Employment outcomes and plant closure in a post-industrial city:an analysis of the labour market studies of MG Rover workers three years on

This paper examines how the loss of 6300 jobs from the closure of MG Rover (MGR) in the city of Birmingham (UK) in April 2005 affected the employment trajectories of ex-workers, in the context of wider structural change and efforts at urban renewal. The paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal survey of 300 ex-MGR workers, and examines to what extent the state of local labour markets and workers’ geographical mobility—as well as the effectiveness of the immediate policy response and longer-term local economic strategies—may have helped to balance the impacts of personal attributes associated with workers’ employability and their reabsorption into the labour markets. It is found that the relative buoyancy of the local economy, the success of longer-run efforts at diversification and a strong policy response and retraining initiative helped many disadvantaged workers to find new jobs in the medium term. However, the paper also highlights the unequal employment outcomes and trajectories that many lesser-skilled workers faced. It explores the policy issues arising from such closures and their aftermath, such as the need to co-ordinate responses, to retain institutional capacity, to offer high-quality training and education resources to workers and, where possible, to slow down such closure processes to enable skills to be retained and reused within the local economy.

Neural networks: A principled perspective

Introductory accounts of artificial neural networks often rely for motivation on analogies with models of information processing in biological networks. One limitation of such an approach is that it offers little guidance on how to find optimal algorithms, or how to verify the correct performance of neural network systems. A central goal of this paper is to draw attention to a quite different viewpoint in which neural networks are seen as algorithms for statistical pattern recognition based on a principled, i.e. theoretically well-founded, framework. We illustrate the concept of a principled viewpoint by considering a specific issue concerned with the interpretation of the outputs of a trained network. Finally, we discuss the relevance of such an approach to the issue of the validation and verification of neural network systems.

Operator-induced errors in Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensing:model eye study

Purpose: To evaluate the effects of instrument realignment and angular misalignment during the clinical determination of wavefront aberrations by simulation in model eyes. Setting: Aston Academy of Life Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Methods: Six model eyes were examined with wavefront-aberration-supported cornea ablation (WASCA) (Carl Zeiss Meditec) in 4 sessions of 10 measurements each: sessions 1 and 2, consecutive repeated measures without realignment; session 3, realignment of the instrument between readings; session 4, measurements without realignment but with the model eye shifted 6 degrees angularly. Intersession repeatability and the effects of realignment and misalignment were obtained by comparing the measurements in the various sessions for coma, spherical aberration, and higher-order aberrations (HOAs). Results: The mean differences between the 2 sessions without realignment of the instrument were 0.020 μm ± 0.076 (SD) for Z3 - 1(P = .551), 0.009 ± 0.139 μm for Z3 1(P = .877), 0.004 ± 0.037 μm for Z4 0 (P = .820), and 0.005 ± 0.01 μm for HO root mean square (RMS) (P = .301). Differences between the nonrealigned and realigned instruments were -0.017 ± 0.026 μm for Z3 - 1(P = .159), 0.009 ± 0.028 μm for Z3 1 (P = .475), 0.007 ± 0.014 μm for Z4 0(P = .296), and 0.002 ± 0.007 μm for HO RMS (P = 0.529; differences between centered and misaligned instruments were -0.355 ± 0.149 μm for Z3 - 1 (P = .002), 0.007 ± 0.034 μm for Z3 1(P = .620), -0.005 ± 0.081 μm for Z4 0(P = .885), and 0.012 ± 0.020 μm for HO RMS (P = .195). Realignment increased the standard deviation by a factor of 3 compared with the first session without realignment. Conclusions: Repeatability of the WASCA was excellent in all situations tested. Realignment substantially increased the variance of the measurements. Angular misalignment can result in significant errors, particularly in the determination of coma. These findings are important when assessing highly aberrated eyes during follow-up or before surgery. © 2007 ASCRS and ESCRS.

Effect of lutein and antioxidant dietary supplementation on contrast sensitivity in age-related macular disease:A randomized controlled trial

Objective: The aim of the study is to determine the effect of lutein combined with vitamin and mineral supplementation on contrast sensitivity in people with age-related macular disease (ARMD). Design: A prospective, 9-month, double-masked randomized controlled trial. Setting: Aston University, Birmingham, UK and a UK optometric clinical practice. Subjects: Age-related maculopathy (ARM) and atrophic age-related macular degeneration (AMD) participants were randomized (using a random number generator) to either placebo (n = 10) or active (n=15) groups. Three of the placebo group and two of the active group dropped out. Interventions: The active group supplemented daily with 6 mg lutein combined with vitamins and minerals. The outcome measure was contrast sensitivity (CS) measured using the Pelli-Robson chart, for which the study had 80% power at the 5% significance level to detect a change of 0.3log units. Results: The CS score increased by 0.07 ± 0.07 and decreased by 0.02 ± 0.18 log units for the placebo and active groups, respectively. The difference between these values is not statistically significant (z = 0.903, P = 0.376). Conclusion: The results suggest that 6 mg of lutein supplementation in combination with other antioxidants is not beneficial for this group. Further work is required to establish optimum dosage levels.

Adding constrained discontinuities to Gaussian process models of wind fields

Gaussian Processes provide good prior models for spatial data, but can be too smooth. In many physical situations there are discontinuities along bounding surfaces, for example fronts in near-surface wind fields. We describe a modelling method for such a constrained discontinuity and demonstrate how to infer the model parameters in wind fields with MCMC sampling.

