Ab-initio GMR and current-induced torques in Au/Cr multilayers

We report on an {\em ab-initio} study of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) and current-induced-torques (CITs) in Cr/Au multilayers that is based on non-equilibrium Green's functions and spin density functional theory. We find substantial GMR due primarily to a spin-dependent resonance centered at the Cr/Au interface and predict that the CITs are strong enough to switch the antiferromagnetic order parameter at current-densities $\sim 100$ times smaller than typical ferromagnetic metal circuit switching densities.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Building on the Paris Agreement: making the case for embodied carbon intensity targets in construction

Progressive clients are targeting embodied carbon reduction through the introduction of carbon intensity targets (CITs). CITs challenge design teams to deliver buildings with supply chain carbon emissions below a set level per functional unit. Despite CITs acting as catalysts for innovation, there are few drivers for their use and substantial variations in their implementation. There is also no means for ensuring consistency between project CITs and national mitigation targets, nor a mechanism for ratcheting up ambitions as anticipated by the Paris Agreement on climate change. This paper discusses these concerns and suggests how CITs could in future be determined, implemented and enforced

Red Ink Rising: A Call to Action to Stem the Mounting Federal Debt

Outlines the risks of high levels of national debt and recommends immediate steps to stabilize the debt over the medium term with specific policies, annual targets with an automatic enforcement mechanism, and a longer-tem commitment to further reductions

Social Cognition, Negative Symptoms and Psychosocial Functioning in Schizophrenia

Although functional recovery could be advocated as an achievable treatment goal, many e ective interventions for the treatment of psychotic symptoms, such as antipsychotic drugs, may not improve functioning. The last two decades of cognitive and clinical research on schizophrenia were a turning point for the rm acknowledgment of how relevant social cognitive de cits and negative symptoms could be in predicting psychosocial functioning. The relevance of so- cial cognition dysfunction in schizophrenia patients’ daily living is now unabated. In fact, social cognition de cits could be the most signi cant predictor of functionality in patients with schizophrenia, non-redundantly with neurocogni- tion. Emerging evidence suggests that negative symptoms appear to play an indirect role, mediating the relationship between neurocognition and social cognition with functional outcomes. Further explorations of this mediating role of negative symptoms have revealed that motivational de cits appear to be particularly important in explaining the relationship between both neurocognitive and social cognitive dysfunction and functional outcomes in schizophrenia. In this paper we will address the relative contribution of two key constructs—social cognitive de cits and negative symptoms, namely how intertwined they could be in daily life functioning of patients with schizophrenia

Are the EU new member states fiscally sustainable? An empirical analysis

This paper discusses the theoretical aspects of fiscal sustainability and identifies the main sources of fiscal non-sustainability from the perspective of both general equilibrium models and partial equilibrium models. The study adopts the partial equilibrium approach to investigate empirically whether the EU New Member States are fiscally sustainable. The stationarity test and cointegration analysis are employed to examine this issue. According to the debt stationarity tests, countries such as Lithuania and Slovenia are the only ones that can be regarded as fiscally sustainable. According to a cointegration analysis of government revenues and expenditures none of the analysed countries is fiscally sustainable. However, analyses based upon public debt stationarity test and intertemporal budget constraint do not account for the costs associated with the transition period, therefore the final conclusion of no sustainability in NMS should be put into a broader context of transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market oriented system. This, of course, should not be taken as an excuse for failing to pursue prudent fiscal policy aiming to ensure sustainability over the long-term. The policy implication of this is that the vast majority of the EU New Member States have to undertake significant corrective measures to ensure sustainability over the long-term: certainly more than is being done at the present time

Catabolite repression of the citST two-component system in Bacillus subtilis

In Bacillus subtilis, expression of the citrate transporter CitM is under strict control. Transcription of the citM gene is induced by citrate in the medium mediated by the CitS-CitT two-component system and repressed by rapidly degraded carbon sources mediated by carbon catabolite repression (CCR). In this study, we demonstrate that citST genes are part of a bicistronic operon. The promoter region was localized in a stretch of 58 base pairs upstream of the citS gene by deletion experiments. Transcription of the operon was repressed in the presence of glucose by the general transcription factor CcpA. A distal consensus cre site in the citS-coding sequence was implicated in the mechanism of repression. Furthermore, this repression was relieved in Bacillus subtilis mutants deficient in CcpA or Hpr/Crh, components essential to CCR. Thus, we demonstrate that CCR represses the expression of the citST operon, which is responsible for the induction of citM, through the cre site located 1326 bp from transcriptional start site of citST

Mandatory Enforcement of Privacy Policies using Trusted Computing Principles

Modern communication systems and information technology create significant new threats to information privacy. In this paper, we discuss the need for proper privacy protection in cooperative intelligent transportation systems (cITS), one instance of such systems. We outline general principles for data protection and their legal basis and argue why pure legal protection is insufficient. Strong privacy-enhancing technologies need to be deployed in cITS to protect user data while it is generated and processed. As data minimization cannot always prevent the need for disclosing relevant personal information, we introduce the new concept of mandatory enforcement of privacy policies. This concept empowers users and data subjects to tightly couple their data with privacy policies and rely on the system to impose such policies onto any data processors. We also describe the PRECIOSA Privacy-enforcing Runtime Architecture that exemplifies our approach. Moreover, we show how an application can utilize this architecture by applying it to a pay as you drive (PAYD) car insurance scenario

Economic and Political Determinants of Budget Deficits in the European Union: A Dynamic Random Coefficient Approach

This paper formulates a dynamic Random Coefficient Model (RCM) to consider a set of popular determinants of public deficits in the EU-15 over the period 1971-2006, both at a country-specific level and from a population-wide perspective. Although the extent of government deficits and debt has been one of the most debated macroeconomic issues in recent times, the models trying to capture the explanatory powers driving these deficits typically estimate models that pose the strict assumption of homogeneity on the coefficients over all countries in the model. The sensibility of this assumption will be investigated, with results showing that an increase in the degree of heterogeneity leads to an improvement in the model fit and provides additional information to nuance the effects of the explanatory variables. In this way, the paper exposes a limited degree of partisanship over all countries under consideration, but on the other hand provides evidence for opportunistic behaviour of policymakers in the major part of the sample. The effect of institutional changes following the enforcement of the Maastricht Treaty varies over the countries and is related to the necessity of budgetary consolidation.fiscal policy, European Monetary Union, Random Coefficient Model, Bayesian Analysis

Decomposition of N2O on the Si(100)2 × 1 and Si(111)7 × 7 surfaces: Determination of the density of broken bonds

This paper reports on the site-specific decomposition behaviour of N2O onthe clean Si(100)2 × 1 and Si(111)7 × 7 surfaces at room temperature, studied by spectroscopic differential reflectometry (SDR) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). It has been established that Si---O bond formation occurs at the toplayer Si atoms, mainly via attachment of the unsaturated broken bonds. In this way it is possible to determine the density of broken (dangling) bonds at the clean Si surface. Our results confirm the high dangling bond density at the 2 × 1 reconstructed Si(100) surface for which we assume a defect density of 15 ± 10%. The density of dangling bonds per 7 × 7 unit cell (49 atoms), 23 ± 4, is in agreement with the established 19 as revealed by current imaging tunneling spectroscopy (CITS)