The influence of age on household savings behaviours and motives: Evidence from Spain

The role which savings play in the economy is beyond the scope of discussion. Hence, the prolonged fall of the family savings rate has caused great worry in developed countries. In Spain, this situation is especially serious with falls beyond the family savings rate. In this context it is absolutely necessary try to understand what the reasons are for savings and what are the variables which have a determined influence on savings. This paper intends to define the socio-demographic variables which determine the behaviour, from an analysis of an average inhabitant of Navarre in terms of financial savings. According to a survey of 1,000 people in Navarre, it is shown that the age can explain not only the savings behaviour of families but also the motives and attitudes. Moreover, the defining capacity and differential of the age in the behaviour of average citizens of Navarre is reflected primarily in the savings motives of particular citizens of Navarre. Similarly, taking into account the savings motives, the authorities can apply appropriate policies in order to increase the level of family savings and achieve sustainable growth in a time of macroeconomics magnitudes.

Enumeration of surfaces containing an elliptic quartic curve

A very general surface of degree at least four in projective space of dimension three contains no curves other than intersections with surfaces. We find a formula for the degree of the locus of surfaces of degree at least five which contain some elliptic quartic curve. We also compute the degree of the locus of quartic surfaces containing an elliptic quartic curve, a case not covered by that formula.Comment: Minor typos corrected. To appear on Proceedings of the American Mathematical Societ

Versatile continuous pH monitoring barcode system based in ionogels

The online monitoring of pH level in different environments like bio-engineering [1] and chemistry [2] is vital for the control and well behaviour of the whole industrial process. Still exist the demand of miniaturised, versatile and autonomous systems which do not require of sensor calibration, replacement and manual attention over a long operational interval. In this abstract we present an innovative miniaturisable system for continuously measurement of pH solutions and vapours streams during chemical or biological processes. It consists on a simple barcode sensor with several pH dyes doped in an ionogel matrix. This ionogel is a hybrid material fabricated from an hydrogel polymer (N-isopropylacrylamide and N,N-methylene-bis(acrylamide) ratio 100:5) and an ionic liquid (Trihexyltetradecylphosphonium dicyanoamide). The barcode sensor consists of nineteen independent micro-wells (120 mm by 50 m) fabricated in poly(methyl methacrylate) and pressure-sensitive adhesive in three layers using a CO2 ablation laser. Different optically responsive molecular recognition ligands (pH-dyes) were incorporated in the ionogel matrix during monomers photo-polymerisation within each of the micro-wells generating a pH-sensor array for specific sensing applications like colorimetric, environmental or chemical sensing, Figure 1. It was observed that no leaching of pH dyes occurred during experiments and that the ionogel material was impressively robust under harsh conditions (pH:1 to pH: 14). The result is a sensing barcode which is able to generate a characteristic fingerprint-type colour of response within a single “snapshot” for different pH solutions and vapours. Moreover the pH response can be monitoring continuously and the barcode is reusable at least fifty times without sensitivity withdrawing

Materials science and the sensor revolution

For the past decade, we have been investigating strategies to develop ways to provide chemical sensing platforms capable of long-term deployment in remote locations1-3. This key objective has been driven by the emergence of ubiquitous digital communications and the associated potential for widely deployed wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Understandably, in these early days of WSNs, deployments have been based on very reliable sensors, such as thermistors, accelerometers, flow meters, photodetectors, and digital cameras. Biosensors and chemical sensors (bio/chemo-sensors) are largely missing from this rapidly developing field, despite the obvious value offered by an ability to measure molecular targets at multiple locations in real-time. Interestingly, while this paper is focused on the issues with respect to wide area sensing of the environment, the core challenge is essentially the same for long-term implantable bio/chemo-sensors4, i.e.; how to maintain the integrity of the analytical method at a remote, inaccessible location

Autonomous valves in micro-fluidic manifolds based on versatile photoresponsive ionogels

