Social networks and employment in India

We investigate the influence of social networks on employment. Using data from India, we estimate the effect of caste based social networks on employment. We use a methodology that allows us to control for several omitted variable biases that often confound network effect. Our results indicate that caste based social networks are important determinant of employment in India. The implication of our findings is that a policy of positive discrimination in labour market for disadvantaged caste is able to generate additional benefit through network channels.

Constituent Quark Scaling of Strangeness Enhancement in Heavy-Ion Collisions

In the frame work of a nuclear overlap model, we estimate the number of nucleon and quark participants in proton-proton, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. We observe the number of nucleon ($N_{N-part}$)-normalized enhancement of multi-strange particles which show a monotonic increase with centrality, turns out to be a centrality independent scaling behavior when normalized to number of constituent quarks participating in the collision ($N_{q-part}$). In addition, we observe that the $N_{q-part}$-normalized enhancement, when further normalized to the strangeness content, shows a strangeness independent scaling behavior. This holds good at top RHIC energy. However, the corresponding SPS data show a weak $N_{q-part}$-scaling with strangeness scaling being violated at top SPS energy. This scaling at RHIC indicates that the partonic degrees of freedom playing an important role in the production of multi-strange particles. Top SPS energy, in view of the above observations, shows a co-existence of hadronic and partonic phases. We give a comparison of data with HIJING, AMPT and UrQMD models to understand the particle production dynamics at different energies.Comment: 9 pages, 17 figure

Discovery of a Quasi-Periodic Oscillation in the Ultraluminous X-ray Source IC 342 X-1: XMM-Newton Results

We report the discovery of a quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) at 642 mHz in an {\it XMM-Newton} observation of the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) IC 342 X-1. The QPO has a centroid at $\nu_{QPO} = 642 \pm 20$ mHz, a coherence factor of $Q = 11.6$, and an amplitude (rms) of 4.1\% with significance of $3.6\sigma$. The energy dependence study shows that the QPO is stronger in the energy range 0.3 - 5.0 keV. A subsequent observation (6 days later) does not show any signature of the QPO in the power density spectrum. The broadband energy spectra (0.3 - 40.0 keV) obtained by quasi-simultaneous observations of {\it XMM-Newton} and {\it NuSTAR} can be well described by an absorbed {\it diskbb} plus {\it cutoffpl} model. The best fitted spectral parameters are power-law index ($\Gamma$) $\sim$ 1.1, cutoff energy ($E_c$) $\sim$ 7.9 keV and disc temperature ($kT_{in}$) $\sim$ 0.33 keV, where the QPO is detected. The unabsorbed bolometric luminosity is $\sim$ 5.34$\times$ 10$^{39}$ erg~s$^{-1}$. Comparing with the well known X-ray binary GRS 1915+105, our results are consistent with the mass of the compact object in IC 342 X-1 being in the range $\sim 20 - 65 ~ M_\odot$. We discuss the possible implications of our results.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures (2 colour), in press (MNRAS

Comment on "Impact of a Global Quadratic Potential on Galactic Rotation Curves"

Conformal gravity theory can explain observed flat rotation curves of galaxies without invoking hypothetical dark matter. Within this theory, we obtain a generic formula for the sizes of galaxies exploiting the stability criterion of circular orbits. It is found that different galaxies have different finite sizes uniquely caused by the assumed quadratic potential of cosmological origin. Observations on where circular orbits might actually terminate could thus be very instructive in relation to the galactic sizes predicted here.Comment: 2 page