Measuring the Contribution of Public Infrastructure Capital in Sweden

Our purpose in this paper is to examine how one might evaluate and measure the contribution of public infrastructure capital on private sector output and productivity growth in Sweden. We do this by specifying and implementing empirically a number of alternative econometric models, using annual data for Sweden from 1960 to 1988. Using a dual cost function approach, we find that increases in public infrastructure capital, ceteris paribus, reduce private sector costs. We compute that amount of public infrastructure capital that would rationalize the cost savings incurred by the private business and manufacturing sectors, and find that the amount that can be rationalized in this manner is less than what was in fact available in 1988, but that the extent of excess public infrastructure capital has been falling in the 1980's.

A new scale to assess the therapeutic relationship in community mental health care: STAR

Background. No instrument has been developed specifically for assessing the clinician-patient therapeutic relationship (TR) in community psychiatry. This study aimed to develop a measure of the TR with clinician and patient versions using psychometric principles for test construction. Method. A four-stage prospective study was undertaken, comprising qualitative semi-structured interviews about TRs with clinicians and patients and their assessment of nine established scales for their applicability to community care, administering an amalgamated scale of more than 100 items, followed by Principal Components Analysis (PCA) of these ratings for preliminary scale construction. test-retest reliability of the scale and administering the scale in a new sample to confirm its factorial structure. The sample consisted of patients with severe mental illness and a designated key worker in the care of 17 community mental health teams in England and Sweden. Results. New items not covered by established scales were identified, including clinician helpfulness in accessing services, patient aggression and family interference. The new patient (STAR-P) and clinician scales (STAR-C) each have 12 items comprising three subscales: positive collaboration and positive clinician input in both versions, non-supportive clinician input in the patient version, and emotional difficulties in the clinician version. Test-retest reliability was r = 0(.)76 for STAR-P and r = 0(.)68 for STAR-C. The factorial structure of the new scale was confirmed with a good fit. Conclusions. STAR is a specifically developed, brief scale to assess TRs in community psychiatry with good psychometric properties and is suitable for use in research and routine care

Friends and Symptom Dimensions in Patients with Psychosis: A Pooled Analysis

PMCID: PMC3503760This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Linkage mapping reveals sex-dimorphic map distances in a passerine bird

Linkage maps are lacking for many highly influential model organisms in evolutionary research, including all passerine birds. Consequently, their full potential as research models is severely hampered. Here, we provide a partial linkage map and give novel estimates of sex-specific recombination rates in a passerine bird, the great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus). Linkage analysis of genotypic data at 51 autosomal microsatellites and seven markers on the Z-chromosome (one of the sex chromosomes) from an extended pedigree resulted in 12 linkage groups with 2–8 loci. A striking feature of the map was the pronounced sex-dimorphism: males had a substantially lower recombination rate than females, which resulted in a suppressed autosomal map in males (sum of linkage groups: 110.2cM) compared to females (237.2cM; female/male map ratio: 2.15). The sex-specific recombination rates will facilitate the building of a denser linkage map and cast light on hypotheses about sex-specific recombination rates

Effective photon-photon interaction in a two-dimensional "photon fluid"

We formulate an effective theory for the atom-mediated photon-photon interactions in a two-dimensional ``photon fluid'' confined in a Fabry-Perot resonator. With the atoms modelled by a collection of anharmonic Lorentz oscillators, the effective interaction is evaluated to second order in the coupling constant (the anharmonicity parameter). The interaction has the form of a renormalized two-dimensional delta-function potential, with the renormalization scale determined by the physical parameters of the system, such as density of atoms and the detuning of the photons relative to the resonance frequency of the atoms. For realistic values of the parameters, the perturbation series has to be resummed, and the effective interaction becomes independent of the ``bare'' strength of the anharmonic term. The resulting expression for the non-linear Kerr susceptibility, is parametrically equal to the one found earlier for a dilute gas of two-level atoms. Using our result for the effective interaction parameter, we derive conditions for the formation of a photon fluid, both for Rydberg atoms in a microwave cavity and for alkali atoms in an optical cavity.Comment: 25 pages (revtex4), including 2 figure

