The export competitiveness of the newly industrialised east Asian economies: How real is the Chinese threat in electronics?

This paper examines the export performance of China in electronics compared to the east Asian NIEs exporting to the USA, the European Union, and Japan between 1988 and 2001 using a dynamic version of shift-share analysis to overcome some of the inherent drawbacks of the widely-used static shift-share methodology. Our findings suggest that China has now emerged as a serious contender in the export market for electronic goods, but this position has not been a dominant one. For electronics as a whole, the principal gainers after 1995 appear to be newcomers China and Malaysia at the expense of the older Tigers, like Singapore and Hong Kong. To some extent this represents a natural process of ‘catch-up’. Moreover, no single NIE has dominated all categories of electronic exports. In the east Asian region, the less developed members of ASEAN would appear to be most at risk in the immediate future since they compete head on with China in lower-end manufacturing and are in danger of being ‘leapfrogged’ in the value-added chain. The more advanced NIEs are in a better position since they have time to increase value-added before China catches up and may benefit more from the opportunities China offers in terms of production and service complementarities

Herschel Observations and Updated Spectral Energy Distributions of Five Sunlike Stars with Debris Disks

Observations from the Herschel Space Observatory have more than doubled the number of wide debris disks orbiting Sunlike stars to include over 30 systems with R > 100 AU. Here we present new Herschel PACS and re-analyzed Spitzer MIPS photometry of five Sunlike stars with wide debris disks, from Kuiper belt size to R > 150 AU. The disk surrounding HD 105211 is well resolved, with an angular extent of >14" along the major axis, and the disks of HD 33636, HD 50554, and HD 52265 are extended beyond the PACS PSF size (50% of energy enclosed within radius 4.23"). HD 105211 also has a 24-micron infrared excess that was previously overlooked because of a poorly constrained photospheric model. Archival Spitzer IRS observations indicate that the disks have small grains of minimum radius ~3 microns, though the minimum grain gradius is larger than the radiation pressure blowout size in all systems. If modeled as single-temperature blackbodies, the disk temperatures would all be <60 K. Our radiative transfer models predict actual disk radii approximately twice the radius of model blackbody disks. We find that the Herschel photometry traces dust near the source population of planetesimals. The disk luminosities are in the range 0.00002 <= L/L* <= 0.0002, consistent with collisions in icy planetesimal belts stirred by Pluto-size dwarf planets.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 18 pages, including 10 figures and 3 table

Geometry and topology of two kinds of extreme Reissner-Nordstro¨\ddot{o}m-anti-de Sitter black holes

Different geometrical and topological properties have been shown for two kinds of extreme Reissner-Nordstr$\ddot{o}$m-anti-de Sitter black holes. The relationship between the geometrical properties and the intrinsic thermodynamical properties has been made explicit.Comment: Latex, 12 pages, 4 figure

A Spitzer IRS Study of Debris Disks Around Planet-Host Stars

Since giant planets scatter planetesimals within a few tidal radii of their orbits, the locations of existing planetesimal belts indicate regions where giant planet formation failed in bygone protostellar disks. Infrared observations of circumstellar dust produced by colliding planetesimals are therefore powerful probes of the formation histories of known planets. Here we present new Spitzer IRS spectrophotometry of 111 Solar-type stars, including 105 planet hosts. Our observations reveal 11 debris disks, including two previously undetected debris disks orbiting HD 108874 and HD 130322. Combining our 32 micron spectrophotometry with previously published MIPS photometry, we find that the majority of debris disks around planet hosts have temperatures in the range 60 < T < 100 K. Assuming a dust temperature T = 70 K, which is representative of the nine debris disks detected by both IRS and MIPS, we find that debris rings surrounding Sunlike stars orbit between 15 and 240 AU, depending on the mean particle size. Our observations imply that the planets detected by radial-velocity searches formed within 240 AU of their parent stars. If any of the debris disks studied here have mostly large, blackbody emitting grains, their companion giant planets must have formed in a narrow region between the ice line and 15 AU.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 14 pages, including five figures and two table

