162 research outputs found
Municipality Size and Efficiency of Local Public Services: Does Size Matter?
Similarly to western Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, the eastern part of Germany has experienced a still ongoing process of numerous amalgamations among counties, towns and municipalities since the mid-1990s. The evidence in the economic literature is mixed with regard to the claimed expenditure reductions and efficiency gains from municipal mergers. We therefore analyze the global efficiency of the municipalities in Saxony-Anhalt, for the first time in this context, using a double-bootstrap procedure combining DEA and truncated regression. This allows including environmental variables to control for exogenous determinants of municipal efficiency. Our focus thereby is on institutional and fiscal variables. Moreover, the scale efficiency is estimated to find out whether large units are necessary to benefit from scale economies. In contrast to previous studies, we chose the aggregate budget of municipal associations (âVerwaltungsgemeinschaftenâ) as the object of our analysis since important competences of the member municipalities are settled on a joint administrative level. Furthermore, we use a data set that has been carefully adjusted for bookkeeping items and transfers within the communal level. On the âeveâ of a mayor municipal reform the majority of the municipalities were found to have an approximately scale-efficient size and centralized organizational forms (âEinheitsgemeindenâ) showed no efficiency advantage over municipal associations.efficiency, local government, DEA, bootstrap, demographic change, local institutions
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Age spectra and other transport diagnostics in the North American monsoon UTLS from SEACRS in situ trace gas measurements
The upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) region during the summer monsoon season over North America (NAM) is influenced by the transport of air from a variety of source regions over a wide range of timescales (hours to years). Age spectra are useful for characterizing the transport into such a region, and in this study we use and build on recently developed techniques to infer age spectra from trace gas measurements with photochemical lifetimes from days to centuries. We show that the measurements taken by the whole-air sampler instrument during the SEACRS campaign can be used to derive not only age spectra, but also path-integrated lifetimes of each of the trace gases and partitioning between North American and tropical surface source origins. The method used here can also clearly identify and adjust for measurement outliers that were influenced by polluted surface source regions. The results are generally consistent with expected transport features of the NAM but also provide a range of transport diagnostics (age spectra, trace gas lifetimes and surface source regions) that have not previously been computed solely from in situ measurements. These methods may be applied to many other existing in situ datasets, and the transport diagnostics can be compared with chemistryâclimate model transport in the UTLS
Long-term trends of temperature, salinity, density and transient tracers in the Central Greenland Sea
We present long-term observations of temperature, salinity, tritium/3He, chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC 11), and chlorofluorocarbon-12 (CFC 12) for the central Greenland Gyre. The time series span the periods between 1952 and 1994 (temperature), 1981 and 1994 (salinity), 1972 and 1994 (tritium/3He), and 1982 and 1994 (CFCs). The correlation between hydrographic and transient tracer data indicates that low temperatures in the deep water in the early 1950s and between 1960 and 1980 reflect periods of higher deep water formation rates whereas periods of increasing temperatures in the late 1950s and between 1980 and 1994 are related to low deep water formation rates. However, the transient tracer observations obtained in the 1980s and early 1990s indicate that even during periods of low deep water formation, some water from the upper water column contributed to deep water formation between 1980 and 1994. In 1994, the deep water reached temperatures and salinities of â1.149 °C and 34.899, respectively, and no longer fits most of the classical definitions of Greenland Sea Deep Water (â1.29°C< Î < â1.0°C, 34.88<S<34.90). The temperature increase in the water column between 200 and 2000 m depth between 1980 and 1994 corresponds to an average heating rate of about 5 Wmâ2 over this period, resulting in a decrease in density. The 13-year warming could be balanced by intensive cooling in two winters. The surface salinity steadily increased from 34.50 in 1991 to 34.85 in 1994
Dynamical Gauge Symmetry Breaking in Extension of the Standard Model
We study the extension of the Standard model with a
strong U(1) coupling. We argue that current experiments limit this coupling to
be relatively large. The model is dynamically broken to the Standard model at the scale of a few TeV with all the extra gauge bosons
and the exotic quarks acquiring masses much larger than the scale of
electroweak symmetry breaking. Furthermore we find that the model leads to
