Growth Cycles in XXth Century European Industrial Productivity: Unbiased Variance Estimation in a Time-varying Parameter Model

This note applies the median unbiased estimation of coefficient variance, proposed by Stock and Watson (1998), to the extraction of the time-varying trend growth rate of industrial productivity in fifteen European countries, over most of the XXth Century, by means of an unobservable components univariate decomposition. In addition to the description of the procedure, this illustration is particularly useful in explaining why the method is especially appropriate for comparison of trends growth rates extracted from time series with diverse degrees of variability.unobservable components model; industrial productivity; growth cycles; Europe.

Phytophthora frigida

I reflect on an argument with a friend, “S,” who also struggles with depression. In examining my formalization of S’s argument, I claim, we may discern the structure of depressive thought. In observing what is missing from this structure, we may identify what depression tends to hide from depressed persons and what, more broadly, it tends to compel from them. I argue for a redescription of depressive thinking in terms of two compulsions: 1) to perceive an absolute and vague threat that causes disruption to action and 2) to take this disruption as also being a reason for inaction. To do ethics for the depressed, I conclude, is to ask what philosophical argument can do for those who seek justification for action but struggle with these specific limits on their responsiveness to reasons. Peer review process: Editoria

Phytophthora boehmeriae

The richness of the term “unsettling” has made it readily employable for phenomenological accounts of racism in philosophy of race literature; yet, the term has been left largely under-theorized. Here, I argue that unsettling encounters can be said to occur when the unfamiliar other has come into contact with the boundary of one’s existential home. For many white people, interracial interactions produce an (often unwarranted) feeling of physical danger, but as I hope to show, this habitual (mis)perception of such encounters is not merely a conditioned response; it also functions to subvert situations that might unsettle white identifies partially constituted by phenomenological demarcations of space along racial lines. Drawing on empirical literature and recent developments in critical phenomenology, I suggest that by exercising habitual, racist gestures and perceptions, white people (mis)perceive ontological threats to their worldview—e.g., a bookish Black student or a masculine gay man—as ontically threatening so as to avoid the kind of work and existential anguish that altering one’s normative expectations would require

Experimental validation of the exact analytical solution to the steady periodic heat transfer problem in a PCM layer

Phase change materials (PCM) are used in many industrial and residential applications for their advantageous characteristic of high capacity of latent thermal storage by means of an isothermal process. In this context, it is very useful to have predictive mathematical models for the analysis of the thermal performance and for the thermal design of these layers. In this work, an experimental validation of an analytical model that resolves the steady periodic heat transfer problem in a finite layer of PCM is presented. The experimental investigation was conducted employing a PCM with thermophysical and thermochemical behavior very close to those hypothesized in the formulation of the analytical model. For the evaluation of the thermophysical properties of the PCM sample used, an experimental procedure created by the authors was employed. In all tests realized in a sinusoidal and non-sinusoidal periodic regime, the comparison between the measured and calculated trends of the temperature at different sample heights and of the surface heat fluxes show an excellent agreement. Moreover, also having verified the analytical total stored energy, the analytical model constitutes a valid instrument for the evaluation of the latent and sensible contribution and the trend in time of the position of the bi-phase interface.The work was partially funded by the Spanish government (ENE2015-64117-C5-1-R (MINECO/FEDER), ENE2015-64117-C5-3-R (MINECO/FEDER), and ULLE10-4E-1305). GREA is certified agent TECNIO in the category of technology developers from the Government of Catalonia. The authors would like to thank the Catalan Government for the quality accreditation given to their research group (2014 SGR 123). This project has received funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) under Grant agreement Nº PIRSES-GA-2013-610692 (INNOSTORAGE) and from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 657466 (INPATH-TES). Alvaro de Gracia would like to thank Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2014-19940. Julià Coma would like to thank the Departament d'Universitats, Recerca i Societat de la Informació de la Generalitat de Catalunya for his research fellowship (2016FI_B2 00147). Aran Solé would like to thank Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España for Grant Juan de la Cierva, FJCI-2015-25741

And yet it moves: The dangers of artificially fixing the Milky Way center of mass in the presence of a massive Large Magellanic Cloud

Motivated by recent studies suggesting that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) could be significantly more massive than previously thought, we explore whether the approximation of an inertial Galactocentric reference frame is still valid in the presence of such a massive LMC. We find that previous estimates of the LMC's orbital period and apocentric distance derived assuming a fixed Milky Way are significantly shortened for models where the Milky Way is allowed to move freely in response to the gravitational pull of the LMC. Holding other parameters fixed, the fraction of models favoring first infall is reduced. Due to this interaction, the Milky Way center of mass within the inner 50 kpc can be significantly displaced in phase-space in a very short period of time that ranges from 0.3 to 0.5 Gyr by as much as 30 kpc and 75 km/s. Furthermore, we show that the gravitational pull of the LMC and response of the Milky Way are likely to significantly affect the orbit and phase space distribution of tidal debris from the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy (Sgr). Such effects are larger than previous estimates based on the torque of the LMC alone. As a result, Sgr deposits debris in regions of the sky that are not aligned with the present-day Sgr orbital plane. In addition, we find that properly accounting for the movement of the Milky Way around its common center of mass with the LMC significantly modifies the angular distance between apocenters and tilts its orbital pole, alleviating tensions between previous models and observations. While these models are preliminary in nature, they highlight the central importance of accounting for the mutual gravitational interaction between the MW and LMC when modeling the kinematics of objects in the Milky Way and Local Group.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 16 pages, 11 figure

Experimental detection of quantum channel capacities

We present an effcient experimental procedure that certifies non vanishing quantum capacities for qubit noisy channels. Our method is based on the use of a fixed bipartite entangled state, where the system qubit is sent to the channel input. A particular set of local measurements is performed at the channel output and the ancilla qubit mode, obtaining lower bounds to the quantum capacities for any unknown channel with no need of a quantum process tomography. The entangled qubits have a Bell state configuration and are encoded in photon polarization. The lower bounds are found by estimating the Shannon and von Neumann entropies at the output using an optimized basis, whose statistics is obtained by measuring only the three observables $\sigma_{x}\otimes\sigma_{x}$, $\sigma_{y}\otimes\sigma_{y}$ and $\sigma_{z}\otimes\sigma_{z}$.Comment: 5 pages and 3 figures in the principal article, and 4 pages in the supplementary materia

Contribuição da solarização do solo para uma agricultura sustentável

A solarização do solo é um meio de luta não químico e muito promissor em protecção e produção integrada das culturas. Recorrendo ao uso de plástico e não à utilização de pesticidas, esta técnica é eficaz relativamente a inúmeros inimigos das culturas presentes no solo, de difícil combate por outras vias. A solarização do solo é segura para o utilizador, para o consumidor e para o ambiente, podendo por isso, em determinadas situações, dar um contributo apreciável na prática da agricultura sustentável. Neste sentido, é com muito agrado que vemos espelhada a relevância destes aspectos nas orientações do Ministério da Agricultura que consideram como elegíveis, entre outras acções ambientais a financiar, o emprego da solarização. Neste documento são apresentados alguns resultados de trabalhos efectuados em Bragança e em Coimbra que mostram a eficácia da solarização relativamente a alguns fungos fitopatogénicos do solo (Plasmodiophora brassicae Wor e Phytophthora cinnamomi Rand ) e que revelam também alguns efeitos positivos, designadamente em relação a algumas características biológicas do solo, ao contrário do que sucede com muitos outros meios de luta, nomeadamente com a aplicação de pesticidas ao solo que apresenta diversos efeitos secundários negativos