1,787 research outputs found
Credit's effect on productivity in Chinese agriculture : a microeconomic model of disequilibrium
Many government programs want to provide more credit to the farm sector to increase agricultural productivity. If the marginal effect on productivity is small, those resources might be put to better use elsewhere. The authors conducted an econometric analysis of the effect of credit on output supply which recognizies that credit markets are not necessarily at equilibrium - so that credit rationing and nonborrowing are both possible. Only about 37 percent of the farmers in the study area were constrained by inadequate formal credit. Informal credit sources provided funds for specific non-agricultural activities that were not fungible. The results indicate that one additional yuan of liquidity yielded 0.235 yuan of additional gross value of output. These results suggest that for the area of China covered in the study, a good part of the short-term credit may actually be used for consumption and investment. Two conclusions are suggested for evaluating the probable effect of expanding agricultural credit. First, not all farmers, and sometimes only a minority, are constrained in their farming operations by inadequate credit. And second, greater supplies of formal credit will be diverted in part to consumption, so the likely effect on output will be smaller than what one might expect if all funds are assumed to be used productively.Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies
Vortex energy and vortex bending for a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate
For a Bose-Einstein condensate placed in a rotating trap, we give a
simplified expression of the Gross-Pitaevskii energy in the Thomas Fermi
regime, which only depends on the number and shape of the vortex lines.
Then we check numerically that when there is one vortex line, our simplified
expression leads to solutions with a bent vortex for a range of rotationnal
velocities and trap parameters which are consistent with the experiments.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. submitte
Formation of a vortex lattice in a rotating BCS Fermi gas
We investigate theoretically the formation of a vortex lattice in a
superfluid two-spin component Fermi gas in a rotating harmonic trap, in a
BCS-type regime of condensed non-bosonic pairs. Our analytical solution of the
superfluid hydrodynamic equations, both for the 2D BCS equation of state and
for the 3D unitary quantum gas, predicts that the vortex free gas is subject to
a dynamic instability for fast enough rotation. With a numerical solution of
the full time dependent BCS equations in a 2D model, we confirm the existence
of this dynamic instability and we show that it leads to the formation of a
regular pattern of quantum vortices in the gas.Comment: 14 page
On the Threshold of Intractability
We study the computational complexity of the graph modification problems
Threshold Editing and Chain Editing, adding and deleting as few edges as
possible to transform the input into a threshold (or chain) graph. In this
article, we show that both problems are NP-complete, resolving a conjecture by
Natanzon, Shamir, and Sharan (Discrete Applied Mathematics, 113(1):109--128,
2001). On the positive side, we show the problem admits a quadratic vertex
kernel. Furthermore, we give a subexponential time parameterized algorithm
solving Threshold Editing in time,
making it one of relatively few natural problems in this complexity class on
general graphs. These results are of broader interest to the field of social
network analysis, where recent work of Brandes (ISAAC, 2014) posits that the
minimum edit distance to a threshold graph gives a good measure of consistency
for node centralities. Finally, we show that all our positive results extend to
the related problem of Chain Editing, as well as the completion and deletion
variants of both problems
Extended microsatellite analysis in microsatellite stable, MSH2 and MLH1 mutation-negative HNPCC patients: Genetic reclassification and correlation with clinical features
Background: Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) is an autosomal dominant disorder predisposing to predominantly colorectal cancer (CRC) and endometrial cancer frequently due to germline mutations in DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes, mainly MLH1, MSH2 and also MSH6 in families seen to demonstrate an excess of endometrial cancer. As a consequence, tumors in HNPCC reveal alterations in the length of simple repetitive genomic sequences like poly-A, poly-T, CA or GT repeats (microsatellites) in at least 90% of the cases. Aim of the Study: The study cohort consisted of 25 HNPCC index patients ( 19 Amsterdam positive, 6 Bethesda positive) who revealed a microsatellite stable (MSS) - or low instable (MSI-L) - tumor phenotype with negative mutation analysis for the MMR genes MLH1 and MSH2. An extended marker panel (BAT40, D10S197, D13S153, D18S58, MYCL1) was analyzed for the tumors of these patients with regard to three aspects. First, to reconfirm the MSI-L phenotype found by the standard panel; second, to find minor MSIs which might point towards an MSH6 mutation, and third, to reconfirm the MSS status of hereditary tumors. The reconfirmation of the MSS status of tumors not caused by mutations in the MMR genes should allow one to define another entity of hereditary CRC. Their clinical features were compared with those of 150 patients with sporadic CRCs. Results: In this way, 17 MSS and 8 MSI-L tumors were reclassified as 5 MSS, 18 MSI-L and even 2 MSI-H ( high instability) tumors, the last being seen to demonstrate at least 4 instable markers out of 10. Among all family members, 87 malignancies were documented. The mean age of onset for CRCs was the lowest in the MSI-H-phenotyped patients with 40.5 +/- 4.9 years (vs. 47.0 +/- 14.6 