Does an International Academic Environment Promote Study Abroad?

Although many studies on international student mobility have examined the impact of individual factors (e.g., gender, age, family background) on students’ decision to study abroad, much less attention has been devoted to the role played by the institutional climate and characteristics of one’s home university. Using data from an Italian survey containing information on a large number of university students, this research investigated the extent to which a more international academic environment incentivizes students to participate in study abroad programs. A logit model was developed to estimate the effect that the degree of internationalization of one’s home university has on the probability that its students will study abroad, while controlling for several student-level factors. The empirical estimates indicate that this effect is significant, suggesting that being part of an international academic environment, where domestic students can interact more frequently with international students, helps motivate them to undertake study abroad. This result stresses the importance of engaging domestic students in the internationalization process of their universities

Tribal Court Jurisdiction and Public Law 280: What Role for Tribal Courts in Alaska

GPS data from Challenging Mini-satellite Payload (CHAMP) is used for its orbit determination for the epoch day of January 1st 2002.  The orbit of CHAMP is computed from the GPS data and ionospheric effects are removed by frequency combination. Further, the orbits of CHAMP for the same epoch day are computed using the satellite tool kit (STK) employing simplified general perturbations (SGP4) and a high precision orbit propagator (HPOP). Furthermore, orbits computed using GPS data are also compared with jet propulsion laboratory’s published CHAMP spacecraft orbit and we have found that root mean square difference in ECEF position X component is below 0.01km other than some spikes at poles. The standard deviation of the difference in ECEF position X coordinate (JPL results – GPS computed results) is 11.7m. Since JPL computed orbits are considered as true orbits of CHAMP with accuracy of centimeter level (https://gipsy-oasis.jpl.nasa.gov/). Therefore this difference can also be referred as observed error in GPS computed orbits. Considering above discussion, we can expect that accuracy of our computed satellite positions (using GPS data) is about 12 metres for other than poles area. However there are some occasional spikes, especially at poles, having maximum errors (about 0.055 km)

Changes in socioeconomic inequality in access to study abroad programs: a cross-country analysis

The growing evidence about the benefits of studying abroad calls for increased public efforts to equalize study abroad opportunities among university students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using student-level data from the nationally representative surveys of three European countries (Italy, France and Germany) between the 2000s and mid-2010s, this paper investigates how the social gap in access to study abroad programs changed over time and what are the factors driving these changes. Logistic regressions are used in order to identify the determinants of study abroad program participation and a decomposition technique is employed in an attempt to both determine how much of the gap each factor explains and compare its relative contribution over time. The results indicate that, not only has disparity in study abroad participation rate between students from more and less advantaged backgrounds not decreased in any of the countries considered here, but there is consistent evidence showing that it has increased in Germany. Differences in earlier educational trajectories and performance between these two groups of students are important predictors of the gap. However, a large part of this gap remains unexplained, and this underscores the important role played by unobserved or difficult-to-measure factors in accounting for inequality

Military Conscription and University Enrolment: Evidence from Italy

Given that a growing number of countries have abolished or are considering the abolition of military conscription, understanding the consequences of this measure is of increased importance. In this paper we study the effect of the suppression of compulsory military service on university enrolment in Italy using double and triple differences models. The empirical results show that there is no compelling evidence suggesting that the abolition of military conscription has a causal effect on university enrolment. However, although there is no significant overall effect, we find some evidence of heterogeneous effects. While this measure seems to increase university participation among individuals from more advantaged backgrounds, it appears to have a detrimental effect on the enrolment of those from less advantaged backgrounds.compulsory military service, university enrolment

Cardy Formulae for SUSY Theories in d=4 and d=6

We consider supersymmetric theories on a space with compact space-like slices. One can count BPS representations weighted by (-1)^F, or, equivalently, study supersymmetric partition functions by compactifying the time direction. A special case of this general construction corresponds to the counting of short representations of the superconformal group. We show that in four-dimensional N=1 theories the "high temperature" asymptotics of such counting problems is fixed by the anomalies of the theory. Notably, the combination a-c of the trace anomalies plays a crucial role. We also propose similar formulae for six-dimensional (1,0) theories.Comment: 33 pages; added reference

Undecidable Properties of Limit Set Dynamics of Cellular Automata

Cellular Automata (CA) are discrete dynamical systems and an abstract model of parallel computation. The limit set of a cellular automaton is its maximal topological attractor. A well know result, due to Kari, says that all nontrivial properties of limit sets are undecidable. In this paper we consider properties of limit set dynamics, i.e. properties of the dynamics of Cellular Automata restricted to their limit sets. There can be no equivalent of Kari's Theorem for limit set dynamics. Anyway we show that there is a large class of undecidable properties of limit set dynamics, namely all properties of limit set dynamics which imply stability or the existence of a unique subshift attractor. As a consequence we have that it is undecidable whether the cellular automaton map restricted to the limit set is the identity, closing, injective, expansive, positively expansive, transitive

An advection-robust Hybrid High-Order method for the Oseen problem

In this work, we study advection-robust Hybrid High-Order discretizations of the Oseen equations. For a given integer $k\ge 0$, the discrete velocity unknowns are vector-valued polynomials of total degree $\le k$ on mesh elements and faces, while the pressure unknowns are discontinuous polynomials of total degree $\le k$ on the mesh. From the discrete unknowns, three relevant quantities are reconstructed inside each element: a velocity of total degree $\le(k+1)$, a discrete advective derivative, and a discrete divergence. These reconstructions are used to formulate the discretizations of the viscous, advective, and velocity-pressure coupling terms, respectively. Well-posedness is ensured through appropriate high-order stabilization terms. We prove energy error estimates that are advection-robust for the velocity, and show that each mesh element $T$ of diameter $h_T$ contributes to the discretization error with an $\mathcal{O}(h_T^{k+1})$-term in the diffusion-dominated regime, an $\mathcal{O}(h_T^{k+\frac12})$-term in the advection-dominated regime, and scales with intermediate powers of $h_T$ in between. Numerical results complete the exposition

A Hybrid High-Order method for Leray-Lions elliptic equations on general meshes

In this work, we develop and analyze a Hybrid High-Order (HHO) method for steady non-linear Leray-Lions problems. The proposed method has several assets, including the support for arbitrary approximation orders and general polytopal meshes. This is achieved by combining two key ingredients devised at the local level: a gradient reconstruction and a high-order stabilization term that generalizes the one originally introduced in the linear case. The convergence analysis is carried out using a compactness technique. Extending this technique to HHO methods has prompted us to develop a set of discrete functional analysis tools whose interest goes beyond the specific problem and method addressed in this work: (direct and) reverse Lebesgue and Sobolev embeddings for local polynomial spaces, $L^{p}$-stability and $W^{s,p}$-approximation properties for $L^{2}$-projectors on such spaces, and Sobolev embeddings for hybrid polynomial spaces. Numerical tests are presented to validate the theoretical results for the original method and variants thereof