Unity and Plurality of the European Cycle

We apply uni- and multivariate unobserved components models to the study of European growth cycles. The multivariate dimension enables to search similar or, more strongly, common components among national GDP series (quarterly data from 1960 to 1999). Three successive ways to exhibit the European cycle satisfactorily converge: the direct decomposition of the aggregate European GDP; the aggregation of the member countries' national cycles; the search for common components between these national cycles. The European aggregate fluctuations reveal two distinct cyclical components, assimilated to the classical Juglar (decennial, related to investment) and Kitchin (triennial, related to inventories) cycles. The European Juglar cycle cannot be reduced to a single common component of the national cycles. It has at least a dimension of "three": it can be understood as the interference of three elementary and independent sequences of stochastic shocks, that correspond to the European geographical division. The euro-zone is not yet an optimal currency area, as the shocks generating the European cycles are not completely symmetrical. Studying the sequences of innovations extracted from the models shows that euro-zone vulnerability to strong shocks and asymmetry of these shocks tend to decrease during the last decades, but this trend is neither regular, nor irreversible.(A)symmetrical shocks, Common factors, European integration, Growth cycles, Stochastic trends, Structural time series model.

Asymmetric Lineshape due to Inhomogeneous Broadening of the Crystal-Field Transitions in Mn12ac Single Crystals

The lineshape of crystal-field transitions in single crystals of Mn12ac molecular magnets is determined by the magnetic history. The absorption lines are symmetric and Gaussian for the non-magnetized state obtained by zero-field cooling (zfc). In the magnetized state which is reached when the sample is cooled in a magnetic field (fc), however, they are asymmetric even in the absence of an external magnetic field. These observations are quantitatively explained by inhomogeneous symmetrical (Gaussian) broadening of the crystal-field transitions combined with a contribution of off-diagonal components of the magnetic susceptibility to the effective magnetic permeability.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Error Correction in Vergence Eye Movements: Evidence Supporting Hering’s Law

In pure symmetrical vergence eye movements, a fusion initiating component quickly brings the eyes close to the desired position. A small error usually remains after this response which must be corrected to attain the small final vergence error (i.e., fixation disparity). Error correction will usually involve both version and version movements so possible mechanisms include: small saccades, smooth pursuit, symmetrical vergence, or some combination. Alternatively, an asymmetrical vergence or uniocular slow eye movement could be used to achieve the highly precise final position. Saccade-free late fusion sustaining components during the steady state to a symmetrical vergence step stimulus are analyzed using independent component analysis. Results suggest that fine correction is most likely the product of closely coordinated version and vergence components

Field theory of massive and massless vector particles in the Duffin - Kemmer - Petiau formalism

Field theory of massive and massless vector particles is considered in the first-order formalism. The Hamiltonian form of equations is obtained after the exclusion of non-dynamical components. We obtain the canonical and symmetrical Belinfante energy-momentum tensors and their nonzero traces. We note that the dilatation symmetry is broken in the massive case but in the massless case the modified dilatation current is conserved. The canonical quantization is performed and the propagator of the massive fields is found in the Duffin - Kemmer - Petiau formalism.Comment: 20 pages, typos corrected, a reference added, journal version, accepted in Int.J.Mod.Phys.

Visualization of the Significant Explicative Categories using Catanova Method and Non-Symmetrical Correspondence Analysis for Evaluation of Passenger Satisfaction

ANalysis Of VAriance (ANOVA) is a method to decompose the total variation of the observations into sum of variations due to different factors and the residual component. When the data are nominal, the usual approach of considering the total variation in response variable as measure of dispersion about the mean is not well defined. Light and Margolin (1971) proposed CATegorical ANalysis Of VAriance (CATANOVA), to analyze the categorical data. Onukogu (1985) extended the CATANOVA method to two-way classified nominal data. The components (sums of squares) are, however, not orthogonal. Singh (1996) developed a CATANOVA procedure that gives orthogonal sums of squares and defined test statistics and their asymptotic null distributions. In order to study which exploratory categories are influential factors for the response variable we propose to apply Non-Symmetrical Correspondence Analysis (D'Ambra and Lauro, 1989) on significant components. Finally, we illustrate the analysis numerically, with a practical example