The Impact of Unemployment on Individual Well-Being in the EU. CEPS ENEPRI Working Papers No. 29, 1 July 2004

Among the working-age population, one of the most damaging individual experiences is unemployment. Many previous studies have confirmed the devastating effects of unemployment on individual well-being, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary. Using the data from the European Community Household Panel survey, this paper examines the factors that affect unemployed workers’ well-being with respect to their situations in their main vocational activity, income, housing, leisure time and health in Europe. The research finds that unemployment substantially reduces an individual’s satisfaction levels with his or her main vocational activity and finance, while it greatly increases his or her satisfaction levels with leisure time. With respect to health, it has a small negative effect. Unemployment duration also has a small, negative impact on individual well-being, suggesting that unemployment has a lasting and aggravating effect throughout the spells of unemployment, contradicting the theory of adaptation

Public sector wage gaps in Spanish regions.

This paper provides an approximation to the measurement of public sector wage gaps in Spanish regions. By using data from the European Community Household Panel, it is shown that the balance between what private firms pay in the local market and what the public sector pays, differs substantially in different areas of the country. Public sector wage differences among Spanish regions are mostly due to differences in returns, not to differences in characteristics or to selection effects, and are not constant across gender, educational levels, or occupations. Moreover, in those regions where Regional Governments have a higher weight in public employment, public wage gaps are higher and public employers pay higher returns. There also seems to be a cross-regional positive correlation between public wage gaps and unemployment, and a negative one between labour productivity and public wage gaps. Hence, a tentative conclusion is that the incentives to select into the public sector are higher in the low productivity regions, precisely those where scarcity of human capital in the private sector may be the most important factor for explaining economic backwardness.public sector, wage differentials, switching regressions, Spanish regions.

Entanglement detection in coupled particle plasmons

When in close contact, plasmonic resonances interact and become strongly correlated. In this work we develop a quantum mechanical model, using the language of continuous variables and quantum information, for an array of coupled particle plasmons. This model predicts that when the coupling strength between plasmons approaches or surpasses the local dissipation, a sizable amount of entanglement is stored in the collective modes of the array. We also prove that entanglement manifests itself in far-field images of the plasmonic modes, through the statistics of the quadratures of the field, in what constitutes a novel family of entanglement witnesses. This protocol is so robust that it is indeed independent of whether our own model is correct. Finally, we estimate the amount of entanglement, the coupling strength and the correlation properties for a system that consists of two or more coupled nanospheres of silver, showing evidence that our predictions could be tested using present-day state-of-the-art technology.Comment: 8 pages (6 main text + 2 supplemental), 3 figure

Shaping an Itinerant Quantum Field by Dissipation

We show that inducing sidebands in the emission of a single emitter into a one dimensional waveguide, together with a dissipative re-pumping process, a photon field is cooled down to a squeezed vacuum. Our method does not require to be in the strong coupling regime, works with a continuum of propagating field modes and it may lead to sources of tunable multimode squeezed light in circuit QED systems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Una generalización de los procesos estocásticos log-normal y de Gompertz como procesos de Itô

Estudiamos una ecuación diferencial estocástica de Itô que es una generalización de los modelos estocásticos logarítmico-normal y de Gomperz. Reducimos la ecuación mediante una transformación de cambio de estado a otra que resulta una generalización de la ecuación de Langevin, que rige el proceso de Uhlenbeck-Ornstein. A partir de la expresión analítica de las soluciones de ésta y de la original estudiamos las características estadísticas de ambos procesos solución, en particular los momentos de las distribuciones finito dimensionales, sus funciones de densidad de transición, las distribuciones límite y las condiciones de estacionariedad, obteniendo que la expresada generalización del proceso de U-O es el único proceso Gaussiano, Markoviano y estacionario no centrado en tiempo continuo. Por otra parte, se establece que las potencias del proceso lognormal-Gompertz generalizado satisfacen una E.D.E. del mismo tipo

