Pair Production in a Time Dependent Magnetic Field

The production of electron-positron pairs in a time-dependent magnetic field is estimated in the hypotheses that the magnetic field is uniform over large distances with respect to the pair localization and it is so strong that the spacing of the Landau levels is larger than the rest mass of the particles. This calculation is presented since it has been suggested that extremely intense and varying magnetic fields may be found around some astrophysical objects.Comment: 11 pages, Plain TeX, no figures. Submitted to Modern Physics Letter

A distributional approach to fractional Sobolev spaces and fractional variation: existence of blow-up

We introduce the new space $BV^{\alpha}(\mathbb{R}^n)$ of functions with bounded fractional variation in $\mathbb{R}^n$ of order $\alpha \in (0, 1)$ via a new distributional approach exploiting suitable notions of fractional gradient and fractional divergence already existing in the literature. In analogy with the classical $BV$ theory, we give a new notion of set $E$ of (locally) finite fractional Caccioppoli $\alpha$-perimeter and we define its fractional reduced boundary $\mathscr{F}^{\alpha} E$. We are able to show that $W^{\alpha,1}(\mathbb{R}^n)\subset BV^\alpha(\mathbb{R}^n)$ continuously and, similarly, that sets with (locally) finite standard fractional $\alpha$-perimeter have (locally) finite fractional Caccioppoli $\alpha$-perimeter, so that our theory provides a natural extension of the known fractional framework. Our main result partially extends De Giorgi's Blow-up Theorem to sets of locally finite fractional Caccioppoli $\alpha$-perimeter, proving existence of blow-ups and giving a first characterisation of these (possibly non-unique) limit sets.Comment: 46 page

Endogenous space in the Net era

Libre Software communities are among the most interesting and advanced socio-economic laboratories on the Net. In terms of directions of Regional Science research, this paper addresses a simple question: “Is the socio-economics of digital nets out of scope for Regional Science, or might the latter expand to a cybergeography of digitally enhanced territories ?” As for most simple questions, answers are neither so obvious nor easy. The authors start drafting one in a positive sense, focussing upon a file rouge running across the paper: endogenous spaces woven by socio-economic processes. The drafted answer declines on an Evolutionary Location Theory formulation, together with two computational modelling views. Keywords: Complex networks, Computational modelling, Economics of Internet, Endogenous spaces, Evolutionary location theory, Free or Libre Software, Path dependence, Positionality.

Measuring the equilibrium real interest rate

The equilibrium real interest rate represents the real rate of return required to keep the economy’s output equal to potential output. This article discusses how to measure the equilibrium real interest rate, using an empirical structural model of the economy.Interest rates ; Monetary policy

Latent Markov model for longitudinal binary data: An application to the performance evaluation of nursing homes

Performance evaluation of nursing homes is usually accomplished by the repeated administration of questionnaires aimed at measuring the health status of the patients during their period of residence in the nursing home. We illustrate how a latent Markov model with covariates may effectively be used for the analysis of data collected in this way. This model relies on a not directly observable Markov process, whose states represent different levels of the health status. For the maximum likelihood estimation of the model we apply an EM algorithm implemented by means of certain recursions taken from the literature on hidden Markov chains. Of particular interest is the estimation of the effect of each nursing home on the probability of transition between the latent states. We show how the estimates of these effects may be used to construct a set of scores which allows us to rank these facilities in terms of their efficacy in taking care of the health conditions of their patients. The method is used within an application based on data concerning a set of nursing homes located in the Region of Umbria, Italy, which were followed for the period 2003--2005.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOAS230 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Time Varying Volatility of Macroeconomic Fluctuations

In this paper we investigate the sources of the important shifts in the volatility of U.S. macroeconomic variables in the postwar period. To this end, we propose the estimation of DSGE models allowing for time variation in the volatility of the structural innovations. We apply our estimation strategy to a large-scale model of the business cycle and find that investment specific technology shocks account for most of the sharp decline in volatility of the last two decades.

Item selection by Latent Class-based methods

The evaluation of nursing homes is usually based on the administration of questionnaires made of a large number of polytomous items. In such a context, the Latent Class (LC) model represents a useful tool for clustering subjects in homogenous groups corresponding to different degrees of impairment of the health conditions. It is known that the performance of model-based clustering and the accuracy of the choice of the number of latent classes may be affected by the presence of irrelevant or noise variables. In this paper, we show the application of an item selection algorithm to real data collected within a project, named ULISSE, on the quality-of-life of elderly patients hosted in italian nursing homes. This algorithm, which is closely related to that proposed by Dean and Raftery in 2010, is aimed at finding the subset of items which provides the best clustering according to the Bayesian Information Criterion. At the same time, it allows us to select the optimal number of latent classes. Given the complexity of the ULISSE study, we perform a validation of the results by means of a sensitivity analysis to different specifications of the initial subset of items and of a resampling procedure