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The relationship of drug reimbursement with the price and the quality of pharmaceutical innovations
This paper studies the strategic interaction between pharmaceutical firms' pricing decisions and government agencies' reimbursement decisions which discriminate between patients by giving reimbursement rights to patients for whom the drug is most effective. We show that if the reimbursement decision preceeds the pricing decision, the agency only reimburses some patients if the private and public health benefits from the new drug diverge. That is, when (i) there are large externalities of consuming the drug and (ii) the difference in costs between the new drug and the alternative treatment is large. Alternatively, if the firm can commit to a price in advance of the reimbursement decision, we identify a strategic effect which implies that by committing to a high price ex ante, the firm can force a listing outcome and make the agency more willing to reimburse than in the absence of commitment
Metallicity of high stellar mass galaxies with signs of merger events
We focus on an analysis of galaxies of high stellar mass and low metallicity.
We cross-correlated the Millenium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC) and the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey (SDSS) galaxy catalogue to provide a sample of MGC objects with high
resolution imaging and both spectroscopic and photometric information available
in the SDSS database. For each galaxy in our sample, we conducted a systematic
morphological analysis by visual inspection of MGC images using their
luminosity contours. The galaxies are classified as either disturbed or
undisturbed objects. We divide the sample into three metallicity regions,
within wich we compare the properties of disturbed and undisturbed objects. We
find that the fraction of galaxies that are strongly disturbed, indicative of
being merger remnants, is higher when lower metallicity objects are considered.
The three bins analysed consist of approximatively 15%, 20%, and 50% disturbed
galaxies (for high, medium, and low metallicity, respectively). Moreover, the
ratio of the disturbed to undisturbed relative distributions of the population
age indicator, Dn(4000), in the low metallicity bin, indicates that the
disturbed objects have substantially younger stellar populations than their
undisturbed counterparts. In addition, we find that an analysis of colour
distributions provides similar results, showing that low metallicity galaxies
with a disturbed morphology are bluer than those that are undisturbed. The
bluer colours and younger populations of the low metallicity, morphologically
disturbed objects suggest that they have experienced a recent merger with an
associated enhanced star formation rate. [abridged]Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysics, in pres
Velocity dispersion estimates of APM galaxy clusters
We present 83 new galaxy radial velocities in the field of 18 APM clusters
with redshifts between 0.06 and 0.13. The clusters have Abell identifications
and the galaxies were selected within 0.75 hMpc in projection from their
centers. We derive new cluster velocity dispersions for 13 clusters using our
data and published radial velocities.
We analyze correlations between cluster velocity dispersions and cluster
richness counts as defined in Abell and APM catalogs. The correlations show a
statistically significant trend although with a large scatter suggesting that
richness is a poor estimator of cluster mass irrespectively of cluster
selection criteria and richness definition. We find systematically lower
velocity dispersions in the sample of Abell clusters that do not fulfill APM
cluster selection criteria suggesting artificially higher Abell richness counts
due to contamination by projection effects in this subsample.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Effects of galaxy interactions in different environments
We analyse star formation rates derived from photometric and spectroscopic
data of galaxies in pairs in different environments using the 2dF Galaxy
Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The two
samples comprise several thousand pairs, suitable to explore into detail the
dependence of star formation activity in pairs on orbital parameters and global
environment. We use the projected galaxy density derived from the fifth nearest
neighbour of each galaxy, with convenient luminosity thresholds to characterise
environment in both surveys in a consistent way. Star formation activity is
derived through the parameter in 2dFGRS and through the star formation
rate normalised to the total mass in stars, , given by Brinchmann et
al. (2004) in the second data release SDSS-DR2. For both galaxy pair catalogs,
the star formation birth rate parameter is a strong function of the global
environment and orbital parameters. Our analysis on SDSS pairs confirms
previous results found with the 2dFGRS where suitable thresholds for the star
formation activity induced by interactions are estimated at a projected
distance r_{\rm p} = 100 \kpc and a relative velocity km
. We observe that galaxy interactions are more effective at triggering
important star formation activity in low and moderate density environments with
respect to the control sample of galaxies without a close companion. Although
close pairs have a larger fraction of actively star-forming galaxies, they also
exhibit a greater fraction of red galaxies with respect to those systems
without a close companion, an effect that may indicate that dust stirred up
during encounters could be affecting colours and, partially, obscuring
tidally-induced star formation.Comment: accepted MNRA
The multicomponent 2D Toda hierarchy: Discrete flows and string equations
The multicomponent 2D Toda hierarchy is analyzed through a factorization
problem associated to an infinite-dimensional group. A new set of discrete
flows is considered and the corresponding Lax and Zakharov--Shabat equations
are characterized. Reductions of block Toeplitz and Hankel bi-infinite matrix
types are proposed and studied. Orlov--Schulman operators, string equations and
additional symmetries (discrete and continuous) are considered. The
continuous-discrete Lax equations are shown to be equivalent to a factorization
problem as well as to a set of string equations. A congruence method to derive
site independent equations is presented and used to derive equations in the
discrete multicomponent KP sector (and also for its modification) of the theory
as well as dispersive Whitham equations.Comment: 27 pages. In the revised paper we improved the presentatio
Multi-wavelength Observations of the Giant X-ray Flare Galaxy NGC 5905: signatures of tidal disruption
NGC 5905 is one of the few galaxies with no prior evidence for an AGN in
which an X-ray flare, due to the tidal disruption of a star by the massive
black hole in the center of the galaxy, was detected by the RASS in 1990-91.
