Looking back at slow employment growth

An analysis of slower-than-normal employment growth in the post-1991 economic recovery, examining trends at both the state and national level and finding a widespread weakness in the rate of job addition in growing industries, rather than an unusually high job deletion rate in contracting industries.Employment (Economic theory) ; Economic conditions - United States

Nonlinear Phenomena in Canonical Stochastic Quantization

Stochastic quantization provides a connection between quantum field theory and statistical mechanics, with applications especially in gauge field theories. Euclidean quantum field theory is viewed as the equilibrium limit of a statistical system coupled to a thermal reservoir. Nonlinear phenomena in stochastic quantization arise when employing nonlinear Brownian motion as an underlying stochastic process. We discuss a novel formulation of the Higgs mechanism in QED.Comment: 8 pages, invited talk at the International Workshop ``Critical Phenomena and Diffusion in Complex Systems'', Dec. 5-7, 2006, Nizhni Novgorod, Russi

How Damage Diversification Can Reduce Systemic Risk

We consider the problem of risk diversification in complex networks. Nodes represent e.g. financial actors, whereas weighted links represent e.g. financial obligations (credits/debts). Each node has a risk to fail because of losses resulting from defaulting neighbors, which may lead to large failure cascades. Classical risk diversification strategies usually neglect network effects and therefore suggest that risk can be reduced if possible losses (i.e., exposures) are split among many neighbors (exposure diversification, ED). But from a complex networks perspective diversification implies higher connectivity of the system as a whole which can also lead to increasing failure risk of a node. To cope with this, we propose a different strategy (damage diversification, DD), i.e. the diversification of losses that are imposed on neighboring nodes as opposed to losses incurred by the node itself. Here, we quantify the potential of DD to reduce systemic risk in comparison to ED. For this, we develop a branching process approximation that we generalize to weighted networks with (almost) arbitrary degree and weight distributions. This allows us to identify systemically relevant nodes in a network even if their directed weights differ strongly. On the macro level, we provide an analytical expression for the average cascade size, to quantify systemic risk. Furthermore, on the meso level we calculate failure probabilities of nodes conditional on their system relevance

Transformations through proximity flying: A phenomenological investigation

Participation in extreme sports has been linked to personal transformations in everyday life. Descriptions of lived experience resulting from transformative experiences are limited. Proximity flying, a relatively new discipline involving BASE jumping with a wingsuit where participants fly close to solid structures, is arguably one of the most extreme of extreme sports. The aim of this paper, part of a larger phenomenological study on the lived experience of proximity flying, is to explicate the ways in which participating in proximity flying influences the everyday lives of participants. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explicate the lived experience of six proximity pilots. An analysis of interview transcripts revealed three significant themes describing the lived experience of participants. First, experiences of change were described as positive and skills developed through proximity flying were transferrable into everyday life. Second, transformative experiences were considered fundamental to participants’ perspectives on life. Third, experience of transformation influenced their sense of personal identity and facilitated flourishing in other aspects of everyday life. Participants were clear that their experiences in proximity flying facilitated a profound process of transformation which manifest as changes in everyday capabilities and behaviours, values and sense of identity

Critical level spacing distribution of two-dimensional disordered systems with spin-orbit coupling

The energy level statistics of 2D electrons with spin-orbit scattering are considered near the disorder induced metal-insulator transition. Using the Ando model, the nearest-level-spacing distribution is calculated numerically at the critical point. It is shown that the critical spacing distribution is size independent and has a Poisson-like decay at large spacings as distinct from the Gaussian asymptotic form obtained by the random-matrix theory.Comment: 7 pages REVTeX, 2 uuencoded, gzipped figures; J. Phys. Condensed Matter, in prin

Industrial Resources - Fulton County - Fulton

Resources for Economic Development: Fulton County, Kentucky” prepared by the Kentucky Department of Economic Development, Division of Research, and the Fulton County Economic Development Partnership, 1995. The report includes, but is not limited to, information about: population, labor market, local manufacturing, transportation, utilities, fuel, water, sewage, industrial sites, local government and services, taxes, educational and health facilities, housing, communication, recreation, natural resources, markets, and climate

A k-shell decomposition method for weighted networks

We present a generalized method for calculating the k-shell structure of weighted networks. The method takes into account both the weight and the degree of a network, in such a way that in the absence of weights we resume the shell structure obtained by the classic k-shell decomposition. In the presence of weights, we show that the method is able to partition the network in a more refined way, without the need of any arbitrary threshold on the weight values. Furthermore, by simulating spreading processes using the susceptible-infectious-recovered model in four different weighted real-world networks, we show that the weighted k-shell decomposition method ranks the nodes more accurately, by placing nodes with higher spreading potential into shells closer to the core. In addition, we demonstrate our new method on a real economic network and show that the core calculated using the weighted k-shell method is more meaningful from an economic perspective when compared with the unweighted one.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Active Brownian particles with velocity-alignment and active fluctuations

We consider a model of active Brownian particles with velocity-alignment in two spatial dimensions with passive and active fluctuations. Hereby, active fluctuations refers to purely non-equilibrium stochastic forces correlated with the heading of an individual active particle. In the simplest case studied here, they are assumed as independent stochastic forces parallel (speed noise) and perpendicular (angular noise) to the velocity of the particle. On the other hand, passive fluctuations are defined by a noise vector independent of the direction of motion of a particle, and may account for example for thermal fluctuations. We derive a macroscopic description of the active Brownian particle gas with velocity-alignment interaction. Hereby, we start from the individual based description in terms of stochastic differential equations (Langevin equations) and derive equations of motion for the coarse grained kinetic variables (density, velocity and temperature) via a moment expansion of the corresponding probability density function. We focus here in particular on the different impact of active and passive fluctuations on the onset of collective motion and show how active fluctuations in the active Brownian dynamics can change the phase-transition behaviour of the system. In particular, we show that active angular fluctuation lead to an earlier breakdown of collective motion and to emergence of a new bistable regime in the mean-field case.Comment: 5 figures, 22 pages, submitted to New Journal of Physic