Global existence for defocusing cubic NLS and Gross-Pitaevskii equations in three dimensional exterior domains

We prove global wellposedness in the energy space of the defocusing cubic nonlinear Schroedinger and Gross-Pitaevskii equations on the exterior of a non-trapping domain in dimension 3. The main ingredient is a Strichartz estimate obtained combining a semi-classical Strichartz estimate with a smoothing effect on exterior domains

Geschlechterunterschiede im Zentralabitur? Fairness von High-Stakes-Tests für Jungen und Mädchen im Fach Englisch in Nordrhein-Westfalen im Kontext der Educational Governance

The shift from decentralized to centralized A-level examinations (Abitur) was implemented in the German school system as a measure of Educational Governance in the last decade. This reform was mainly introduced with the intention of providing higher comparability of school examinations and student achievement as well as increasing fairness in school examinations. It is not known yet if these ambitious aims and functions of the new centralized examination format have been achieved and if fairer assessment can be guaranteed in terms of providing all students with the same opportunities to pass the examinations by allocating fair tests to different student subpopulations e.g., students of different background or gender. The research presented in this article deals with these questions and focuses on gender differences. It investigates gender-specific fairness of the test items in centralized Abitur examinations as high school exit examinations in Germany. The data are drawn from Abitur examinations in English (as a foreign language). Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis reveals that at least some parts of the examinations indicate gender inequality. (DIPF/Orig.)Die fast flächendeckende Implementation des Zentralabiturs in Deutschland als Maßnahme im Kontext der Neuen Steuerung im Bildungswesen ist eng mit dem Ziel verbunden, die Vergleichbarkeit von Schulabschlüssen und schulischen Leistungen insgesamt zu erhöhen und durch zentrale Prüfungen die Fairness von Leistungsfeststellungen im Sinne der Komparabilitätsfunktion zentraler Prüfungsformate zu sichern. Bisher ist jedoch nicht bekannt und untersucht, ob das Zentralabitur diesen Ansprüchen tatsächlich gerecht wird und die vorgenannten Funktionen so erfüllt, dass eine faire Leistungsmessung für unterschiedliche Schülersubgruppen gegeben ist. Auf der Grundlage von Daten zu differenzierten Schülerergebnissen zum Zentralabitur im Fach Englisch untersucht dieser Beitrag exemplarisch die geschlechtsspezifische Fairness von Abitur aufgaben. Eine Differential-Item-Functioning-Analyse (DIF-Analyse) zeigt, dass zumindest ein Teil der eingesetzten Aufgaben auf eine geschlechtsspezifische Ungleichbehandlung durch die Aufgabenstellung hinweist. (DIPF/Orig.

Freedom of choice or force of circumstance? : Eastern European sex-workers in the Republic of Cyprus ; paper for the conference 'Alltag der Globalisierung. Perspektiven einer transnationalen Anthropologie', January 16-18, 2003, Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main

This paper focuses on Eastern European migrants who, since the beginning of the 1990s, are entering the Republic Cyprus as “artistes”. This is a visa permit status as well as an euphemism for short-term work permits in the local sex industry. In addition to exploring the migrational experiences of these women and their living and working conditions in the Republic of Cyprus, the paper reconstructs, empirically and analyt ically, the connection between immigration and the local sex industry. Here, several categories of social actors and institutions in Cyprus are actively involved. The rhetoric of government representatives, entrepreneurs and clients in the sex business on the one hand is contrasted with the discourse of local NGO representatives concerned with immigrants’ rights on the other hand. The paper comes to the conclusion that all of these discursive positions ultimately do not do justice to the complex process of decisionmaking that women undergo who migrate into the sex industry. Either, freedom of choice is emphasized – such as by entrepreneurs and the government – or the domination of women – as in the public statements of the NGO. In order to analyze the ambivalent tension between freedom of choice and submission to force by which the women’s decision is characterized, the author employs Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which describes forms of political regulation that use the individual’s freedom of action as an instrument to exercise power

Challenging and confirming touristic representations of the Mediterranean : migrant workers in Crete

From the perspective of Western Europe the Mediterranean is shaped by the imagery of tourism and migration. During the time of the “guest worker”-migration in the 1960s and 70s the notion of the hopelessly underdeveloped South of Europe which pushes “guest workers” towards the rich North became prevalent here. It offered a contrast which let the beginning prosperity in the North appear even clearer. (see von Osten 2006) Besides the attractions “sea, sun and sand” it was exactly this conception of backwardness which – reinterpreted in authentic and traditional Mediterranean lifestyle – made the area attractive for tourist consumption. Today it is again pictures of the Mediterranean, which represent migration dynamics in Europe. In the meantime, however, the countries of origin of the “guest workers” have become countries of immigration and European Union member states or candidates for accession. The representation of the Mediterranean as an area of migration is dominated now by pictures of desperate refugees and illegal immigrants, who risk their life by crossing the sea, in order to enter the “fortress Europe”. In these current representations the “colonial narrative of migrants as members of a territory of underdeveloped” is continued (ibid.). A translation of the migrant area into the tourist area seems, however, more difficult than at the times of the “guest worker”-migration. What constitutes the Mediterranean as a tourist destination seems to have no longer anything in common with the Mediterranean as an area of migration....

PDF/A standard for long term archiving

PDF/A is defined by ISO 19005-1 as a file format based on PDF format. The standard provides a mechanism for representing electronic documents in a way that preserves their visual appearance over time, independent of the tools and systems used for creating or storing the files.Comment: 8 pages, exposed on 5th International Conference "Actualities and Perspectives on Hardware and Software" - APHS2009, Timisoara, Romani

Pair Production of Beyond the Standard Model Higgs Bosons

Higgs pair production is not only sensitive to the trilinear Higgs self-coupling, but it can give access to other anomolous couplings, as e.g. a novel $hht\bar{t}$ coupling. In Composite Higgs Models, this coupling usually leads to a large increase of the cross section. In such a framework an interesting question is, whether it might be possible to observe new physics for the first time in Higgs pair production. This question will be addressed by taking into account projected sensitivities for Higgs coupling measurements and for direct searches of new vector-like quarks. Higher order corrections to Higgs pair production via gluon fusion are sizeable. It is hence not only important to compute them in the Standard Model (SM) but also in its extensions. Here, the computation of the QCD corrections in the SM with dimension 6 operators as well as the SUSY-QCD corrections to Higgs pair production via gluon fusion in the MSSM are presented.Comment: 10 pages, 1 table, 3 figures, Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics, Crete, Greec

(Anti-)deuteron production and anisotropic flow measured with ALICE at the LHC

The high abundance of (anti-)deuterons in the statistics gathered in Run 1 of the LHC and the excellent performance of the ALICE setup allow for the simultaneous measurement of the elliptic flow and the deuteron production rates with a large transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) reach. The (anti-) deuterons are identified using the specific energy loss in the time projection chamber and the velocity information in the time-of-flight detector. The elliptic flow of (anti-)deuterons can provide insight into the production mechanisms of particles in heavy-ion collisions. Quark coalescence is one of the approaches to describe the elliptic flow of hadrons, while the production of light nuclei can be also depicted as a coalescence of nucleons. In these proceedings, the measured $v_{2}$ of deuterons produced in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$=2.76TeV will be compared to expectations from coalescence and hydrodynamic models.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, proceeding of Quark Matter 2015, Kobe, Japa