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Vast Differences (vast + difference)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

The Laser Two-photon Photolysis of Liquid Carbon Tetrachloride,

PHOTOCHEMISTRY & PHOTOBIOLOGY, Issue 1 2006
G. Zhang
ABSTRACT The two-photon photolysis of liquid CCl4 with 25 ps pulses of 266 nm light has been studied and compared with similar studies with high energy radiation. Both neutral and ionic species are produced from excited states and ionization. The emphasis of the study is on the ionic processes, while some data related to excited states and free radicals are presented. In both radiolysis and photolysis, a solvent separated charged pair, CCl3+, Cl - , exhibiting a ,max at 475 nm, is observed that exhibits a total growth over 38 to 100 ps. Solutes with ionization potentials less than that of CCl4 (11.47 eV) reduce the yield of the 475 nm species producing radical cations of the solute. The efficiency of this process is about 10-fold larger in radiolysis compared with photolysis. Analysis of the data suggest that the lower energy of two-photon photolysis produces a charge pair CCl4+, CCl4 - , which decays in about 3 ps to CCl4+, Cl - . This species then decays to CCl3+, Cl - . The lifetime of the growth of the 475 nm is measured as 46 ps. These studies clearly show areas where radiolysis and photolysis can be quite similar and also areas where the vast difference in excitation energy introduces stark differences in the observed radiation and photoinduced chemistry. [source]

The importance of housing costs in cross-national comparisons of welfare (state) outcomes

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 2 2003
Veli-Matti Ritakallio
Mainstream comparative research on welfare policy outcomes has focused mainly on the role of government benefits and resulting distributions of income. From the point of view of the economic well-being of households, it is said that this narrow approach has produced results which have exaggerated the difference between continental western Europe and the New World. It has been argued that, to get fair results, comparative studies of welfare outcomes should take into account the differences in housing policies and structures of tenure. The ownership of private houses is more common in the New World nations than in Europe. Home ownership is thought to improve the economic well-being of the typical poverty-prone group, namely older people. This article tests how the cross-national picture of poverty and inequality changes when we approach the economic well-being of households on the basis of disposable incomes after housing costs instead of the traditional, purely income-based approach. The empirical analysis shows that, instead of vast differences in inequality, poverty and, in particular, old-age poverty, the real differences between Australia and Finland are only modest when housing costs are taken into account. [source]

Does Political Democracy Enhance Human Development in Developing Countries?

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
A Cross-National Analysis
Despite the considerable progress of human development (HD) in developing countries (DCs) during recent decades, vast differences still remain among such countries. The question thus arises of why these divergences persist. This cross-national study uses a larger sample of DCs to offer necessary testing of the impact of democracy on HD. This study adopts new measures of democracy featuring majority rule and political contention to estimate their correlation with three physical well-being indicators as well as with three school enrollment indicators. After controlling for several macro-level political and economic characteristics (state revenue and economic growth), the regression modeling for recent data from the 1980s and 1990s showed that democracies indeed achieved higher levels on the HD indicators used here. However, democracy was not a powerful predictor of changes in HD scores during the analysis period. Neither central government health or educational spending significantly altered HD. The conclusions offer a plausible explanation of why democracy in DCs failed to sustain its momentum in improving HD. [source]

When Financial Institutions Are Large Shareholders: The Role of Macro Corporate Governance Environments

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 6 2006
DONGHUI LI
ABSTRACT While financial institutions' aggregate investments have grown substantially worldwide, the size of their individual shareholdings, and ultimately their incentive to monitor, may be limited by the free-rider problem, regulations, and a preference for diversification and liquidity. We compare institutions' shareholding patterns across countries and find vast differences in the extent to which they are large shareholders. These variations are largely determined by macro corporate governance factors such as shareholder protection, law enforcement, and corporate disclosure requirements. This suggests that strong governance environments act to strengthen monitoring ability such that more institutions are encouraged to hold concentrated equity positions. [source]

A Country of No Significance?

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 2 2009
Interpreting The Japan Times's Inattentive Approach to Chinese Affairs in 199
This article seeks to explain why The Japan Times takes a backseat approach to events in China. Specifically, the Japanese English-language newspaper demonstrated a lack of sensitivity when dealing with events that took place in China during 1997. The Japan Times's attitude is tantamount to actualizing a familiar identity strategy of withdrawal. For modern Japanese thinkers, such as Nishida Kitaro, Takeuchi Yoshimi, and Mizoguchi Yuzo, the withdrawal is a common strategy when dealing with the issue of universality. This is a surprising observation, given these scholars' vast differences when narrating Japanese identities. Accordingly, China has defined the condition from which withdrawal seems imperative for Japan to fulfill modernity. The Japan Times's apparent inattention to China may serve as the contemporary example of "withdrawing for universality" and poses different narrators against one another to show the indecisive condition The Japan Times has created for all of them. [source]

Integration of Ranked Lists via Cross Entropy Monte Carlo with Applications to mRNA and microRNA Studies

BIOMETRICS, Issue 1 2009
Shili Lin
Summary One of the major challenges facing researchers studying complex biological systems is integration of data from -omics platforms. Omic-scale data include DNA variations, transcriptom profiles, and RAomics. Selection of an appropriate approach for a data-integration task is problem dependent, primarily dictated by the information contained in the data. In situations where modeling of multiple raw datasets jointly might be extremely challenging due to their vast differences, rankings from each dataset would provide a commonality based on which results could be integrated. Aggregation of microRNA targets predicted from different computational algorithms is such a problem. Integration of results from multiple mRNA studies based on different platforms is another example that will be discussed. Formulating the problem of integrating ranked lists as minimizing an objective criterion, we explore the usage of a cross entropy Monte Carlo method for solving such a combinatorial problem. Instead of placing a discrete uniform distribution on all the potential solutions, an iterative importance sampling technique is utilized "to slowly tighten the net" to place most distributional mass on the optimal solution and its neighbors. Extensive simulation studies were performed to assess the performance of the method. With satisfactory simulation results, the method was applied to the microRNA and mRNA problems to illustrate its utility. [source]