Credit, wages, and bankruptcy laws

We analyze how bankruptcy laws affect the general equilibrium interactions between credit and wages. Soft laws reduce the frequency of liquidations and thus ex post inefficiencies, but they worsen credit rationing ex ante. This hinders firm creation and thus depresses labor demand. Rich agents who need few outside funds can invest even if creditor rights are weak. Hence, they favor soft laws that exclude poorer agents from the credit market and reduce the competition for labor. Such laws can generate greater utilitarian welfare than under perfect contract enforcement: By barring access to credit to some agents, soft laws lower wages, which increases the pledgeable income of richer agents and decreases the liquidation rates they must commit to. When they induce strong credit rationing, however, soft laws are Pareto-dominated by tougher laws combined with subsidies to entrepreneurs

Same Sign WW Scattering Process as a Probe of Higgs Boson in pp Collision at s\sqrt{s} = 10 TeV

WW scattering is an important process to study electroweak symmetry breaking in the Standard Model at the LHC, in which the Higgs mechanism or other new physics processes must intervene to preserve the unitarity of the process below 1 TeV. This channel is expected to be one of the most sensitive to determine whether the Higgs boson exists. In this paper, the final state with two same sign Ws is studied, with a simulated sample corresponding to the integrated luminosity of 60 fb$^{-1}$ in pp collision at $\sqrt{s}=$10 TeV. Two observables, the invariant mass of $\mu\mu$ from W decays and the azimuthal angle difference between the two $\mu$s, are utilized to distinguish the Higgs boson existence scenario from the Higgs boson absence scenario. A good signal significance for the two cases can be achieved. If we define the separation power of the analysis as the distance, in the log-likelihood plane, of pseudo-experiments outcomes in the two cases, with the total statistics expected from the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the nominal centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, the separation power will be at the level of 4 $\sigma$.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

Optimizing detection of RET and PPARg rearrangements in thyroid neoplastic cells using a home-brew tetracolor probe

BACKGROUND Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to identify specific DNA target sequences in the nuclei of nondividing cells of numerous solid neoplasms has contributed to the introduction of molecular cytogenetics as a useful adjunct to cytology, leading recently to the "marriage" of the 2 disciplines. Numerous cancer molecular markers can now be investigated using different technical approaches, at both the gene and expression levels, in biopsies of various suspected cancers, including differentiated thyroid carcinoma. The limited amount of bioptic material is often insufficient to carry out multiple tests, and optimizing handling of the biopsy is desirable. METHODS We have developed a home-brew tetracolor break-apart probe able to simultaneously identify the 2 most common genetic alterations in differentiated thyroid carcinoma: RET/PTC variants in papillary thyroid carcinoma and PAX8/PPARg fusion and variants in follicular thyroid carcinoma. RESULTS The probe had 100% specificity, 99.5% sensitivity, and >= 3% cutoff. The probe was tested on RET/PTC and PAX8/PPARg RT-PCR positive controls, and feasibility was assessed in 368 thyroid nodule fine-needle aspirations (FNA). In the latter analysis, 24 FNAs had split RET signal, and 9 had split PPARg signal. FISH analysis of available surgically removed nodules confirmed the sensitivity of FISH in detecting abnormal clones and oligoclones. CONCLUSIONS The home-brew tetracolor probe showed high feasibility, optimizing the use of the biological material in relation to the available molecular tests and maximizing the FISH experimental and slide-scoring times. This probe may be considered an alternative to RT-PCR when recovery and quality of RNA amplification from FNA are insufficient

Semiconducting quantum confined silicon-tin alloyed nanocrystals prepared by ns pulsed laser ablation in water

In this letter we demonstrate the material synthetic feasibility for semiconducting alloyed silicon-tin nanocrystals (SiSn-ncs) with quantum confinement effects. An environmentally friendly synthesis is achieved by ns laser ablation of SiSn amorphous target in water at ambient conditions. Plasmas generated in liquid by laser pulses are characterized by spatial confinement with very high pressure (GPa), which allowed the growth of SiSn-ncs via kinetic pathways. We further illustrate that surface engineering by a direct-current atmospheric-pressure microplasma is capable of tailoring SiSn-ncs surface properties without the need of lengthy surfactants and resulting in room temperature photoluminescence (PL); the PL peak wavelength is red-shifted by more than 250 nm with respect to the PL peak wavelengths observed for comparable elemental silicon nanocrystals

Mixing Improvement in a T-Shaped Micro-Junction through Small Rectangular Cavities

The T-shaped micro-junction is among the most used geometry in microfluidic applications, and many design modifications of the channel walls have been proposed to enhance mixing. In this work, we investigate through numerical simulations the introduction of one pair of small rectangular cavities in the lateral walls of the mixing channel just downstream of the confluence region. The aim is to preserve the simple geometry that has contributed to spread the practical use of the T-shaped micro-junction while suggesting a modification that should, in principle, work jointly with the vortical structures present in the mixing channel, further enhancing their efficiency in mixing without significant additional pressure drops. The performance is analyzed in the different flow regimes occurring by increasing the Reynolds number. The cavities are effective in the two highly-mixed flow regimes, viz., the steady engulfment and the periodic asymmetric regimes. This presence does not interfere with the formation of the vortical structures that promote mixing by convection in these two regimes, but it further enhances the mixing of the inlet streams in the near-wall region of the mixing channel without any additional cost, leading to better performance than the classical configuration

Nanostructured Perovskite Solar Cells

Funding: UK EPSRC EP/K022237/1, EP/M024938/1 and EP/R023638/1.Over the past decade, lead halide perovskites have emerged as one of the leading photovoltaic materials due to their long carrier lifetimes, high absorption coefficients, high tolerance to defects, and facile processing methods. With a bandgap of ~1.6 eV, lead halide perovskite solar cells have achieved power conversion efficiencies in excess of 25%. Despite this, poor material stability along with lead contamination remains a significant barrier to commercialization. Recently, low-dimensional perovskites, where at least one of the structural dimensions is measured on the nanoscale, have demonstrated significantly higher stabilities, and although their power conversion efficiencies are slightly lower, these materials also open up the possibility of quantum-confinement effects such as carrier multiplication. Furthermore, both bulk perovskites and low-dimensional perovskites have been demonstrated to form hybrids with silicon nanocrystals, where numerous device architectures can be exploited to improve efficiency. In this review, we provide an overview of perovskite solar cells, and report the current progress in nanoscale perovskites, such as low- dimensional perovskites, perovskite quantum dots, and perovskite-nanocrystal hybrid solar cells.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe