Latin America's Access to International Capital Markets: Good Behavior or Global Liquidity?

This paper examines Latin America’s access to international capital markets from 1980 to 2005, with particular attention to the role of domestic and external factors. To capture access to international markets, we use primary gross issuance in international bond, equity, and syndicated-loan markets. Using panel estimation, we find that sound fundamentals matter. For example, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile’s superb performance in capital markets during the early 1990s has been in large part driven by better fundamentals. However, the upsurge in international lending to Latin America starting in 2003 has been mainly driven by a dramatic increase in global liquidity.

Zur Identifikation und Visualisierung von Einfamilienhausgebieten der 1950er- bis 1970er-Jahre für eine nachhaltige Raumplanung

Alternde Einfamilienhausgebiete sind eine Herausforderung für die nachhaltige Raumplanung. Insbesondere im ländlichen Raum führt der demografische Wandel vermehrt zu Leerständen in den Gebäudebeständen der 1950er- bis 1970er-Jahre, da der Generationenwechsel von Erstbesitzern zu jungen Familien oder neuen Eigentümern häufig problematisch verläuft. Diese Gebiete zu identifizieren ist daher von entscheidendem Nutzen, um raumplanerische Maßnahmen treffen zu können. Anhand des Baujahres eines Gebäudes lassen sich relevante Einfamilienhausgebiete erfassen. Angaben zu Gebäudebaujahren finden sich u. a. im AFIS-ALKIS-ATKIS-Modell (AAA-Modell). In den konkreten Datensätzen fehlt diese Angabe jedoch zumeist. Daher werden in der jüngeren Forschung die bereits durch die INSPIRE-Richtlinie (Richtlinie 2007/2/EG) flächenmäßig verfügbaren Bebauungspläne behelfsweise herangezogen. Eine Auswertung hinsichtlich Festsetzungen und Datum der Rechtskraft ist hierbei jedoch nur ein Indiz für das Baujahr der Wohngebäude im überplanten Gemeindegebiet. Vor allem in schrumpfenden Regionen, in denen es oft zu Leerständen kommt, gibt es mitunter eine große zeitliche Diskrepanz zwischen dem Rechtskraftdatum eines Bebauungsplans und dem tatsächlichen Baujahr eines Gebäudes. Die Einfamilienhausgebiete lassen sich dort nicht abschließend identifizieren. Durch die Kombination verschiedener heterogener Quellen und Disaggregation von Daten können erforderliche Baujahresklassen identifiziert werden. Diese Methode bietet sich als praktikable Vorgehensweise an, die sowohl als Grundlage für Fragen der Forschung als auch der Raumplanung herangezogen werden kann. Als Evaluation dient ein Negativabgleich mit Erhebungen von Gebäudebaujahren der vergangenen ca. 25 Jahre in einem Testgebiet

Explicit Descriptions of Bisymmetric Sugeno Integrals

We provide sufficient conditions for a Sugeno integral to be bisymmetric. We explicitly describe bisymmetric Sugeno integrals over chains

Evolution and environment of the eastern linear pottery culture: A case study in the site of Polgár-Piócási-Dűlő

A salvage excavation preceding a major investment project was conducted in 2006–2007, during which associated settlement features of a Middle Neolithic, Eastern Linear Pottery Culture (Alföld Linearbandkeramik – ALBK) were uncovered in an area called Piócási-dűlő on the eastern outskirts of Polgár. The features of the ALBK settlement date from two periods. The cluster of multi-functional pits yielding a rich assortment of finds, the handful of post-holes and an unusual ritual well found in the southern part of the investigated area formed one unit from the earliest phase of the Middle Neolithic (ALBK I). The settlement’s other occupation can be assigned to the late phase of the Middle Neolithic (ALBK IV). Five houseplans representing the remains of timber-framed buildings outlined a distinct area with three multi-functional pits. Associated with the above features were 8 burials. The preliminary archaeobotanical results from Polgár–Piócási-dűlő are based on the plant material found within the sediments of 11 archaeological structures, which mainly represent pits and a welI. It can be stated that the natural environment offered habitats in which oak trees dominated in the local vegetation, forming floodplain forests and wooded steppes. They also provided food in the form of fruits and formed an optimal habitat for domestic animals. Arable fields were probably also established in the vicinity of the settlements, suggested by findings of macroscopic plant remains that represented cultivated species. In both settlement phases lithic production activities are manifested both by the local on-site lithic production and – most importantly – by the presence of imported, mainly mesolocal, raw materials that point to contacts with deposit areas, or off-site preliminary working of obsidian and limnoquartzites. The kit of harvesting tools and a large number of grinding stones – especially in the younger phase – for the preparation of plant food suggest a major role of plant cultivation

