International Capital Market Integration, Educational Choice and Economic Growth

This paper examines the impact of capital market integration (CMI) on higher education and economic growth. We take into account that participation in higher education is non-compulsory and depends on individual choice. Integration increases (decreases) the incentives to participate in higher education in capital-importing (-exporting) economies, all other things equal. Increased participation in higher education enhances productivity progress and is accompanied by rising wage inequality. From a national policy point of view, education expenditure should increase after integration of similar economies. Using foreign direct investment (FDI) as a measure for capital flows, we present empirical evidence which largely confirms our main hypothesis: An increase in net capital inflows in response to CMI raises participation in higher education and thereby fosters economic growth. We apply a structural estimation approach to fully track the endogenous mechanisms of the model.capital mobility, capital-skill complementarity educational choice, education policy, economic growth, wage income inequality

Attachment working models as unconscious structures: An experimental test

Internal working models of attachment (IWMs) are presumed to be largely unconscious representations of childhood attachment experiences. Several instruments have been developed to assess IWMs; some of them are based on self-report and others on narrative interview techniques. This study investigated the capacity of a self-report measure, the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA; Armsden & Greenberg, 1987), and of a narrative interview method, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), to measure unconscious attachment models. We compared scores on the two attachment instruments to response latencies in an attachment priming task. It was shown that attachment organisation assessed by the AAI correlates with priming effects, whereas the IPPA scales were inversely or not related to priming. The results are interpreted as support for the assumption that the AAI assesses, to a certain degree, unconscious working models of attachment

Landau functions for non-interacting bosons

We discuss the statistics of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a canonical ensemble of N non-interacting bosons in terms of a Landau function L_N^{BEC} (q) defined by the logarithm of the probability distribution of the order parameter q for BEC. We also discuss the corresponding Landau function for spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), which for finite N should be distinguished from L_N^{BEC}. Only for intinite N BEC and SSB can be described by the same Landau function which depends on the dimensionality and on the form of the external potential in a surprisingly complex manner. For bosons confined by a three-dimensional harmonic trap the Landau function exhibits the usual behavior expected for continuous phase transitions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; final version to appear as a rapid communication in Physical Review A. Abstract modified and typos correcte

Informationsversorgung aus einer Hand - Diensteinfrastruktur an der Universität Ulm

Mit der Bildung eines Kommunikations- und Informationszentrums (kiz) aus zuvor selbständigen Zentralen Einrichtungen hat die Universität Ulm die organisatorischen Voraussetzungen für die Einführung eines campusübergreifenden, integrierten Informationsmanagements geschaffen und mit dessen Implementierung begonnen. Ziel der Reorganisation des zentralen Dienstleistungsbereiches war jedoch nicht nur eine simple Rationalisierung durch Addition vorhandener Einrichtungen ("alles unter einem Dach"), sondern die Integration dieser Einrichtungen zu einer neuen, zukunftsfähigen und effizienten Organisationseinheit ("alles aus einer Hand"). Zentrale Aufgabe dieser neuen Organisation ist der Aufbau und der Betrieb einer verlässlichen Dienste-Infrastruktur für alle Nutzergruppen und nahezu alle Anwendungsbereiche im universitären Umfeld

Tunneling in a cavity

The mechanism of coherent destruction of tunneling found by Grossmann et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, 516 (1991)] is studied from the viewpoint of quantum optics by considering the photon statistics of a single mode cavity field which is strongly coupled to a two-level tunneling system (TS). As a function of the interaction time between TS and cavity the photon statistics displays the tunneling dynamics. In the semi-classical limit of high photon occupation number $n$, coherent destruction of tunneling is exhibited in a slowing down of an amplitude modulation for certain parameter ratios of the field. The phenomenon is explained as arising from interference between displaced number states in phase space which survives the large $n$ limit due to identical $n^{-1/2}$ scaling between orbit width and displacement.Comment: 4 pages Revtex, 2 PS-figures, appears in The Physical Review

Coherence control for qubits

We study the influence of an external driving field on the coherence properties of a qubit under the influence of bit-flip noise. In the presence of driving, two paradigmatic cases are considered: (i) a field that results for a suitable choice of the parameters in so-called coherent destruction of tunneling and (ii) one that commutes with the static qubit Hamiltonian. In each case, we give for high-frequency driving a lower bound for the coherence time. This reveals the conditions under which the external fields can be used for coherence stabilization.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figur

Comparative promoter region analysis powered by CORG

BACKGROUND: Promoters are key players in gene regulation. They receive signals from various sources (e.g. cell surface receptors) and control the level of transcription initiation, which largely determines gene expression. In vertebrates, transcription start sites and surrounding regulatory elements are often poorly defined. To support promoter analysis, we present CORG , a framework for studying upstream regions including untranslated exons (5' UTR). DESCRIPTION: The automated annotation of promoter regions integrates information of two kinds. First, statistically significant cross-species conservation within upstream regions of orthologous genes is detected. Pairwise as well as multiple sequence comparisons are computed. Second, binding site descriptions (position-weight matrices) are employed to predict conserved regulatory elements with a novel approach. Assembled EST sequences and verified transcription start sites are incorporated to distinguish exonic from other sequences. As of now, we have included 5 species in our analysis pipeline (man, mouse, rat, fugu and zebrafish). We characterized promoter regions of 16,127 groups of orthologous genes. All data are presented in an intuitive way via our web site. Users are free to export data for single genes or access larger data sets via our DAS server . The benefits of our framework are exemplarily shown in the context of phylogenetic profiling of transcription factor binding sites and detection of microRNAs close to transcription start sites of our gene set. CONCLUSION: The CORG platform is a versatile tool to support analyses of gene regulation in vertebrate promoter regions. Applications for CORG cover a broad range from studying evolution of DNA binding sites and promoter constitution to the discovery of new regulatory sequence elements (e.g. microRNAs and binding sites)

Classification of the Nuclear Multifragmentation Phase Transition

Using a recently proposed classification scheme for phase transitions in finite systems [Phys.Rev.Lett.{\bf 84},3511 (2000)] we show that within the statistical standard model of nuclear multifragmentation the predicted phase transition is of first order.Comment: 5 pages, 4 eps figures, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.C (in press

Contribution of microstructural parameters to strengthening in an ultrafine-grained Al-7%Si alloy processed by severe deformation

An Al-7%Si alloy was severely deformed by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) to study the refinement of the microstructure and associated changes of mechanical properties. The initial coarse dendritic structure was broken into an elongated sub-micron grain/subgrain structure, with high dislocation density, and distributed fine Si particles. The Si particles in the composite are seen to induce a high dislocation density during deformation and lead to faster structural refinement than in a monolithic alloy with the same composition as the matrix. The additional strengthening of the composite relative to the monolithic alloy is due to both the finer grain size and the high retained dislocation density. Severe plastic deformation leads also to an improvement of the ductility of the strong material due to the refinement of both matrix microstructure and the Si particlesWe should like to acknowledge financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under project number MAT2003-01540, as well as the award of a Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral fellowship for one of the authors (I.G.)Peer reviewe

Deceptive signals of phase transitions in small magnetic clusters

We present an analysis of the thermodynamic properties of small transition metal clusters and show how the commonly used indicators of phase transitions like peaks in the specific heat or magnetic susceptibility can lead to deceptive interpretations of the underlying physics. The analysis of the distribution of zeros of the canonical partition function in the whole complex temperature plane reveals the nature of the transition. We show that signals in the magnetic susceptibility at positive temperatures have their origin at zeros lying at negative temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, revtex4, for further information see http://www.smallsystems.d