37 research outputs found
Economic exchanges in a stratified society: End of the middle class?
We study the effect of the social stratification on the wealth distribution
on a system of interacting economic agents that are constrained to interact
only within their own economic class. The economical mobility of the agents is
related to its success in exchange transactions. Different wealth distributions
are obtained as a function of the width of the economic class. We find a range
of widths in which the society is divided in two classes separated by a deep
gap that prevents further exchange between poor and rich agents. As a
consequence, the middle wealth class is eliminated. The high values of the Gini
indices obtained in these cases indicate a highly unequal society. On the other
hand, lower and higher widths induce lower Gini indices and a fairer wealth
distribution.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, to appear in Physica
The dynamics of opinion in hierarchical organizations
We study the mutual influence of authority and persuasion in the flow of
opinion. Many social organizations are characterized by a hierarchical
structure where the propagation of opinion is asymmetric. In the normal flow of
opinion formation a high-rank agent uses its authority (or its persuasion when
necessary) to impose its opinion on others. However, agents with no authority
may only use the force of its persuasion to propagate their opinions. In this
contribution we describe a simple model with no social mobility, where each
agent belongs to a class in the hierarchy and has also a persuasion capability.
The model is studied numerically for a three levels case, and analytically
within a mean field approximation, with a very good agreement between the two
approaches. The stratum where the dominant opinion arises from is strongly
dependent on the percentage of agents in each hierarchy level, and we obtain a
phase diagram identifying the relative frequency of prevailing opinions. We
also find that the time evolution of the conflicting opinions polarizes after a
short transient.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Why, when, and how fast innovations are adopted
When the full stock of a new product is quickly sold in a few days or weeks,
one has the impression that new technologies develop and conquer the market in
a very easy way. This may be true for some new technologies, for example the
cell phone, but not for others, like the blue-ray. Novelty, usefulness,
advertising, price, and fashion are the driving forces behind the adoption of a
new product. But, what are the key factors that lead to adopt a new technology?
In this paper we propose and investigate a simple model for the adoption of an
innovation which depends mainly on three elements: the appeal of the novelty,
the inertia or resistance to adopt it, and the interaction with other agents.
Social interactions are taken into account in two ways: by imitation and by
differentiation, i.e., some agents will be inclined to adopt an innovation if
many people do the same, but other will act in the opposite direction, trying
to differentiate from the "herd". We determine the conditions for a successful
implantation of the new technology, by considering the strength of advertising
and the effect of social interactions. We find a balance between the
advertising and the number of anti-herding agents that may block the adoption
of a new product. We also compare the effect of social interactions, when
agents take into account the behavior of the whole society or just a part of
it. In a nutshell, the present model reproduces qualitatively the available
data on adoption of innovation.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures (with subfigures), full paper (EPJB 2012) on
innovation adoption mode
Vector opinion dynamics in a model for social influence
We present numerical simulations of a model of social influence, where the
opinion of each agent is represented by a binary vector. Agents adjust their
opinions as a result of random encounters, whenever the difference between
opinions is below a given threshold. Evolution leads to a steady state, which
highly depends on the threshold and a convergence parameter of the model. We
analyze the transition between clustered and homogeneous steady states. Results
of the cases of complete mixing and small-world networks are compared.Comment: Latex file, 14 pages and 11 figures, Accepted in Physica
The role of noise and initial conditions in the asymptotic solution of a bounded confidence, continuous-opinion model
We study a model for continuous-opinion dynamics under bounded confidence. In
particular, we analyze the importance of the initial distribution of opinions
in determining the asymptotic configuration. Thus, we sketch the structure of
attractors of the dynamical system, by means of the numerical computation of
the time evolution of the agents density. We show that, for a given bound of
confidence, a consensus can be encouraged or prevented by certain initial
conditions. Furthermore, a noisy perturbation is added to the system with the
purpose of modeling the free will of the agents. As a consequence, the
importance of the initial condition is partially replaced by that of the
statistical distribution of the noise. Nevertheless, we still find evidence of
the influence of the initial state upon the final configuration for a short
range of the bound of confidence parameter
Emergence of communities on a coevolutive model of wealth interchange
We present a model in which we investigate the structure and evolution of a
random network that connects agents capable of exchanging wealth. Economic
interactions between neighbors can occur only if the difference between their
wealth is less than a threshold value that defines the width of the economic
classes. If the interchange of wealth cannot be done, agents are reconnected
with another randomly selected agent, allowing the network to evolve in time.