Reasoning with comparative moral judgements: an argument for Moral Bayesianism

The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements (i.e judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of moral cognitivism are discussed

Reconciling aerosol light extinction measurements from spaceborne lidar observations and in situ measurements in the Arctic

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.In this study we investigate to what degree it is possible to reconcile continuously recorded particle light extinction coefficients derived from dry in situ measurements at Zeppelin station (78.92° N, 11.85° E; 475 m above sea level), Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, that are recalculated to ambient relative humidity, as well as simultaneous ambient observations with the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) aboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite. To our knowledge, this represents the first study that compares spaceborne lidar measurements to optical aerosol properties from short-term in situ observations (averaged over 5 h) on a case-by-case basis. Finding suitable comparison cases requires an elaborate screening and matching of the CALIOP data with respect to the location of Zeppelin station as well as the selection of temporal and spatial averaging intervals for both the ground-based and spaceborne observations. Reliable reconciliation of these data cannot be achieved with the closest-approach method, which is often used in matching CALIOP observations to those taken at ground sites. This is due to the transport pathways of the air parcels that were sampled. The use of trajectories allowed us to establish a connection between spaceborne and ground-based observations for 57 individual overpasses out of a total of 2018 that occurred in our region of interest around Svalbard (0 to 25° E, 75 to 82° N) in the considered year of 2008. Matches could only be established during winter and spring, since the low aerosol load during summer in connection with the strong solar background and the high occurrence rate of clouds strongly influences the performance and reliability of CALIOP observations. Extinction coefficients in the range of 2 to 130 Mmg-1 at 532 nm were found for successful matches with a difference of a factor of 1.47 (median value for a range from 0.26 to 11.2) between the findings of in situ and spaceborne observations (the latter being generally larger than the former). The remaining difference is likely to be due to the natural variability in aerosol concentration and ambient relative humidity, an insufficient representation of aerosol particle growth, or a misclassification of aerosol type (i.e., choice of lidar ratio) in the CALIPSO retrieval.Peer reviewe

A Simple Derivation of the Hard Thermal Loop Effective Action

We use the background field method along with a special gauge condition, to derive the hard thermal loop effective action in a simple manner. The new point in the paper is to relate the effective action explicitly to the S-matrix from the onset.Comment: 11 pages, Latex; lost text after sect. 2 reinserte

Solitons and Quasielectrons in the Quantum Hall Matrix Model

We show how to incorporate fractionally charged quasielectrons in the finite quantum Hall matrix model.The quasielectrons emerge as combinations of BPS solitons and quasiholes in a finite matrix version of the noncommutative $\phi^4$ theory coupled to a noncommutative Chern-Simons gauge field. We also discuss how to properly define the charge density in the classical matrix model, and calculate density profiles for droplets, quasiholes and quasielectrons.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Quantum Hall quasielectron operators in conformal field theory

In the conformal field theory (CFT) approach to the quantum Hall effect, the multi-electron wave functions are expressed as correlation functions in certain rational CFTs. While this approach has led to a well-understood description of the fractionally charged quasihole excitations, the quasielectrons have turned out to be much harder to handle. In particular, forming quasielectron states requires non-local operators, in sharp contrast to quasiholes that can be created by local chiral vertex operators. In both cases, the operators are strongly constrained by general requirements of symmetry, braiding and fusion. Here we construct a quasielectron operator satisfying these demands and show that it reproduces known good quasiparticle wave functions, as well as predicts new ones. In particular we propose explicit wave functions for quasielectron excitations of the Moore-Read Pfaffian state. Further, this operator allows us to explicitly express the composite fermion wave functions in the positive Jain series in hierarchical form, thus settling a longtime controversy. We also critically discuss the status of the fractional statistics of quasiparticles in the Abelian hierarchical quantum Hall states, and argue that our construction of localized quasielectron states sheds new light on their statistics. At the technical level we introduce a generalized normal ordering, that allows us to "fuse" an electron operator with the inverse of an hole operator, and also an alternative approach to the background charge needed to neutralize CFT correlators. As a result we get a fully holomorphic CFT representation of a large set of quantum Hall wave functions.Comment: minor changes, publishe