopping dynamics that was validated by high-quality quantum Monte Carlo calculations. We also show that QNTO can be useful for considerably larger and more complex systems: by projecting the excitations to those of a reference oxirane molecule, the approach is able to identify and analyse specific excitations of a trans-2,3-diphenyloxirane molecule.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figure

Projector self-consistent DFT+U using non-orthogonal generalized Wannier functions

We present a formulation of the density-functional theory + Hubbard model (DFT+U) method that is self-consistent over the choice of Hubbard projectors used to define the correlated subspaces. In order to overcome the arbitrariness in this choice, we propose the use of non-orthogonal generalized Wannier functions (NGWFs) as projectors for the DFT+U correction. We iteratively refine these NGWF projectors and, hence, the DFT+U functional, such that the correlated subspaces are fully self-consistent with the DFT+U ground-state. We discuss the convergence characteristics of this algorithm and compare ground-state properties thus computed with those calculated using hydrogenic projectors. Our approach is implemented within, but not restricted to, a linear-scaling DFT framework, opening the path to DFT+U calculations on systems of unprecedented size.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. This version (v2) matches that accepted for Physical Review B Rapid Communications on 26th July 201

Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologies

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion \ud of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there \ud is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. \ud Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement

Mathematics: A good predictor for success in a health science degree

Research-based literature indicates that secondary school mathematics performance is highly predictive of university performance Moreover, scholars suggest that success in secondary mathematics courses translates into success in tertiary degrees where mathematics is required. This paper examines the extent to which the completion of secondary school mathematics courses is predictive of academic success for 57 first-year students enrolled in a Health Science degree at The University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) (Fremantle Campus). Using the University’s databases, the level of mathematics completed at secondary school was examined against gender, Tertiary Entrance Ranking (TER) and Grade Point Average (GPA). A statistical analysis of collected data revealed that irrespective of gender, students who completed 3C3D mathematics at secondary school had a significantly (p = .00) higher GPA, than those students who had studied level 2C2D mathematics. These findings are discussed briefly in light of the current literature presented

Energy landscape and band-structure tuning in realistic MoS2/MoSe2 heterostructures

While monolayer forms of two-dimensional materials are well characterized both experimentally and theoretically, properties of bilayer heterostructures are not nearly so well known. We employ high-accuracy linear-scaling density functional theory calculations utilizing nonlocal van der Waals functionals to explore the possible constructions of the MoS2/MoSe2 interface. Utilizing large supercells, we vary rotation, translation, and separation of the layers without introducing unrealistic strain. The energy landscape shows very low variations under rotation, with no strongly preferred alignments. By unfolding the spectral function into the primitive cells, we show that the monolayers are more independent than in homo-bilayers and that the electronic band structure of each layer is tunable through rotation, thus influencing hole effective masses.The authors acknowledge the support of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability. Computing resources were provided by the Darwin Supercomputer of the University of Cambridge High Performance Computing Service and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory, supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. G.C.C. acknowledges the support of the Cambridge Home and EU Scholarship Scheme.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in Physical Review B (Constantinescu GC, Hine NDM, Physical Review B, 2015, 91, 195416, doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.91.195416). The final version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.91.19541

Linear-scaling DFT+U with full local orbital optimization

We present an approach to the DFT+U method (Density Functional Theory + Hubbard model) within which the computational effort for calculation of ground state energies and forces scales linearly with system size. We employ a formulation of the Hubbard model using nonorthogonal projector functions to define the localized subspaces, and apply it to a local-orbital DFT method including in situ orbital optimization. The resulting approach thus combines linear-scaling and systematic variational convergence. We demonstrate the scaling of the method by applying it to nickel oxide nano-clusters with sizes exceeding 7,000 atoms.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. This version (v3) matches that accepted for Physical Review B on 30th January 201

The association between secondary mathematics and first year university performance in health sciences

In recent years, there has been a significant decline in the rate of participation in secondary school mathematics courses within Australia, particularly in advanced or higher level mathematics. The aim of this study was to investigate how grade point average (GPA) differed between five health science degrees at an Australian university. The association between Australian Tertiary Admission Ranking (ATAR), the level of mathematics completed at secondary school and GPA was also investigated. Results showed that students studying Biomedical Sciences and Physiotherapy had significantly higher GPA and ATAR than students studying Exercise and Sports Science, Physical Education, and Nursing. A higher percentage of Biomedical Science, and Physiotherapy students undertook advanced mathematics (3C3D MAT) at secondary school than students in the other three degrees, who recorded lower secondary school mathematics result scores from an intermediate or elementary mathematics course studied (3A3B and 2C2D MAT, respectively). The results of this study accord with published literature from other university courses that the decline in numbers of students opting to undertake a higher level of mathematics at secondary school will impact negatively upon their first year university performance

Opaque Service Virtualisation: A Practical Tool for Emulating Endpoint Systems

Large enterprise software systems make many complex interactions with other services in their environment. Developing and testing for production-like conditions is therefore a very challenging task. Current approaches include emulation of dependent services using either explicit modelling or record-and-replay approaches. Models require deep knowledge of the target services while record-and-replay is limited in accuracy. Both face developmental and scaling issues. We present a new technique that improves the accuracy of record-and-replay approaches, without requiring prior knowledge of the service protocols. The approach uses Multiple Sequence Alignment to derive message prototypes from recorded system interactions and a scheme to match incoming request messages against prototypes to generate response messages. We use a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for distance calculation during message matching. Our approach has shown greater than 99% accuracy for four evaluated enterprise system messaging protocols. The approach has been successfully integrated into the CA Service Virtualization commercial product to complement its existing techniques.Comment: In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (pp. 202-211). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1510.0142