Interpersonal perceptions of adverse peer experiences in first-grade students

Aim: The aim of this study was to identify which adverse peer experiences better predict perceived negative peer relationships among elementary school first graders according to sex. The peer experiences examined were peer rejection, peer victimization, and mutual antipathy; the interpersonal perceptions studied were perceived peer victimization, dyadic meta-perception of peer disliking, and loneliness. Methods: The participants were 809 children (Mage = 6.4 years, SD = 0.32; ngirls = 412, 50.9%) enrolled in 35 first-grade classes from 15 schools in 4 Spanish regions: Valencia, n = 276, 34.1%; Balearic Islands, n = 140, 17.3%; Andalusia, n = 199, 24.6%; Castile-Leon, n = 194, 24%. We calculated sex differences in peer experiences and interpersonal perceptions by means of one-way ANOVA for means differences and Fisher’s r-to-z transformation for correlations differences. We used a multilevel regression analysis (nesting variables: class and region) to determine whether the associations between each peer experiences and each perception were unique. Results: Each adverse peer relationship predicted each interpersonal perception differentially. Peer victimization was a good predictor of the three interpersonal perceptions, and the only predictor of perceived peer victimization. Peer rejection predicted loneliness, whereas mutual antipathies predicted dyadic meta-perception of peer disliking, although more so among girls. A significant effect at region level was found but not at class level. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that research should take into account the different levels of the social peer system when analyzing peer experiences within the classroom context. The study contributes to sensitize teachers about the greater responsiveness of 6-year-old girls to adverse peer experiences, and it could be useful for designing interventions that would help children oppose rejection and empower active bystanders to fight against peer mistreatment.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España EDU2012-35930Universitat Jaume I P1-1A2012-0

Nanoclustering as a dominant feature of plasma membrane organization

Early studies have revealed that some mammalian plasma membrane proteins exist in small nanoclusters. The advent of super-resolution microscopy has corroborated and extended this picture, and led to the suggestion that many, if not most, membrane proteins are clustered at the plasma membrane at nanoscale lengths. In this Commentary, we present selected examples of glycosylphosphatidyl-anchored proteins, Ras family members and several immune receptors that provide evidence for nanoclustering. We advocate the view that nanoclustering is an important part of the hierarchical organization of proteins in the plasma membrane. According to this emerging picture, nanoclusters can be organized on the mesoscale to form microdomains that are capable of supporting cell adhesion, pathogen binding and immune cell-cell recognition amongst other functions. Yet, a number of outstanding issues concerning nanoclusters remain open, including the details of their molecular composition, biogenesis, size, stability, function and regulation. Notions about these details are put forth and suggestions are made about nanocluster function and why this general feature of protein nanoclustering appears to be so prevalent.Postprint (published version

Preserving Established Communications in IPv6 Multi-homed Sites with MEX

This research was supported by the SAM (Advanced Mobility Services) project, funded by the Spanish National R&D Programme under contract MCYT TIC2002-04531-C04-03.A proper support for multimedia communications transport has to provide fault tolerance capabilities such as the preservation of established connections in case of failures. While multi-homing addresses this issue, the currently available solution based in massive BGP route injection presents serious scalability limitations, since it contributes to the exponential growth of the BGP table size. Alternative solutions proposed for IPv6 fail to provide equivalent facilities to the current BGP based solution. In this paper we present MEX (Muti-homing through EXtension header) a novel proposal for the provision of IPv6 multi-homing capabilities. MEX preserves overall scalability by storing alternative route information in end-hosts while at the same time reduces packet loss by allowing routers to re-route in-course packets. This behavior is enabled by conveying alternative route information within packets inside a newly defined Extension Header. The resulting system provides fault tolerance capabilities and preserves scalability, while the incurred costs, namely deployment and packet overhead, are only imposed to those that benefit from it. An implementation of the MEX host and router components is also presented.Publicad

An X-ray characterization of the central region of the SNR G332.5-5.6

We present an X-ray analysis of the central region of supernova remnant (SNR) G332.5-5.6 through an exhaustive analysis of XMM-Netwon observations with complementary infrared observations. We characterize and discuss the origin of the observed X-ray morphology, which presents a peculiar plane edge over the west side of the central region. The morphology and spectral properties of the X-ray supernova remnant were studied using a single full frame XMM-Newton observation in the 0.3 to 10.0 keV energy band. Archival infrared WISE observations at 8, 12 and 24 \mu m were also used to investigate the properties of the source and its surroundings at different wavelengths. The results show that the extended X-ray emission is predominantly soft (0.3-1.2 keV) and peaks around 0.5 keV, which shows that it is an extremely soft SNR. X-ray emission correlates very well with central regions of bright radio emission. On the west side the radio/X-ray emission displays a plane-like feature with a terminal wall where strong infrared emission is detected. Our spatially resolved X-ray spectral analysis confirms that the emission is dominated by weak atomic emission lines of N, O, Ne, and Fe, all of them undetected in previous X-ray studies. These characteristics suggest that the X-ray emission is originated in an optically thin thermal plasma, whose radiation is well fitted by a non-equilibrium ionization collisional plasma (VNEI) X-ray emission model. Our study favors a scenario where G332.5-5.6 is expanding in a medium with an abrupt density change (the wall), likely a dense infrared emitting region of dust on the western side of the source.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures and 2 tables. Accepted for publication in A&