Beyond the Salassa-Samuelson Effect in some New Member States of the European Union

This paper analyses the Balassa and Samuelson hypothesis in two groups of European countries: six New Member States (NMS) and six advanced EU-15 economies. It is found that the second stage of the hypothesis, which relates relative sector prices with the real exchange rate, does not hold anywhere. In the NMS the main reasons are increased demand for domestic tradables stemming from positive differentials in economic growth, probably coupled with quality improvements in domestic tradable goods. In the EU-15, the explanatory factor is segmentation between national markets of tradables, caused by transportation costs, non-tariff barriers and imperfect competition between firms.Balassa-Samuelson effect, panel cointegration, economic transition, market segmentation, quality bias

The backwater effect as a tool to assess formative long-term flood regimes

The Ter River drains the south-eastern Pyrenees and flows into the Mediterranean Sea. A lithological constriction affects the normal water flow in the La Plana de Vic area. As a consequence of this disturbance in the flow, the shrinkage in the bedrock activates a backwater effect. Systematic water retention during extreme events has formative consequences. The process involves the creation of a helical flow for the structural misalignment of the channel at the point of narrowness. The backwater effect transmits the secondary currents backwards, resulting in the creation of a sinuous pattern upstream from the shrinkage. A tributary, the Gurri River, flows into the main river just before the constriction, and this too has been affected by the process of water storage and channel pattern change. A two-dimensional numerical flow model (Iber) has modelled several hypothetical cases of flooding. This modelling aims to test the reach of the hydraulic influence upstream from the constriction, both in the main river and its tributary, due to the backwater effect. Moreover, it sought to find the best balance of discharge between the two streams. The upstream reach of the backwater effect was considered as its endpoint. During the flooding, the system reached hydraulic equilibrium between the constriction and the two endpoints when both were at the same water level, and the flow regime was subcritical everywhere. The hydraulic conditions that drove the water flow to the equilibrium are thought to be the ones that promoted formative processes in a sinuous pattern on a long-term basis. The water discharge values obtained from this procedure are, in general terms, 50% above those considered to be a peak flood with a recurrence time of 500 years (Q500), and they accomplish the conditions of extreme events. Thus classified, the calculated discharges can be helpful for comparison with those measured in historical and systematic records, because a water discharge like the one calculated has never been measured at the Ter River.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Implications of Halo Inside-out Growth on the X-Ray Properties of Nearby Galaxy Systems within the Preheating Scenario

We present an entirely analytic model for a preheated, polytropic intergalactic medium in hydrostatic equilibrium within a NFW dark halo potential in which the evolution of the halo structure between major merger events proceeds inside-out by accretion. This model is used to explain, within a standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmogony, the observed X-ray properties of nearby relaxed, non-cooling flow groups and clusters of galaxies. We find that our preferred solution to the equilibrium equations produces scaling relations in excellent agreement with observations, while simultaneously accounting for the typical structural characteristics of the distribution of the diffuse baryons. In the class of preheating models, ours stands out because it offers a unified description of the intrahalo medium for galaxy systems with total masses above \sm 2\times 10^{13}\msun, does not produce baryonic configurations with large isentropic cores, and reproduces faithfully the observed behavior of the gas entropy at large radii. All this is achieved with a moderate level of energy injection of about half a keV, which can be easily accommodated within the limits of the total energy released by the most commonly invoked feedback mechanisms, as well as with a polytropic index of 1.2, consistent with both many observational determinations and predictions from high-resolution gas-dynamical simulations of non-cooling flow clusters. More interestingly, our scheme offers a physical motivation for the adoption of this specific value of the polytropic index, as it is the one that best ensures the conservation after halo virialization of the balance between the total specific energies of the gas and dark matter components for the full range of masses investigated.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Dataset of herbarium specimens of threatened vascular plants in Catalonia

This data paper describes a specimens' dataset of the Catalonian threatened vascular plants conserved in five public Catalonian herbaria (BC, BCN, HGI, HBIL and MTTE). Catalonia is an administrative region of Spain that includes large autochthon plants diversity and 199 taxa with IUCN threatened categories (EX, EW, RE, CR, EN and VU). This dataset includes 1,618 records collected from 17th century to nowadays. For each specimen, the species name, locality indication, collection date, collector, ecology and revision label are recorded. More than 94% of the taxa are represented in the herbaria, which evidence the paper of the botanical collections as an essential source of occurrence data

Mapa de Vegetació de Catalunya 1:50.000 (MVC50). Memòria del full d’Artesa de Segre (328)

Podeu consultar la Memòria del full d’Artesa de Segre (328) http://hdl.handle.net/2445/193344Aquesta memòria va associada al mapa de vegetació que comprèn el territori administrat per la Generalitat de Catalunya inclòs en el full 328 (Artesa de Segre). Inclou una descripció detallada del medi físic, i de les unitats de vegetació actual i potencial. Enllaç al mapa