Multiple light source detection.

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Gender wage differentials and discrimination in the UK and Europe.

Gender wage differentials and discrimination are issues of primary significance both in terms of equity and efficiency. Current policy debate emphasises the importance of labour market efficiency with various HM Treasury reports highlighting productivity as the key determinant of economic growth. Consequently a deeper understanding of where the labour market allocates its scare human resource inefficiently, as a result of discrimination, is always desirable. The vast majority of the existing literature is based upon single country studies using cross-sectional data. This has led to weaknesses in our understanding of the inter-temporal processes generating changes to the wage gap, as well as the impact of national differences to relative cross-country gender differentials. Using the UK as the major focus, and other European countries for comparison, this thesis improves upon both of these. Paying particular attention to the roles played by inequality and sample selection. Blau and Kahn (1992) initially highlighted the importance of wage inequality to cross-country wage gaps. This is built upon by applying the techniques they pioneered and making use of the higher levels of comparability and compatibility inherent within the Panel Comparability Project (PACO) and European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data sets. With the analysis revealing that the gender wage gap would be narrower in the UK if the level of inequality was reduced to those in the rest of Europe. Thus supporting the view that a compression of the overall wage distribution leads to smaller gender wage gaps. The issue of sample selection is always present when empirical work is based upon earnings functions. Since Heckman (1979) it has become the norm to correct for possible bias using his two-stage procedure. However this is generally treated as a technical exercise and rarely warrants any meaningful discussion. Unfortunately selectivity is not merely a source of potential bias it also reflects relationships that have a significant effect upon the gender wage gap, most importantly its inter-temporal path. Consequently there is a clear need for a deeper understanding of this issue. It is revealed to be important, especially in the UK, where changes to the skill levels of those employed, relative to the overall population, are shown to be crucial to the narrowing of the wage gap. With this improvement resulting from more favourable skill endowments for those women entering or re-entering paid employment. This indicates that policies addressing human capital accumulation prior to labour market entry have already been successful in narrowing the differential. However there is still evidence that women are receiving inequitable returns from their human capital, hence more effective legislation addressing this is a matter of priorit

Estimation of glottal closure instants in voiced speech using the DYPSA algorithm

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Methanol oxidation on Fe2O3catalysts and the effects of surface Mo

The adsorption of methanol on haematite has been investigated using temperature programmed methods, combined with in situ DRIFTS. Model catalysts based on this material have then been made with a shell–core configuration of molybdenum oxide monolayers on top of the haematite core. These are used as models of industrial iron molybdate catalysts, used to selectively oxidise methanol to formaldehyde, one of the major chemical outlets for methanol. Haematite itself is completely ineffective in this respect since it oxidises it to CO2 and the DRIFTS shows that this occurs by oxidation of methoxy to formate at around 200 °C. The decomposition behaviour is affected by the absence or presence of oxygen in the gas phase; oxygen destabilises the methoxy and enhances formate production. In contrast, when a monolayer of molybdena is placed onto the surface by incipient wetness, and it remains there after calcination, the pathway to formate production is blocked and formaldehyde is the main gas phase product in TPD after methanol dosing

Algorithms for max and min filters with improved worst-case performance

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Employment regulation and productivity: is there a case for deregulation?

This paper explores empirically the economic validity of the relatively limited approach to the regulation of employment protection pursued in the UK over the last three decades and within the European Union more recently. It does so by comparing the UK’s manufacturing labour productivity performance with those of three countries – France, Germany and Sweden – that possess more stringent employment protection laws. The findings reveal that while productivity growth in the UK was superior to France and Sweden, it was lower than in Germany. More generally, the study’s findings fail to support the existence of a straightforward negative relationship between regulatory stringency and productivity growth

Two ethological studies of social behaviour in day nurseries

The development of ethological and observational methods of studying children's social behaviour is discussed, characteristics of the methods are outlined, and their theoretical basis is considered. Recent literature dealing with the social development of pre-school children is reviewed, with particular reference to social interactions with adults and peers, the development and function of smiling, and the effect of gender on social behaviour. The first study reported, compared the frequencies of some social behaviours observed in 2-year-old girls and boys with frequencies of the same behaviours observed in 4-year olds cared for at the same local authority day nursery. Developmental changes in these behaviours, inferred from comparison of the two age groups, are discussed. The study showed that social interactions with peers were significantly more frequent in 4 year olds, as has often been found; interactions with adult caregivers, however, did not decrease in frequency in the older group. It is argued that relationships with caregivers in the nursery are especially important for these deprived children. It was observed that children more often participated in smile exchanges with adults, and it is suggested that caregivers regard smiling as an important social skill, and taught it to the children by example. All the children had more frequent social interchanges with caregivers than peers. The older children however had significantly more successful social interchanges with peers than the younger ones. A significant degree of correlation was found between the frequency with which a child was seen to smile, and the frequency of its social interactions in general. A further pilot study compared the social interactions between 2 groups of 4 year olds and their mothers, during a 20 minute play period. The first group were cared for in a day nursery; the second group at home. Significantly less spatial proximity, and significantly more verbal exchange, between mothers and children, was observed in the day care group. It is suggested that, as a result of social experience with other adults and peers in the nursery, the day care group may have developed more mature relationships with their mothers. Observation of the 2 groups under different conditions, however, and problems of inference from attachment theory, make the results of the pilot study ambiguous

Precise real-time outlier removal from motion vector fields for 3D reconstruction

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