On each interaction there is a probability of favoring the poorer agent,
simulating the action of the government. We measure the Gini index, having real
world values attached to reality. Besides the network structure showed a very
close connection with the economic dynamic of the system.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure
UV laser-induced high resolution cleaving of Si wafers for micro-nano devices and polymeric waveguide characterization
In this work we propose a method for cleaving silicon-based photonic chips by using a laser based micromachining system, consisting of a ND:YVO4laser emitting at 355 nm in nanosecond pulse regime and a micropositioning system. The laser makes grooved marks placed at the desired locations and directions where cleaves have to be initiated, and after several processing steps, a crack appears and propagate along the crystallographic planes of the silicon wafer. This allows cleavage of the chips automatically and with high positioning accuracy, and provides polished vertical facets with better quality than the obtained with other cleaving process, which eases the optical characterization of photonic devices.
This method has been found to be particularly useful when cleaving small-sized chips, where manual cleaving is hard to perform; and also for polymeric waveguides, whose facets get damaged or even destroyed with polishing or manual cleaving processing. Influence of length of the grooved line and speed of processing is studied for a variety of silicon chips. An application for cleaving and characterizing sol–gel waveguides is presented. The total amount of light coupled is higher than when using any other procedure
Stochastic Production Of Kink-Antikink Pairs In The Presence Of An Oscillating Background
We numerically investigate the production of kink-antikink pairs in a
dimensional field theory subject to white noise and periodic driving.
The twin effects of noise and periodic driving acting in conjunction lead to
considerable enhancement in the kink density compared to the thermal
equilibrium value, for low dissipation coefficients and for a specific range of
frequencies of the oscillating background. The dependence of the kink-density
on the temperature of the heat bath, the amplitude of the oscillating
background and value of the dissipation coefficient is also investigated. An
interesting feature of our result is that kink-antikink production occurs even
though the system always remains in the broken symmetry phase.Comment: Revtex, 21 pages including 7 figures; more references adde
Transverse Phase Locking for Vortex Motion in Square and Triangular Pinning Arrays
We analyze transverse phase locking for vortex motion in a superconductor
with a longitudinal DC drive and a transverse AC drive. For both square and
triangular arrays we observe a variety of fractional phase locking steps in the
velocity versus DC drive which correspond to stable vortex orbits. The locking
steps are more pronounced for the triangular arrays which is due to the fact
that the vortex motion has a periodic transverse velocity component even for
zero transverse AC drive. All the steps increase monotonically in width with AC
amplitude. We confirm that the width of some fractional steps in the square
arrays scales as the square of the AC driving amplitude. In addition we
demonstrate scaling in the velocity versus applied DC driving curves at
depinning and on the main step, similar to that seen for phase locking in
charge-density wave systems. The phase locking steps are most prominent for
commensurate vortex fillings where the interstitial vortices form symmetrical
ground states. For increasing temperature, the fractional steps are washed out
very quickly, while the main step gains a linear component and disappears at
melting. For triangular pinning arrays we again observe transverse phase
locking, with the main and several of the fractional step widths scaling
linearly with AC amplitude.Comment: 10 pages, 14 postscript figure
Exploring Health Science Students’ Notions on Organ Donation and Transplantation: A Multicenter Study
The knowledge acquired during university education about organ donation and transplantation (ODT) decisively influences the information future health professionals transmit. This is important in ODT where the participation of the general public is essential to obtain organs. Objective: To determine notions of Spanish medicine and nursing students on ODT and its relationship with attitude toward ODT. Methods and Design: and design. We conducted a sociologic, multicenter, and observational study. The population for our study consisted of medical and nursing students in Spanish universities. Our database was the Collaborative International Donor Project, stratified by geographic area and academic course. A validated questionnaire (PCID-DTO-RIOS) was self-administered and completed anonymously. Our sample consisted of 9598 medical and 10, 566 nursing students (99% confidence interval; precision of ±1%), stratified by geographic area and year of study. Results: The completion rate for our study was 90%. Only 20% (n=3640) of students thought their notions on ODT were good; 41% (n=7531) thought their notions were normal; 36% (n=6550) thought their notions were scarce. Comparing groups, there were differences between those who believed that their notions on ODT were good (44% nursing vs 56% medical students; P < .000), and those who believed it scarce (54% nursing vs 46% medical students; P < .000). Notions on ODT were related with attitude toward the donation of one''s own organs: those who considered their notions were good were more in favor then those who considered it scarce (88% vs 72%; P < .000). Conclusion: Only 20% of Spanish medical and nursing students thought their notions on ODT were good. Having good knowledge is related to a favorable attitude towards ODT. Receiving specific information on the subject could improve their knowledge about ODT during their training