59,724 research outputs found
An Incomes Policy for the Professions: the Dutch Experience
In 1951 the United States began moving toward an incomes policy, an attempt to end postwar wage and price inflation by linking changes in these prices to gains in productivity. Other countries later followed suit; some countries had already adopted wage and price control policies. The Netherlands moved toward an incomes policy immediately after World War II. Initially, the Dutch program involved wages only, but in the 1970s it became an accepted principle that private professional income should be comparable with the salaries of government officials and civil servants with comparable training and responsibilities. In the Netherlands (as in the United States and, before medicine was socialized, the United Kingdom) health professionals operate on a fee-for-service basis and their incomes escalated as a result of both inflation and monopoly power. So they were subjected to the incomes policy. The policy's effectiveness in curbing income escalation cannot be determined with certainty—reliable data are lacking. However, the evidence indicates that the policy failed to achieve its original purpose.Incomes policy, Netherlands
The exclusive (e,ep) reaction at high missing momenta
The reduced (e,ep) cross section is calculated for kinematics that probe
high missing momenta. The final-state interaction is handled within a
non-relativistic many-body framework. One- and two-body nuclear currents are
included. Electron distortion effects are treated in an exact distorted wave
calculation. It is shown that at high missing momenta the calculated (e,ep)
cross sections exhibit a pronounced sensitivity to ground-state correlations of
the RPA type and two-body currents. The role of these mechanisms is found to be
relatively small at low missing momenta.Comment: 15 pages in REVtex with embedded psfigure
Control of recollision wave packets for molecular orbital tomography using short laser pulses
The tomographic imaging of arbitrary molecular orbitals via high-order
harmonic generation requires that electrons recollide from one direction only.
Within a semi-classical model, we show that extremely short phase-stabilized
laser pulses offer control over the momentum distribution of the returning
electrons. By adjusting the carrier-envelope phase, recollisions can be forced
to occur from mainly one side, while retaining a broad energy spectrum. The
signatures of the semi-classical distributions are observed in harmonic spectra
obtained by numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures; v2: Added some extra clarifications; v3: minor
grammatical change
First Detection of Molecular Gas in the Shells of CenA
Shells are faint arc-like stellar structures, which have been observed around
early type galaxies and are thought to be the result of an interaction. HI gas
has recently been detected in shells, a surprising result in view of the
theoretical predictions that most of the gas should decouple from stars and
fall into the nucleus in such interactions. Here we report the first detection
of molecular gas (CO) in shells, found 15kpc away from the center of NGC5128
(CenA), a giant elliptical galaxy that harbors an active nucleus (AGN). The
ratio between CO and HI emission in the shells is the same as that found in the
central regions, which is unexpected given the metallicity gradient usually
observed in galaxies. We propose that the dynamics of the gas can be understood
within the standard picture of shell formation if one takes into account that
the interstellar medium is clumpy and hence not highly dissipative. The
observed metal enrichment could be due to star formation induced by the AGN jet
in the shells. Furthermore our observations provide evidence that molecular gas
in mergers may be spread out far from the nuclear regions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters, (Vol.
356), 4 pages + 1 color figur
X-ray photoemission characterization of La_{0.67}(Ca_{x}Sr_{1-x})_{0.33}MnO_{3} films
The Curie temperature and x-ray photoemission spectra of thin films of
La_{0.67}(Ca_{x}Sr_{1-x})_{0.33}MnO_{3} (LCSMO) have been studied as a function
of the Ca/Sr ratio. The films were grown by off-axis cosputtering from
individual targets of La_{0.67}Ca_{0.33}MnO_{3} (LCMO) and
La_{0.67}Sr_{0.33}MnO_{3} (LSMO) onto (100) oriented NdGaO_{3} substrates. The
films grow with a (100) orientation, with no other orientations observed by
x-ray diffraction. For the alloy mixtures, the Curie temperature, T_C, varies
slowly as the Ca/Sr is decreased, remaining 300 K, while for the LCMO
and LSMO films T_C is 260 and 330 K, respectively. The Mn-O valence structure
is composed of two dominant peaks, whose positions undergo a change as the Ca
fraction is decreased. The core lines behave as linear combinations of lines
from pure LCMO and LSMO.Comment: 3 pages, 5 eps figures. To be published in Journal of Applied Physics
(Proceedings of MMM'98
Hansenula polymorpha: An attractive model organism for molecular studies of peroxisome biogenesis and function
In wild-type Hansenula polymorpha the proliferation of peroxisomes is induced by various unconventional carbon- and nitrogen sources. Highest induction levels, up to 80% of the cytoplasmic volume, are observed in cells grown in methanol-limited chemostat cultures. Based on our accumulated experience, we are now able to precisely adjust both the level of peroxisome induction as well as their protein composition by specific adaptations in growth conditions.