and 49.8 +/- 11.9 years in MSI-L- and MSS-phenotyped patients, respectively). The percentage of CRC was the highest in families with MSS-phenotyped tumors (88%), followed by MSI-L-phenotyped ( 78%) and then by MSI-H-phenotyped (67%) tumors. MSS tumors were preferentially localized in the distal colon supposing a similar biologic behavior like sporadic CRC. MSH6 mutation analysis for the MSI-L and MSI-H patients revealed one truncating mutation for a patient initially with an MSS tumor, which was reclassified as MSI-L by analyzing the extended marker panel. Conclusion: Extended microsatellite analysis serves to evaluate the sensitivity of the reference panel for HNPCC detection and permits phenotype confirmation or upgrading. Additionally, it confirms the MSS status of hereditary CRCs not caused by the common mutations in the MMR genes and provides hints to another entity of hereditary CRC. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel
Scale-free network topology and multifractality in weighted planar stochastic lattice
We propose a weighted planar stochastic lattice (WPSL) formed by the random
sequential partition of a plane into contiguous and non-overlapping blocks and
find that it evolves following several non-trivial conservation laws, namely
is independent of time , where
and are the length and width of the th block. Its dual on the
other hand, obtained by replacing each block with a node at its center and
common border between blocks with an edge joining the two vertices, emerges as
a network with a power-law degree distribution where
revealing scale-free coordination number disorder since
also describes the fraction of blocks having neighbours. To quantify the
size disorder, we show that if the th block is populated with then its distribution in the WPSL exhibits multifractality.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, To appear in New Journal of Physics (NJP
spectra in elementary cellular automata and fractal signals
We systematically compute the power spectra of the one-dimensional elementary
cellular automata introduced by Wolfram. On the one hand our analysis reveals
that one automaton displays spectra though considered as trivial, and on
the other hand that various automata classified as chaotic/complex display no
spectra. We model the results generalizing the recently investigated
Sierpinski signal to a class of fractal signals that are tailored to produce
spectra. From the widespread occurrence of (elementary) cellular
automata patterns in chemistry, physics and computer sciences, there are
various candidates to show spectra similar to our results.Comment: 4 pages (3 figs included
New and simple algorithms for stable flow problems
Stable flows generalize the well-known concept of stable matchings to markets
in which transactions may involve several agents, forwarding flow from one to
another. An instance of the problem consists of a capacitated directed network,
in which vertices express their preferences over their incident edges. A
network flow is stable if there is no group of vertices that all could benefit
from rerouting the flow along a walk.
Fleiner established that a stable flow always exists by reducing it to the
stable allocation problem. We present an augmenting-path algorithm for
computing a stable flow, the first algorithm that achieves polynomial running
time for this problem without using stable allocation as a black-box
subroutine. We further consider the problem of finding a stable flow such that
the flow value on every edge is within a given interval. For this problem, we
present an elegant graph transformation and based on this, we devise a simple
and fast algorithm, which also can be used to find a solution to the stable
marriage problem with forced and forbidden edges.
Finally, we study the stable multicommodity flow model introduced by
Kir\'{a}ly and Pap. The original model is highly involved and allows for
commodity-dependent preference lists at the vertices and commodity-specific
edge capacities. We present several graph-based reductions that show
equivalence to a significantly simpler model. We further show that it is
NP-complete to decide whether an integral solution exists
Dynamic instability of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate
We consider a Bose-Einstein condensate subject to a rotating harmonic
potential, in connection with recent experiments leading to the formation of
vortices. We use the classical hydrodynamic approximation to the non-linear
Schr\"odinger equation to determine almost analytically the evolution of the
condensate. We predict that this evolution can exhibit dynamical instabilities,
for the stirring procedure previously demonstrated at ENS and for a new
stirring procedure that we put forward. These instabilities take place within
the range of stirring frequency and amplitude for which vortices are produced
experimentally. They provide therefore an initiating mechanism for vortex
nucleation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, last version including comparison with
experiment
Absorbing Subalgebras, Cyclic Terms, and the Constraint Satisfaction Problem
The Algebraic Dichotomy Conjecture states that the Constraint Satisfaction
Problem over a fixed template is solvable in polynomial time if the algebra of
polymorphisms associated to the template lies in a Taylor variety, and is
NP-complete otherwise. This paper provides two new characterizations of
finitely generated Taylor varieties. The first characterization is using
absorbing subalgebras and the second one cyclic terms. These new conditions
allow us to reprove the conjecture of Bang-Jensen and Hell (proved by the
authors) and the characterization of locally finite Taylor varieties using weak
near-unanimity terms (proved by McKenzie and Mar\'oti) in an elementary and
self-contained way
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