The incidence of graft on developing-country firms

This paper measures the extent to which firms in developing countries are the target of bribes. Using new firm-level survey data from 33 African and Latin American countries, we first show that perceptions adjust slowly tofirms'experience with corrupt officials and hence are an imperfect proxy for the true incidence of graft. We then construct an experience-based index that reflects the probability that a firm will be asked for a bribe in order to complete a specified set of business transactions. On average, African firms are three times as likely to be asked for bribes as are firms in Latin America, although there is substantial variation within each region. Last, we show that graft appears to be more prevalent in countries with excessive regulation and where democracy is weak. In particular, our results suggest that the incidence of graft in Africa would fall by approximately 85 percent if countries in the region had levels of democracy and regulation similar to those that exist in Latin America.Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Crime and Society,E-Business,Access to Finance

Jupiter as an exoplanet: UV to NIR transmission spectrum reveals hazes, a Na layer and possibly stratospheric H2O-ice clouds

Currently, the analysis of transmission spectra is the most successful technique to probe the chemical composition of exoplanet atmospheres. But the accuracy of these measurements is constrained by observational limitations and the diversity of possible atmospheric compositions. Here we show the UV-VIS-IR transmission spectrum of Jupiter, as if it were a transiting exoplanet, obtained by observing one of its satellites, Ganymede, while passing through Jupiter's shadow i.e., during a solar eclipse from Ganymede. The spectrum shows strong extinction due to the presence of clouds (aerosols) and haze in the atmosphere, and strong absorption features from CH4. More interestingly, the comparison with radiative transfer models reveals a spectral signature, which we attribute here to a Jupiter stratospheric layer of crystalline H2O ice. The atomic transitions of Na are also present. These results are relevant for the modeling and interpretation of giant transiting exoplanets. They also open a new technique to explore the atmospheric composition of the upper layers of Jupiter's atmosphere.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Applying Liberation Psychology Tenets to the Career Trajectory of the First Chicano Psychologist

The authors of this paper use a liberation psychology framework to explore the career trajectory of Alfredo Castañeda (1923-1981), the first Latinx individual to earn a Ph.D. in psychology and the first Mexican American to hold a full professorship in the United States. Castañeda experienced a prolific career in teaching and research that began by investigating universal elements in children’s learning and anxiety and ultimately transformed into an emphasis on multiculturalism, cultural strengths, advocacy, and social justice. A combination of data was used to inform the current project, including interviews from Castañeda’s former graduate students, published obituaries and memorial tributes, and Castañeda’s published and unpublished works. Liberation psychology tenets are applied to his career trajectory to highlight the underlying parallel process of psychological liberation, particularly in the realm of accessing cultural strengths inherent within traditional Latinx values

A ringed pole-on outflow from DO Tauri revealed by ALMA

We present new ALMA Band 6 observations including the CO (2-1) line and 1.3 mmcontinuum emission from the surroundings of the young stellar object DO Tauri. TheALMA CO molecular data show three different series of rings at different radial ve-locities. These rings have radii around 220 au and 800 au. We make individual fits tothe rings and note that their centers are aligned with DO Tauri and its optical high-velocity jet. In addition, we notice that the velocity of these structures increases withthe separation from the young star. We discuss the data under the hypothesis that therings represent velocity cuts through three outflowing shells that are possibly drivenby a wide-angle wind, dragging the environment material along a direction close to theline of sight (i= 19◦). We estimate the dynamical ages, the mass, the momentum andthe energy of each individual outflow shell and those of the whole outflow. The resultsare in agreement with those found in outflows from Class II sources. We make a roughestimate for the size of the jet/wind launching region, which needs to be of.15 au.We report the physical characteristics of DO Tauri?s disk continuum emission (almostface-on and with a projected major axis in the north-south direction) and its velocitygradient orientation (north-south), indicative of disk rotation for a 1-2 Mcentral star.Finally we show an HST [SII] image of the optical jet and report a measurement of itsorientation in the plane of the sky.Fil: Fernandez Lopez, Manuel. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía; ArgentinaFil: Zapata Gonzalez, Luis Alberto. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Instituto de Astronomia; MéxicoFil: Rodríguez, Luis F.. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Instituto de Astronomia; MéxicoFil: Vazzano, María Mercedes. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía; ArgentinaFil: Guzman, Andrés E.. National Astronomical Observatory Of Japan; JapónFil: López, Rosario. Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Facultad de Física. Departamento Astronomía y Meteorología; Españ

Water vapor emission from IRC+10216 and other carbon-rich stars: model predictions and prospects for multitransition observations

We have modeled the emission of H2O rotational lines from the extreme C-rich star IRC+10216. Our treatment of the excitation of H2O emissions takes into account the excitation of H2O both through collisions, and through the pumping of the nu2 and nu3 vibrational states by dust emission and subsequent decay to the ground state. Regardless of the spatial distribution of the water molecules, the H2O 1_{10}-1_{01} line at 557 GHz observed by the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) is found to be pumped primarily through the absorption of dust-emitted photons at 6 $\mu$m in the nu2 band. As noted by previous authors, the inclusion of radiative pumping lowers the ortho-H2O abundance required to account for the 557 GHz emission, which is found to be (0.5-1)x10^{-7} if the presence of H2O is a consequence of vaporization of orbiting comets or Fischer-Tropsch catalysis. Predictions for other submillimeter H2O lines that can be observed by the Herschel Space Observatory (HSO) are reported. Multitransition HSO observations promise to reveal the spatial distribution of the circumstellar water vapor, discriminating among the several hypotheses that have been proposed for the origin of the H2O vapor in the envelope of IRC+10216. We also show that, for observations with HSO, the H2O 1_{10}-1_{01} 557 GHz line affords the greatest sensitivity in searching for H2O in other C-rich AGB stars.Comment: 35 pages, 12 figures, to be published in The Astrophysical Journa

Strange matter in the universe

The strange quark matter hypothesis is one of the most exciting speculations of the XX Century Physics. If this hypothesis is correct, the ground state of the matter would be the strange matter, which could form the core of compact objects like neutron stars or even more exotic objects like quarks stars. Due to the high-density and low-temperature regime in these stars, the interaction between quarks through gluon exchange could favor the appearance of a color superconducting state, significantl modifying the equation of state of the system. In this paper we present a general overview of this Subject, taking also into account the effect of strong magnetic field in the quark stars

Dark Energy Accretion onto black holes in a cosmic scenario

In this paper we study the accretion of dark energy onto a black hole in the cases that dark energy is equipped with a positive cosmological constant and when the space-time is described by a Schwarzschild-de Sitter metric. It is shown that, if confronted with current observational data, the results derived when no cosmological constant is present are once again obtained in both cases.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure