Critically Assessing the Invalidity of Race Realism and Finding Solutions to Educate Society on Racial Theory

With race being a hard concept to grasp, many competing theories have arisen to explain what race is and how to categorise someone by race. The dominant explanation for race in early history has been characterised by race realism. Colloquially, race realism is the theory that scientific evidence proves race to be objectively definable by trends in geography, appearance, and most prominently, genetics. Previous research from Stanford geneticist Noah Rosenberg (2005) that looked to support this topic has relied on small sample sizes and data that had otherwise been misconducted. When Sarah Tishkoff (2009) of the University of Pennsylvania conducted the same experiments more thoroughly and with larger sample sizes, evidence contradictory to earlier experiments arose and invalidated the findings supposedly supporting race realism. Considering this, we used data from an extensive public survey to assess society’s underlying beliefs and attitudes towards race while looking to confirm that race realism had been invalidated at a social level. In alignment with the newer findings, the data we collected suggests that people of younger generations have been less and less exposed to the ideas of race realism, and all have come to the conclusion on their own that it is arbitrary to objectively define someone by race. The study showed that while these generations still socially group themselves into races as a result of ancestral and geographic history, there is no genetic property that ties them to their personal sense of identity. Thus, the study concludes by providing ways to further educate the population and avoid the pitfalls of race realism, as certain social groups in the media still back the obsolete ideas of race realism to this day

Measurement Issues and International Comparisons of Output and Productivity Growth

Since the mid-1990s the average growth rates of real GDP and labour productivity in the European Union have fallen behind those in the United States. This development has led to questions about the potential contribution of the differences in measurement methodologies to GDP and productivity growth between the EU and the US. This paper outlines the issues regarding one of the measurement differences between the US and EU, that of using quality-adjusted or hedonic price indices for high technology sectors. We also estimate their contribution to the observed output and productivity differentials. We find that differences in measurement of high technology sectors cannot account for the widening productivity growth difference between the EU and the US. These measurement differences are estimated to have contributed between one and three tenths of a percentage point to differences in growth rates. Ireland proves to be an exception from this general finding however. The application of hedonic price indices for Ireland resulted in an increase of approximately 1.3 per cent in the growth rates of both GDP and labour productivity. This can be explained by the much higher relative importance of high-technology sectors in the Irish economy relative to the rest of the EU. Adjustments to the measurement of these sectors therefore have a larger effect on economy-wide measures of output and productivity.Productivity growth; hedonic index; high-technology sectors

Firm Export Participation: Entry, Spillovers and Tradability

This paper analyses the choices made by individual firms to enter the export market. It uses data on a sample of Irish firms over seventeen years to test whether sunk costs influence the decision to export. A probit specification tests the probability of exporting in the current period given past exporting experience, controlling for the firm’s initial export status. Methodologically, the contribution of this paper is the use of a two-step estimation procedure suggested by Orme (1997), which controls for the influence of initial conditions. In addition, this paper tests for the existence of spillover effects in exporting, in particular if the levels of export activity in a sector increase the probability of a firm participating in the export market. Significant evidence of sunk costs was found, based on the observed persistence of export activity and the explanatory power of previous exporting experience on current export status. A measure of sector tradability was also used, and as expected firms in more easily traded sectors were most likely to be exporters. However, little evidence of spillovers was found in determining export market participation.

Firm Export Dynamics and the Geography of Trade

Two recent trends in international economics have been an increased focus on the geography of trade (e.g. what factors determine where a country exports to) and the emergence of empirical work examining firm-level data on exporting activity. However, data limitations have prevented there being much progress in combining these two areas, because very few countries provide firm-level data breaking down firm exports by their destination. Eaton, Kortum and Kramarz (2004) have analysed such data for French frms but their study only uses a single cross-section of data. This paper uses a unique survey of Irish exporting firms over a five year period to fill some of the gaps in this empirical literature. With information on over fifty destinations, firm-level changes in market coverage and their contribution to net export growth are investigated. Firm involvement in individual export markets is found to be much more dynamic than export status. Entry and exit to markets is shown to be a quantifiably important component of overall export ows, with this factor becoming more important for less popular markets. The paper also shows how the patterns of entry and exit into export markets combine to determine the overall firm-level distribution of number of markets entered.Firm exports; market entry and exit; transition matrix

