Women’s changing socioeconomic position and union formation in Spain and Portugal

Economic and sociological theories of marriage have long emphasized the impact of women’s education and employment on union formation. In this study, we explore the relevance of the female economic independence hypothesis to explain women’s patterns of entry into marriage and cohabitation in Portugal and Spain. In these two Southern European countries, gender equity has improved remarkably in the public sphere, but family relations remain structured along traditional gender roles. We focus on three indicators of women’s autonomy: educational attainment, employment status and having lived independently from the family of origin. The analysis is based on the Fertility and Family Surveys and discrete-time multinomial logistic regression models are used to estimate the odds of marrying, cohabiting or remaining single. The results suggest that whereas the effect of female education is consistent with the independence hypothesis, women’s labour force participation encourages union formation, particularly among younger cohorts. Living independently from the family of origin reduces the likelihood of entering marriage but increases considerably the odds of cohabiting.cohabitation, education, employment, independence hypothesis, marriage, Portugal, South Europe, Spain, union formation, women’s status

Conservation Coverage: An assessment of the protection of highly threatened species of birds and mammals in Tanzania

43 species of birds and mammals are either critically endangered or endangered within Tanzania. Compromised to halt the rapid loss of biodiversity, the Tanzanian government, several non-governmental organizations, government agencies and zoological institutions are attempting to preserve these highly-threatened species. This project assesses the current state of conservation for those species by: 1) diagnosing their captive populations in Tanzania, through visits to zoological institutions in the country and in a global scale by using ZIMS, a global database for zoos and aquariums. 2) determining the protected areas in which the species are found by overlapping distribution maps with protected areas found in the country and interviewing wildlife experts and 3) determines which species are protected by NGO’s or government agencies, done by conducting interviews with key informants of six conservation organizations/agencies in Tanzania. In addition, the project identifies prioritization aspects considered by organization when developing conservation strategies and the challenges faced by the organizations when implementing such strategies. Finally, a ranking of the species is created, listing the highly-threatened species from the ones which are less protected to those which are the most protected. It was found that 75% of the species were protected by at least one conservation method, but only 28% were protected by the three studied strategies. 11 highly threatened species are not protected by any scheme, most of which are “less iconic” species, like shrews, bats or dull-coloured passerines

Anomalous scaling in a non local growth model in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class

We study the interface dynamics of a discrete model to quantitatively describe electrochemical deposition experiments. Extensive numerical simulations indicate that the interface dynamics is unstable at early times, but asymptotically displays the scaling of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class. During the time interval in which the surface is unstable, its power spectrum is anomalous; hence the behaviors at length scales smaller than or comparable with the system size are described by different roughness exponents. These results are expected to apply to a wide range of electrochemical deposition experiments.Comment: REVTEX (4 pages) and three figures (postscript), to be published in PRE (rapid communication, March, 1998

Not truly partnerless: Non-residential partnerships and retreat from marriage in Spain

In Spain, nearly two-thirds of women aged 20-34 have not yet entered their first union. However, almost half of them have a stable partner in a different household. Hence, the drop in marriage rates and low prevalence of cohabitation cannot be rightly interpreted as a decline in partnership formation, but rather as a postponement of co-residential unions. This paper examines the prevalence and determinants of non-residential stable partnerships among young adults (women aged 20-34), in relation to cohabitation and marriage, using a multinomial logit model of current partnership type. The analysis is based on data from the 1999 Spanish Fertility Survey.cohabitation, LAT, partnerships, Spain, union formation

Bose Polaron in a One-Dimensional Lattice with Power-Law Hopping

Polarons, quasiparticles resulting from the interaction between an impurity and the collective excitations of a medium, play a fundamental role in physics, mainly because they represent an essential building block for understanding more complex many-body phenomena. In this manuscript, we study the spectral properties of a single impurity mixed with identical bosons in a one-dimensional lattice with power-law hopping. In particular, based on the so-called T-matrix approximation, we show the existence of well-defined quasiparticle branches for several tunneling ranges and for both repulsive and attractive impurity-boson interactions. Furthermore, we demonstrate the persistence of the attractive polaron branch when the impurity-boson bound state is absorbed into the two-body continuum and that the attractive polaron becomes more robust as the range of the hopping increases. The results discussed here are relevant for the understanding of the equilibrium properties of quantum systems with power-law interactions

Challenges in mixed-signal IC design of CNN chips in submicron CMOS

Summary form only given. The contrast observed between the performance of artificial vision machines and "natural" vision system is due to the inherent parallelism of the former. In particular, the retina combines image sensing and parallel processing to reduce the amount of data transmitted for subsequent processing by the following stages of the human vision system. Industrial applications demand CMOS vision chips capable of flexible operation, with programmable features and standard interfacing to conventional equipment. The CNN Universal Machine (CNN-UM) is a powerful methodological framework for the systematic development of these chips. Basic system-level targets in the design of these chips are to increase the cell density and operation speed. As the technology scales down to submicron all the lateral dimensions decrease by the scaling factor /spl lambda/, and the vertical dimensions scale as /spl lambda//sup -a/, where a is typically around 1/2. Ideally, cell density /spl prop//spl lambda//sup 2/ and time constant /spl prop//spl lambda//sup -2/. The article explains why this is not strictly true, and addresses the challenges involved in the design of CNN chips in submicron technologies.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC96-1392-C02-0