The Relationship between Innovations and Economic Growth in Sri Lanka

Innovation is widely recognized as a major incentive to national economic growth in industrial, newly industrialized, and developing economies (Pavitt and Walker, 1976; Kim, 1980; Archibugi et al., 1991; Ernst and Kim, 2002; Guan and Chen, 2012) and also there is widespread agreement among most economists on the positive link between innovation and growth. The objective of the study is to find out the impact of innovation on economic growth, the long run relationship between economic growth and other economic variables using Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test and Johansen's test of co-intergration.  The researcher used only secondary data for the study and the conclusion was that innovations positively influence economic growth in Sri Lanka. Keywords: Innovation, Economic Growth, unit roots, co-integration, vector auto-regression mode

Calorimetric and magnetic study for Ni50_{50}Mn36_{36}In14_{14} and relative cooling power in paramagnetic inverse magnetocaloric systems

The non-stoichiometric Heusler alloy Ni$_{50}$Mn$_{36}$In$_{14}$ undergoes a martensitic phase transformation in the vicinity of 345 K, with the high temperature austenite phase exhibiting paramagnetic rather than ferromagnetic behavior, as shown in similar alloys with lower-temperature transformations. Suitably prepared samples are shown to exhibit a sharp transformation, a relatively small thermal hysteresis, and a large field-induced entropy change. We analyzed the magnetocaloric behavior both through magnetization and direct field-dependent calorimetry measurements. For measurements passing through the first-order transformation, an improved method for heat-pulse relaxation calorimetry was designed. The results provide a firm basis for the analytic evaluation of field-induced entropy changes in related materials. An analysis of the relative cooling power (RCP), based on the integrated field-induced entropy change and magnetizing behavior of the Mn spin system with ferromagnetic correlations, shows that a significant RCP may be obtained in these materials by tuning the magnetic and structural transformation temperatures through minor compositional changes or local order changes