Armed Conflict Exposure, Human Capital Investments and Child Labor: Evidence from Colombia

Using a unique combination of household and violence data sets and a duration analysis methodology, this paper estimates the effect that exposure to armed conflict has on school drop-out decisions of Colombian children between the ages of six and seventeen. After taking into account the possible endogeneity of municipal conflict related events through the use of instrumental variables, we find that armed conflict reduces the average years of schooling in 8.78% for all Colombian children. This estimate increases to 17.03% for children between sixteen and seventeen years old. We provide evidence that such effect may be induced mainly through higher mortality risks, and to lesser extent due to negative economic shocks and lower school quality; all of which induce a trade-off between schooling and child labor.Armed con.ict, School drop-out, Duration Analysis, Colombia

Hacia una mejor educación rural: impacto de un programa de intervención a las escuelas en Colombia

Utilizando información censal de las sedes educativas rurales de Colombia el presente trabajo evalúa el impacto que tuvo el Programa de Educación Rural -PER - en las tasas de eficiencia (cobertura, reprobación, aprobación y deserción) y calidad de la educación en las sedes en donde se aplicó. A través de la implementación de modelos educativos flexibles adaptados a las necesidades de la comunidad, el programa logró efectos positivos en las medidas de eficiencia y calidad de las sedes tratadas. Los resultados son robustos a distintas metodologías de estimación y grupos de control y evidencian que programas de intervención dirigidos a la oferta (escuelas) pueden mejorar sustancialmente la eficiencia y calidad de la educación en las zonas rurales. Se encuentra, en adición, que el efecto del PER sobre los indicadores de eficiencia de las sedes educativas rurales se da a través de la calidad tanto del material educativo y de la capacitación en los modelos pedagógicos como de las mejoras en la gestión y administración de la institución educativa.Educación rural, evaluación de impacto, diferencias endiferencias, matching estimators.

Topological phase transitions in the gauged BPS baby Skyrme model

We demonstrate that the gauged BPS baby Skyrme model with a double vacuum potential allows for phase transitions from a non-solitonic to a solitonic phase, where the latter corresponds to a ferromagnetic liquid. Such a transition can be generated by increasing the external pressure P or by turning on an external magnetic field H. As a consequence, the topological phase where gauged BPS baby skyrmions exist, is a higher density phase. For smaller densities, obtained for smaller values of P and H, a phase without solitons is reached. We find the critical line in the P,H parameter space. Furthermore, in the soliton phase, we find the equation of state for the baby skyrmion matter V = V (P,H) at zero temperature, where V is the “volume”, i.e., area of the solitonsThe authors acknowledge financial support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports, Spain (Grant No. FPA2011-22776), the Xunta de Galicia (Grant No. INCITE09.296.035PR and Conselleria de Educacion), the Spanish Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme CPAN (CSD2007-00042), and FEDER. Further, the authors acknowledge support from the Polish FOCUS grant (No. 42/F/AW/2014). CN thanks the Spanish Ministery of Education, Culture and Sports for financial support (grant FPU AP2010-5772)S

Analog CMOS Readout Channel for Time and Amplitude Measurements With Radiation Sensitivity Analysis for Gain-Boosting Amplifiers

The front-end readout channel consists of a charge sensitive amplifier (CSA) and two different unipolar-shaping circuits to generate pulses suitable for time and energy measurement. The signal processing chain of the single channel is built of two different parallel processing paths: a fast path with a peaking time of 30 ns to obtain the time of arrival for each particle impinging the detector; and a slow path with a peaking time of 400 ns dedicated for low noise amplitude measurements, which is formed by a pole-zero cancellation circuit and a 4th order complex shaper based on a bridged-T architecture. The tunability of the system is accomplished by the discharge time constant of the CSA in order to accommodate various event rates. The readout system has been implemented in a 180 nm CMOS technology with the size of 525 μm x 290 μm . The building blocks use compact gain-boosting techniques based on quasi-floating gate (QFG) transistors achieving accurate energy measurement with good resolution. The high impedance nodes of QFG transistors require a detailed study of sensitivity to single-effect transients (SET). After carrying out this study, this paper proposes a method to select the value of the QFG capacitors, minimizing the area occupancy while maintaining robustness to radiation. The nonlinearity of the CSA-slow-shaper has been found to be less than 1% over a 10–70 fC input charge. The power dissipation of the readout channel is 4.1 mW with a supply voltage of 1.8 V.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades PGC2018-095640-B-I00Consejería de Transformación Económica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades P18-FR-3852 y P18-FR-431

