An Empirical Analysis of Scale and Scope Economies and Technical Change in an Irish Multiproduct Banking Firm

In contrast to most empirical investigations of the efficiency of multiproduct financial institutions, which either estimate scale and scope economies with a given state of technology, or only analyse technical change in the presence of overall scale economies, this study estimates overall scale economies, product-specific scale economies and scope economies in the presence of both neutral and non-neutral technical change. Also, in contrast to most other empirical studies in this area, standard errors are computed for all relevant statistics. The findings indicate diseconomies of scope; overall diseconomies of scale; product-specific economies are decreasing for investments and increasing for loans; in addition to substantial neutral technical change, biased technical change is labour- and capital-saving and deposits-using in character.

Europeanization of Inequality and Europeanization of Reference Groups

In this article we take advantage of the availability of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data to address both weak and strong versions of the Europeanization of reference groups thesis. The former proposes that common standards of evaluation emerge as a consequence of knowledge of conditions in other societies. The latter argues that people increasingly perceive themselves as part of a larger European stratification system. Our analysis leads us to reject both versions of the thesis. Material deprivation rather than having a uniform effect is highly dependent on national context. If a process of convergence is underway, it is one that as yet has had a limited impact. In circumstances where the Europeanization of inequality is raising issues relating to both national and transnational forms of legitimacy, it is important to understand that there is no necessary relationship between such Europeanization and the Europeanization of reference groups.

The importance of solid-phase distribution on the oral bioaccessibility of Ni and Cr in soils overlying Palaeogene basalt lavas, Northern Ireland

Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) including nickel and chromium are often present in soils overlying basalt at concentrations above regulatory guidance values due to the presence of these elements in underlying geology. Oral bioaccessibility testing allows the risk posed by PTEs to human health to be assessed; however, bioaccessibility is controlled by factors including mineralogy, particle size, solid-phase speciation and encapsulation. X-ray diffraction was used to characterise the mineralogy of 12 soil samples overlying Palaeogene basalt lavas in Northern Ireland, and non-specific sequential extraction coupled with chemometric analysis was used to determine the distribution of elements amongst soil components in 3 of these samples. The data obtained were related to total concentration and oral bioaccessible concentration to determine whether a relationship exists between the overall concentrations of PTEs, their bioaccessibility and the soils mineralogy and geochemistry. Gastric phase bioaccessible fraction (BAF %) ranged from 0.4 to 5.4 % for chromium in soils overlying basalt and bioaccessible and total chromium concentrations are positively correlated. In contrast, the range of gastric phase BAF for nickel was greater (1.4–43.8 %), while no significant correlation was observed between bioaccessible and total nickel concentrations. However, nickel BAF was inversely correlated with total concentration. Solid-phase fractionation information showed that bioaccessible nickel was associated with calcium carbonate, aluminium oxide, iron oxide and clay-related components, while bioaccessible chromium was associated with clay-related components. This suggests that weathering significantly affects nickel bioaccessibility, but does not have the same effect on the bioaccessibility of chromium.

Pneumonia and lower respiratory infections in nursing home residents:Predictors of hospitalization and mortality

OBJECTIVES: To compare predictors of hospitalization and death in nursing home residents with pneumonia and other lower respiratory infections (LRIs). DESIGN: A nested cohort study. SETTING: Nine nursing homes in southern Ontario. PARTICIPANTS: Three hundred fifty-three nursing home residents with LRIs (enrolled in the control arm of a clinical trial). MEASUREMENTS: Comorbidities, vaccination status, age, health-related quality of life, functional status, and vital statistics were evaluated as potential predictors of hospitalization and mortality at 30 days. RESULTS: Moderate to high disease severity score on a practical severity scale was a strong independent predictor of hospitalization (odds ratio (OR)=7.12, P

Patterns of Holocene relative sea level change in the North of Britain and Ireland

