874 research outputs found
Application of Nationality-Adjusted Net Sales and Value Added Framework: The Case of Japan
This paper applies the nationality-adjusted net sales and value added framework proposed in Baldwin and Kimura (1996) to Japan. Despite possibly large estimation errors due to statistical deficiencies, the framework is very useful for analyzing the relationship of the Japanese economy to the world economy. We find that Japan is special in the following four aspects. First, Japanese-owned firms have become increasingly dependent on the marketing activities of their foreign affiliates, rather than depending on cross-border exports by parent firms located in Japan. Second, the much smaller activities of Japanese affiliates of foreign firms (JAFF) relative to those of foreign affiliates of Japanese firms (FAJF) are apparent in terms of sales, value added, and employment, at both the macroeconomic and sectoral levels. Third, Japanese net sales to foreigners are consistently larger than cross-border net exports of Japan. Fourth, among the activities of FAJF, the importance of commercial FAJF is particularly large; these commercial FAJF handle a large portion of Japanese exports and imports. The paper concludes by discussing a number of statistical improvements required by the Japanese government in order to apply our analytical framework more rigorously.
Measuring U.S. International Goods and Services Transactions
In order to better capture the close relationship between firms' cross-border trading activities and the sales and purchasing activities of their foreign affiliates, this paper proposes supplementary accounting formats that classify cross-border and foreign affiliate activities on an ownership basis, in contrast to the residency approach followed in the balance-of-payments accounts. One format combines net cross-border sales by Americans to foreigners, net sales by foreign affiliates of U.S. firms to foreigners, and net sales of U.S. firms to U.S. affiliates of foreign firms to yield a figure that indicates net sales by Americans to foreigners. Another accounting format measures the value-added embodied in cross-border and foreign affiliate activities on an ownership basis. U.S. cross- border and foreign affiliate activities based on these two approaches are presented and analyzed for the period, 1987-1992. In addition, data by industry are presented in these formats.
Tradeoff between short-term and long-term adaptation in a changing environment
We investigate the competition dynamics of two microbial or viral strains
that live in an environment that switches periodically between two states. One
of the strains is adapted to the long-term environment, but pays a short-term
cost, while the other is adapted to the short-term environment and pays a cost
in the long term. We explore the tradeoff between these alternative strategies
in extensive numerical simulations, and present a simple analytic model that
can predict the outcome of these competitions as a function of the mutation
rate and the time scale of the environmental changes. Our model is relevant for
arboviruses, which alternate between different host species on a regular basis.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, PRE in pres
Prospective parentsâ perspectives on antenatal decision making for the anticipated birth of a periviable infant
Objective: To examine prospective parentsâ perceptions of management options and outcomes in the context of threatened periviable delivery, and the values they apply in making antenatal decisions during this period.
Study design: Qualitative analysis of 46 antenatal interviews conducted at three tertiary-care hospitals with 54 prospective parents (40 pregnant women, 14 partners) who had received counseling for threatened periviable delivery (40 cases).
Results: Participants most often recalled being involved in resuscitation, cerclage, and delivery mode decisions. Over half (63.0%) desired a shared decision-making role. Most (85.2%) recalled hearing about morbidity and mortality, with many reiterating terms like âbrain damageâ, âdisabilityâ, and âhandicapâ. The potential for disability influenced decision making to variable degrees. In describing what mattered most, participant spoke of giving their child a âfighting chanceâ; others voiced concerns about âbest interestâ, a âhealthy babyâ, âpain and sufferingâ, and religious faith.
Conclusions: Our findings underscore the importance of presenting clear information on disability and eliciting the factors that parents deem most important in making decisions about periviable birth
Surprisingly Simple Spectra
The large N limit of the anomalous dimensions of operators in
super Yang-Mills theory described by restricted Schur polynomials, are studied.
We focus on operators labeled by Young diagrams that have two columns (both
long) so that the classical dimension of these operators is O(N). At large N
these two column operators mix with each other but are decoupled from operators
with columns. The planar approximation does not capture the large N
dynamics. For operators built with 2, 3 or 4 impurities the dilatation operator
is explicitly evaluated. In all three cases, in a certain limit, the dilatation
operator is a lattice version of a second derivative, with the lattice emerging
from the Young diagram itself. The one loop dilatation operator is diagonalized
numerically. All eigenvalues are an integer multiple of and there
are interesting degeneracies in the spectrum. The spectrum we obtain for the
one loop anomalous dimension operator is reproduced by a collection of harmonic
oscillators. This equivalence to harmonic oscillators generalizes giant
graviton results known for the BPS sector and further implies that the
Hamiltonian defined by the one loop large dilatation operator is
integrable. This is an example of an integrable dilatation operator, obtained
by summing both planar and non-planar diagrams.Comment: 34 page
Multicolour correlative imaging using phosphor probes
Correlative light and electron microscopy exploits the advantages of optical methods, such as multicolour probes and their use in hydrated live biological samples, to locate functional units, which are then correlated with structural details that can be revealed by the superior resolution of electron microscopes. One difficulty is locating the area imaged by the electron beam in the much larger optical field of view. Multifunctional probes that can be imaged in both modalities and thus register the two images are required. Phosphor materials give cathodoluminescence (CL) optical emissions under electron excitation. Lanthanum phosphate containing thulium or terbium or europium emits narrow bands in the blue, green and red regions of the CL spectrum; they may be synthesised with very uniform-sized crystals in the 10- to 50-nm range. Such crystals can be imaged by CL in the electron microscope, at resolutions limited by the particle size, and with colour discrimination to identify different probes. These materials also give emissions in the optical microscope, by
multiphoton excitation. They have been deposited on the surface of glioblastoma cells and imaged by CL. Gadolinium oxysulphide doped with terbium emits green photons by either ultraviolet or electron excitation. Sixty-nanometre crystals of this phosphor have been imaged in the atmospheric scanning electron microscope (JEOL ClairScope). This probe and microscope combination allow correlative imaging in hydrated samples. Phosphor probes should prove to be very useful in correlative light and electron microscopy, as fiducial
markers to assist in image registration, and in high/super resolution imaging studies
Beyond the Planar Limit in ABJM
In this article we consider gauge theories with a U(N)X U(N) gauge group. We
provide, for the first time, a complete set of operators built from scalar
fields that are in the bi fundamental of the two groups. Our operators
diagonalize the two point function of the free field theory at all orders in
1/N. We then use this basis to investigate non-planar anomalous dimensions in
the ABJM theory. We show that the dilatation operator reduces to a set of
decoupled harmonic oscillators, signaling integrability in a nonplanar large N
limit.Comment: v2: minor revisison
Nonplanar integrability at two loops
In this article we compute the action of the two loop dilatation operator on
restricted Schur polynomials that belong to the su(2) sector, in the displaced
corners approximation. In this non-planar large N limit, operators that
diagonalize the one loop dilatation operator are not corrected at two loops.
The resulting spectrum of anomalous dimensions is related to a set of decoupled
harmonic oscillators, indicating integrability in this sector of the theory at
two loops. The anomalous dimensions are a non-trivial function of the 't Hooft
coupling, with a spectrum that is continuous and starting at zero at large N,
but discrete at finite N.Comment: version to appear in JHE
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