Understanding and reducing stress in collaborative e-learning

This article examines the important issue of stress in collaborative e-learning, and how it can be eliminated or minimised through appropriate design and support. The authors explore these issues mainly based on evidence from students in an Open University Business School (OUBS) course, and they also link their findings to previous research and similar concerns in other areas, like on-line collaboration in and across businesses and teleworking

Gifts and inheritances in Ireland. ESRI WP579, December 2017

Information on the frequency, value and composition of household wealth transfers has been fairly limited in Ireland and this paper aims to fill this gap by drawing on the detailed data now available on the pattern of gifts and inheritances from the 2013 Household Finance and Consumption Survey. We find that a considerably larger number of older and wealthier households report having received a gift or inheritance compared to their younger, less wealthy counterparts. The household main residence and businesses/farms are identified as the most important asset type in wealth transfers. Overall slightly over 13% of home-owning households were gifted or inherited their household main residence. We also show some association between inheritance and position in the wealth distribution, controlling for other factors. We find that that having received an inheritance or gift moves a household up the wealth distribution by 15.4 percentiles on average relative to households of the same income level that did not receive an inheritance. This effect is particularly large when the inheritance takes the form of a business or a property (not the main residence)

A study of murine bone marrow cells cultured in bioreactors which create an environment which simulated microgravity

Previous research indicated that mouse bone marrow cells could be grown in conditions of simulated microgravity. This environment was created in rotating bioreactor vessels. On three attempts mouse cells were grown successfully in the vessels. The cells reached a stage where the concentrations were doubling daily. Phenotypic analysis using a panel of monoclonal antibodies indicated that the cell were hematopoietic pluripotent stem cells. One unsuccessful attempt was made to reestablish the immune system in immunocompromised mice using these cells. Since last summer, several unsuccessful attempts were made to duplicate these results. It was determined by electron microscopy that the cells successfully grown in 1989 contained virus particles. It was suggested that these virally parasitized cells had been immortalized. The work of this summer is a continuation of efforts to grow mouse bone marrow in these vessels. A number of variations of the protocol were introduced. Certified pathogen free mice were used in the repeat experiments. In some attempts the medium of last summer was used; in others Dexture Culture Medium containing Iscove's Medium supplemented with 20 percent horse serum and 10-6 M hydrocortisone. Efforts this summer were directed solely to repeating the work of last summer. Plans were made for investigations if stem cells were isolated. Immortalization of the undifferentiated stem cell would be attempted by transfection with an oncogenic vector. Selective differentiation would be induced in the stem cell line by growing it with known growth factors and immune response modulators. Interest is in identifying any surface antigens unique to stem cells that would help in their characterization. Another goal was to search for markers on stem cells that would distinguish them from stem cells committed to a particular lineage. If the undifferentiated hematopoietic stem cell was obtained, the pathways that would terminally convert it to myeloid, lyphoid, erythroid, or other cell lines would be studied. Transfection with a known gene would be attempted and then conversion to a terminally identifiable cell

Fundamental studies on a heat driven lamp

A detailed theoretical study of a heat-driven lamp has been performed. This lamp uses a plasma produced in a thermionic diode. The light is produced by the resonance transition of cesium. An important result of this study is that up to 30% of the input heat is predicted to be converted to light in this device. This is a major improvement over ordinary thermionic energy converters in which only approx. 1% is converted to resonance radiation. Efficiencies and optimum inter-electrode spacings have been found as a function of cathode temperature and the radiative escape factor. The theory developed explains the operating limits of the device

Agency in Social Context

Many political philosophers argue that interference threatens a person’s agency. And they cast political freedom in opposition to interpersonal threats to agency, as non-interference. I argue that this approach relies on an inapt model of agency, crucial aspects of which emerge from our relationships with other people. Such relationships involve complex patterns of vulnerability and subjection, essential to our constitution as particular kinds of agents: as owners of property, as members of families, and as participants in a market for labor. We should construct a conception of freedom that targets the structures of our interpersonal relations, and the kinds of agents these relations make us. Such a conception respects the interpersonal foundations of human agency. It also allows us to draw morally significant connections between diverse species of unfreedom—between, for instance, localized domination and structural oppression