Here we present analysis of late-time follow-up observations of NGC 5905 using
Chandra, Spitzer VLA 3 GHz and 8 GHz archival data and GMRT 1.28 GHz radio
observations. The X-ray image shows no compact source that could be associated
with an AGN. Instead, the emission is extended -- likely due to nuclear star
formation and the total measured X-ray luminosity is comparable to the X-ray
luminosity determined from the 2002 Chandra observations. Diffuse X-ray
emission was detected close to the circum-nuclear star forming ring. The
Spitzer 2006 mid-infrared spectrum also shows strong evidence of nuclear star
formation but no clear AGN signatures. The semi-analytical models of Tommasin
et. al. 2010 together with the measured [OIV]/[NeII] line ratio suggest that at
most only 5.6% of the total IR Flux at 19 m is being contributed by the
AGN. The GMRT 1.28 GHz observations reveal a nuclear source. In the much higher
resolution VLA 3 GHz map, the emission has a double lobed structure of size
2.7'' due to the circumnuclear star forming ring. The GMRT 1.28 GHz peak
emission coincides with the center of the circumnuclear ring. We did not detect
any emission in the VLA 8 GHz (1996) archival data. The 3 upper limits
for the radio afterglow of the TDE at 1.28 GHz, 3 GHz and 8 GHz are 0.17 mJy,
0.09 mJy and 0.09 mJy, respectively. Our studies thus show that (i) NGC 5905
has a declining X-ray flux consistent with a TDE, (ii) the IR flux is dominated
by nuclear star formation, (iii) the nuclear radio emission observed from the
galaxy is due to circumnuclear star formation, (iv) no compact radio emission
associated with a radio afterglow from the TDE is detected.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted to be published in Astrophysics and
Space Scienc
Near-infrared K-band Spectroscopic Investigation of Seyfert 2 Nuclei in the CfA and 12 Micron Samples
We present near-infrared K-band slit spectra of the nuclei of 25 Seyfert 2
galaxies in the CfA and 12 micron samples. The strength of the CO absorption
features at 2.3-2.4 micron produced by stars is measured in terms of a
spectroscopic CO index. A clear anti-correlation between the observed CO index
and the nuclear K-L color is present, suggesting that a featureless hot dust
continuum heated by an AGN contributes significantly to the observed K-band
fluxes in the nuclei of Seyfert 2 galaxies. After correction for this AGN
contribution, we estimate nuclear stellar K-band luminosities for all sources,
and CO indices for sources with modestly large observed CO indices. The
corrected CO indices for 10 (=40%) Seyfert 2 nuclei are found to be as high as
those observed in star-forming or elliptical (=spheroidal) galaxies. We combine
the K-band data with measurements of the L-band 3.3 micron polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbon (PAH) emission feature, another powerful indicator for
star-formation, and find that the 3.3 micron PAH to K-band stellar luminosity
ratios are substantially smaller than those of starburst galaxies. Our results
suggest that the 3.3 micron PAH emission originates in the putative nuclear
starbursts in the dusty tori surrounding the AGNs, because of its high surface
brightness, whereas the K-band CO absorption features detected at the nuclei
are dominated by old bulge (=spheroid) stars, and thus may not be a powerful
indicator for the nuclear starbursts. We see no clear difference in the
strength of the CO absorption and PAH emission features between the CfA and 12
micron Seyfert 2s.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ (10 October
2004, v614 issue
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