Versatility in valve actuation within micro-fluidic devices is very desirable since precise flow control, provision of exact reagent amounts, contamination prevention between reagents, autonomy, disposability and low-cost manufacture are factors that cannot be found today for microfluidic valves. Valves made using photo-responsive gels are of great interest as functional materials within micro-fluidic systems since actuation can be controlled by light irradiation, without physical contact, unlike equivalent electroactuated valves. Nevertheless, their poor versatility, slow response times and limited robustness render them currently as scientific curiosities rather than ideally functioning devices.[1] The incorporation of photoresponsive gels with ionic liquids (ILs), ionogels, produces hybrid materials with many advantages over conventional materials. For example, through the tailoring of chemical and physical properties of ILs, robustness, acid/ base character, viscosity and other critical operational characteristics can be finely adjusted. Therefore, we can tune the characteristics of the ionogels by changing the IL and so more closely control the actuation behaviour of micro-valves made from these novel materials. In this paper, we present the preparation and performance of four different ionogels as micro-valves in microfluidic systems. It was found that simply varying the ILs, actuation can be modulated on demand

Photo-responsive ionogels: versatile flow control in micro-fluidic manifolds

This paper presents the synthesis, characterization and micro-valve actuation in a micro-fluidic device of novel polymeric materials based on phosphonium ionic liquids (ILs), ionogels. When photo-responsive gels are co-polymerised within different IL matrixes, high versatility in the ionogels actuation can be achieved when incorporated in a micro-fluidic system as micro-valves

Closed time path approach to the Casimir energy in real media

The closed time path formalism is applied, in the framework of open quantum systems, to study the time evolution of the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor of a scalar field in the presence of real materials. We analyze quantum fluctuations in a fully non-equilibrium scenario, when the scalar field is interacting with the polarization degrees of freedom of matter, described as quantum Brownian particles. A generalized analysis was done for two types of couplings between the field and the material. On the one hand, we considered a bilinear coupling, and on the other hand, a (more realistic) current-type coupling as in the case of the electromagnetic field interacting with matter. We considered the high temperature limit for the field, keeping arbitrary temperatures for each part of the volume elements of the material. We obtained a closed form for the Hadamard propagator, which let us study the dynamical evolution of the expectations values of the energy-momentum tensor components from the initial time. We showed that two contributions always take place in the transient evolution: one of these is associated to the material and the other one is only associated to the field. Transient features were studied and the long-time limit was derived in several cases. We proved that in the steady situation of a field in n + 1 dimensions, the material always contribute unless is non-dissipative. Conversely, the proper field contribution vanishes unless the material is non-dissipative or, moreover, at least for the 1 + 1 case, if there are regions without material. We conclude that any steady quantization scheme in 1 + 1 dimensions must consider both contributions and we argue why these results are physically expected from a dynamical point of view, and also could be valid for higher dimensions based on the expected continuity between the non-dissipative and real material cases.Comment: 28 pages, no figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Order Reduction of the Chemical Master Equation via Balanced Realisation

We consider a Markov process in continuous time with a finite number of discrete states. The time-dependent probabilities of being in any state of the Markov chain are governed by a set of ordinary differential equations, whose dimension might be large even for trivial systems. Here, we derive a reduced ODE set that accurately approximates the probabilities of subspaces of interest with a known error bound. Our methodology is based on model reduction by balanced truncation and can be considerably more computationally efficient than the Finite State Projection Algorithm (FSP) when used for obtaining transient responses. We show the applicability of our method by analysing stochastic chemical reactions. First, we obtain a reduced order model for the infinitesimal generator of a Markov chain that models a reversible, monomolecular reaction. In such an example, we obtain an approximation of the output of a model with 301 states by a reduced model with 10 states. Later, we obtain a reduced order model for a catalytic conversion of substrate to a product; and compare its dynamics with a stochastic Michaelis-Menten representation. For this example, we highlight the savings on the computational load obtained by means of the reduced-order model. Finally, we revisit the substrate catalytic conversion by obtaining a lower-order model that approximates the probability of having predefined ranges of product molecules.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure