Giving all power to the beast! Violent authority and collective action by ‘second-class’ citizens in Nairobi

This article focuses on the relationship between young, male citizens and the state at the urban margins of Nairobi; a relationship framed by violent encounters and police brutality. My aim is to explore young people's notions of citizenship at these urban margins through two interconnected emic concepts: the notion of living with ‘the beast’ – as an intimate, violent presence of the state in the form of the police, and the idea of being a ‘second-class citizen’. My research highlights the characteristics of being young and male by focusing on concrete interactions and relationships between authority and particularly situated citizens. Social position – including legal and economic status – is a third aspect that influences the encounters and relationships with authority. Violence, state practices and intersectionality constitute a fourth area explored in the article, as I argue that violence becomes a repertoire of action for what the young people refer to as ‘second-class citizenship’. This notion of ‘second-class citizenship’ applied by young people at the urban margins, and analysed in the article, contributes to a nuanced and ambiguous conceptualization of and relationship with the Kenyan state. The state is not merely seen as an outsider, operating on the informal settlement from the outside, as it were, but also as a locally entangled urban authority, always present in the informal settlement through intimate and intricate relationships. Lastly, I attempt to show that this form of ‘second-class citizenship’ is not associated with rebellion or pride, but with resignation with a form of citizenship whereby young Kenyans at the urban margins only feel heard in the context of potentially violent demonstrations.</p

Modelling Transport in an Interregional General Equilibrium Model with Externalities

In this working paper the regional impacts of road pricing on cars are analysed taking into account externality effects from transportation on wages and productivity. In the paper the direct impacts from changes in transport costs on level of wages and productivity (=direct externality effects) have been estimated. The direct and derived impacts of road pricing have been analysed with AKF’s local economic model LINE and include the impacts on regional production, income and employment. LINE is an interregional general equilibrium model, which uses an interregional social accounting matrix (SAM-K) and a regional transport satellite account as the basis for modelling. Additionally, data from a GIS-system (Technical University of Copenhagen) on transport costs have been included to estimate the demand for transport commodities and increase in transport demand and costs due to road pricing. The direct effects on level of wages and productivity have been included into the model together with all the direct effects on commodity prices from road pricing. In the working paper the total impacts of road pricing have been subdivided into 2 components: 1) The wage effects of reducing income net of commuting of increasing transport cost by introduction of road pricing, 2) the labour contraction effect from increasing wages through increase in commuting cost and 3) the negative productivity effects of introducing road pricing. In total the impacts of road pricing are substantial. Regions with high level of average commuting cost (suburban areas in Greater Copenhagen) suffers most, whereas the centre of Copenhagen suffers least because of short commuting distances. In rural areas impacts are on or just below average because low level of road pricing.

Tuning Yu-Shiba-Rusinov States in a Quantum Dot

We present transport spectroscopy of sub-gap states in a bottom gated InAs nanowire coupled to a normal lead and a superconducting aluminium lead. The device shows clearly resolved sub-gap states which we can track as the coupling parameters of the system are tuned and as the gap is closed by means of a magnetic field. We systematically extract system parameters by using numerical renormalization group theory fits as a level of the quantum dot is tuned through a quantum phase transition electrostatically and magnetically. We also give an intuitive description of sub-gap excitations.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Gaps below strange star crusts

The gap caused by a strong electric field between the quark surface and nuclear crust of a strange star is studied in an improved model including gravity and pressure as well as electrostatic forces. The transition from gap to crust is followed in detail. The properties of the gap are investigated for a wide range of parameters assuming both color-flavor locked and non color-flavor locked strange star cores. The maximally allowed crust density is generally lower than that of neutron drip. Finite temperature is shown to increase the gap width, but the effect is significant only at extreme temperatures. Analytical approximations are derived and shown to provide useful fits to the numerical results.Comment: 12 pages incl. 14 figures. To appear in Physical Review

The role of aquaporins in the kidney of euryhaline teleosts

Water balance in teleost fish is maintained with contributions from the major osmoregulatory organs: intestine, gills and kidney. Overall water fluxes have been studied in all of these organs but not until recently has it become possible to approach the mechanisms of water transport at the molecular level. This mini-review addresses the role of the kidney in osmoregulation with special emphasis on euryhaline teleosts. After a short review of current knowledge of renal functional morphology and regulation, we turn the focus to recent molecular investigations of the role of aquaporins in water and solute transport in the teleost kidney. We conclude that there is much to be achieved in understanding water transport and its regulation in the teleost kidney and that effort should be put into systematic mapping of aquaporins to their tubular as well as cellular localization