942 research outputs found
Redefining Europeâs economic sovereignty. Policy Contribution Issue nË9 | June 2019. Bruegel
Executive summary
Europeans like to believe the European Union has the collective economic size and
capacity to determine its own economic destiny. But the behaviour of others global powers
is increasingly calling this ability into question. China and the United States, especially, do
not separate economic interests from geopolitical interests in the same way the EU does.
They are increasingly using economic connections, from cyberspace to financial links, to
gain geopolitical advantage or to serve geopolitical goals. Europeâs economic sovereignty is at
stake.
The problem for Europe is real but manageable. This Policy Contribution examines
the specific problems that China and the US pose for European economic sovereignty,
and considers how the EU and its member states can better protect European economic
sovereignty in a range of areas, including state aid to domestic industries, competition policy,
investment screening, export controls, the international role of the euro, the role of European
development banks, the European payments infrastructure and the global governance
system. In each area, we recommend ways to improve the EUâs capacity to wield economic
power, without advocating increased protectionism or a retreat from globalisation.
We make recommendations on how to adapt the EU and national policy systems to better
integrate economic and geopolitical considerations. The next European Commission should
develop an economic sovereignty strategy to boost Europeâs research and scientific base,
protect assets critical to national security from foreign interference, enforce a level playing
field in domestic and international competition, and strengthen European monetary and
financial autonomy.
To guide the implementation of this strategy, an economic sovereignty committee should
be established that will seek to integrate economic and security considerations within the
European Commission. But the answer to this problem does not lie only in Brussels. We
recommend a flexible implementation strategy that connects with member-state policy
debates and makes use of âmini-lateralâ groups of member states
Shape, shear and flexion II - Quantifying the flexion formalism for extended sources with the ray-bundle method
Flexion-based weak gravitational lensing analysis is proving to be a useful
adjunct to traditional shear-based techniques. As flexion arises from gradients
across an image, analytic and numerical techniques are required to investigate
flexion predictions for extended image/source pairs. Using the Schwarzschild
lens model, we demonstrate that the ray-bundle method for gravitational lensing
can be used to accurately recover second flexion, and is consistent with
recovery of zero first flexion. Using lens plane to source plane bundle
propagation, we find that second flexion can be recovered with an error no
worse than 1% for bundle radii smaller than {\Delta}{\theta} = 0.01 {\theta}_E
and lens plane impact pararameters greater than {\theta}_E + {\Delta}{\theta},
where {\theta}_E is the angular Einstein radius. Using source plane to lens
plane bundle propagation, we demonstrate the existence of a preferred flexion
zone. For images at radii closer to the lens than the inner boundary of this
zone, indicative of the true strong lensing regime, the flexion formalism
should be used with caution (errors greater than 5% for extended image/source
pairs). We also define a shear zone boundary, beyond which image shapes are
essentially indistinguishable from ellipses (1% error in ellipticity). While
suggestive that a traditional weak lensing analysis is satisfactory beyond this
boundary, a potentially detectable non-zero flexion signal remains.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Societ
On the informational content of wage offers
This article investigates signaling and screening roles of wage offers in a single-play matching model with two-sided unobservable characteristics. It generates the following predictions as matching equilibrium outcomes: (i) âgoodâ jobs offer premia if âhigh-qualityâ worker population is large; (ii) âbadâ jobs pay compensating differentials if the proportion of âgoodâ jobs to âlow-qualityâ workers is large; (iii) all firms may offer a pooling wage in markets dominated by âhigh-qualityâ workers and firms; or (iv) Greshamâs Law prevails: âgoodâ types withdraw if âbadâ types dominate the population. The screening/signaling motive thus has the potential of explaining a variety of wage patterns
Polar mesoscale cyclones in the northeast Atlantic: Comparing climatologies from ERA-40 and satellite imagery
