How global performance assessments shape attitudes toward government decision-making: Survey experimental evidence

Global Performance Assessments (GPAs), which rank countries on a range of policy areas, can encourage domestic demands for policy reform. Yet can they also affect at what level of government—local or national—citizens want reform to take place? We theorize that, by emphasizing how countries fare relative to others, GPAs prompt citizens to view domestic policy underperformance as a “national problem requiring national solutions.” This increases calls for vesting policymaking authority in the hands of central governments. We argue that this effect should be most salient when underperformance is presented as a threat to a country's security because it induces citizens to “rally ‘round the flag.” To test our theory, we field an original survey experiment in the United States using fictitious news articles manipulating both the source of performance monitoring information and how it is presented. In line with our prediction, respondents are most likely to demand policy centralization when underperformance is framed using GPAs and citizens are primed to think of low scores as a threat to their country's security. These results indicate that GPAs could eventually increase calls for expanding the purview of national‐level politicians over policymaking

Los intervalos de referencia biológicos.

Los intervalos de referencia biológicos son la herramienta más utilizada para la interpretación de los resultados de laboratorio y pueden condicionar decisiones clínicas. Es preciso conocer los principios en los que se basan para hacer un uso adecuado de ellos en la práctica clínica habitual. Se calculan a partir individuos sanos seleccionados procedentes de una población concreta, con distintos criterios. Es importante que se expliquen con el detalle necesario estos criterios, así como con todos los pasos llevados a cabo para obtener los intervalos de referencia. En este trabajo hemos pretendido realizar una revisión de las distintas etapas necesarias para la obtención de unos intervalos de referencia, incluyendo la selección de los individuos sanos, la preparación preanalítica, distintos controles de calidad analítica, los procedimientos estadísticos aplicados o la presentación de los datos. En conjunto es un proceso costoso y que requiere tiempo, por lo que muchos laboratorios no pueden permitírselo. Una posible solución es la de compartir datos para determinar unos intervalos de referencia comunes. Algunos autores proponen la armonización del proceso global de una prueba y la estandarización de la medida como respuestas a la variabilidad que existe entre distintos laboratorios. Suponen una oportunidad para lograr hacer comparables resultados obtenidos en centros diferentes. Por último se exponen la situación actual y las perspectivas futuras de los intervalos de referencia. Inglés: Biological reference intervals are the most widely used tool in the interpretation of laboratory results and may determine clinical decisions. A basic knowledge of the principles in which they are based is necessary to achieve a proper use in daily clinical practice. They are calculated from healthy individuals belonging to a specific population, with different health criteria. It is important to provide enough information about the decisions taken along the whole process of determining the reference intervals. In this essay we have aimed to perform a review of the different phases of this process, including healthy individual selection, preanalytical considerations, quality controls, statistic procedures applied or data presentation. All in all, determining RI is an expensive and highly time-demanding task. Therefore many laboratories can not afford to follow stricly the recommendations. A possible solution can be to share information between laboratories to determine common reference intervals via multicenter collaborative studies. Some authors propose the harmonization of the total testing process in laboratory and the standardization of measurements as the answer for reducing interlaboratory variation. Those initiatives are a chance to make results more comparable and consequently easier to share. Finaly, we deal with the present situation and the future perspectives of reference intervals

Observation of huge thermal spin currents in magnetic multilayers

Thermal spin pumping constitutes a novel mechanism for generation of spin currents; however their weak intensity constitutes a major roadblock for its usefulness. We report a phenomenon that produces a huge spin current in the central region of a multilayer system, resulting in a giant spin Seebeck effect in a structure formed by repetition of ferromagnet/metal bilayers. The result is a consequence of the interconversion of magnon and electron spin currents at the multiple interfaces. This work opens the possibility to design thin film heterostructures that may boost the application of thermal spin currents in spintronics

Temperature dependence of the spin Seebeck effect in [Fe3O4/Pt]n multilayers

We report temperature dependent measurements of the spin Seebeck effect (SSE) in multilayers formed by repeated growth of a Fe3O4/Pt bilayer junction. The magnitude of the observed enhancement of the SSE, relative to the SSE in the single bilayer, shows a monotonic increase with decreasing the temperature. This result can be understood by an increase of the characteristic length for spin current transport in the system, in qualitative agreement with the recently observed increase in the magnon diffusion length in Fe3O4 at lower temperatures. Our result suggests that the thermoelectric performance of the SSE in multilayer structures can be further improved by careful choice of materials with suitable spin transport properties

Spin Seebeck effect in insulating epitaxial ¿-Fe2O3 thin films

We report the fabrication of high crystal quality epitaxial thin films of maghemite (¿-Fe2O3), a classic ferrimagnetic insulating iron oxide. Spin Seebeck effect (SSE) measurements in ¿-Fe2O3/Pt bilayers as a function of sample preparation conditions and temperature yield a SSE coefficient of 0.5(1) µV/K at room temperature. Dependence on temperature allows us to estimate the magnon diffusion length in maghemite to be in the range of tens of nanometers, in good agreement with that of conducting iron oxide magnetite (Fe3O4), establishing the relevance of spin currents of magnonic origin in magnetic iron oxides

