100,462 research outputs found
Fraser of Allander Institute : Economic Commentary [March 2014]
No full textThe latest economic data provide further evidence of a strengthening recovery. Positive growth has now been recorded for the Scottish economy in the last 6 quarters. In the third quarter, GDP in Scotland was -0.9% below the pre-recession peak, whereas UK G DP stood at -1.9% below its pre-recession peak more than 5 years ago. But during 2013, the UK recovery has again been stronger in each of the three quarters of published data so far. When oil and gas production is removed from the UK figures to make UK GDP comparable to the Scottish data, which do not include offshore production we find that the long period of weak oil and gas production has resulted in the UK GDP - ex oil & gas - having a much stronger recovery from recession than Scottish GDP. Scottish GD P has recovered by 4.9% since the trough of recession while UK GDP - ex oil & gas - has recovered by 6.8% from its trough. At the industry level, Scottish services' growth is underperforming the overall performance of the economy in the recovery whereas that is not the case in the UK where the recovery in services has been somewhat quicker. It is the production sector that has boosted Scottish growth, growing by nearly 10% in the recovery while it has been a significant drag on the recovery in the UK with zero growth since the trough of the recession, which is partly a consequence of the weakness of oil & gas production on the UK production and GDP figures. It is the performance of manufacturing that is the main driver of the differential performance in production between Scotland and the UK. Scottish manufacturing GVA continues to stand at - 4.6% below the 2008 -09 pre- recession peak, while the figure for UK manufacturing has dropped slightly to -9% from - 9.8% in the second quarter. The favourable gap between Scotland and UK manufacturing performance during the recovery therefore continues to be large. In Scottish construction whi le growth in the sector has picked up since the heavy recession period of 2010q4 to 2012q1 performance appears to have weakened relative to the UK from the start of last year. The sector is still very much depressed in both the UK and Scotland. However, the recent stronger performance of UK construction is evident with GVA in the sector in the third quarter -10.9% below its pre -recession peak compared to -13.6% in Scotland. Business and financial services continue to contribute positively to the growth of t he Scottish economy. By the latest quarter, the sector in the UK had moved to +1.3% above its pre-recession peak from -0.4% in the previous quarter, while its Scottish counterpart moved further ahead to stand at 2.2% above its pre-recession peak. In the pr evious two Commentaries, we noted that the aggregate GVA data for business and financial services in Scotland masked significant differences between the performance of financial services on the one hand and business services on the ot
Letter, [Author unclear] to Paulina T. Merritt
No full textHandwritten letter to Paulina Merritt from an unknown author, October 1, 1876.
A restatement of the case for Scottish fiscal autonomy : or: the Barnett Formula - a formula for a Rake’s Progress
No full textIn this paper, we rebut the case that Ashcroft, Christie and Swales [ACS] (2006) make in favour of the status quo fiscal settlement in Scotland that stems from the Scotland Act 1998. This Act in creating the Scottish Parliament and Executive effectively separated public spending by the Scottish government from the need to raise taxes to finance it; rather, financing comes from Westminster through the Barnett formula. We do not think that these arrangements provide a stable political solution in the UK, as is evidenced by the so-called West Lothian question - a matter that may be becoming of greater concern in England than hitherto. Scotland, therefore, should be forewarned that even if it does not move from the status quo, movement might anyway be forced on it
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Thinking about regional competitiveness - critical issues
No full textThis think piece was commissioned to inform then 2006 Regional Economic Strategy. It aimed to provide a critical review of the concept of regional competitive advantage, problems with measurement, and limits to thinking in 'regional competitiveness' terms. The author then suggests a series of recommendations for policies aimed at improving regional economic performance.
Handwritten biographical information on Paulina T. McClung Merritt
No full textA handwritten biography of Paulina T. McClung Merritt by an unknown author, 1892.
Heterogeneous and tissue-specific regulation of effector T cell responses by IFN-gamma during Plasmodium berghei ANKA infection.
No full textIFN-γ and T cells are both required for the development of experimental cerebral malaria during Plasmodium berghei ANKA infection. Surprisingly, however, the role of IFN-γ in shaping the effector CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cell response during this infection has not been examined in detail. To address this, we have compared the effector T cell responses in wild-type and IFN-γ(-/-) mice during P. berghei ANKA infection. The expansion of splenic CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells during P. berghei ANKA infection was unaffected by the absence of IFN-γ, but the contraction phase of the T cell response was significantly attenuated. Splenic T cell activation and effector function were essentially normal in IFN-γ(-/-) mice; however, the migration to, and accumulation of, effector CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells in the lung, liver, and brain was altered in IFN-γ(-/-) mice. Interestingly, activation and accumulation of T cells in various nonlymphoid organs was differently affected by lack of IFN-γ, suggesting that IFN-γ influences T cell effector function to varying levels in different anatomical locations. Importantly, control of splenic T cell numbers during P. berghei ANKA infection depended on active IFN-γ-dependent environmental signals--leading to T cell apoptosis--rather than upon intrinsic alterations in T cell programming. To our knowledge, this is the first study to fully investigate the role of IFN-γ in modulating T cell function during P. berghei ANKA infection and reveals that IFN-γ is required for efficient contraction of the pool of activated T cells
Chasing graduate jobs?
No full textThis paper examines empirically the relationship between under-employment and migration amongst five cohorts of graduates of Scottish higher education institutions with micro-data collected by the Higher Education Statistical Agency. The data indicate that there is a strong positive relationship between migration and graduate employment—those graduates who move after graduation from Scotland to the rest of the UK or abroad have a much higher rate of graduate employment. Versions of probit regression are used to estimate migration and graduate employment equations in order to explore the nature of this relationship further. These equations confirm that there is a strong positive relationship between the probability of migrating and the probability of being in graduate employment even after other factors are controlled for. Instrumental variables estimation is used to examine the causal nature of the relationship by attempting to deal with the potential endogeneity of migration decisions. Overall the analysis is consistent with the hypotheses that a sizeable fraction of higher education graduates are leaving Scotland for employment reasons. In turn this finding suggests the over-education/under-employment nexus is a serious problem in Scotland
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Pelevin’s Trinity in the novel “t”: author – protagonist – reader
No full textThe article attempts to interpret Pelevin's artistic strategy in the novel "T" by exploring its subject organization and addressing the key problems of the author, the protagonist, and the reader as they are seen by the researcher. The article analyzes the peculiarities of constructing the narrative reality in the novel "T", and goes on to discuss Pelevin's philosophic models of the development of the humankind, and the emergence of his new anthropology
Measuring industry-science links through inventor-author relations: A profiling method
No full textIn this pilot study we examine the performance of text-based profiling in recovering a set of validated inventor-author links. In a first step we match patents and publications solely based on their similarity in content. Next, we compare inventor and author names on the highest ranked matches for the occurrence of name matches. Finally, we compare these candidate matches with the names listed in a validated set of inventor-author names. Our text-based profile methodology performs significantly better than a random matching of patents and publications, suggesting that text-based profiling is a valuable complementary tool to the name searches used in previous studies.innovation; industry-science links; text-based profiling;
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