17,167 research outputs found
IS SOCIAL CAPITAL REALLY CAPITAL?
Social capital in the past two decades has emerged as a dominant paradigm in the various social science disciplines. However, its adoption by the different social science disciplines has led to multiple and often conflicting definitions of social capital. Some differences in the definition of social capital can be explained because scientists have included in the definition expressions of its possible uses, where it resides, and how its service capacity can be changed. This paper defends the social capital metaphor by pointing out that social capital has many important capital-like properties including service potential, durability, flexibility, substitutability, opportunities for decay (maintenance), reliability, ability to create other capital forms, and investment (disinvestment) opportunities. Social capital is compared to other forms of capital including cultural capital and human capital. Keywords: social capital, cultural capital, human capital, physical/financial capital, service potential, durability, flexibility, substitutability, decay (maintenance), reliability, investment (disinvestment)social capital, cultural capital, human capital, physical/financial capital, service potential, durability, flexibility, substitutability, decay (maintenance), reliability, investment (disinvestment), Institutional and Behavioral Economics,
SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POVERTY REDUCTION: TOWARD A MATURE PARADIGM
Introduction The purposes of this paper are: (1) to introduce the social capital paradigm; (2) to present evidence that social capital has an important role in poverty reduction; and (3) to suggest several policy prescriptions for building and using social capital to reduce poverty. The social capital paradigm includes social capital, networks, socio-emotional goods, attachment values, institutions, and power. Social capital is a person or group's sympathy for others. Social capital resides in sympathetic relationships that can be described using networks. One reason to value social capital is because it can produce economic benefits and if neglected, economic disadvantages. Another reason to value social capital is because it can be used to produce socio-emotional goods. Sometimes socio-emotional goods become embedded in objects. When this occurs, the meaning and value of the object change. The change in the value of an object produced by embedded socio-emotional goods is the object's attachment value. Individuals exchange both physical and socio-emotional goods. Institutions are the rules that order and give meaning to exchanges. Institutions with high attachment values are more likely to be observed than those whose compliance depends on economic incentives or threats. Finally, power, the ability to influence others, depends on one's resources, including one's social capital. In most personalized transactions, persons exchange both socio-emotional goods and physical goods and services. Moreover, the relative amounts of socio-emotional goods and physical goods and services exchanged will alter the levels and terms of trade when measured in physical units. Since one's ability to include socio-emotional goods in exchanges for physical goods and services depends on one's social capital, the terms and levels of exchange of physical goods and services will be influenced by the transacting party's social capital. Those with high levels of social capital will have advantages over those who lack social capital because they can exchange both socio-emotional goods and physical goods and services. Furthermore, since social capital alters the terms and levels of trade and the terms and levels of trade influence the distribution of incomes derived from trades, then social capital also has an important influence on the distribution of household income and poverty. Some evidence suggests that the distribution of social capital in networks and the distribution of household incomes are connected.Food Security and Poverty, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,
Device for in-situ cleaving of hard crystals
Cleaving crystals in a vacuum chamber is a simple method for obtaining
atomically flat and clean surfaces for materials that have a preferential
cleaving plane. Most in-situ cleavers use parallel cutting edges that are
applied from two sides on the sample. We found in ambient experiments that
diagonal cutting pliers, where the cleavage force is introduced in a single
point instead of a line work very well also for hard materials. Here, we
incorporate the diagonal cutting plier principle in a design compatible with
ultra-high vacuum requirements. We show optical microscopy (mm scale) and
atomic force microscopy (atomic scale) images of NiO(001) surfaces cleaved with
this device.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures Submitted to Review of Scientific Instruments
(2005
Non-linear optomechanical measurement of mechanical motion
Precision measurement of non-linear observables is an important goal in all
facets of quantum optics. This allows measurement-based non-classical state
preparation, which has been applied to great success in various physical
systems, and provides a route for quantum information processing with otherwise
linear interactions. In cavity optomechanics much progress has been made using
linear interactions and measurement, but observation of non-linear mechanical
degrees-of-freedom remains outstanding. Here we report the observation of
displacement-squared thermal motion of a micro-mechanical resonator by
exploiting the intrinsic non-linearity of the radiation pressure interaction.
Using this measurement we generate bimodal mechanical states of motion with
separations and feature sizes well below 100~pm. Future improvements to this
approach will allow the preparation of quantum superposition states, which can
be used to experimentally explore collapse models of the wavefunction and the
potential for mechanical-resonator-based quantum information and metrology
applications.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, extensive supplementary material available with
published versio
Towards a microscopic theory of toroidal moments in bulk periodic crystals
We present a theoretical analysis of magnetic toroidal moments in periodic
systems, in the limit in which the toroidal moments are caused by a time and
space reversal symmetry breaking arrangement of localized magnetic dipole
moments. We summarize the basic definitions for finite systems and address the
question of how to generalize these definitions to the bulk periodic case. We
define the toroidization as the toroidal moment per unit cell volume, and we
show that periodic boundary conditions lead to a multivaluedness of the
toroidization, which suggests that only differences in toroidization are
meaningful observable quantities. Our analysis bears strong analogy to the
modern theory of electric polarization in bulk periodic systems, but we also
point out some important differences between the two cases. We then discuss the
instructive example of a one-dimensional chain of magnetic moments, and we show
how to properly calculate changes of the toroidization for this system.
Finally, we evaluate and discuss the toroidization (in the local dipole limit)
of four important example materials: BaNiF_4, LiCoPO_4, GaFeO_3, and BiFeO_3.Comment: replaced with final (published) version, which includes some changes
in the text to improve the clarity of presentatio
Dynamic Model and Phase Transitions for Liquid Helium
This article presents a phenomenological dynamic phase transition theory --
modeling and analysis -- for superfluids. As we know, although the
time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model has been successfully used in
superconductivity, and the classical Ginzburg-Landau free energy is still
poorly applicable to liquid helium in a quantitative sense. The study in this
article is based on 1) a new dynamic classification scheme of phase
transitions, 2) new time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau models for general
equilibrium transitions, and 3) the general dynamic transition theory. The
results in this article predict the existence of a unstable region H, where
both solid and liquid He II states appear randomly depending on fluctuations
and the existence of a switch point M on the lambda-curve, where the
transitions changes types
Probing of the Kondo peak by the impurity charge measurement
We consider the real-time dynamics of the Kondo system after the local probe
of the charge state of the magnetic impurity. Using the exactly solvable
infinite-degeneracy Anderson model we find explicitly the evolution of the
impurity charge after the measurement.Comment: 4 pages, 1 eps figure, revte
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