Investment in education: the implications for economic growth and public finances - Andrea Montanino, Bartosz Przywara and David Young

This paper analyses the demographic and institutional influences underlying public spending on education, as well as the consequences for average educational attainment and economic growth. The issues are topical given, on one hand, EU objectives for increased investment in human resources and, on the other, increasing concerns about the sustainability of public finances, particularly in view of ageing populations. The paper presents methodologies for projecting educational attainment and public expenditure on education. Tentative numerical results suggest that the growth of average educational attainment is likely to slow slightly, compared to recent decades. Nevertheless, education is set to continue making a substantial contribution to economic growth in the EU as a whole, though the impact varies widely among Member States. As regards public expenditure, although demographic trends mean a reduction in the potential number of students, this is offset by two factors: increasing enrolment rates at upper-secondary and tertiary level (projected taking into consideration either past developments in enrolment or the expected future evolution of labour force); and increasing expenditure per student (projected on the basis of recent trends). Thus, few savings - if any - are expected from reductions in expenditure on education due to changes in the demographic structure.education, educational attainment, growth, public finances, human resources, Montanino, Przywara, Young, investment in education

Application of the modified finite particle method to the simulation of the corneal air puff test

We present a numerical procedure for the simulation of the air puff test, a medical procedure used by ophtalmologists for the identification of the Intra Ocular Pressure, and potentially useful for the identification of material properties of the human cornea. The problem involves the modeling of the cornea, that is a biological tissue, modelled as an hyperelastic material, and the aqueous humor, that is, the fluid filling the anterior chamber of the eye, that is treated as a Newtonian fluid, and modelled using a meshfree formulation, useful for the solution of a Fluid-Structure Interaction problem. Fluid and Structure are coupled using a Dirichlet-Neumann iterative approach, which permits the adoption of a partitioned coupling approach and explicit, fast solvers for the different subproblems

Un modello di danno fragile per mezzi porosi: esempi di applicazione

Si presenta un approccio accoppiato per modellare il danneggiamento indotto da sollecitazioni idrauliche e meccaniche in ammassi rocciosi. Il danneggiamento del materiale è legato alla formazione a scala microstrutturale di diverse famiglie di fratture parallele, annidate una nell’altra, ciascuna caratterizzata da una propria orientazione e spaziatura. La semplicità della geometria delle fratture permette di esprimere analiticamente la variazione di porosità e di permeabilità causate dal progressivo danneggiamento del materiale. Si illustrano alcune simulazioni, sia a livello di punto di volume sia come problema al contorno, per mettere in evidenza i potenziali campi di applicazione del modello, tra i quali si individuano la stabilità di perforazioni in roccia e l’ottimizzazione di processi di fratturazione idraulica

On different discretisation strategies to solve the kinematical and equilibrium problem for masonry-like structures

Nowadays, there is a raising interest in the development of fast and robust tools to detect the consequences of settlements or loading changes in unreinforced masonry buildings, since they constitute a large part of world architectural heritage. Current tools, based on Finite Element Method or on Discrete Element Method are computationally cumbersome, from one side due to difficulties in dealing with unilateral materials, and on the other side, due to the need of formulating the problem as an explicit dynamics problem. The methods proposed here are based on the minimization problem of two different functionals, the Total Potential Energy, and the Total Complementary Energy, which allow to detect the stress and strain distribution developed under given load and given boundary settlements, through a minimization problem, which require a significantly lower computational cost and no material parameters, especially when rigidity assumption of the material is done. After illustrating the main characteristics of the two methods, they are applied to a case study, and the results are suitably described and discussed

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pTpT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HTHT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb−1. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pTpT distributions of the leading jets at high pTpT values, the distributions of the HTHT at high-HTHT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO