Do greater amounts of FDI cause higher pollution levels? Evidence from OECD countries

Using an ARDL model for a panel of 15 OECD countries, this work analyses the impact that FDI, both jointly and by sector, has on CO₂ emissions. The findings reveal that these countries are yielding to the pressure on the trade sector. Unexpectedly, gross fixed capital formation shrink pollution, excluding in the mining sector. With findings supporting the Pollution Haven Hypothesis, policymakers must pay attention to FDI inflows, ensuring that FDI place high importance on the transfer of green technologies to improve the efficiency. These goals could be achieved through an increase in the stringency of environmental laws within the host countries, especially the ones related to FDI.     

Refugees from Nazism and Cultural Transfer to Britain

This study accepts that while cultural transfer was obvious in the history of German Jewish settlement in Britain from Nazi Germany during the 1930s, it looks at what four individuals did and what helped them to lay the foundations of a successful career in Britain and make a noticeable contribution to their host society. The essay asks how bewildered refugees overcame social uprooting, isolation in a foreign country, linguistic deficiencies and lack of funds. It demonstrates the importance of relatives and fellow exiles, friends and colleagues, relief organisations and professional associations. The contribution uses the case studies of the journalist Sebastian Haffner, the Germanist Charlotte Jolles, the historian Francis L. Carsten and the industrialist Mac Goldsmith.     

Do people think about absolute or relative price differences when choosing between substitute goods?

The article presents experimental evidence that shows that people often consider relative price differences in addition to absolute differences when choosing between substitute goods. Because the choice between substitute goods is a very common one, this is an important finding. The experiment uses scenarios in various consumption categories: hotel rooms, flights, and books. Subjects were either students or participants in an economics conference. The data allow to reject the hypothesis that people think only about relative price differences in favor of the hypothesis that people think about both relative and absolute price differences. Whether the price given to the subjects is that of the high-quality good or of the low-quality good makes a large difference, a result that is related to the endowment effect and the status quo bias. Implications of the results for business strategy and other areas are also discussed.     

An adaptive sampling scheme guided by BART—with an application to predict processor performance

The evaluation of new processor designs is an important issue in electrical and computer engineering. Architects use simulations to evaluate designs and to understand trade‐offs and interactions among design parameters. However, due to the lengthy simulation time and limited resources, it is often practically impossible to simulate a full factorial design space. Effective sampling methods and predictive models are required. In this paper, the authors propose an automated performance predictive approach which employs an adaptive sampling scheme that interactively works with the predictive model to select samples for simulation. These samples are then used to build Bayesian additive regression trees, which in turn are used to predict the whole design space. Both real data analysis and simulation studies show that the method is effective in that, though sampling at very few design points, it generates highly accurate predictions on the unsampled points. Furthermore, the proposed model provides quantitative interpretation tools with which investigators can efficiently tune design parameters in order to improve processor performance. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 38: 136–152; 2010 © 2010 Statistical Society of Canada     

Second-Order Approximations to Two Classes of Sequential Estimation Procedures

For the model considered by Chaturvedi, Pandey and Gupta (1991), two classes of sequential procedures are developed to construct confidence regions (which may be interval, ellipsoidal or spherical) of ‘pre-assigned width and coverage probability’ for the parameters of interest and for the minimum risk point estimation (taking loss to be quadratic plus linear cost of sampling) of the nuisance parameter. Second-Order approximations are derived for the expected sample size, coverage probability and ‘regret’ associated with the two classes of sequential procedures. A simple and direct method of obtaining the asymptotic distribution of the stopping time is provided. By means of examples, it is illustrated that several estimation problems can be tackled with the help of proposed classes of sequential procedures.     

The mad estimator: when is it non-linear? applications to two-way design models

The mean absolute deviation (MAD) estimator has recently received a great deal of attention as applied to full-rank linear regression models. This paper provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the MAD estimator to be a non-linear estimator, in which case conditions for the variance of the MAD estimator to be larger or smaller than those for OLS are, in general, unknown. The non-linearity of the MAD estimator is examined for several two-way designs; in particular (1) randomized block design (2) two-way nested design (3) two-way classification with interaction and (4) partially balanced incomplete block design     

富勒的新自然法学对当代法治国家的启示

富勒的新自然法学继承了以往自然法学的传统,追求法律的道德价值,强调法律与道德的不可分。他还把法律作为一个过程来研究,特别强调过程的重要性。他的思想对我国建设社会主义法治国家具有重要的启示,中国的法治之路,应实现中国式的法治与西方法治的互补与整合。     

浅谈汉译英时主语的选择

本文主要分析了学生在做汉译英时主语常常丢失的情况。这是因为其一:汉语是话题优先型语言,话题与主语重合或话题出现而主语不出现的现象十分普遍;而英语是主语优先型语言,话题仅是一种特殊现象;其二:在做翻译练习时,主语选择的错误受到二语习得母语迁移的影响     

对《涉外民事关系法律适用法》的“两点论”评析

已于2011年4月1日正式施行的《中华人民共和国涉外民事关系法律适用法》从我国实际情况出发,改变了以往我国国际私法立法体系分散、法律规定不明确、相关制度规定不科学的状况,进一步完善了我国涉外民事关系法律适用制度。无论在立法体系,还是在编排体例、相关制度方面该法都体现了“两点论”的指导原则和影响,既充分借鉴了当今世界国际私法制度的先进理念,同时又从中国经济发展的实际情况出发,一定程度上体现了中国特色。     

落葵果实中总黄酮提取条件的研究

采用超声波提取法,通过正交实验确定从落葵果实中提取总黄酮的最佳工艺条件,并用比色法测定提取物中总黄酮的含量.结果表明,最佳条件是以体积分数为70%的乙醇为提取剂、料液比为1：20、提取时间为35min.在此条件下,落葵果实总黄酮提取量为5.3 mg蛐g.