Reconstructing carotenoid-based and structural coloration in fossil skin

Evidence of original coloration in fossils provides insights into the visual communication strategies used by ancient animals and the functional evolution of coloration over time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Hitherto, all reconstructions of the colors of reptile integument and the plumage of fossil birds and feathered dinosaurs have been of melanin-based coloration [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Extant animals also use other mechanisms for producing color [8], but these have not been identified in fossils. Here we report the first examples of carotenoid-based coloration in the fossil record, and of structural coloration in fossil integument. The fossil skin, from a 10 million-year-old colubrid snake from the Late Miocene Libros Lagerstätte (Teruel, Spain) [9, 10], preserves dermal pigment cells (chromatophores)—xanthophores, iridophores, and melanophores—in calcium phosphate. Comparison with chromatophore abundance and position in extant reptiles [11, 12, 13, 14, 15] indicates that the fossil snake was pale-colored in ventral regions; dorsal and lateral regions were green with brown-black and yellow-green transverse blotches. Such coloration most likely functioned in substrate matching and intraspecific signaling. Skin replicated in authigenic minerals is not uncommon in exceptionally preserved fossils [16, 17], and dermal pigment cells generate coloration in numerous reptile, amphibian, and fish taxa today [18]. Our discovery thus represents a new means by which to reconstruct the original coloration of exceptionally preserved fossil vertebrates

Reconstructing Carotenoid-Based and Structural Coloration in Fossil Skin

Evidence of original coloration in fossils provides insights into the visual communication strategies used by ancient animals and the functional evolution of coloration over time [1-7]. Hitherto, all reconstructions of the colors of reptile integument and the plumage of fossil birds and feathered dinosaurs have been of melanin-based coloration [1-6]. Extant animals also use other mechanisms for producing color [8], but these have not been identified in fossils. Here we report the first examples of carotenoid-based coloration in the fossil record, and of structural coloration in fossil integument. The fossil skin, from a 10 million-year-old colubrid snake from the Late Miocene Libros Lagerstätte (Teruel, Spain) [9, 10], preserves dermal pigment cells (chromatophores) - xanthophores, iridophores, and melanophores - in calcium phosphate. Comparison with chromatophore abundance and position in extant reptiles [11-15] indicates that the fossil snake was pale-colored in ventral regions; dorsal and lateral regions were green with brown-black and yellow-green transverse blotches. Such coloration most likely functioned in substrate matching and intraspecific signaling. Skin replicated in authigenic minerals is not uncommon in exceptionally preserved fossils [16, 17], and dermal pigment cells generate coloration in numerous reptile, amphibian, and fish taxa today [18]. Our discovery thus represents a new means by which to reconstruct the original coloration of exceptionally preserved fossil vertebrates.This research was funded by Enterprise Ireland Basic Research Grant C/2002/138 awarded to P.J.O. and by an IRCSET-Marie Curie International Mobility Fellowship and Marie Curie Career Integration Grant 618598 awarded to M.E.M.Peer Reviewe

Spin-to-charge conversion by spin pumping in sputtered polycrystalline Bix_xSe1−x_{1-x}

Topological materials are of high interest due to the promise to obtain low power and fast memory devices based on efficient spin-orbit torque switching or spin-orbit magnetic state read-out. In particular, sputtered polycrystalline Bi$_x$Se$_{1-x}$ is one of the materials with more potential for this purpose since it is relatively easy to fabricate and has been reported to have a very high spin Hall angle. We study the spin-to-charge conversion in Bi$_x$Se$_{1-x}$ using the spin pumping technique coming from the ferromagnetic resonance in a contiguous permalloy thin film. We put a special emphasis on the interfacial properties of the system. Our results show that the spin Hall angle of Bi$_x$Se$_{1-x}$ has an opposite sign to the one of Pt. The charge current arising from the spin-to-charge conversion is, in contrast, lower than Pt by more than one order of magnitude. We ascribe this to the interdiffusion of Bi$_x$Se$_{1-x}$ and permalloy and the changes in chemical composition produced by this effect, which is an intrinsic characteristic of the system and is not considered in many other studies

Snowmass 2021 White Paper: Cosmogenic Dark Matter and Exotic Particle Searches in Neutrino Experiments

The signals from outer space and their detection have been playing animportant role in particle physics, especially in discoveries of and searchesfor physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM); beyond the evidence of dark matter(DM), for example, the neutrinos produced from the dark matter annihilation isimportant for the indirect DM searches. Moreover, a wide range of new,well-motivated physics models and dark-sector scenarios have been proposed inthe last decade, predicting cosmogenic signals complementary to those in theconventional direct detection of particle-like dark matter. Most notably,various mechanisms to produce (semi-)relativistic DM particles in the presentuniverse (e.g. boosted dark matter) have been put forward, while beingconsistent with current observational and experimental constraints on DM. Theresulting signals often have less intense and more energetic fluxes, to whichunderground, kiloton-scale neutrino detectors can be readily sensitive. Inaddition, the scattering of slow-moving DM can give rise to a sizable energydeposit if the underlying dark-sector model allows for a large mass differencebetween the initial and final state particles, and the neutrino experimentswith large volume detectors are well suited for exploring these opportunities. This White Paper is devoted to discussing the scientific importance of thecosmogenic dark matter and exotic particle searches, not only overviewing therecent efforts in both the theory and the experiment communities but alsoproviding future perspectives and directions on this research branch. Alandscape of technologies used in neutrino detectors and their complementarityis discussed, and the current and developing analysis strategies are outlined.<br