Education and health

Recent studies have tried to provide rigorous tests of causal effects of education levels on health status. Some of these studies show a significant causal impact of school-leaving age on mortality at later ages: their empirical strategy consists in using exogenous shocks on education levels resulting from changes in compulsory schooling regulations. Data from Insees Permanent Demographic Dataset can be used to attempt transposing this strategy to the French case. The two identifying shocks used are the Zay and Berthoin reforms. They have respectively raised the minimum school leaving age to 14 and 16 years. After having detailed the methological framework, we successively implement a non-parametric approach comparing cohorts born immediately before or immediately after the application of reforms, and a parametric two-stage approach using information from a larger part of our sample. None of these approaches confirm results of existing studies. Despite the fact that reforms have significantly increased school leaving ages, and despite the fact that subsequent declines in mortality have been observed, none of these declines appear to be significant. We conclude with a discussion on possible limitations of these two reforms as identifying devices, and make some suggestions for future research.Health, mortality, education, causal effect, regression discontinuities

Projective dynamics and classical gravitation

Given a real vector space V of finite dimension, together with a particular homogeneous field of bivectors that we call a "field of projective forces", we define a law of dynamics such that the position of the particle is a "ray" i.e. a half-line drawn from the origin of V. The impulsion is a bivector whose support is a 2-plane containing the ray. Throwing the particle with a given initial impulsion defines a projective trajectory. It is a curve in the space of rays S(V), together with an impulsion attached to each ray. In the simplest example where the force is identically zero, the curve is a straight line and the impulsion a constant bivector. A striking feature of projective dynamics appears: the trajectories are not parameterized. Among the projective force fields corresponding to a central force, the one defining the Kepler problem is simpler than those corresponding to other homogeneities. Here the thrown ray describes a quadratic cone whose section by a hyperplane corresponds to a Keplerian conic. An original point of view on the hidden symmetries of the Kepler problem emerges, and clarifies some remarks due to Halphen and Appell. We also get the unexpected conclusion that there exists a notion of divergence-free field of projective forces if and only if dim V=4. No metric is involved in the axioms of projective dynamics.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Projective dynamics and first integrals

We present the theory of tensors with Young tableau symmetry as an efficient computational tool in dealing with the polynomial first integrals of a natural system in classical mechanics. We relate a special kind of such first integrals, already studied by Lundmark, to Beltrami's theorem about projectively flat Riemannian manifolds. We set the ground for a new and simple theory of the integrable systems having only quadratic first integrals. This theory begins with two centered quadrics related by central projection, each quadric being a model of a space of constant curvature. Finally, we present an extension of these models to the case of degenerate quadratic forms.Comment: 39 pages, 2 figure

Action minimizing orbits in the n-body problem with simple choreography constraint

In 1999 Chenciner and Montgomery found a remarkably simple choreographic motion for the planar 3-body problem (see \cite{CM}). In this solution 3 equal masses travel on a eight shaped planar curve; this orbit is obtained minimizing the action integral on the set of simple planar choreographies with some special symmetry constraints. In this work our aim is to study the problem of $n$ masses moving in \RR^d under an attractive force generated by a potential of the kind $1/r^\alpha$, $\alpha >0$, with the only constraint to be a simple choreography: if $q_1(t),...,q_n(t)$ are the $n$ orbits then we impose the existence of x \in H^1_{2 \pi}(\RR,\RR^d) such that q_i(t)=x(t+(i-1) \tau), i=1,...,n, t \in \RR, where $\tau = 2\pi / n$. In this setting, we first prove that for every d,n \in \NN and $\alpha>0$, the lagrangian action attains its absolute minimum on the planar circle. Next we deal with the problem in a rotating frame and we show a reacher phenomenology: indeed while for some values of the angular velocity minimizers are still circles, for others the minima of the action are not anymore rigid motions.Comment: 24 pages; 4 figures; submitted to Nonlinearit

Statistical Mechanics of Vacancy and Interstitial Strings in Hexagonal Columnar Crystals

Columnar crystals contain defects in the form of vacancy/interstitial loops or strings of vacancies and interstitials bounded by column ``heads'' and ``tails''. These defect strings are oriented by the columnar lattice and can change size and shape by movement of the ends and forming kinks along the length. Hence an analysis in terms of directed living polymers is appropriate to study their size and shape distribution, volume fraction, etc. If the entropy of transverse fluctuations overcomes the string line tension in the crystalline phase, a string proliferation transition occurs, leading to a supersolid phase. We estimate the wandering entropy and examine the behaviour in the transition regime. We also calculate numerically the line tension of various species of vacancies and interstitials in a triangular lattice for power-law potentials as well as for a modified Bessel function interaction between columns as occurs in the case of flux lines in type-II superconductors or long polyelectrolytes in an ionic solution. We find that the centered interstitial is the lowest energy defect for a very wide range of interactions; the symmetric vacancy is preferred only for extremely short interaction ranges.Comment: 22 pages (revtex), 15 figures (encapsulated postscript

Bases for qudits from a nonstandard approach to SU(2)

Bases of finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces (in dimension d) of relevance for quantum information and quantum computation are constructed from angular momentum theory and su(2) Lie algebraic methods. We report on a formula for deriving in one step the (1+p)p qupits (i.e., qudits with d = p a prime integer) of a complete set of 1+p mutually unbiased bases in C^p. Repeated application of the formula can be used for generating mutually unbiased bases in C^d with d = p^e (e > or = 2) a power of a prime integer. A connection between mutually unbiased bases and the unitary group SU(d) is briefly discussed in the case d = p^e.Comment: From a talk presented at the 13th International Conference on Symmetry Methods in Physics (Dubna, Russia, 6-9 July 2009) organized in memory of Prof. Yurii Fedorovich Smirnov by the Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of the JINR and the ICAS at Yerevan State University

Antibacterial properties of Ag-TiO2 composite sol-gel coatings

This study reveals the connection between the silver-doping method, the resulting nature and amount of the silver dopant together with the structural properties and the long-term antibacterial activity of composite coatings.</p