Coupling slot-waveguide cavities for large-scale quantum optical devices

By offering effective modal volumes significantly less than a cubic wavelength, slot-waveguide cavities offer a new in-road into strong atom-photon coupling in the visible regime. Here we explore two-dimensional arrays of coupled slot cavities which underpin designs for novel quantum emulators and polaritonic quantum phase transition devices. Specifically, we investigate the lateral coupling characteristics of diamond-air and GaP-air slot waveguides using numerically-assisted coupled-mode theory, and the longitudinal coupling properties via distributed Bragg reflectors using mode-propagation simulations. We find that slot-waveguide cavities in the Fabry-Perot arrangement can be coupled and effectively treated with a tight-binding description, and are a suitable platform for realizing Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard physics.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, submitte

Geometry of the extreme Kerr black holes

Geometrical properties of the extreme Kerr black holes in the topological sectors of nonextreme and extreme configurations are studied. We find that the Euler characteristic plays an essential role to distinguish these two kinds of extreme black holes. The relationship between the geometrical properties and the intrinsic thermodynamics are investigated.Comment: Latex version, 10 page

The Radio-to-Submm Spectral Index as a Redshift Indicator

We present models of the 1.4 GHz to 350 GHz spectral index, alpha(350/1.4), for starburst galaxies as a function of redshift. The models include a semi-analytic formulation, based on the well quantified radio-to-far infrared correlation for low redshift star forming galaxies, and an empirical formulation, based on the observed spectrum of the starburst galaxies M82 and Arp 220. We compare the models to the observed values of alpha(350/1.4) for starburst galaxies at low and high redshift. We find reasonable agreement between the models and the observations, and in particular, that an observed spectral index of alpha(350/1.4) > +0.5 indicates that the target source is likely to be at high redshift, z > 1. The evolution of alpha(350/1.4) with redshift is mainly due to the very steep rise in the Raleigh-Jeans portion of the thermal dust spectrum shifting into the 350 GHz band with increasing redshift. We also discuss situations where this relationship could be violated. We then apply our models to examine the putative identifications of submm sources in the Hubble Deep Field, and conclude that the submm sources reported by Hughes et al. are likely to be at high redshifts, z > 1.5.Comment: standard LATEX file plus 1 postscript figure. Added references and revised figure. second figure revision. Final Proof version. to appear in Astrophysical Journal Letter

Pictor A (PKS 0518-45) - From Nucleus to Lobes

We present radio and optical imaging and kinematic data for the radio galaxy Pictor A, including HST continuum and [OIII], emission-line images (at a resolution of 25 - 100 mas) and ground-based imaging and spectroscopy (at a resolution of ~ 1.5". The radio data include 3 cm Australia Telescope images of the core, at a resolution comparable to that of the optical, ground-based images, and a VLBI image of a jet in the compact core (at a resolution of 2 - 25 mas), which seems to align with a continuum ``jet'' found in the HST images. The core radio jet, the HST optical continuum ``jet'', and the NW H-alpha filaments all appear to point toward the optical-synchrotron hot-spot in the NW lobe of this object and are associated with a disrupted velocity field in the extended ionized gas. The ground-based spectra which cover this trajectory also yield line ratios for the ionized gas which have anomalously low [NII] (6564), suggesting either a complex, clumpy structure in the gas with a higher cloud-covering factor at larger radii and with denser clouds than is found in the nuclear regions of most NLRG and Seyfert 2 galaxies, or some other, unmodeled, mechanism for the emergent spectrum from this region. The H-alpha emission-line filaments to the N appear to be associated with a 3 cm radio continuum knot which lies in a gap in the filaments ~ 4" from the nucleus. Altogether, the data in this paper provide good circumstantial evidence for non-disruptive redirection of a radio jet by interstellar gas clouds in the host galaxy.Comment: 19 pages, 6 ps.gz fig pages, to appear in the Ap.J. Supp