Spherically symmetric solutions of a boundary value problem for monopoles

In this paper we study spherically symmetric monopoles, which are critical points for the Yang-Mills-Higgs functional over a disk in 3 dimensions, with prescribed degree and covariant constant at the boundary. This is a 3-dimensional gauge-theory generalization of the Ginzburg-Landau model in 2 dimensions.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, LaTe

A content analysis of Chicago Cubs and White Sox local news coverage during the 2004 and 2008 major league baseball seasons

This research paper explored how the media presented information about the Chicago Cubs and White Sox during the 2004 and 2008 seasons. This was accomplished through content analysis from sports sections of both, The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times, totaling 167 articles containing 2,777 paragraphs. This analysis measured quantity and tone of news coverage with cross-comparisons between two teams, two years and two news sources. Each paragraph was assigned to one of the teams and categorized into a pre-determined coding group. These coding groups were classified as positive, negative, or neutral in tone. This study sought to identify whether significant agenda-setting or framing differences existed between the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox and how this differences could have impact on object salience. The theories of agenda-setting and framing will provide insight into the decision making process of sportswriters as to: how much information of each subject is being presented (quantity), and how the story is presenting the subject (tone). The Cubs received a slightly higher amount of coverage than the White Sox for the entirety of the study. However, as total coverage decreased, from 2004 to 2008, the majority of which was in coverage for the White Sox. Thus, suggesting an agenda-setting function in this particular area of the study. Both the White Sox and Cubs received more neutral coverage, than positive or neutral frames. The remained constant to the study, with the exception of the Cubs in the year 2008, where they received a significant amount of positive coverage as opposed to their 2004 season. This paper sought the theories of framing and agendasetting beyond their popular reach in the political world. by applying them to sports writing, a previously untapped discipline.Department of JournalismThesis (M.A.

The value of a new idea: knowledge transmission, workers' mobility and market structure

We model the process of knowledge transmission among firms via workers mobility as a multi-stage game. In our setup an idea to be realized needs that the agent informed about the idea recruits another agent from a pool of uninformed people. This constraint generates a recursive effect of knowledge transmission via players mobility across firms which affects simultaneously the players payoffs and the number of active players engaged in market competition. We provide sufficient conditions for the game to possess a unique symmetric subgame perfect equilibrium in which all incumbent players deter the exit of their collaborators. The equilibrium outcome is shown to depend upon the success of the idea over time, expressed by the behaviour of the market demand and on playerstime preferences. A few other intuitions are provided on the interplay between technology, market structure and the market value of an innovative idea.Innovation; Workers’ Mobility; Knowledge Transmission; Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium; Recursive Games

Cooling of a lattice granular fluid as an ordering process

We present a new microscopic model of granular medium to study the role of dynamical correlations and the onset of spatial order induced by the inelasticity of the interactions. In spite of its simplicity, it features several different aspects of the rich phenomenology observed in granular materials and allows to make contact with other topics of statistical mechanics such as diffusion processes, domain growth, persistence, aging phenomena. Interestingly, while local observables being controlled by the largest wavelength fluctuations seem to suggest a purely diffusive behavior, the formation of spatially extended structures and topological defects, such as vortices and shocks, reveals a more complex scenario.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

A sequential approach to the characteristic function and the core in games with externalities

This paper proposes a formulation of coalitional payoff possibilities in games with externalities, based on the assumption that forming coalitions can exploit a ”first mover advantage”. We derive a characteristic function and show that when outside players play their best response noncooperatively, the core is nonempty in games with strategic complements. We apply this result to Cournot and Bertrand games and to public goods economies.Core; cooperative games; externalities

Road pricing as a citizen-candidate game

We construct a political economy model to analyze the political acceptability of road pricing policies. We use a citizen-candidate framework with a population composed by three groups differing for their income level. We show that road pricing policies are never applied when there is no redistribution of the resources in favour of other modes of transport or when the congestion of these types of transport is relatively high. The results suggest that the efficiency of the redistribution of resources from road to the alternative types of transport as well as the fraction of the population that uses the road transport are key factors in explaining the adoption of road pricing schemes

Driven granular gases with gravity

We study fluidized granular gases in a stationary state determined by the balance between an external driving and the bulk dissipation. The two considered situations are inspired by recent experiments, where the gravity plays a major role as a driving mechanism: in the first case gravity acts only in one direction and the bottom wall is vibrated, in the second case gravity acts in both directions and no vibrating walls are present. Simulations performed under the molecular chaos assumption show averaged profiles of density, velocity and granular temperature which are in good agreement with the experiments. Moreover we measure the velocity distributions which show strong non-Gaussian behavior, as experiments pointed out, but also density correlations accounting for clustering, at odds with the experimental results. The hydrodynamics of the first model is discussed and an exact solution is found for the density and granular temperature as functions of the distance from the vibrating wall. The limitations of such a solution, in particular in a broad layer near the wall injecting energy, are discussed.Comment: Revised version accepted for publication. New results added and discussions considering tangential forces. 27 pages (19 figures included), to appear in Phys.Rev.