Incentives to Research in European Public Universities

In this paper we study the implementation of policy incentives aimed at increasing the research output at European public universities by university managers and public administrations. Although public universities are subject to significant management rigidities, we provide some interesting policies aimed at increasing their research output. We pay special attention to the principal agent problem between professors and university managers due to the career options that professors face outside the university.Efficiency, productivity, professors’ salaries, incentives to research, state and federal aid, resource allocation.

Does a public university system avoid the stratification of public universities and the segregation of students?

We present a model which allows us to show that even in a public university system where tuition and fees are fixed by the administration, a stratification of public universities according to the quality they offer and the quality of students they select, can be observed. This result is similar to that observed in private and competitive university systems. We also show that it is very unlikely that segregation and stratification could be avoided by subsidizing those universities that are more inefficient. We show also that even if stratification and segregation could be corrected with subsidies it would be at the cost of fixing the upper-bounds at the quality that could be offered at any university, hence fixing quality limits at the whole university system.School choice, state and federal aid.

A chiral Maxwell Demon

We investigate the role of chirality on the performance of a Maxwell demon implemented in a quantum Hall bar with a localized impurity. Within a stochastic thermodynamics description we investigate the ability of such a demon to drive a current against a bias. We show that the ability of the demon to perform is directly related to its ability to extract information from the system. The key features of the proposed Maxwell demon are the topological properties of the quantum Hall system. The asymmetry of the electronic interactions felt at the localized state when the magnetic field is reversed joined to the fact that we consider energy dependent (and asymmetric) tunneling barriers that connect such state with the Hall edge modes allow the demon to properly work.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Dynamical Coulomb blockade of thermal transport

The role of energy exchange between a quantum system and its environment is investigated from the perspective of the Onsager conductance matrix. We consider the thermoelectric linear transport of an interacting quantum dot coupled to two terminals under the influence of an electrical potential and a thermal bias. We implement in our model the effect of coupling to electromagnetic environmental modes created by nearby electrons within the P(E)-theory of dynamical Coulomb blockade. Our findings relate the lack of some symmetries among the Onsager matrix coefficients with an enhancement of the efficiency at maximum power and the occurrence of the heat rectification phenomenon.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Microbial manganese and sulfate reduction in Black Sea shelf sediments

The microbial ecology of anaerobic carbon oxidation processes was investigated in Black Sea shelf sediments from mid-shelf with well-oxygenated bottom water to the oxic-anoxic chemocline at the shelf-break. At all stations, organic carbon (Corg) oxidation rates were rapidly attenuated with depth in anoxically incubated sediment. Dissimilatory Mn reduction was the most important terminal electron-accepting process in the active surface layer to a depth of ∼1 cm, while SO42− reduction accounted for the entire Corg oxidation below. Manganese reduction was supported by moderately high Mn oxide concentrations. A contribution from microbial Fe reduction could not be discerned, and the process was not stimulated by addition of ferrihydrite. Manganese reduction resulted in carbonate precipitation, which complicated the quantification of Corg oxidation rates. The relative contribution of Mn reduction to Corg oxidation in the anaerobic incubations was 25 to 73% at the stations with oxic bottom water. In situ, where Mn reduction must compete with oxygen respiration, the contribution of the process will vary in response to fluctuations in bottom water oxygen concentrations. Total bacterial numbers as well as the detection frequency of bacteria with fluorescent in situ hybridization scaled to the mineralization rates. Most-probable-number enumerations yielded up to 105 cells of acetate-oxidizing Mn-reducing bacteria (MnRB) cm−3, while counts of Fe reducers were <102 cm−3. At two stations, organisms affiliated with Arcobacter were the only types identified from 16S rRNA clone libraries from the highest positive MPN dilutions for MnRB. At the third station, a clone type affiliated with Pelobacter was also observed. Our results delineate a niche for dissimilatory Mn-reducing bacteria in sediments with Mn oxide concentrations greater than ∼10 μmol cm−3 and indicate that bacteria that are specialized in Mn reduction, rather than known Mn and Fe reducers, are important in this niche