War and Economics: Spanish Civil War Finances Revisited

This paper reviews how the Spanish civil war was financed. We present new evidence to show that the two combatant parties, the Republican government and the Franco administration followed similar financial strategies. In both cases money creation, rather than new taxes or the issue of debt, was the main mechanism used to cover the expenses of the war. We argue, contrary to the established knowledge, that both sides consumed a similar amount of domestic and foreign resources. We also argue that the Spanish Republic did not lose the war because of a lack of means. International factors, such as the Non-Intervention agreement promoted by France and Great Britain, and the military setbacks of the Republican army during the first year of the war, were decisive for Franco’s victory in 1939.Spain, civil war, financial resources

Optical absorption of divalent metal tungstates: Correlation between the band-gap energy and the cation ionic radius

We have carried out optical-absorption and reflectance measurements at room temperature in single crystals of AWO4 tungstates (A = Ba, Ca, Cd, Cu, Pb, Sr, and Zn). From the experimental results their band-gap energy has been determined to be 5.26 eV (BaWO4), 5.08 eV (SrWO4), 4.94 eV (CaWO4), 4.15 eV (CdWO4), 3.9-4.4 eV (ZnWO4), 3.8-4.2 eV (PbWO4), and 2.3 eV (CuWO4). The results are discussed in terms of the electronic structure of the studied tungstates. It has been found that those compounds where only the s electron states of the A2+ cation hybridize with the O 2p and W 5d states (e.g BaWO4) have larger band-gap energies than those where also p, d, and f states of the A2+ cation contribute to the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band (e.g. PbWO4). The results are of importance in view of the large discrepancies existent in prevoiusly published data.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Electromagnetic dipole moments of charged baryons with bent crystals at the LHC

We propose a unique program of measurements of electric and magnetic dipole moments of charm, beauty and strange charged baryons at the LHC, based on the phenomenon of spin precession of channeled particles in bent crystals. Studies of crystal channeling and spin precession of positively- and negatively-charged particles are presented, along with feasibility studies and expected sensitivities for the proposed experiment using a layout based on the LHCb detector.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

Myristic acid potentiates palmitic acid-induced lipotoxicity and steatohepatitis associated with lipodystrophy by sustaning de novo ceramide synthesis.

Palmitic acid (PA) induces hepatocyte apoptosis and fuels de novo ceramide synthesis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Myristic acid (MA), a free fatty acid highly abundant in copra/palmist oils, is a predictor of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and stimulates ceramide synthesis. Here we investigated the synergism between MA and PA in ceramide synthesis, ER stress, lipotoxicity and NASH. Unlike PA, MA is not lipotoxic but potentiated PA-mediated lipoapoptosis, ER stress, caspase-3 activation and cytochrome c release in primary mouse hepatocytes (PMH). Moreover, MA kinetically sustained PA-induced total ceramide content by stimulating dehydroceramide desaturase and switched the ceramide profile from decreased to increased ceramide 14:0/ceramide16:0, without changing medium and long-chain ceramide species. PMH were more sensitive to equimolar ceramide14:0/ceramide16:0 exposure, which mimics the outcome of PA plus MA treatment on ceramide homeostasis, than to either ceramide alone. Treatment with myriocin to inhibit ceramide synthesis and tauroursodeoxycholic acid to prevent ER stress ameliorated PA plus MA induced apoptosis, similar to the protection afforded by the antioxidant BHA, the pan-caspase inhibitor z-VAD-Fmk and JNK inhibition. Moreover, ruthenium red protected PMH against PA and MA-induced cell death. Recapitulating in vitro findings, mice fed a diet enriched in PA plus MA exhibited lipodystrophy, hepatosplenomegaly, increased liver ceramide content and cholesterol levels, ER stress, liver damage, inflammation and fibrosis compared to mice fed diets enriched in PA or MA alone. The deleterious effects of PA plus MA-enriched diet were largely prevented by in vivo myriocin treatment. These findings indicate a causal link between ceramide synthesis and ER stress in lipotoxicity, and imply that the consumption of diets enriched in MA and PA can cause NASH associated with lipodystrophy

Estimation procedure of the descriptor LAeq,T from the stabilization time of the sound pressure level value

