Comparing village characteristics derived from rapid appraisals and household surveys

This paper investigates whether inferences drawn about a population are sensitive to the manner by which those data are obtained. It compares information obtained using participatory appraisal techniques with a survey of households randomly drawn from a locally administered census that had been carefully revised. The community map tends to include household members who do not, in fact, reside in the enumerated locality. By contrast, the revised official census is slightly more likely to exclude household members who actually lived in the surveyed area. Controlling for the survey technique, we find that the revised official census produces higher estimates of average household size and wealth but lower estimates of total village size or wealth, than the community map. Pairwise comparison of the survey techniques, holding the households constant, shows that the community map leads, on average, to higher estimates of household size and lower estimates of wealth.FCND ,Population Statistics. ,Surveys Methodology. ,Mali. ,

Phase Closure Nulling: results from the 2009 campaign

We present here a new observational technique, Phase Closure Nulling (PCN), which has the potential to obtain very high contrast detection and spectroscopy of faint companions to bright stars. PCN consists in measuring closure phases of fully resolved objects with a baseline triplet where one of the baselines crosses a null of the object visibility function. For scenes dominated by the presence of a stellar disk, the correlated flux of the star around nulls is essentially canceled out, and in these regions the signature of fainter, unresolved, scene object(s) dominates the imaginary part of the visibility in particular the closure phase. We present here the basics of the PCN method, the initial proof-of-concept observation, the envisioned science cases and report about the first observing campaign made on VLTI/AMBER and CHARA/MIRC using this technique.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the SPIE'2010 conference on "Optical and Infrared Interferometry II

Characterizing and Detecting Loops in n-Dimensional Discrete Toric Spaces

International audienc

Coherence-preserving trap architecture for long-term control of giant Rydberg atoms

We present a way to trap a single Rydberg atom, make it long-lived and preserve an internal coherence over time scales reaching into the minute range. We propose to trap using carefully designed electric fields, to inhibit the spontaneous emission in a non resonant conducting structure and to maintain the internal coherence through a tailoring of the atomic energies using an external microwave field. We thoroughly identify and account for many causes of imperfection in order to verify at each step the realism of our proposal.Comment: accepted for publication in PR

Rethinking Subsidiarity in the EU: Economic Principles

This chapter reconsiders and assesses subsidiarity as one of the general principles to guide the political and institutional development of the European Union, and proposes a framework to assess the consistency of alternative plans.

Should We Worry about the Brain Drain?

This chapter presents evidence on the brain drain from European countries towards the US, identifying possible causes and costs for the economy, and looks at factors and policies that could reduce the net outflows of skilled people from Europe.

Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Stabilisation in the Euro Area: Possible Reforms of the Stability and Growth Pact and National Decision-Making-Processes

This chapter analyses the role of fiscal policy as a tool of macroeconomic stabilisation and proposes changes in the EU fiscal rules with the aim of making them more flexible while at the same time maintaining fiscal discipline.

The European Economy: Current Situation and Economic Outlook

This chapter presents forecasts of growth and inflation in the European economy for the year 2003 and assesses the current macroeconomic conditions for the whole area and for some individual countries.