Gender gap in the ERASMUS mobility program

Studying abroad has become very popular among students. The ERASMUS mobility program is one of the largest international student exchange programs in the world, which has supported already more than three million participants since 1987. We analyzed the mobility pattern within this program in 2011-12 and found a gender gap across countries and subject areas. Namely, for almost all participating countries, female students are over-represented in the ERASMUS program when compared to the entire population of tertiary students. The same tendency is observed across different subject areas. We also found a gender asymmetry in the geographical distribution of hosting institutions, with a bias of male students in Scandinavian countries. However, a detailed analysis reveals that this latter asymmetry is rather driven by subject and consistent with the distribution of gender ratios among subject areas

Finding the optimal nets for self-folding Kirigami

Three-dimensional shells can be synthesized from the spontaneous self-folding of two-dimensional templates of interconnected panels, called nets. However, some nets are more likely to self-fold into the desired shell under random movements. The optimal nets are the ones that maximize the number of vertex connections, i.e., vertices that have only two of its faces cut away from each other in the net. Previous methods for finding such nets are based on random search and thus do not guarantee the optimal solution. Here, we propose a deterministic procedure. We map the connectivity of the shell into a shell graph, where the nodes and links of the graph represent the vertices and edges of the shell, respectively. Identifying the nets that maximize the number of vertex connections corresponds to finding the set of maximum leaf spanning trees of the shell graph. This method allows not only to design the self-assembly of much larger shell structures but also to apply additional design criteria, as a complete catalog of the maximum leaf spanning trees is obtained.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, Supplemental Material, Source Cod

Effect of particle polydispersity on the irreversible adsorption of fine particles on patterned substrates

We performed extensive Monte Carlo simulations of the irreversible adsorption of polydispersed disks inside the cells of a patterned substrate. The model captures relevant features of the irreversible adsorption of spherical colloidal particles on patterned substrates. The pattern consists of (equal) square cells, where adsorption can take place, centered at the vertices of a square lattice. Two independent, dimensionless parameters are required to control the geometry of the pattern, namely, the cell size and cell-cell distance, measured in terms of the average particle diameter. However, to describe the phase diagram, two additional dimensionless parameters, the minimum and maximum particle radii are also required. We find that the transition between any two adjacent regions of the phase diagram solely depends on the largest and smallest particle sizes, but not on the shape of the distribution function of the radii. We consider size dispersions up-to 20% of the average radius using a physically motivated truncated Gaussian-size distribution, and focus on the regime where adsorbing particles do not interact with those previously adsorbed on neighboring cells to characterize the jammed state structure. The study generalizes previous exact relations on monodisperse particles to account for size dispersion. Due to the presence of the pattern, the coverage shows a non-monotonic dependence on the cell size. The pattern also affects the radius of adsorbed particles, where one observes preferential adsorption of smaller radii particularly at high polydispersity.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Non-hexagonal-ring defects and structures induced by strain in graphene and in functionalized graphene

We perform {\textit ab initio} calculations for the strain-induced formation of non-hexagonal-ring defects in graphene, graphane (planar CH), and graphenol (planar COH). We find that the simplest of such topological defects, the Stone-Wales defect, acts as a seed for strain-induced dissociation and multiplication of topological defects. Through the application of inhomogeneous deformations to graphene, graphane and graphenol with initially small concentrations of pentagonal and heptagonal rings, we obtain several novel stable structures that possess, at the same time, large concentrations of non-hexagonal rings (from fourfold to elevenfold) and small formation energies

Invasion Percolation Between two Sites

We investigate the process of invasion percolation between two sites (injection and extraction sites) separated by a distance r in two-dimensional lattices of size L. Our results for the non-trapping invasion percolation model indicate that the statistics of the mass of invaded clusters is significantly dependent on the local occupation probability (pressure) Pe at the extraction site. For Pe=0, we show that the mass distribution of invaded clusters P(M) follows a power-law P(M) ~ M^{-\alpha} for intermediate values of the mass M, with an exponent \alpha=1.39. When the local pressure is set to Pe=Pc, where Pc corresponds to the site percolation threshold of the lattice topology, the distribution P(M) still displays a scaling region, but with an exponent \alpha=1.02. This last behavior is consistent with previous results for the cluster statistics in standard percolation. In spite of these discrepancies, the results of our simulations indicate that the fractal dimension of the invaded cluster does not depends significantly on the local pressure Pe and it is consistent with the fractal dimension values reported for standard invasion percolation. Finally, we perform extensive numerical simulations to determine the effect of the lattice borders on the statistics of the invaded clusters and also to characterize the self-organized critical behavior of the invasion percolation process.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures, submited for PR