Access by Capacity and Peak-Load Pricing

Several European telecommunications regulatory agencies have recently introduced a fixed capacity charge (flat rate) to regulate access to the incumbents network. The purpose of this paper is to show that the optimal capacity charge and the optimal access-minute charge analysed by Armstrong, Doyle, and Vickers (1996) have a similar structure and imply the same payment for the entrant. I extend the analysis to the case where there is a competitor with market power. In this case, the optimal capacity charge should be modified to avoid that the entrant cream-skims the market, fixing a longer or a shorter peak period than the optimal. Finally, I consider a multiproduct setting, where the effect of the product differentiation is exacerbated.peak-load pricing, network regulation, telecommunications, access pricing, capacity charge

Superintegrable Lissajous systems on the sphere

A kind of systems on the sphere, whose trajectories are similar to the Lissajous curves, are studied by means of one example. The symmetries are constructed following a unified and straightforward procedure for both the quantum and the classical versions of the model. In the quantum case it is stressed how the symmetries give the degeneracy of each energy level. In the classical case it is shown how the constants of motion supply the orbits, the motion and the frequencies in a natural way.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures. Submitte

Integrability, Supersymmetry and Coherent States. A volume in honour of Professor Véronique Hussin

ISBN 978-3-030-20087-

(Un)Plugging Smart Cities with Urban Transformations

In this paper, the author argues that the development of the so-called smart city concept and its use in planning inner cities are intimately bound up with required current urban transformations. In particular, regarding the notion of urban governance, which encompasses economic transformations, big data, social innovation and urban living labs as some timely key ingredients that should be addressed in contemporary cities (Urban Transformations ESRC portfolio, 2016). By contrast, it is noteworthy that although smart cities are already being built around us, they differ considerably from the simplistic‚ one-size-fits-all, smart-city-in-the-box mainstream approach (Townsend et al., 2011) that has been hegemonic so far. This idea mostly hearkens back to basic notions of deconstructing the governance interactions that actively require a holistic approach considering urban transformation trends occurring in our cities in a different manner. Based on a previously published Journal of Urban Technology paper entitled ‘Unplugging: Deconstructing the Smart City’, the authors argue that such reimagining and repositioning need to occur across smart city technologies by avoiding pragmatic approaches that wrongly are assumed to be non-ideological and commonsensical. Hence, the paper is structured in five sections. First, the concept of the smart city as both a buzzword and a fetish term will be presented. Second, the author shows how smart city policy agendas should be unpacked and plugged in again in a wider and inclusive perspective by suggesting the Unplugging framework, which consists of 10 transitions. Third, based on on-going, EU-funded smart city project’s interventions, the author underlines the importance of integrating urban transformations and research findings as a strategy that would enable more emancipatory and empowering visions of smart cities beyond simplistic market ambitions of companies or the control desires of states (Kitchin 2015: 30). Finally, five final remarks are presented as the future research agenda of (un)plugging smart cities with urban transformations: urban governance interdependencies, data to decide, metropolitan and regional scaling-up, city-to-city learning and comparing smartness (benchmarking, dashboards and rankings)

Europe is witnessing the establishment of a new regional order, built on territories such as Scotland, Catalonia and the Basque Country

This year has seen an independence referendum in Scotland, a contested debate over a proposed independence consultation in Catalonia and growing momentum behind independence movements elsewhere in Europe. Igor Calzada writes that the debates taking place within countries like Spain and the UK offer an example of what he terms ‘post-independence’. He argues that political devolution, economic development and nation-state re-scaling processes have become intertwined, thereby establishing a new European regional order characterised by the presence of city-regional small nations as new key players beyond their referential nation-states

Intertwining Symmetry Algebras of Quantum Superintegrable Systems

We present an algebraic study of a kind of quantum systems belonging to a family of superintegrable Hamiltonian systems in terms of shape-invariant intertwinig operators, that span pairs of Lie algebras like $(su(n),so(2n))$ or $(su(p,q),so(2p,2q))$. The eigenstates of the associated Hamiltonian hierarchies belong to unitary representations of these algebras. It is shown that these intertwining operators, related with separable coordinates for the system, are very useful to determine eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonians in the hierarchy. An study of the corresponding superintegrable classical systems is also included for the sake of completness

Influence of dissociative recombination on the LTE of argon high-frequency plasmas at atmospheric pressure

This work presents a few preliminary results from a collisional-radiative (CR) model intended to describe an argon microwave (2.45 GHz) plasma at atmospheric pressure. This model aims to investigate the influence of dissociative recombination products on the Saha-Boltzmann plasma equilibrium. The model is tested through comparison with experimental results obtained in an argon plasma column generated by a traveling electromagnetic surface-wave, which is suitable to perform a parametric investigation of the plasma. It is shown that dissociative recombination predominantly populates the 4s levels and the ground state. It is further observed that it strongly influences the population of the levels, specially those of lower energy. However, the higher levels (close to the ionization limit) appear to be in equilibrium whatever the plasma density. This allows assuming that the excitation temperature Texc determined from the upper levels in the atomic system in the Boltzmann-plot is equal to Te.Comment: 12th International Congress on Plasma Physics, 25-29 October 2004, Nice (France

Five turns of the screw. A CADS analysis of the European Parliament

The present paper proposes a CADS-based analysis of European Parliament speeches, by merging (C)DA theoretical constructs (inspired by Laclau and Mouffe 1985 ) and CL tools. In this fashion, the European Comparable and Parallel Corpus of Parliamentary Speeches Archive (ECPC) is examined along synchronic and diachronic, quantitative and qualitative lines, in an inductive study that commutes from the micro-text to the macro-context