Self measurement of blood pressure:A community survey

New technology means that self-measurement or testing of blood pressure (BP) is potentially available for many people but few data exist on how common it is. A community survey in Birmingham, UK in June 2005 (2931 responders; response rate 54%) of self-testing of BP showed that 9% of a randomly selected population sample had self-tested their own BP. Greater public awareness of BP through self-testing has the potential to improve the detection and treatment of BP but this will only be possible if professionals are aware of it.

Optimizing measurement of subjective amplitude of accommodation with defocus curves

PURPOSE: To determine whether letter sequences and/or lens-presentation order should be randomized when measuring defocus curves and to assess the most appropriate criterion for calculating the subjective amplitude of accommodation (AoA) from defocus curves. SETTING: Eye Clinic, School of Life & Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom. METHODS: Defocus curves (from +3.00 diopters [D] to -3.00 D in 0.50 D steps) for 6 possible combinations of randomized or nonrandomized letter sequences and/or lens-presentation order were measured in a random order in 20 presbyopic subjects. Subjective AoA was calculated from the defocus curves by curve fitting using various published criteria, and each was correlated to subjective push-up AoA. Objective AoA was measured for comparison of blur tolerance and pupil size. RESULTS: Randomization of lens-presentation order and/or letter sequences, or lack of, did not affect the measured defocus curves (P>.05, analysis of variance). The range of defocus that maintains highest achievable visual acuity (allowing for variability of repeated measurement) was better correlated to (r = 0.84) and agreed best with ( 0.50 D) subjective push-up AoA than any other relative or absolute acuity criterion used in previous studies. CONCLUSIONS: Nonrandomized letters and lens presentation on their own did not affect subjective AoA measured by defocus curves, although their combination should be avoided. Quantification of subjective AoA from defocus curves should be standardized to the range of defocus that maintains the best achievable visual acuity.

Education as a critical practice

Few today doubt that English Higher Education (HE), like the wider world in which it is located, is in crisis. This is, in part, an economic crisis, as the government response to the current recession seems to be that of introducing the kind of neoliberal ‘shock doctrine’ (Klein 2007) or ‘shock therapy’ (Harvey 2005) that previously resulted in swingeing cuts in public services in Southern nations. Our aim in producing this volume is that these contributions help develop a collective response to the seeming limits of these conditions. We view the strength of these contributions in part as providing palpable evidence of how we and our colleagues are acting with critical hope under current conditions so that we might encourage others to work with us to build, together, more progressive formal and informal education systems that address and seek to redress multiple injustices of the world today.

English collocation studies:the OSTI report

This is the first published edition of John Sinclair, Susan Jones and Robert Daley's research on collocation undertaken in 1970. The unpublished report was circulated amongst a small group of academics and was enormously influential, sparking a growth of interest in collocation amongst researchers in linguistics. Collocation was first viewed as important in computational linguistics in the work of Harold Palmer in Japan. Later M.A.K. Halliday and John Sinclair published on collocation in the 1960s. English Collocation Studies is a report on empirical research into collocation, devised by Halliday with Sinclair acting as the Principal Investigator and editor of the resultant OSTI report. The present edition contains an introduction by Professor Wolfgang Teubert based on his interview with John Sinclair. The introduction assesses the extent to which the findings of the original research have developed in the intervening years, and how some of the techniques mentioned in the report were implemented in the COBUILD project at Birmingham University in the 1980s.

Approximately optimal experimental design for heteroscedastic Gaussian process models

This paper presents a greedy Bayesian experimental design criterion for heteroscedastic Gaussian process models. The criterion is based on the Fisher information and is optimal in the sense of minimizing parameter uncertainty for likelihood based estimators. We demonstrate the validity of the criterion under different noise regimes and present experimental results from a rabies simulator to demonstrate the effectiveness of the resulting approximately optimal designs.

Access to technological and financial resources for SME innovation

Editorial: The contributions to this special issue of the International Journal of Technology Management are all based on selected papers presented at the European Conference on Management of Technology held at Aston University, Birmingham, UK in June 1995. This conference was held on behalf of the International Association for Management of Technology (IAMOT) and was the first of the association’s major conferences to be held outside North America. The overall theme of the conference was ‘Technological Innovation and Global Challenges’. Altogether more than 130 papers were presented within four sub-themes and twenty seven topic sessions. This special issue draws on papers within five difference topic sessions: ‘Small firm linkages’; ‘The global company’; ‘New technology based firms’; ‘Financing innovation’; ‘Technology and development’. Together they cover a wide range of issues around the common question of accessing resources for innovation in small and medium sized enterprises. They present a global perspective on this important subject with authors from The Netherlands, Canada, USA, Ireland, France, Finland, Brazil and UK. A wide range of subjects are covered including the move away from public support for innovation, the role of alliances and networks, linkages to larger enterprises and the social implications associated with small enterprise innovation in developing countries.

Trade balance and real exchange rate:new evidence from Mauritius-UK trade

In this study we investigate whether there exists a relationship between the exchange rate and the trade balance using bilateral data for the Mauritius/UK trade. We also investigate whether following depreciation or a devaluation the trade balance initially worsens due to contractual agreements and subsequently improves when new contracts for international trade are signed. Using a variety of econometric techniques we are able to establish that there exists a long-run relationship between the trade balance and the real exchange rate. The existence of such a relationship signifies that the authorities would be able to use the exchange rate to steer the trade balance. We also find following a depreciation or devaluation the trade balance initially worsens due to contractual agreements but the trade balance subsequently improves when new contracts are signed. This signifies that if the authorities want to devalue their currency to improve the trade balance, the desired effect does not occur immediately but it occurs with a lag, in this particular case after approximately a year.