Temporal and spatial patterns of relative sea level (RSL) change in the North of Britain and Ireland during the Holocene are examined. Four episodes, each defined by marked changes in the RSL trend, are identified. Each episode is marked by a rise to a culminating shoreline followed by a fall. Episode HRSL-1 dates from the Younger Dryas to early in the Holocene; HRSL-2 to HRSL-4 occurred later in the Holocene. There is extensive evidence for each episode, and on this basis the spatial distribution of the altitude data for three culminating shorelines and a shoreline formed at the time of the Holocene Storegga Slide tsunami (ca 8110 ± 100 cal. BP) is analysed. Ordinary Kriging is used to determine the general pattern, following which Gaussian Trend Surface Analysis is employed. Recognising that empirical measurements of RSL change can be unevenly distributed spatially, a new approach is introduced which enables the developing pattern to be identified. The patterns for the most widely occurring shorelines were analysed and found to be similar and common centre and axis models were developed for all shorelines. The analyses described provide models of the spatial pattern of Holocene RSL change in the area between ca 8100 cal. BP and ca 1000 cal. BP based on 2262 high resolution shoreline altitude measurements. These models fit the data closely, no shoreline altitude measurement lying more than −1.70 m or +1.82 m from the predicted value. The models disclose a similar pattern to a recently published Glacial Isostatic Adjustment model for present RSL change across the area, indicating that the overall spatial pattern of RSL change may not have varied greatly during the last ca 8000 years.

Profiling the ionome of rice and its use in discriminating geographical origins at the regional scale, China

Element profile was investigated for their use to trace the geographical origin of rice (Oryza sativa L.) samples. The concentrations of 13 elements (calcium (Ca), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), phosphorus (P), boron (B), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), arsenic (As), selenium (Se), molybdenum (Mo), and cadmium (Cd)) were determined in the rice samples by inductively coupled plasma optical emission and mass spectrometry. Most of the essential elements for human health in rice were within normal ranges except for Mo and Se. Mo concentrations were twice as high as those in rice from Vietnam and Spain. Meanwhile, Se concentrations were three times lower in the whole province compared to the Chinese average level of 0.088 mg/kg. About 12% of the rice samples failed the Chinese national food safety standard of 0.2 mg/kg for Cd. Combined with the multi-elemental profile in rice, the principal component analysis (PCA), discriminant function analysis (DFA) and Fibonacci index analysis (FIA) were applied to discriminate geographical origins of the samples. Results indicated that the FIA method could achieve a more effective geographical origin classification compared with PCA and DFA, due to its efficiency in making the grouping even when the elemental variability was so high that PCA and DFA showed little discriminatory power. Furthermore, some elements were identified as the most powerful indicators of geographical origin: Ca, Ni, Fe and Cd. This suggests that the newly established methodology of FIA based on the ionome profile can be applied to determine the geographical origin of rice.

Partitioning Heritability of Regulatory and Cell-Type-Specific Variants across 11 Common Diseases

Regulatory and coding variants are known to be enriched with associations identified by genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of complex disease, but their contributions to trait heritability are currently unknown. We applied variance-component methods to imputed genotype data for 11 common diseases to partition the heritability explained by genotyped SNPs () across functional categories (while accounting for shared variance due to linkage disequilibrium). Extensive simulations showed that in contrast to current estimates from GWAS summary statistics, the variance-component approach partitions heritability accurately under a wide range of complex-disease architectures. Across the 11 diseases DNaseI hypersensitivity sites (DHSs) from 217 cell types spanned 16% of imputed SNPs (and 24% of genotyped SNPs) but explained an average of 79% (SE = 8%) of  from imputed SNPs (5.1× enrichment; p = 3.7 × 10⁻¹⁷) and 38% (SE = 4%) of  from genotyped SNPs (1.6× enrichment, p = 1.0 × 10⁻⁴). Further enrichment was observed at enhancer DHSs and cell-type-specific DHSs. In contrast, coding variants, which span 1% of the genome, explained <10% of  despite having the highest enrichment. We replicated these findings but found no significant contribution from rare coding variants in independent schizophrenia cohorts genotyped on GWAS and exome chips. Our results highlight the value of analyzing components of heritability to unravel the functional architecture of common disease.

Thermodynamics of trajectories and local fluctuation theorems for harmonic quantum networks

We present a general method to undertake a thorough analysis of the thermodynamics of the quantum jump trajectories followed by an arbitrary quantum harmonic network undergoing linear and bilinear dynamics. The approach is based on the phase-space representation of the state of a harmonic network. The large deviation function associated with this system encodes the full counting statistics of exchange and also allows one to deduce for fluctuation theorems obeyed by the dynamics. We illustrate the method showing the validity of a local fluctuation theorem about the exchange of excitations between a restricted part of the environment (i.e., a local bath) and a harmonic network coupled with different schemes.