Ray-tracing and physical-optics analysis of the aperture efficiency in a radio telescope

The performance of telescope systems working at microwave or visible/IR wavelengths is typically described in terms of different parameters according to the wavelength range. Most commercial ray tracing packages have been specifically designed for use with visible/IR systems and thus, though very flexible and sophisticated, do not provide the appropriate parameters to fully describe microwave antennas, and thus to compare with specifications. In this work we demonstrate that the Strehl ratio is equal to the phase efficiency when the apodization factor is taken into account. The phase efficiency is the most critical contribution to the aperture efficiency of an antenna, and the most difficult parameter to optimize during the telescope design. The equivalence between the Strehl ratio and the phase efficiency gives the designer/user of the telescope the opportunity to use the faster commercial ray-tracing software to optimize the design. We also discuss the results of several tests performed to check the validity of this relationship that we carried out using a ray-tracing software, ZEMAX and a full Physical Optics software, GRASP9.3, applied to three different telescope designs that span a factor of $\simeq 10 in terms of D/lambda. The maximum measured discrepancy between phase efficiency and Strehl ratio varies between$\simeq 0.4 and 1.9 up to an offset angle of >40 beams, depending on the optical configuration, but it is always less than 0.5 where the Strehl ratio is >0.95.Comment: 34 pages, 7 figure

Measuring growth of labour quality and the quality-adjusted unemployment rate in Switzerland

This paper presents results on human capital accumulation for the Swiss economy. We find that the index of labour quality has grown at a rate of 0.5% per year from 1991 to 2006. The main sources are the growth in average levels of education and the passing of the baby boom cohort through the age structure of the workforce. Projections over the period 2006-2050 suggest that labour quality growth will slow down with time. We also calculate a quality-adjusted unemployment rate and find that the unemployment rate is reduced by about 0.3 pp when human capital accumulation is taken into account.human capital, labour quality, unemployment rate

Dendritic-Cell (DC)-Based Immunotherapy: Tumor Endothelial Marker 8 (TEM8) Gene Expression of DC Vaccines Correlates with Clinical Outcome

ABSTRACT\ud Previous studies have shown that tumor-endothelial markers (TEMs) are upregulated in immunosuppressive, pro-angiogenic dendritic cells (DCs) found in tumor microenvironments. \ud We reported that pro-angiogenic monocyte-derived DCs (Mo-DCs), utilized for therapeutic vaccination of cancer patients upon maturation, markedly differ in their ability to up-regulate tumor-endothelial marker 8 (TEM8) gene\ud expression. A DC vaccination trial of 17 advanced cancer patients (13 melanoma and 4 renal cell carcinoma), carried out at the Cancer Institute of Romagna (I.R.S.T.) in Meldola, highlighted a significant correlation between delayed-type hypersensitivity test (DTH) and overall survival (OS). In the study, relative TEM8 mRNA and protein expression levels (mature (m) vs. immature (i) DCs), in DCs obtained for therapeutic vaccines were evaluated by quantitative real-time RT-PCR and cytofluorimetric analysis, respectively. mDCs from six healthy donors were included for comparison purposes. Eight non-progressing patients, all DTH-positive, had a mean fold increase\ud (mfi) of 1.97 in TEM8 expression. Similarly, a TEM8 mRNA mfi = 2.7 was found in healthy donor mDCs. Conversely, mDCs from nine progressing patients, all but one with negative DTH, had a TEM8 mRNA mfi of 12.88. Thus, mDC TEM8 expression levels would seem to identify (p = 0.0018) patients who could benefit from DC therapeutic vaccination

Social Bonds And Fear Of Crime Victimization Among Youth: An Analysis Using Ferraro’s Risk Assessment Framework

