Skill-biased Technical Change and the Relative Pay and Employment of Men and Women in the UK Economy 1971 – 1991

This paper presents quantitative estimates of the effects of technological change in industries and services on skill composition in the United Kingdom for four skill groups, for men and women separately for the period 1971 – 1991. The paper separates the effects of relative wage change, biased technological change and changes in sectoral composition and estimates the effect of biased technological change on relative pay.Skill change; United Kingdom; technological change; relative pay

The Technological Bias Against Production Workers in United States Manufacturing 1949 – 1996

This paper presents quantitative estimates of the effects of technological change on the composition of production and non-production workers in manufacturing in the United States for the period 1950 – 1995. The paper separates the effects of relative wage change, biased technological change and changes in sectoral composition and estimates the effect of upward pressure on relative pay exerted by biased technological change.Skill change; United Kingdom; technological change; sectoral composition

The Long Run Bias Against Manual Workers in British Manufacturing 1920 – 1995

This paper presents quantitative estimates of the effects of technological change on the composition of manual and non-manual employment in manufacturing in the United Kingdom for the period 1921 – 1995. The paper separates the effects of relative wage change, biased technological change and changes in sectoral composition and calculates the upward pressure on relative pay exerted by biased technological change.Skill change; United Kingdom; technological change; sectoral composition

Remotely triggered scaffolds for controlled release of pharmaceuticals

Fe3O4-Au hybrid nanoparticles (HNPs) have shown increasing potential for biomedical applications such as image guided stimuli responsive drug delivery. Incorporation of the unique properties of HNPs into thermally responsive scaffolds holds great potential for future biomedical applications. Here we successfully fabricated smart scaffolds based on thermo-responsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNiPAM). Nanoparticles providing localized trigger of heating when irradiated with a short laser burst were found to give rise to remote control of bulk polymer shrinkage. Gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles were synthesized using wet chemical precipitation methods followed by electrochemical coating. After subsequent functionalization of particles with allyl methyl sulfide, mercaptodecane, cysteamine and poly(ethylene glycol) thiol to enhance stability, detailed biological safety was determined using live/dead staining and cell membrane integrity studies through lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) quantification. The PEG coated HNPs did not show significant cytotoxic effect or adverse cellular response on exposure to 7F2 cells (p < 0.05) and were carried forward for scaffold incorporation. The pNiPAM-HNP composite scaffolds were investigated for their potential as thermally triggered systems using a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. These studies show that incorporation of HNPs resulted in scaffold deformation after very short irradiation times (seconds) due to internal structural heating. Our data highlights the potential of these hybrid-scaffold constructs for exploitation in drug delivery, using methylene blue as a model drug being released during remote structural change of the scaffold

Students academic self-perception

Participation rates in higher education differ persistently between some groups in society. Using two British datasets we investigate whether this gap is rooted in students' mis-perception of their own and other's ability, thereby increasing the expected costs to studying. Among high school pupils, we find that pupils with a more positive view of their academic abilities are more likely to expect to continue to higher education even after controlling for observable measures of ability and students' characteristics. University students are also poor at estimating their own test-performance and over-estimate their predicted test score. However, females, white and working class students have less inflated view of themselves. Self-perception has limited impact on the expected probability of success and expected returns amongst these university students.Test performance, self-assessment, higher education participation, academic self-perception

The impact of the mixing properties within the Antarctic stratospheric vortex on ozone loss in spring

Calculations of equivalent length from an artificial advected tracer provide new insight into the isentropic transport processes occurring within the Antarctic stratospheric vortex. These calculations show two distinct regions of approximately equal area: a strongly mixed vortex core and a broad ring of weakly mixed air extending out to the vortex boundary. This broad ring of vortex air remains isolated from the core between late winter and midspring. Satellite measurements of stratospheric H2O confirm that the isolation lasts until at least mid-October. A three-dimensional chemical transport model simulation of the Antarctic ozone hole quantifies the ozone loss within this ring and demonstrates its isolation. In contrast to the vortex core, ozone loss in the weakly mixed broad ring is not complete. The reasons are twofold. First, warmer temperatures in the broad ring prevent continuous polar stratospheric cloud (PSC) formation and the associated chemical processing (i.e., the conversion of unreactive chlorine into reactive forms). Second, the isolation prevents ozone-rich air from the broad ring mixing with chemically processed air from the vortex core. If the stratosphere continues to cool, this will lead to increased PSC formation and more complete chemical processing in the broad ring. Despite the expected decline in halocarbons, sensitivity studies suggest that this mechanism will lead to enhanced ozone loss in the weakly mixed region, delaying the future recovery of the ozone hole

A Search for Scalar Chameleons with ADMX

Scalar fields with a "chameleon" property, in which the effective particle mass is a function of its local environment, are common to many theories beyond the standard model and could be responsible for dark energy. If these fields couple weakly to the photon, they could be detectable through the "afterglow" effect of photon-chameleon-photon transitions. The ADMX experiment was used in the first chameleon search with a microwave cavity to set a new limit on scalar chameleon-photon coupling excluding values between 2*10^9 and 5*10^14 for effective chameleon masses between 1.9510 and 1.9525 micro-eV.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure