A single currency for Asia? Evaluation and comparison using hierarchical and model-based cluster analysis

Today, there is increased speculation on the possibility of an Asian currency, as the region begins to show increased promise as a region of nascent economic activity. Any monetary integration scheme in East Asia would likely have to include both China and India though, so this paper attempts to assess the evolution of convergence among the East Asian countries, including China and India, according to the optimum currency area theory criteria, which is operationalized through the use of cluster analysis. In this paper we use both traditional "hierarchical" clustering as well as the more recently developed "model-based" clustering techniques and compare the outcome in each case. As the East Asian crisis of 1997-98 is likely to a¤ect the results, the exercise is done for pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis periods. The results reveal some structure among the countries, an increase in the degree of subregional homogeneity, and a robust relationship between Malaysia and Singapore

Flavoured Soft Leptogenesis

We study the impact of flavour in ``soft leptogenesis'' (leptogenesis induced by soft supersymmetry breaking terms). We address the question of how flavour effects can affect the region of parameters in which successful soft leptogenesis induced by CP violation in the right-handed sneutrino mixing is possible. We find that for decays which occur in the intermediate to strong washout regimes for all flavours, the produced total $B-L$ asymmetry can be up to a factor ${\cal O}(30)$ larger than the one predicted with flavour effects being neglected. This enhancement, permits slightly larger values of the required lepton violating soft bilinear term.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures. Version accepted in JHEP. Results unchange

A Game Industry Beyond Diversity: Systemic Barriers to Participation in South Korea

Digital gaming has become a prominent part of mainstream culture. However, as one may observe in the public exhibitions of this form of play, the multitude of reasons for participation in the games industry are especially divided along gender lines. This paper is an analysis of themes emerging from the critical ethnographic examination of South Korea’s1 online game culture that, upon closer and iterative analyses, point to additional socioeconomic complications and systemic barriers to women’s equitable participation in the game development and production. Using South Korea’s national context as a point of reference, the findings from this case study offer a synthesis between educational policies and industry practices that implicate how labor originating from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) disciplines may include crucial systemic barriers to women’s participation in the aspects of game culture contributing the most to upward mobility. The findings illustrate that factors (such as compulsory military service) that are typically overlooked in policy research are imperative to understanding how specific structural systems serve to reinforce existing gender norms. These factors go beyond gender disparities, pipeline issues and problems of representation that preclude female’s substantive involvement in the game industry

Quantum Diffusion on Molecular Tubes: Universal Scaling of the 1D to 2D Transition

The transport properties of disordered systems are known to depend critically on dimensionality. We study the diffusion coefficient of a quantum particle confined to a lattice on the surface of a tube, where it scales between the 1D and 2D limits. It is found that the scaling relation is universal and independent of the disorder and noise parameters, and the essential order parameter is the ratio between the localization length in 2D and the circumference of the tube. Phenomenological and quantitative expressions for transport properties as functions of disorder and noise are obtained and applied to real systems: In the natural chlorosomes found in light-harvesting bacteria the exciton transfer dynamics is predicted to be in the 2D limit, whereas a family of synthetic molecular aggregates is found to be in the homogeneous limit and is independent of dimensionality.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Self-Dual Conformal Supergravity and the Hamiltonian Formulation

In terms of Dirac matrices the self-dual and anti-self-dual decomposition of a conformal supergravity is given and a self-dual conformal supergravity theory is developed as a connection dynamic theory in which the basic dynamic variabes include the self-dual spin connection i.e. the Ashtekar connection rather than the triad. The Hamiltonian formulation and the constraints are obtained by using the Dirac-Bergmann algorithm. PACS numbers: 04.20.Cv, 04.20.Fy,04.65.+

Implementation of packaged integrated antenna with embedded front end for Bluetooth applications

The design, integration and realization of system in enhanced package approach towards fully functional system level integration by using a compact Bluetooth USB dongle as the demonstrator is presented here. The integration was done on FR4 substrates, which is totally compatible with today’s printed circuit board manufacturing capability. A commercially available Bluetooth integrated chip was chosen as the chipset of our demonstrator, and a package integrated antenna together with an embedded front end completes the system in package integration. The front end developed here is based on an embedded meander line combline filter and an embedded transformer balun. The filter has a 35% area reduction when compared with the classical combline filter and similar performance. The balun has the coils distributed on three layers that minimized the board area needed it and optimizes the performances. The proposed packaged integrated antenna approach is successfully demonstrated here and the new module shows excellent performance when compared with a commercial solution, surpassing the normal Bluetooth class II dongle range which is up to 10 m and increasing the module range up to 120 m without an extra power amplifier