The impact of crime taking place in society can be fluid and may quickly gain the form of fear among individuals with both direct and no direct victimization experience. While youth are extensively more vulnerable and immature than adults (Krulichová & Podaná, 2019), they are more likely to have or learn the fear of crime victimization. Therefore, the distribution and etiology of youth fear of crime victimization should not be overlooked. Ferraro\u27s (1995) risk assessment framework suggests incorporating theoretical variables to predict the evolution of fear. With the inclusion of the perceived risk of victimization, Ferraro\u27s risk assessment framework provides a comprehensive understanding of how an individual\u27s response to crime transitions into fear of crime victimization. This research utilized the Ferraro risk assessment framework and employed Social Bond Theory to examine the impact of social bonds on youth\u27s perceived risk and fear of crime victimization. This quantitative research utilized secondary data to perform analysis. The data for this research came from the National Evaluation of the Teens, Crime, and Community and the Community Works (TCC/CW)program, a self-report study of adolescents from several locations across the United States (Esbensen, 2005). This research conducted a Mediation Analysis to understand the relationships between social bonds, such as parental attachment, school commitment, the belief of guilt for wrongdoings, and involvement in legitimate activities, perceived risk of victimization, and fear of crime victimization among youth in general and across various race/ethnic and gender backgrounds of the youth. Results from Mediation Analysis identified that perceived risk of victimization significantly mediated the relationship between parental attachment and fear of crime, and school commitment and fear of crime among all youth and girls. Further, the study results suggested a non-significant relationship between all the elements of the social bonds, perceived risk of victimization, and fear of crime victimization among young males irrespective of their race and ethnic origin. Overall, two elements of social bonds, parental attachment and school commitment, were found to be important in minimizing the perceived risk of victimization and fear of crime victimization among the youth in general and specifically among females. Keywords: social bonds, perceived risk of victimization, fear of crime victimization, Ferraro’s risk assessment framework, youth, gende

Innovators in Urban China: Makerspaces and Marginality with Impact

In China, the emergence of makerspaces, hackerspaces, Fab Labs, and innovation labs reflects top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The grassroots movements and governmental efforts promoting innovation and creativity are part of the maker trend linked to the rise of the Internet and access to digital tools. The urban imaginary of the maker culture creates networks and events both globally and locally. The first makerspaces opened in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 2010 and attracted the attention of the government, which published an initiative in 2015 that influenced the typology of makerspaces in China. The ephemeral spaces for innovators, hackers, makers, and entrepreneurs shaped by this cultural context and local ecosystem are urban phenomena investigated with social anthropological and experimental methodologies to better understand the extension and platformisation of these autonomous and co-opted communities and narratives. This research fills the knowledge gap on makerspaces in China in recent years, showing the impact of governmental initiatives on a grassroots culture, the possible roles of makers, and the complexity and unlimitedness of the maker culture through international partnerships for projects such as Designed in Ethiopia and Kabakoo Academies

Measurement of labor quality growth: Caused by unobservable characteristics

The standard economy-wide indices of labor quality (or human capital) largely ignore the role of unobservable worker characteristics. In this paper, we develop a methodology for identifying the contributions of both observable and unobservable worker characteristics in the presence of the incidental parameter problem. Based on data for Switzerland over the period 1991-2006, we find that a large part of growth in labor quality is caused by shifts in the distribution of unobservable characteristics. The contributions to growth attributed to education and age are corrected downwards, if unobservable worker characteristics are taken into account. Yet the standard indices of labor quality appear to be robust to this extension

Evaluating the Impact of Employment Protection on Firm-Provided Training in an RDD Framework

This paper exploits exceptions in the application of employment protection legislation (EPL) to small firms beneath a particular size threshold to test the theoretical hypothesis that EPL increases the incentives of firms to train their employees in a regression discontinuity setting. Using firm-level data from Finland and Italy provides no empirical evidence for this hypothesis. In fact, the results rather suggest a potentially negative impact, which is unstable across empirical specifications though. We test whether this might be due to a negative selection of employees by comparing firms with low and high shares of old employees. The insignificantly higher effect of EPL for firms with older workers provides at best suggestive evidence that EPL affects training negatively though

A comparison of firm-level innovation cooperation in five European countries

This paper compares the determinants and the effects of innovation cooperation on innovation performance at firm level in five European countries: Belgium, Germany, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland. In a first step we analyse cooperation agreements with national and international partners and in a second step cooperation with enterprises and research institutions. In a third step we investigate the impact of all four categories of cooperation on innovation performance

Job mobility, peer effects, and research productivity in economics

Analysing a comprehensive panel dataset of economists working at Austrian, German, and Swiss universities, we investigate how the local environment influences a scientist's research productivity. The research environment varies if a scientist joins another department or if the characteristics of his colleagues change. We find no influence of the research environment on the average researcher's productivity, if we control for individual characteristics. This result indicates that with today's communication technologies spillovers are not bounded locally

Do competitively acquired funds induce public research institutions to behave efficiently?

This paper analyzes the effect of public and private third-party funds on the effciency of departments of Swiss public research institutions. Estimating an output distance function assuming that labor is used to produce master students and scientific publications, we find no statistically significant effect of private or public third-party funding on research efficiency. However, once we include technology transfer as an additional output, the coefficient of private funding is statistically significant. We further find that this disciplining effect of private funding is qualitatively robust in a setting controlling for endogeneity