Temporal structure of sound pressure level is a key aspect at the time of characterizing urban sound environments. In urban agglomerations, environmental noise levels fluctuate over a large range as a result of the great complexity of these settings, with considerable temporal and spatial heterogeneity. Furthermore, the domain in urban environments of noise sources, such as road traffic, commercial or leisure activities, construction works, etc., together with the occurrence of sudden sound-level maxima events (bells, sirens, vehicles at high traffic speed, honking horns...), which are quite frequent in urban agglomerations, generate the appearance of very high values of the impulsiveness of sound pressure level. This aspect causes a great influence on the time necessary for environmental noise levels to become stabilized, which is a key aspect for the accurate measurement, interpretation and guarantee of a statistically representative sample of a given urban sound environment. Therefore, the goal pursued in this work is to put forth a procedure for the calculation of a value of LAeq,T, representative of a certain urban location in a short-term time period, from the utilization of the value of the stabilization time of the sound pressure level

Observational constraints to boxy/peanut bulge formation time

Boxy/peanut bulges are considered to be part of the same stellar structure as bars and both could be linked through the buckling instability. The Milky Way is our closest example. The goal of this letter is determining if the mass assembly of the different components leaves an imprint in their stellar populations allowing to estimate the time of bar formation and its evolution. To this aim we use integral field spectroscopy to derive the stellar age distributions, SADs, along the bar and disc of NGC 6032. The analysis shows clearly different SADs for the different bar areas. There is an underlying old (>=12 Gyr) stellar population for the whole galaxy. The bulge shows star formation happening at all times. The inner bar structure shows stars of ages older than 6 Gyrs with a deficit of younger populations. The outer bar region presents a SAD similar to that of the disc. To interpret our results, we use a generic numerical simulation of a barred galaxy. Thus, we constrain, for the first time, the epoch of bar formation, the buckling instability period and the posterior growth from disc material. We establish that the bar of NGC 6032 is old, formed around 10 Gyr ago while the buckling phase possibly happened around 8 Gyr ago. All these results point towards bars being long-lasting even in the presence of gas.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Splitting of the middle layer of LPW SAFNWC/MSG satellite product in order to improve the monitoring of pre-convective environments

International audienceSeven of the infrared channels from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imagery (SEVIRI) instrument, on board the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), are used to retrieve Layer Precipitable Water (LPW) and Stability Analysis Imagery (SAI) in the SAFNWC framework. Both products are retrieved using a statistical retrieval based on neural networks; they are routinely generated every fifteen minutes at a satellite horizontal resolution of 3 km in NADIR only in cloud-free areas. Many factors are involved in the development of severe weather and these parameters are only some of the indicators. However, due to the high resolution of these products, the use of them in conjunction with satellite and radar images can help to identify mesoscale features related to convection. The MSG moisture and parcel instability time trend fields are especially useful during the period previous to convection. Once the outbreak of convection occurs, the products calculated in the clear air pixels surrounding the convective system can give us hints to anticipate its evolution. SAFNWC LPW and SAI were analyzed for a severe weather event during August 2004. A thunderstorm over Teruel (Spain) produced intense precipitation and hail; a tornado developed while this thunderstorm was moving towards SE. The pre-convective parcel potential buoyancy and moisture SAFNWC products changed in a way that was consistent with the observed intense convective activity. In previous studies, the atmospheric moisture in medium levels, which has been proven to be relevant in some cases, was represented by only one level parameter (ML: middle layer LPW). However, it was observed that this layer is too thick to do an adequate analysis of moisture available for convection. Hence, an improvement on the LPW algorithm has been carried out by splitting the middle layer into two new sub-layers (approximately separated at 700 hPa) and training two new neural networks. The impact of monitoring moisture in the new sub-layers separately in this severe weather event has been tested, and the improvements achieved have been evaluated

Analysis of CMB maps with 2D wavelets

We consider the 2D wavelet transform with two scales to study sky maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). We apply this technique to simulated maps of small sky patches of size 12.8 \times 12.8 square degrees and 1.5' \times 1.5' pixels. The relation to the standard approach, based on the cl's is established through the introduction of the scalogram. We consider temperature fluctuations derived from standard, open and flat-Lambda CDM models. We analyze CMB anisotropies maps plus uncorrelated Gaussian noise (uniform and non-uniform) at idfferent S/N levels. We explore in detail the denoising of such maps and compare the results with other techniques already proposed in the literature. Wavelet methods provide a good reconstruction of the image and power spectrum. Moreover, they are faster than previously proposed methods.Comment: latex file 7 pages + 5 postscript files + 1 gif file; accepted for publication in A&A