large dynamical mass of the top quark and hence also breaks the electroweak
gauge symmetry. It therefore leads to large dynamical effects within the
Standard model and can partially replace the Higgs interactions.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, no figures; revised version predicting realistic
mass spectru
PGB pair production at LHC and ILC as a probe of the topcolor-assisted technicolor models
The topcolor-assisted technicolor (TC2) model predicts some light pseudo
goldstone bosons (PGBs), which may be accessible at the LHC or ILC. In this
work we study the pair productions of the charged or neutral PGBs at the LHC
and ILC. For the productions at the LHC we consider the processes proceeding
through gluon-gluon fusion and quark-antiquark annihilation, while for the
productions at the ILC we consider both the electron-positron collision and the
photon-photon collision. We find that in a large part of parameter space the
production cross sections at both colliders can be quite large compared with
the low standard model backgrounds. Therefore, in future experiments these
productions may be detectable and allow for probing TC2 model.Comment: 26 pages, 16 figures. slight changes in the text; notations for
curves changed; references adde
Dynamical fermion mass generation at a tricritical point in strongly coupled U(1) lattice gauge theory
Fermion mass generation in the strongly coupled U(1) lattice gauge theory
with fermion and scalar fields of equal charge is investigated by means of
numerical simulation with dynamical fermions. Chiral symmetry of this model is
broken by the gauge interaction and restored by the light scalar. We present
evidence for the existence of a particular, tricritical point of the
corresponding phase boundary where the continuum limit might possibly be
constructed. It is of interest as a model for dynamical symmetry breaking and
mass generation due to a strong gauge interaction. In addition to the massive
and unconfined fermion F and Goldstone boson , a gauge ball of mass and some other states are found. Tricritical exponents appear
to be non-classical.Comment: 21 page
Improved representation of plant functional types and physiology in the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES v4.2) using plant trait information
The Collider Phenomenology of Technihadrons in the Technicolor Straw Man Model
We discuss the phenomenology of the lightest SU(3)_C singlet and non-singlet
technihadrons in the Straw Man Model of low-scale technicolor (TCSM). The
technihadrons are assumed to be those arising in topcolor--assisted technicolor
models in which topcolor is broken by technifermion condensates. We improve
upon the description of the color--singlet sector presented in our earlier
paper introducing the TCSM (hep-ph/9903369). These improvements are most
important for subprocess energies well below the masses of the technirho and
techniomega, and, therefore, apply especially to e+e- colliders such as LEP and
a low--energy linear collider. In the color--octet sector, we consider mixing
of the gluon, the coloron V_8 from topcolor breaking, and four isosinglet
color--octet technirho mesons. We assume, as expected in walking technicolor,
that these technirhos decay into qbar-q, gg, and g-technipion final states, but
not into technipion pairs. All the TCSM production and decay processes
discussed here are included in the event generator Pythia. We present several
simulations appropriate for the Tevatron Collider, and suggest benchmark model
lines for further experimental investigation.Comment: 42 pages, 7 figure
Sites of transcription initiation drive mRNA isoform selection
The generation of distinct messenger RNA isoforms through alternative RNA processing modulates the expression and function of genes, often in a cell-type-specific manner. Here, we assess the regulatory relationships between transcription initiation, alternative splicing, and 3' end site selection. Applying long-read sequencing to accurately represent even the longest transcripts from end to end, we quantify mRNA isoforms in Drosophila tissues, including the transcriptionally complex nervous system. We find that in Drosophila heads, as well as in human cerebral organoids, 3' end site choice is globally influenced by the site of transcription initiation (TSS). "Dominant promoters," characterized by specific epigenetic signatures including p300/CBP binding, impose a transcriptional constraint to define splice and polyadenylation variants. In vivo deletion or overexpression of dominant promoters as well as p300/CBP loss disrupted the 3' end expression landscape. Our study demonstrates the crucial impact of TSS choice on the regulation of transcript diversity and tissue identity
Tevatron Constraints on Topcolor-Assisted Technicolor
We study the constraints on models of topcolor-assisted technicolor arising
from measurements of high- jets and high-mass lepton pairs at the Tevatron
collider. Existing data can eliminate models that have appeared in the
literature.Comment: Version published in Physical Review Letters with improved
statistical analysis; 11 pages Latex with 4 eps figure
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