The rise and fall of turbulent fountains: a new model for improved quantitative predictions

International audienceTurbulent fountains are of major interest for many natural phenomena and industrial applications, and can be considered as one of the canonical examples of turbulent flows. They have been the object of extensive experimental and theoretical studies that yielded scaling laws describing the behaviour of the fountains as a function of source conditions (namely their Reynolds and Froude numbers). However, although such scaling laws provide a clear understanding of the basic dynamics of the turbulent fountains, they usually rely on more or less ad hoc dimensionless proportionality constants that are scarcely tested against theoretical predictions. In this paper, we use a systematic comparison between the initial and steady-state heights of a turbulent fountain predicted by classical top-hat models and those obtained in experiments. This shows scaling agreement between predictions and observations, but systematic discrepancies regarding the proportionality constant. For the initial rise of turbulent fountains, we show that quantitative agreement between top-hat models and experiments can be achieved by taking into account two factors: (i) the reduction of entrainment by negative buoyancy (as quantified by the Froude number), and (ii) the fact that turbulence is not fully developed at the source at intermediate Reynolds number. For the steady-state rise of turbulent fountains, a new model (‘confined top-hat') is developed to take into account the coupling between the up-flow and the down-flow in the steady-state fountain. The model introduces three parameters, calculated from integrals of experimental profiles, that highlight the dynamics of turbulent entrainment between the up-flow and the down-flow, as well as the change of buoyancy flux with height in the up-flow. The confined top-hat model for turbulent fountains achieves good agreement between theoretical predictions and experimental results. In particular, it predicts a systematic increase of the ratio between the initial and steady-state heights of turbulent fountains as a function of their source Froude number, an observation that was not handled properly in previous models

Are generalized Lorentz "spaces" really spaces?

Godkänd; 2003; 20130226 (andbra

Seismic characterization of mantle flow in subduction systems: Can we resolve a hydrated mantle wedge?

International audienceThis study provides new constraints on the resolvability of mantle flow in subduction zone settings as inferred by observations of seismic anisotropy. We are motivated by the broad range of shear wave splitting observations in subduction systems that suggest complex flow geometries, changes in the deformation state of mantle minerals, or a combination of both. While shear wave splitting fast polarization directions are typically interpreted as a proxy for flow or maximum finite extension, experimental studies suggest that olivine slip systems change under higher stress and hydration states, conditions likely appropriate for subduction systems. In this study, we predict shear wave splitting as a result of mantle silicate lattice-preferred orientation development in steady-state two-dimensional mantle flow models using a textural development theory that incorporates the combined effects of intracrystalline slip and dynamic recrystallization. We utilize the resulting textures to predict shear wave splitting for populations of seismic raypaths traversing the model within the subduction zone mantle wedge. The results of our study demonstrate that combined observations of variations in fast polarization directions and splitting times make it possible to resolve a shift from anhydrous to hydrous mantle insubduction zone settings provided very good sampling of the mantle wedge. Our models are generally consistent with observed splitting variations for several subduction zones with dense data sampling, including Tonga, Japan, and Kamchatka. The implications of our work suggest that, provided adequate data sampling, shear wave splitting measurements can provide the necessary information to evaluate potential competing effects between variations in mantle flow direction and changes in the stress and hydration states of subduction zone mantle wedges

Use of Raman and Raman optical activity to extract atomistic details of saccharides in aqueous solution

Sugars are crucial components in biosystems and industrial applications. In aqueous environments, the natural state of short saccharides or charged glycosaminoglycans is floating and wiggling in solution. Therefore, tools to characterize their structure in a native aqueous environment are crucial but not always available. Here, we show that a combination of Raman/ROA and, on occasions, NMR experiments with Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Quantum Mechanics (QM) is a viable method to gain insights into structural features of sugars in solutions. Combining these methods provides information about accessible ring puckering conformers and their proportions. It also provides information about the conformation of the linkage between the sugar monomers, i.e., glycosidic bonds, allowing for identifying significantly accessible conformers and their relative abundance. For mixtures of sugar moieties, this method enables the deconvolution of the Raman/ROA spectra to find the actual amounts of its molecular constituents, serving as an effective analytical technique. For example, it allows calculating anomeric ratios for reducing sugars and analyzing more complex sugar mixtures to elucidate their real content. Altogether, we show that combining Raman/ROA spectroscopies with simulations is a versatile method applicable to saccharides. It allows for accessing many features with precision comparable to other methods routinely used for this task, making it a viable alternative. Furthermore, we prove that the proposed technique can scale up by studying the complicated raffinose trisaccharide, and therefore, we expect its wide adoption to characterize sugar structural features in solution