14,139 research outputs found
Ethnic Concentration, Cultural Identity and Immigrant Self-Employment in Switzerland
Immigrant self-employment rates vary considerably across regions in Switzerland. Business ownership provides an alternative to wage labour, where immigrants have to face structural barriers such as the limited knowledge of the local language, or difficulties in fruitfully making use of their own human capital. Despite their historically high unemployment rates with respect to natives, immigrants in Switzerland are less entrepreneurial. It is therefore important to uncover factors that may facilitate the transition from the status of immigrant to the one of economic agent. Among others factors, concentration in ethnic enclaves, as well as accumulated labour market experience and time elapsed since immigration, have been associated to higher business ownership rates. In this paper, we use a cross-section of 2,490 Swiss municipalities in order to investigate the role played by the ethnic concentration of immigrants, as well as cultural factors, in determining self-employment rates.
DNA sensing by electrocatalysis with hemoglobin
Electrocatalysis offers a means of electrochemical signal amplification, yet in DNA-based sensors, electrocatalysis has required high-density DNA films and strict assembly and passivation conditions. Here, we describe the use of hemoglobin as a robust and effective electron sink for electrocatalysis in DNA sensing on low-density DNA films. Protein shielding of the heme redox center minimizes direct reduction at the electrode surface and permits assays on low-density DNA films. Electrocatalysis with methylene blue that is covalently tethered to the DNA by a flexible alkyl chain linkage allows for efficient interactions with both the base stack and hemoglobin. Consistent suppression of the redox signal upon incorporation of a single cytosine-adenine (CA) mismatch in the DNA oligomer demonstrates that both the unamplified and the electrocatalytically amplified redox signals are generated through DNA-mediated charge transport. Electrocatalysis with hemoglobin is robust: It is stable to pH and temperature variations. The utility and applicability of electrocatalysis with hemoglobin is demonstrated through restriction enzyme detection, and an enhancement in sensitivity permits femtomole DNA sampling
Effects of H2O, CO2, and N2 Air Contaminants on Critical Airside Strain Rates for Extinction of Hydrogen-Air Counterflow Diffusion Flames
Coaxial tubular opposed jet burners (OJB) were used to form dish shaped counterflow diffusion flames (CFDF), centered by opposing laminar jets of H2, N2 and both clean and contaminated air (O2/N2 mixtures) in an argon bath at 1 atm. Jet velocities for flame extinction and restoration limits are shown versus wide ranges of contaminant and O2 concentrations in the air jet, and also input H2 concentration. Blowoff, a sudden breaking of CFDF to a stable ring shape, occurs in highly stretched stagnation flows and is generally believed to measure kinetically limited flame reactivity. Restore, a sudden restoration of central flame, is a relatively new phenomenon which exhibits a H2 dependent hysteresis from Blowoff. For 25 percent O2 air mixtures, mole for mole replacement of 25 percent N2 contaminant by steam increased U(air) or flame strength at Blowoff by about 5 percent. This result is consistent with laminar burning velocity results from analogous substitution of steam for N2 in a premixed stoichiometric H2-O2-N2 (or steam) flame, shown by Koroll and Mulpuru to promote a 10 percent increase in experimental and calculated laminar burning velocity, due to enhanced third body efficiency of water in: H + O2 + M yields HO2 + M. When the OJB results were compared with Liu and MacFarlane's experimental laminar burning velocity of premixed stoichiometric H2 + air + steam, a crossover occurred, i.e., steam enhanced OJB flame strength at extinction relative to laminar burning velocity
Surface terms on the Nishimori line of the Gaussian Edwards-Anderson model
For the Edwards-Anderson model we find an integral representation for some
surface terms on the Nishimori line. Among the results are expressions for the
surface pressure for free and periodic boundary conditions and the adjacency
pressure, i.e., the difference between the pressure of a box and the sum of the
pressures of adjacent sub-boxes in which the box can been decomposed. We show
that all those terms indeed behave proportionally to the surface size and prove
the existence in the thermodynamic limit of the adjacency pressure.Comment: Final version with minor corrections. To appear in Journal of
Statistical Physic
General properties of overlap probability distributions in disordered spin systems. Toward Parisi ultrametricity
For a very general class of probability distributions in disordered Ising
spin systems, in the thermodynamical limit, we prove the following property for
overlaps among real replicas. Consider the overlaps among s replicas. Add one
replica s+1. Then, the overlap q(a,s+1) between one of the first s replicas,
let us say a, and the added s+1 is either independent of the former ones, or it
is identical to one of the overlaps q(a,b), with b running among the first s
replicas, excluding a. Each of these cases has equal probability 1/s.Comment: LaTeX2e, 11 pages. Submitted to Journal of Physics A: Mathematical
and General. Also available at
http://rerumnatura.zool.su.se/stefano/ms/ghigu.p
Comparison of Four Space Propulsion Methods for Reducing Transfer Times of Manned Mars Mission
We assess the possibility of reducing the travel time of a manned mission to
Mars by examining four different propulsion methods, and keeping the mass at
departure under 2,500 tonnes, for a fixed architecture. We evaluated
representative systems of three different state of the art technologies
(chemical, nuclear thermal, and electric), and one advance technology, the
"Pure Electro-Magnetic Thrust" (PEMT) concept (proposed by Rubbia). A mission
architecture mostly based on the Design Reference Architecture 5.0 is assumed
in order to estimate the mass budget, that influences the performance of the
propulsion system. Pareto curves of the duration of the mission and time of
flight versus mass of mission are drawn. We conclude that the ion engine
technology, combined with the classical chemical engine, yields the shortest
mission times for this architecture with the lowest mass, and that chemical
propulsion alone is the best to minimise travel time. The results obtained
using the PEMT suggest that it could be a more suitable solution for farther
destinations than Mars.Comment: Change in title, abstract and presentation so to clarify the main
results. 14 pages, 7 figures and 2 table
Interpolating the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick replica trick
The interpolation techniques have become, in the past decades, a powerful
approach to lighten several properties of spin glasses within a simple
mathematical framework. Intrinsically, for their construction, these schemes
were naturally implemented into the cavity field technique, or its variants as
the stochastic stability or the random overlap structures. However the first
and most famous approach to mean field statistical mechanics with quenched
disorder is the replica trick. Among the models where these methods have been
used (namely, dealing with frustration and complexity), probably the best known
is the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick spin glass: In this paper we are pleased to
apply the interpolation scheme to the replica trick framework and test it
directly to the cited paradigmatic model: interestingly this allows to obtain
easily the replica-symmetric control and, synergically with the broken replica
bounds, a description of the full RSB scenario, both coupled with several minor
theorems. Furthermore, by treating the amount of replicas as an
interpolating parameter (far from its original interpretation) this can be
though of as a quenching temperature close to the one introduce in
off-equilibrium approaches and, within this viewpoint, the proof of the
attended commutativity of the zero replica and the infinite volume limits can
be obtained.Comment: This article is dedicated to David Sherrington on the occasion of his
seventieth birthda
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