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.

Entanglement Swapping: Entangling Atoms That Never Interacted

In this paper we discuss four different proposals of entangling atomic states of particles which have never interacted. The experimental realization proposed makes use of the interaction of Rydberg atoms with a micromaser cavity prepared in either a coherent state or in a superposition of the zero and one field Fock states. We consider atoms in either a three-level cascade or lambda configurationComment: 17 pages and 2 figure

Isospin mixing and Fermi transitions: Selfconsistent deformed mean field calculations and beyond

We study Fermi transitions and isospin mixing in an isotopic chain 70-78 Kr considering various approximations that use the same Skyrme-Hartree-Fock single particle basis. We study Coulomb effects as well as the effect of BCS and quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA) correlations. A measure of isospin mixing in the approximate ground state is defined by means of the expectation value of the isospin operator squared in N=Z nuclei (which is generalized to N different from Z nuclei). Starting from strict Hartree-Fock approach without Coulomb, it is shown that the isospin breaking is negligible, on the order of a few per thousand for (N-Z)=6, increasing to a few percent with Coulomb. Pairing correlations induce rather large isospin mixing and Fermi transitions of the forbidden type (beta- for NZ). The enhancement produced by BCS correlations is compensated to a large extent by QRPA correlations induced by isospin conserving residual interactions that tend to restore isospin symmetry.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Gamow-Teller strength distributions in Fe and Ni stable isotopes

We study Gamow-Teller strength distributions in some selected nuclei of particular Astrophysical interest within the iron mass region. The theoretical framework is based on a proton-neutron Quasiparticle Random Phase Approximation built on a deformed selfconsistent mean field basis obtained from two-body density-dependent Skyrme forces. We compare our results to available experimental information obtained from (n,p) and (p,n) charge exchange reactions.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

A random number generator for continuous random variables

A FORTRAN 4 routine is given which may be used to generate random observations of a continuous real valued random variable. Normal distribution of F(x), X, E(akimas), and E(linear) is presented in tabular form

Knowledgezoom for java: A concept-based exam study tool with a zoomable open student model

This paper presents our attempt to develop a personalized exam preparation tool for Java/OOP classes based on a fine-grained concept model of Java knowledge. Our goal was to explore two most popular student model-based approaches: open student modeling and problem sequencing. The result of our work is a Java exam preparation tool, Knowledge Zoom. The tool combines an open concept-level student model component, Knowledge Explorer and a concept-based sequencing component, Knowledge Maximizer into a single interface. This paper presents both components of Knowledge Zoom, reports results of its evaluation, and discusses lessons learned. © 2013 IEEE

La emoción y otras emociones varias

La conferencia es el paulatino y emocionado descubrimiento de Quevedo por parte del autor. Se inicia de muy joven con el soneto «Amor constante más allá de la muerte», continúa con El Buscón y se confirma en ya relecturas de (casi) toda su poesía y prosa. Se insiste en el carácter existencialista de su concepto del paso del tiempo: ayer, hoy, mañana. En la vejez como enfermedad terminal. En el escepticismo sobre los remedios terapéuticos de la época, metaforización de su escepticismo sobre la condición humana. En la dignidad que encierra su famosa primera frase «Yo, señor, soy de Segovia». Y se insiste sobre todo en la emoción que palpita a lo largo de su obra, sea cual sea el tema a tratar, con la paradoja añadida de que la palabra emoción no existía en el castellano del Siglo de Oro