Geographic space, assets, livelihoods and well-being in rural Central America

"This paper uses an asset-base framework to analyze the determinants of rural growth and sustainable poverty reduction for the three poorest countries in Central America: Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua...Using a combination of GIS mapping techniques, quantitative household analysis, and qualitative analyses of assets and livelihoods, the authors generate a description of rural territories that recognizes the differential effects of policies and asset bundles across space and households. They identify the combinations of human, natural and physical, social and location-specific assets that matter most to raise household well-being and take advantage of prospects for poverty-reducing growth." from Authors' AbstractPoverty reduction ,rural livelihoods ,Households Economic aspects ,

Propagators in Lagrangian space

It has been found recently that propagators, e.g. the cross-correlation spectra of the cosmic fields with the initial density field, decay exponentially at large-k in an Eulerian description of the dynamics. We explore here similar quantities defined for a Lagrangian space description. We find that propagators in Lagrangian space do not exhibit the same properties: they are found not to be monotonic functions of time, and to track back the linear growth rate at late time (but with a renormalized amplitude). These results have been obtained with a novel method which we describe alongside. It allows the formal resummation of the same set of diagrams as those that led to the known results in Eulerian space. We provide a tentative explanation for the marked differences seen between the Eulerian and the Lagrangian cases, and we point out the role played by the vorticity degrees of freedom that are specific to the Lagrangian formalism. This provides us with new insights into the late-time behavior of the propagators.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Density waves in the shearing sheet I. Swing amplification

The shearing sheet model of a galactic disk is studied anew. The theoretical description of its dynamics is based on three building blocks: Stellar orbits, which are described here in epicyclic approximation, the collisionless Boltzmann equation determining the distribution function of stars in phase space, and the Poisson equation in order to take account of the self-gravity of the disk. Using these tools I develop a new formalism to describe perturbations of the shearing sheet. Applying this to the unbounded shearing sheet model I demonstrate again how the disturbances of the disk evolve always into `swing amplified' density waves, i.e. spiral-arm like, shearing density enhancements, which grow and decay while the wave crests swing by from leading to trailing orientation. Several examples are given how such `swing amplification' events are incited in the shearing sheet.Comment: small corrections, uses new A&A style fil

Class of invariants for the 2D time-dependent Landau problem and harmonic oscillator in a magnetic field

We consider an isotropic two dimensional harmonic oscillator with arbitrarily time-dependent mass $M(t)$ and frequency $\Omega(t)$ in an arbitrarily time-dependent magnetic field $B(t)$. We determine two commuting invariant observables (in the sense of Lewis and Riesenfeld) $L,I$ in terms of some solution of an auxiliary ordinary differential equation and an orthonormal basis of the Hilbert space consisting of joint eigenvectors $\phi_\lambda$ of $L,I$. We then determine time-dependent phases $\alpha_\lambda(t)$ such that the $\psi_\lambda(t)=e^{i\alpha_\lambda}\phi_\lambda$ are solutions of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation and make up an orthonormal basis of the Hilbert space. These results apply, in particular to a two dimensional Landau problem with time-dependent $M,B$, which is obtained from the above just by setting $\Omega(t) \equiv 0$. By a mere redefinition of the parameters, these results can be applied also to the analogous models on the canonical non-commutative plane.Comment: 13 pages, 3 references adde

Evidence for a meteoritic origin of the September 15, 2007, Carancas crater

On September 15th, 2007, around 11:45 local time in Peru, near the Bolivian border, the atmospheric entry of a meteoroid produced bright lights in the sky and intense detonations. Soon after, a crater was discovered south of Lake Titicaca. These events have been detected by the Bolivian seismic network and two infrasound arrays operating for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, situated at about 80 and 1620 km from the crater. The localization and origin time computed with the seismic records are consistent with the reported impact. The entry elevation and azimuthal angles of the trajectory are estimated from the observed signal time sequences and backazimuths. From the crater diameter and the airwave amplitudes, the kinetic energy, mass and explosive energy are calculated. Using the estimated velocity of the meteoroid and similarity criteria between orbital elements, an association with possible parent asteroids is attempted. The favorable setting of this event provides a unique opportunity to evaluate physical and kinematic parameters of the object that generated the first actual terrestrial meteorite impact seismically recorded

Reduced Gutzwiller formula with symmetry: case of a finite group

We consider a classical Hamiltonian $H$ on $\mathbb{R}^{2d}$, invariant by a finite group of symmetry $G$, whose Weyl quantization $\hat{H}$ is a selfadjoint operator on $L^2(\mathbb{R}^d)$. If $\chi$ is an irreducible character of $G$, we investigate the spectrum of its restriction $\hat{H}\_\chi$ to the symmetry subspace $L^2\_\chi(\mathbb{R}^d)$ of $L^2(\mathbb{R}^d)$ coming from the decomposition of Peter-Weyl. We give reduced semi-classical asymptotics of a regularised spectral density describing the spectrum of $\hat{H}\_\chi$ near a non critical energy $E\in\mathbb{R}$. If $\Sigma\_E:=\{H=E \}$ is compact, assuming that periodic orbits are non-degenerate in $\Sigma\_E/G$, we get a reduced Gutzwiller trace formula which makes periodic orbits of the reduced space $\Sigma\_E/G$ appear. The method is based upon the use of coherent states, whose propagation was given in the work of M. Combescure and D. Robert.Comment: 20 page

Slowly, rotating non-stationary, fluid solutions of Einstein's equations and their match to Kerr empty space-time

A general class of solutions of Einstein's equation for a slowly rotating fluid source, with supporting internal pressure, is matched using Lichnerowicz junction conditions, to the Kerr metric up to and including first order terms in angular speed parameter. It is shown that the match applies to any previously known non-rotating fluid source made to rotate slowly for which a zero pressure boundary surface exists. The method is applied to the dust source of Robertson-Walker and in outline to an interior solution due to McVittie describing gravitational collapse. The applicability of the method to additional examples is transparent. The differential angular velocity of the rotating systems is determined and the induced rotation of local inertial frame is exhibited

Generation of Vorticity and Velocity Dispersion by Orbit Crossing

We study the generation of vorticity and velocity dispersion by orbit crossing using cosmological numerical simulations, and calculate the backreaction of these effects on the evolution of large-scale density and velocity divergence power spectra. We use Delaunay tessellations to define the velocity field, showing that the power spectra of velocity divergence and vorticity measured in this way are unbiased and have better noise properties than for standard interpolation methods that deal with mass weighted velocities. We show that high resolution simulations are required to recover the correct large-scale vorticity power spectrum, while poor resolution can spuriously amplify its amplitude by more than one order of magnitude. We measure the scalar and vector modes of the stress tensor induced by orbit crossing using an adaptive technique, showing that its vector modes lead, when input into the vorticity evolution equation, to the same vorticity power spectrum obtained from the Delaunay method. We incorporate orbit crossing corrections to the evolution of large scale density and velocity fields in perturbation theory by using the measured stress tensor modes. We find that at large scales (k~0.1 h/Mpc) vector modes have very little effect in the density power spectrum, while scalar modes (velocity dispersion) can induce percent level corrections at z=0, particularly in the velocity divergence power spectrum. In addition, we show that the velocity power spectrum is smaller than predicted by linear theory until well into the nonlinear regime, with little contribution from virial velocities.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures. v2: reorganization of the material, new appendix. Accepted by PR