During the last few years a series of peroxisome-deficient (per) mutants of H. polymorpha have been isolated and characterized. Phenotypically these mutants are characterized by the fact that they are not able to grow on methanol. Three mutant phenotypes were defined on the basis of morphological criteria, namely: (a) mutants completely lacking peroxisomes (Per-; 13 complementation groups); (b) mutants containing few small peroxisomes which are partly impaired in the peroxisomal import of matrix proteins (Pim-; five complementation groups); and (c) mutants with aberrations in the peroxisomal substructure (Pss-; two complementation groups). In addition, several conditional Per-, Pim- and Pss- mutants have been obtained. In all cases the mutant phenotype was shown to be caused by a recessive mutation in one gene. However, we observed that different mutations in one gene may cause different morphological mutant phenotypes. A detailed genetic analysis revealed that several PER genes, essential for peroxisome biogenesis, are tightly linked and organized in a hierarchical fashion.
The use of both constitual and conditional per mutants in current and future studies of the molecular mechanisms controlling peroxisome biogenesis and function is discussed.
A deep learning approach to diabetic blood glucose prediction
We consider the question of 30-minute prediction of blood glucose levels
measured by continuous glucose monitoring devices, using clinical data. While
most studies of this nature deal with one patient at a time, we take a certain
percentage of patients in the data set as training data, and test on the
remainder of the patients; i.e., the machine need not re-calibrate on the new
patients in the data set. We demonstrate how deep learning can outperform
shallow networks in this example. One novelty is to demonstrate how a
parsimonious deep representation can be constructed using domain knowledge
Chemical abundances in LMC stellar populations. II. The bar sample
This paper compares the chemical evolution of the Large Magellanic Cloud
(LMC) to that of the Milky Way (MW) and investigates the relation between the
bar and the inner disc of the LMC in the context of the formation of the bar.
We obtained high-resolution and mid signal-to-noise ratio spectra with
FLAMES/GIRAFFE at ESO/VLT and performed a detailed chemical analysis of 106 and
58 LMC field red giant stars (mostly older than 1 Gyr), located in the bar and
the disc of the LMC respectively. We measured elemental abundances for O, Mg,
Si, Ca, Ti, Na, Sc, V, Cr, Co, Ni, Cu, Y, Zr, Ba, La and Eu. We find that the
{\alpha}-element ratios [Mg/Fe] and [O/Fe] are lower in the LMC than in the MW
while the LMC has similar [Si/Fe], [Ca/Fe], and [Ti/Fe] to the MW. As for the
heavy elements, [Ba,La/Eu] exhibit a strong increase with increasing
metallicity starting from [Fe/H]=-0.8 dex, and the LMC has lower [Y+Zr/Ba+La]
ratios than the MW. Cu is almost constant over all metallicities and about 0.5
dex lower in the LMC than in the MW. The LMC bar and inner disc exhibit
differences in their [{\alpha}/Fe] (slightly larger scatter for the bar in the
metallicity range [-1,-0.5]), their Eu (the bar trend is above the disc trend
for [Fe/H] > -0.5 dex), their Y and Zr, their Na and their V (offset between
bar and disc distributions). Our results show that the chemical history of the
LMC experienced a strong contribution from type Ia supernovae as well as a
strong s-process enrichment from metal-poor AGB winds. Massive stars made a
smaller contribution to the chemical enrichment compared to the MW. The
observed differences between the bar and the disc speak in favour of an episode
of enhanced star formation a few Gyr ago, occurring in the central parts of the
LMC and leading to the formation of the bar. This is in agreement with recently
derived star formation histories.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figures; Accepted for publication in A&
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