Local Environment Control and Institutional Crowding-out

Regulations that are designed to improve social welfare typically begin with the premise that individuals are purely self-interested. Experimental evidence shows, however, that individuals do not typically behave this way; instead, they tend to strike a balance between self and group interests. From experiments performed in rural Colombia, we found that a regulatory solution for an environmental dilemma that standard theory predicts would improve social welfare clearly did not. This occurred because individuals confronted with the regulation began to exhibit less other-regarding behavior and made choices that were more self-interested; that is, the regulation appeared to crowd out other-regarding behavior.institutional crowding-out, external regulation, local environment quality, experiments, South America, Colombia

Economic inequality and burden-sharing in the provision of local environmental quality

A large, but inconclusive, literature addresses how economic heterogeneity affects the use of local resources and local environmental quality. One line of thought, which derives from Nash equilibrium provision of public goods, suggests that in contexts in which individual actions degrade local environmental quality, wealthier people in a community will tend to do more to protect environmental quality. In this paper we report on experiments performed in rural Colombia that were designed to explore the role that economic inequality plays in the å¢rovision-of local environmental quality. Subjects were asked to decide how much time to devote to collecting firewood from a local forest, which degrades local water quality, and how much to unrelated pursuits. Economic heterogeneity was introduced by varying the private returns to these alternative pursuits. Consistent with the Nash equilibrium prediction, we found that the players with more valuable alternative options put less pressure on local water quality. However, the subjects with less valuable alternative options showed significantly more restraint relative to their pure Nash strategies. Furthermore, they were willing to bear significantly greater opportunity costs to move their groups to outcomes that yielded higher average payoffs and better water quality than the Nash equilibrium outcome.Local environment quality, burden sharing, economic inequality, experiments

Cluster size distributions in gas jets for different nozzle geometries

Cluster size distributions were investigated in case of different nozzle geometries in argon and xenon using Rayleigh scattering diagnostics. Different nozzle geometries result in different behaviour, therefore both spatial- and temporal cluster size distributions were studied to obtain a well-characterized cluster target. It is shown that the generally used Hagena scaling can result in a significant deviation from the observed data and the behaviour cannot be described by a single material condensation parameter. The results along with the nanoplasma model applied to the data of previous high harmonic generation experiments allow the independent measurement of cluster size and cluster density.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Electrokenitic Corrosion Treatment of Concrete

A method and apparatus for strengthening cementitious concrete by placing a nanoparticle carrier liquid in contact with a first surface of a concrete section and inducing a current across the concrete section at sufficient magnitude and for sufficient time that nanoparticles in the nanoparticle carrier liquid migrate through a significant depth of the concrete section

Electrokinetic Strength Enhancement of Concrete

A method and apparatus for strengthening cementitious concrete by placing a nanoparticle carrier liquid in contact with a first surface of a concrete section and inducing a current across the concrete section at sufficient magnitude and for sufficient time that nanoparticles in the nanoparticle carrier liquid migrate through a significant depth of the concrete section

Magnon valley Hall effect in CrI3-based vdW heterostructures

Magnonic excitations in the two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnet CrI3 are studied. We find that bulk magnons exhibit a non-trivial topological band structure without the need for Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction. This is shown in vdW heterostructures, consisting of single-layer CrI3 on top of different 2D materials as MoTe2, HfS2 and WSe2. We find numerically that the proposed substrates modify substantially the out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy on each sublattice of the CrI3 subsystem. The induced staggered anisotropy, combined with a proper band inversion, leads to the opening of a topological gap of the magnon spectrum. Since the gap is opened non-symmetrically at the K+ and K- points of the Brillouin zone, an imbalance in the magnon population between these two valleys can be created under a driving force. This phenomenon is in close analogy to the so-called valley Hall effect (VHE), and thus termed as magnon valley Hall effect (MVHE). In linear response to a temperature gradient we quantify this effect by the evaluation of the temperature-dependence of the magnon thermal Hall effect. These findings open a different avenue by adding the valley degrees of freedom besides the spin, in the study of magnons

Diversity and distribution models of horse flies (Diptera : Tabanidae) from Ecuador

Worldwide information about Tabanidae is biased toward taxonomical research, which has been the main source of diversity data for this group of flies. In Ecuador, studies on horse flies have been irregular since the first descriptions of three Andean specimens in 1848. Catalogues, checklists and collections in national museums demonstrate that despite its size, Ecuador is at present the richest country in number of tabanids species in the Neotropics after Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and has one of the highest numbers of species per unit area. The tabanofauna is predominantly shared with Colombia (62.6%), Peru (47%), Brazil (35.9%), Panama (35.4%), and Venezuela (30.3%) that have biogeographic areas in common with Ecuador. Endemism rate of this group is around 12.6%, with Diachlorus, Dicladocera, Esenbeckia, Eristalotabanus (monotypic), and Leucotabanus genera as the most representatives. We add new records of Tabanidae for the country. The genus Hemichrysops was recorded for first time. The number of species in Ecuador now totals 198. A catalogue of all Ecuadorian species is compiled with a localities-gazetteer. We also present and discuss for the first time, the distribution of well known horse flies species (Chrysops varians var. tardus, Dicladocera macula and Fidena rhinophora) using georeferenced localities and niche modelling analyses