Cross-Country Evidence on the Link between the Level of Infrastructure and Capital Inflows

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between public infrastructrue and international capital flows. Out of a sample of thirty countries a cross-sectional econometric model is constructed to estimate the effects. Different components of infrastructure variables are tested in relation to their impact on different kinds of external capital liabilities. The resuts suggest a positive relationship between the level of infrastructure and capital inflows. However, statistical significance cannot be established for all variables in question.

Many Particle Hardy-Inequalities

In this paper we prove three differenttypes of the so-called many-particle Hardy inequalities. One of them is a "classical type" which is valid in any dimesnion $d\neq 2$. The second type deals with two-dimensional magnetic Dirichlet forms where every particle is supplied with a soplenoid. Finally we show that Hardy inequalities for Fermions hold true in all dimensions.Comment: 20 page

Analyticity of the density of electronic wavefunctions

We prove that the electronic densities of atomic and molecular eigenfunctions are real analytic in ${\mathbb R}^3$ away from the nuclei.Comment: 19 page

Inelastic relaxation and noise temperature in S/N/S junctions

We studied electronic relaxation in long diffusive superconductor / normal metal / superconductor (S/N/S) junctions by means of current noise and transport measurements down to very low temperature (100mK). Samples with normal metal lengths of 4, 10 and 60 micrometer have been investigated. In all samples the shot noise increases very rapidly with the voltage. This is interpreted in terms of enhanced heating of the electron gas confined between the two S/N interfaces. Experimental results are analyzed quantitatively taking into account electron-phonon interaction and heat transfer through the S/N interfaces. Transport measurements reveal that in all samples the two S/N interfaces are connected incoherently, as shown by the reentrance of the resistance at low temperature. The complementarity of noise and transport measurements allows us to show that the energy dependence of the reentrance at low voltage is essentially due to the increasing effective temperature of the quasiparticles in the normal metal.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to be published in EPJ

Cepheid Variables in the Maser-Host Galaxy NGC 4258

We present results of a ground-based survey for Cepheid variables in NGC 4258. This galaxy plays a key role in the Extragalactic Distance Scale due to its very precise and accurate distance determination via VLBI observations of water masers. We imaged two fields within this galaxy using the Gemini North telescope and GMOS, obtaining 16 epochs of data in the SDSS gri bands over 4 years. We carried out PSF photometry and detected 94 Cepheids with periods between 7 and 127 days, as well as an additional 215 variables which may be Cepheids or Population II pulsators. We used the Cepheid sample to test the absolute calibration of theoretical gri Period-Luminosity relations and found good agreement with the maser distance to this galaxy. The expected data products from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) should enable Cepheid searches out to at least 10 Mpc.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa