Social inequalities: theories, concepts and problematics

This article aims to present a concise perusal of the different approaches developed in the study of social inequalities and in the relationships that they establish with manifold social processes and problems. The text does not intend to be exhaustive from the theoretical point of view, but rather to present an overview of the analytical complexity of the inequalities systems and demonstrate that they should be tackled in a multidimensional, systemic and multiscale perspective.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Introduction: Spaces of inequality

WOS:000395242900001 (Nº de Acesso Web of Science

Phase diagram of a model for a binary mixture of nematic molecules on a Bethe lattice

We investigate the phase diagram of a discrete version of the Maier-Saupe model with the inclusion of additional degrees of freedom to mimic a distribution of rodlike and disklike molecules. Solutions of this problem on a Bethe lattice come from the analysis of the fixed points of a set of nonlinear recursion relations. Besides the fixed points associated with isotropic and uniaxial nematic structures, there is also a fixed point associated with a biaxial nematic structure. Due to the existence of large overlaps of the stability regions, we resorted to a scheme to calculate the free energy of these structures deep in the interior of a large Cayley tree. Both thermodynamic and dynamic-stability analyses rule out the presence of a biaxial phase, in qualitative agreement with previous mean-field results

Social capital and socio-demographic changes: from non-differentiation to multifocalisation

WOS:000333744200004 (Nº de Acesso Web of Science)This article examines how different socio-demographic trends interrelate with alterations in the traditional forms of social and interpersonal relationships. We will focus on two Portuguese municipalities using the concept of rural community as an analytic starting point for framing and examining the different dimensions of social capital. The survey's data shows that the generalised nature of mutual knowledge and trust, that used to characterise more traditional communities, tends now to depend on new social categories and groups that live and interact in these places. The study contains a multivariate, multiple correspondence analysis, which shows three different profiles of social capital coexisting in the two areas

Embedding Versus Immersion in General Relativity

We briefly discuss the concepts of immersion and embedding of space-times in higher-dimensional spaces. We revisit the classical work by Kasner in which he constructs a model of immersion of the Schwarzschild exterior solution into a six-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean manifold. We show that, from a physical point of view, this model is not entirely satisfactory since the causal structure of the immersed space-time is not preserved by the immersion.Comment: 5 page

Multiple disparities: earning inequalities in Lisbon

The aim of this article is to analyse the way in which unequal salaries are related to spatial disparities within the city of Lisbon in a context of economic globalization. It will therefore compare the pay levels of the Lisbon's working population in the different parishes. Lisbon municipality stands out from the rest of Portugal because of workers' higher earnings there. However, the municipality has higher inequality levels than those of the country as a whole. These inequalities are not evenly distributed in the municipality’s parishes

Statistical models of mixtures with a biaxial nematic phase

We consider a simple Maier-Saupe statistical model with the inclusion of disorder degrees of freedom to mimic the phase diagram of a mixture of rod-like and disc-like molecules. A quenched distribution of shapes leads to the existence of a stable biaxial nematic phase, in qualitative agreement with experimental findings for some ternary lyotropic liquid mixtures. An annealed distribution, however, which is more adequate to liquid mixtures, precludes the stability of this biaxial phase. We then use a two-temperature formalism, and assume a separation of relaxation times, to show that a partial degree of annealing is already sufficient to stabilize a biaxial nematic structure.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Dynamics of Wolbachia pipientis gene expression across the Drosophila melanogaster life cycle

Symbiotic interactions between microbes and their multicellular hosts have manifold impacts on molecular, cellular and organismal biology. To identify candidate bacterial genes involved in maintaining endosymbiotic associations with insect hosts, we analyzed genome-wide patterns of gene expression in the alpha-proteobacteria Wolbachia pipientis across the life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster using public data from the modENCODE project that was generated in a Wolbachia-infected version of the ISO1 reference strain. We find that the majority of Wolbachia genes are expressed at detectable levels in D. melanogaster across the entire life cycle, but that only 7.8% of 1195 Wolbachia genes exhibit robust stage- or sex-specific expression differences when studied in the "holo-organism" context. Wolbachia genes that are differentially expressed during development are typically up-regulated after D. melanogaster embryogenesis, and include many bacterial membrane, secretion system and ankyrin-repeat containing proteins. Sex-biased genes are often organised as small operons of uncharacterised genes and are mainly up-regulated in adult males D. melanogaster in an age-dependent manner suggesting a potential role in cytoplasmic incompatibility. Our results indicate that large changes in Wolbachia gene expression across the Drosophila life-cycle are relatively rare when assayed across all host tissues, but that candidate genes to understand host-microbe interaction in facultative endosymbionts can be successfully identified using holo-organism expression profiling. Our work also shows that mining public gene expression data in D. melanogaster provides a rich set of resources to probe the functional basis of the Wolbachia-Drosophila symbiosis and annotate the transcriptional outputs of the Wolbachia genome.Comment: 58 pages, 6 figures, 6 supplemental figures, 4 supplemental files (available at https://github.com/bergmanlab/wolbachia/tree/master/gutzwiller_et_al/arxiv

Condiciones ambientales y diferenciación social en los patrones de movilidad: el caso de las desigualdades de género en el Área Metropolitana de Lisboa

Place determinants and social dimensions interact to produce mobility patterns. The article seeks to measure to what extent the physical and social conditions of the residency place modulate the intensity of mobility particularly in what concerns gender inequalities. To do so, we first present the theoretical framework, which guides our perspective on mobility inequalities and the geographical focus: Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). Secondly, using logistic regression on representative data from a survey to LMA inhabitants we elaborate on the concept of environmental motility and its relationship to various types of inequality. Lastly, we systematize a view on accumulated inequalities examining how local environments may increase the mobilities gender gap.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio