Performance-related Funding of Universities – Does more Competition Lead to Grade Inflation?

German universities are regarded as being under-financed, inefficient, and performing below average if compared to universities in other European countries and the US. Starting in the 1990s, several German federal states implemented reforms to improve this situation. An important part of these reforms has been the introduction of indicator-based funding systems. These financing systems aimed at increasing the competition between universities by making their public funds dependent on their relative performance concerning different output measures, such as the share of students obtaining a degree or the amount of third party funds. This paper evaluates whether the indicator-based funding created unintended incentives, i.e. whether the reform caused a grade inflation. Estimating mean as well as quantile treatment effects, we cannot support the hypothesis that increased competition between universities causes grade inflation.Grade inflation; higher education funding; university competition

The Resummed Photon Spectrum in Radiative Upsilon Decays

We present a theoretical prediction for the photon spectrum in radiative Upsilon decay including the effects of resumming the endpoint region, E_\gamma -> M_\Upsilon/2. Our approach is based on NRQCD and the soft collinear effective theory. We find that our results give much better agreement with data than the leading order NRQCD prediction.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Causality Violations in Cascade Models of Nuclear Collisions

Transport models have successfully described many aspects of intermediate energy heavy-ion collision dynamics. As the energies increase in these models to the ultrarelativistic regime, Lorentz covariance and causality are not strictly respected. The standard argument is that such effects are not important to final results; but they have not been seriously considered at high energies. We point out how and why these happen, how serious of a problem they may be and suggest ways of reducing or eliminating the undesirable effects.Comment: RevTeX, 23 pages, 9 (uuencoded) figures; to appear in Phys. Rev

Spectral estimates of solar radiation intercepted by corn canopies

Reflectance factor data were acquired with a Landsat band radiometer throughout two growing seasons for corn (Zea mays L.) canopies differing in planting dates, populations, and soil types. Agronomic data collected included leaf area index (LAI), biomass, development stage, and final grain yields. The spectral variable, greenness, was associated with 78 percent of the variation in LAI over all treatments. Single observations of LAI or greenness have limited value in predicting corn yields. The proportions of solar radiation intercepted (SRI) by these canopies were estimated using either measured LAI or greenness. Both SRI estimates, when accumulated over the growing season, accounted for approximately 65 percent of the variation in yields. Models which simulated the daily effects of weather and intercepted solar radiation on growth had the highest correlations to grain yields. This concept of estimating intercepted solar radiation using spectral data represents a viable approach for merging spectral and meteorological data for crop yield models

Electronic correlations in double ionization of atoms in pump-probe experiments

The ionization dynamics of a two-electron atom in an attosecond XUV-infrared pump-probe experiment is simulated by solving the time-dependent two-electron Schr\"odinger equation. A dramatic change of the double ionization (DI) yield with variation of the pump-probe delay is reported and the governing role of electron-electron correlations is shown. The results allow for a direct control of the DI yield and of the relative strength of double and single ionization

Debye relaxation and 250 K anomaly in glass forming monohydroxy alcohols

A previous dielectric, near-infrared (NIR), and nuclear magnetic resonance study on the hydrogen-bonded liquid 2-ethyl-1-hexanol [C. Gainaru et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 118304 (2011)] revealed anomalous behavior in various static quantities near 250 K. To check whether corresponding observations can be made for other monohydroxy alcohols as well, these experimental methods were applied to such substances with 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 carbon atoms in their molecular backbone. All studied liquids exhibit a change of behavior near 250 K which is tentatively ascribed to effects of hydrogen bond cooperativity. By analyzing the NIR band intensities, a linear cluster size is derived that agrees with estimates from dielectric spectroscopy. All studied alcohols, except 4-methyl-3-heptanol, display a dominant Debye-like peak. Furthermore, neat 2-ethyl-1-butanol exhibits a well resolved structural relaxation in its dielectric loss spectrum which so far has only been observed for diluted monohydroxy alcohols.Comment: 39 pages including 12 figure

SN 1996cr: Confirmation of a Luminous Type IIn Supernova in the Circinus Galaxy

We have recently confirmed SN 1996cr as a late-time type IIn supernova (SN) via VLT spectroscopy and isolated its explosion date to ~1 yr using archival optical imaging. We briefly touch upon here the wealth of optical, X-ray, and radio archival observations available for this enigmatic source. Due to its relative proximity (3.8 +/-0.6 Mpc), SN 1996cr ranks among the brightest X-ray and radio SNe ever detected and, as such, may offer powerful insights into the structure and composition of type IIn SNe. We also find that SN 1996cr is matched to GRB 4B 960202 at a 2-3 sigma confidence level, making it perhaps the third GRB to be significantly associated with a type II SN. We speculate on whether SN 1996cr could be an off-axis or ``failed'' GRB.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, poster proceeding for "Supernova 1987A: 20 Years After: Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursters" AIP, New York, eds. S. Immler, K.W. Weiler, and R. McCra

LERW as an example of off-critical SLEs

Two dimensional loop erased random walk (LERW) is a random curve, whose continuum limit is known to be a Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE) with parameter kappa=2. In this article we study ``off-critical loop erased random walks'', loop erasures of random walks penalized by their number of steps. On one hand we are able to identify counterparts for some LERW observables in terms of symplectic fermions (c=-2), thus making further steps towards a field theoretic description of LERWs. On the other hand, we show that it is possible to understand the Loewner driving function of the continuum limit of off-critical LERWs, thus providing an example of application of SLE-like techniques to models near their critical point. Such a description is bound to be quite complicated because outside the critical point one has a finite correlation length and therefore no conformal invariance. However, the example here shows the question need not be intractable. We will present the results with emphasis on general features that can be expected to be true in other off-critical models.Comment: 45 pages, 2 figure

Phase diagram for morphological transitions of wetting films on chemically structured substrates

Using an interface displacement model we calculate the shapes of thin liquidlike films adsorbed on flat substrates containing a chemical stripe. We determine the entire phase diagram of morphological phase transitions in these films as function of temperature, undersaturation, and stripe widthComment: 15 pages, RevTeX, 7 Figure