A translational approach for the clinical application of recently updated definitions of malnutrition (GLIM) and sarcopenia (EWGSOP2)

Sarcopenia is a nutrition-related disease and, like undernutrition, a major cause of adverse clinical outcomes, particularly among middle-aged and older people: hospital admissions, reduced functional capacity, impaired quality of life, and increased mortality risk. Updated definitions of sarcopenia and malnutrition have just been published [1,2], presenting a crucial crossroad for their diagnosis and treatment and an important opportunity to bridge the gaps between research and clinical practice

Overview of progress in European medium sized tokamaks towards an integrated plasma-edge/wall solution

Integrating the plasma core performance with an edge and scrape-off layer (SOL) that leads to tolerable heat and particle loads on the wall is a major challenge. The new European medium size tokamak task force (EU-MST) coordinates research on ASDEX Upgrade (AUG), MAST and TCV. This multi-machine approach within EU-MST, covering a wide parameter range, is instrumental to progress in the field, as ITER and DEMO core/pedestal and SOL parameters are not achievable simultaneously in present day devices. A two prong approach is adopted. On the one hand, scenarios with tolerable transient heat and particle loads, including active edge localised mode (ELM) control are developed. On the other hand, divertor solutions including advanced magnetic configurations are studied. Considerable progress has been made on both approaches, in particular in the fields of: ELM control with resonant magnetic perturbations (RMP), small ELM regimes, detachment onset and control, as well as filamentary scrape-off-layer transport. For example full ELM suppression has now been achieved on AUG at low collisionality with n = 2 RMP maintaining good confinement HH(98,y2) 0.95. Advances have been made with respect to detachment onset and control. Studies in advanced divertor configurations (Snowflake, Super-X and X-point target divertor) shed new light on SOL physics. Cross field filamentary transport has been characterised in a wide parameter regime on AUG, MAST and TCV progressing the theoretical and experimental understanding crucial for predicting first wall loads in ITER and DEMO. Conditions in the SOL also play a crucial role for ELM stability and access to small ELM regimes.European Commission (EUROfusion 633053

Experimental magnetic form factors in Co3V2O8: A combined study of ab initio calculations, magnetic Compton scattering and polarized neutron diffraction

We present a combination of ab initio calculations, magnetic Compton scattering and polarized neutron experiments, which elucidate the density distribution of unpaired electrons in the kagome staircase system Co3V2O8. Ab initio wave functions were used to calculate the spin densities in real and momentum space, which show good agreement with the respective experiments. It has been found that the spin polarized orbitals are equally distributed between the t2g and the eg levels for the spine (s) Co ions, while the eg orbitals of the cross-tie (c) Co ions only represent 30% of the atomic spin density. Furthermore, the results reveal that the magnetic moments of the cross-tie Co ions, which are significantly smaller than those of the spine Co ions in the zero-field ferromagnetic structure, do not saturate by applying an external magnetic field of 2 T along the easy axis a, but that the increasing bulk magnetization originates from induced magnetic moments on the O and V sites. The refined individual magnetic moments are mu(Co_c)=1.54(4) mu_B, mu(Co_s)=2.87(3) mu_B, mu(V)=0.41(4) mu_B, mu(O1)=0.05(5) mu_B, mu(O2)=0.35(5) mu_B, and; mu(O3)=0.36(5) mu_B combining to the same macroscopic magnetization value, which was previously only attributed to the Co ions