Identifying rent pressures [on housing market] in your neighbourhood: a new model of Irish regional rent indicators. ESRI WP567, June 2017

Since 2013, researchers in the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) have compiled a hedonic rental index for the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB). The indicator estimates a standardised rental index on a national, Dublin and outside of Dublin basis based on the 950,000 rental properties registered with the RTB. The provision in late 2016 of detailed geographical identifiers has enabled an alternative series of indicators to be estimated. In particular, hedonic rental indicators for 137 local electoral areas (LEAs) are now available on a quarterly basis from 2007 quarter 3 to 2016 quarter 4. By providing a more accurate assessment of regional trends in rental supply and demand, the indicators should enable a more precise implementation of policies in the rental market. They should also serve as a proxy for measuring underlying economic activity in these regions on an ongoing basis

Model of tunneling transistors based on graphene on SiC

Recent experiments shown that graphene epitaxially grown on Silicon Carbide (SiC) can exhibit a energy gap of 0.26 eV, making it a promising material for electronics. With an accurate model, we explore the design parameter space for a fully ballistic graphene-on-SiC Tunnel Field-Effect Transistors (TFETs), and assess the DC and high frequency figures of merit. The steep subthreshold behavior can enable I_{ON}/I_{OFF} ratios exceeding 10^4 even with a low supply voltage of 0.15 V, for devices with gatelength down to 30 nm. Intrinsic transistor delays smaller than 1 ps are obtained. These factors make the device an interesting candidate for low-power nanoelectronics beyond CMOS

Deformation surfaces, integrable systems and Chern - Simons theory

A few years ago, some of us devised a method to obtain integrable systems in (2+1)-dimensions from the classical non-Abelian pure Chern-Simons action via reduction of the gauge connection in Hermitian symmetric spaces. In this paper we show that the methods developed in studying classical non-Abelian pure Chern-Simons actions, can be naturally implemented by means of a geometrical interpretation of such systems. The Chern-Simons equation of motion turns out to be related to time evolving 2-dimensional surfaces in such a way that these deformations are both locally compatible with the Gauss-Mainardi-Codazzi equations and completely integrable. The properties of these relationships are investigated together with the most relevant consequences. Explicit examples of integrable surface deformations are displayed and discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, submitted to J. Math. Phy

Design criteria to develop choice experiments to measure the WTP accurately.

To measure the willingness-to-pay (WTP) accurately, Vermeulen et al.[2008] apply the c-optimality criterion to generate designs for conjoint choice experiments. This criterion is based on minimizing the sum of the variances of the WTP estimators approximated by the delta method. Designs generated based on this criterion lead to more accurate WTP estimates than the ones obtained by standard designs and reduce considerably the occurrence of extreme WTP estimates, although they do not exclude them. In this paper, other optimality criteria are considered to tackle this problem. We distinguish between criteria in preference space on the one hand and criteria in WTP-space on the other hand. In a simulation study and a numerical example, we compare the accuracy of the WTP and the utility coefficient estimates yielded by the designs based on these new criteria.conjoint choice experiment; Bayesian optimal design; willingness-to-pay; conditional logit model;

An efficient algorithm for constructing Bayesian optimal choice designs.

Recently, Kessels et al. (2006) developed a way to produce Bayesian G- and V-optimal designs for the multinomial logitmodel. These designs allow for precise response predictions which is the goal of conjoint choice experiments. The authors showed that the G- and V- optimality criteria outperform the D- and A-optimality criteria for prediction. However, their G- and V-optimal design algorithm is computationally intensive, which is a barrier to its use in practice. In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm for calculating Bayesian optimal designs by means of the different criteria. Particularly, the speed of computation for the V-optimality criterion has improved dramatically.The new algorithm makes it possible to use Bayesian D-, A-, G- and V-optimal designs that are tailored to individual respondents in computerized conjoint choice studies.Adaptive algorithm; Bayesian D-,A-,G- and V-optimality; Cholesky decomposition; Conjoint choice design; Coordinate-exchange; Conjoint choice experiments;

Thyroid hormones correlate with field metabolic rate in ponies, Equus ferus caballus

Acknowledgments The authors thank Jürgen Dörl for technical help and for taking care of the animals and Peter Thompson for technical assistance with the doubly labelled water analysis. Funding The study was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG;GE 704/13-1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Topology and Sizes of HII Regions during Cosmic Reionization

We use the results of large-scale simulations of reionization to explore methods for characterizing the topology and sizes of HII regions during reionization. We use four independent methods for characterizing the sizes of ionized regions. Three of them give us a full size distribution: the friends-of-friends (FOF) method, the spherical average method (SPA) and the power spectrum (PS) of the ionized fraction. These latter three methods are complementary: While the FOF method captures the size distribution of the small scale H~II regions, which contribute only a small amount to the total ionization fraction, the spherical average method provides a smoothed measure for the average size of the H~II regions constituting the main contribution to the ionized fraction, and the power spectrum does the same while retaining more details on the size distribution. Our fourth method for characterizing the sizes of the H II regions is the average size which results if we divide the total volume of the H II regions by their total surface area, (i.e. 3V/A), computed in terms of the ratio of the corresponding Minkowski functionals of the ionized fraction field. To characterize the topology of the ionized regions, we calculate the evolution of the Euler Characteristic. We find that the evolution of the topology during the first half of reionization is consistent with inside-out reionization of a Gaussian density field. We use these techniques to investigate the dependence of size and topology on some basic source properties, such as the halo mass-to-light ratio, susceptibility of haloes to negative feedback from reionization, and the minimum halo mass for sources to form. We find that suppression of ionizing sources within ionized regions slows the growth of H~II regions, and also changes their size distribution. Additionally, the topology of simulations including suppression is more complex. (abridged