Polar mesoscale cyclones over the subarctic are thought to be an important component of the coupled atmosphereâocean climate system. However, the relatively small scale of these features presents some concern as to their representation in the meteorological reanalysis datasets that are commonly used to drive ocean models. Here polar mesocyclones are detected in the 40-Year European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis dataset (ERA-40) in mean sea level pressure and 500-hPa geopotential height, using an automated cyclone detection algorithm. The results are compared to polar mesocyclones detected in satellite imagery over the northeast Atlantic, for the period October 1993âSeptember 1995. Similar trends in monthly cyclone numbers and a similar spatial distribution are found. However, there is a bias in the size of cyclones detected in the reanalysis. Up to 80% of cyclones larger than 500 km are detected in MSL pressure, but this hit rate decreases, approximately linearly, to âŒ40% for 250-km-scale cyclones and to âŒ20% for 100-km-scale cyclones. Consequently a substantial component of the associated airâsea fluxes may be missing from the reanalysis, presenting a serious shortcoming when using such reanalysis data for ocean modeling simulations. Eight maxima in cyclone density are apparent in the mean sea level pressure, clustered around synoptic observing stations in the northeast Atlantic. They are likely spurious, and a result of unidentified shortcomings in the ERA-40 data assimilation procedure
Measuring the Reduced Shear
Neglecting the second order corrections in weak lensing measurements can lead
to a few percent uncertainties on cosmic shears, and becomes more important for
cluster lensing mass reconstructions. Existing methods which claim to measure
the reduced shears are not necessarily accurate to the second order when a
point spread function (PSF) is present. We show that the method of Zhang (2008)
exactly measures the reduced shears at the second order level in the presence
of PSF. A simple theorem is provided for further confirming our calculation,
and for judging the accuracy of any shear measurement method at the second
order based on its properties at the first order. The method of Zhang (2008) is
well defined mathematically. It does not require assumptions on the
morphologies of galaxies and the PSF. To reach a sub-percent level accuracy,
the CCD pixel size is required to be not larger than 1/3 of the Full Width at
Half Maximum (FWHM) of the PSF. Using a large ensemble (> 10^7) of mock
galaxies of unrestricted morphologies, we find that contaminations to the shear
signals from the noise of background photons can be removed in a well defined
way because they are not correlated with the source shapes. The residual shear
measurement errors due to background noise are consistent with zero at the
sub-percent level even when the amplitude of such noise reaches about 1/10 of
the source flux within the half-light radius of the source. This limit can in
principle be extended further with a larger galaxy ensemble in our simulations.
On the other hand, the source Poisson noise remains to be a cause of systematic
errors. For a sub-percent level accuracy, our method requires the amplitude of
the source Poisson noise to be less than 1/80 ~ 1/100 of the source flux within
the half-light radius of the source, corresponding to collecting roughly 10^4
source photons.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, minor changes from the previous
versio
Whole gene deletion of EBF3 supporting haploinsufficiency of this gene as a mechanism of neurodevelopmental disease
Mutations in early B cell factor 3 (EBF3) were recently described in patients with a neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) that includes developmental delay/intellectual disability, ataxia, hypotonia, speech impairment, strabismus, genitourinary abnormalities, and mild facial dysmorphisms. Several large 10q terminal and interstitial deletions affecting many genes and including EBF3 have been described in the literature. However, small deletions (<1 MB) affecting almost exclusively EBF3 are not commonlyreported. We performed array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) (Agilent 180K) and quantitative PCR analysis in a female patient with intellectual disability. A clinical comparison between our patient and overlapping cases reported in the literature was also made. The patient carries a de novo 600 Kb deletion at 10q26.3 affecting the MGMT, EBF3, and GLRX genes. The patient has severe intellectual disability, language impairment, conductive hearing loss, hypotonia, vision alterations, triangular face, short stature, and behavior problems. This presentation overlaps that reported for patients carrying EBF3 heterozygous point mutations, as well as literature reports of patients carrying large 10qter deletions. Our results and the literature review suggest that EBF3 haploinsufficiency is a key contributor to the common aspects of the phenotype presented by patients bearing point mutations and indels in this gene, given that deletions affecting the entire gene (alone or in addition to other genes) are causative of a similar syndrome, including intellectual disability (ID) with associated neurological symptoms and particular facial dysmorphisms.FCTâFundação para a CiĂȘncia e a Tecnologia within the projects
and scholarships (PIC/IC/83026/2007, PIC/IC/83013/2007,
SFRH/BD/90167/2012). This article has been developed under
the scope of the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013,
supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational
Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnershi
p
Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund
(FEDER).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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