Why has productivity growth stagnated in most Latin-American countries since the neo-liberal reforms?

Latin America’s economic performance since the beginning of neo-liberal reforms has been poor; this not only contrasts with its own performance pre-1980, but also with what has happened in Asia since 1980. I shall argue that the weakness of the region’s new paradigm is rooted as much in its intrinsic flaws as in the particular way it has been implemented. Latin America’s economic reforms were undertaken primarily as a result of the perceived economic weaknesses of the region — i.e., there was an attitude of ‘throwing in the towel’ vis-à-vis the previous state-led import substituting industrialisation strategy, because most politicians and economists interpreted the 1982 debt crisis as conclusive evidence that it had led the region into a cul-de-sac. As Hirschman has argued, policymaking has a strong component of ‘path-dependency’; as a result, people often stick with policies after they have achieved their aims, and those policies have become counterproductive. This leads to such frustration and disappointment with existing policies and institutions that is not uncommon to experience a ‘rebound effect’. An extreme example of this phenomenon is post-1982 Latin America, where the core of the discourse of the economic reforms that followed ended up simply emphasising the need to reverse as many aspects of the previous development (and political) strategies as possible. This helps to explain the peculiar set of priorities, the rigidity and the messianic attitude with which the reforms were implemented in Latin America, as well as their poor outcome. Something very different happened in Asia, where economic reforms were often intended (rightly or wrongly) as a more targeted and pragmatic mechanism to overcome specific economic and financial constraints. Instead of implementing reforms as a mechanism to reverse existing industrialisation strategies, in Asia they were put into practice in order to continue and strengthen ambitious processes of industrialisation

The role of auxiliary states in state discrimination with linear optical evices

The role of auxiliary photons in the problem of identifying a state secretly chosen from a given set of L-photon states is analyzed. It is shown that auxiliary photons do not increase the ability to discriminate such states by means of a global measurement using only optical linear elements, conditional transformation and auxiliary photons.Comment: 5 pages. 1 figure. RevTex documen

Towards an Ontology Metadata Standard

In this poster, we present (i) a proposal for a metadata standard, known as Ontology Metadata Vocabulary (OMV) which is based on discussions in the EU IST thematic network of excellence Knowledge Web1 and (ii) two complementary reference implementations which show the benefit of such a standard in decentralized and centralized scenarios, i.e. the Oyster P2P system and the Onthology metadata portal

Entanglement entropy in a periodically driven quantum Ising chain

We numerically study the dynamics of entanglement entropy, induced by an oscillating time periodic driving of the transverse field, h(t), of a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain. We consider several realizations of h(t), and we find a number of results in analogy with entanglement entropy dynamics induced by a sudden quantum quench. After short-time relaxation, the dynamics of entanglement entropy synchronises with h(t), displaying an oscillatory behaviour at the frequency of the driving. Synchronisation in the dynamics of entanglement entropy, is spoiled by the appearance of quasi-revivals which fade out in the thermodynamic limit, and which we interpret using a quasi-particle picture adapted to periodic drivings. Taking the time-average of the entanglement entropy in the synchronised regime, we find that it obeys a volume law scaling with the subsystem's size. Such result is reminiscent of a thermal state or of a Generalised Gibbs ensemble of a quenched Ising chain, although the system does not heat up towards infinite temperature as a consequence of the integrability of the model.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

On the origin of <i>Halipeurus heraldicus</i> on Round Island petrels: cophylogenetic relationships between petrels and their chewing lice

Lice phylogenetic relationships have often been used to elucidate host relationships and vice versa. In this study, we investigate the louse genus Halipeurus which parasitizes bird hosts in the families Procellariidae, Hydrobatidae and Pelecanoididae. The presence of two lice species on Pterodroma arminjoniana in different breeding grounds (Halipeurus heraldicus on Round Island, off Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and Halipeurus kermadecensis on Trindade Island in the Atlantic Ocean) has led to some confusion in the distribution of Pt. arminjoniana and its close relatives Pt. heraldica and Pt. neglecta. By using a cophylogenetic approach that incorporates uncertainties in phylogenetic reconstructions, we show significant overall coevolution between Halipeurus lice and their hosts. However, the study also indicates that the presence of H. heraldicus on Pt. arminjoniana and Pt. neglecta on Round Island and on Pt. heraldica on Gambier Island are the result of a host switch whereas H. kermadecensis is the ancestral parasite of Pt. arminjoniana. This suggests that H. kermadecensis was lost during or after colonisation of Round Island by Pt. arminjoniana. We conclude that cophylogenetic analyses are central to inferring the evolutionary history and biogeographical patterns of hosts and their parasites

The First Fermi-LAT SNR Catalog SNR and Cosmic Ray Implications

Galactic cosmic ray (CRs) sources, classically proposed to be Supernova Remnants (SNRs), must meet the energetic particle content required by direct measurements of high energy CRs. Indirect gamma-ray measurements of SNRs with the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) have now shown directly that at least three SNRs accelerate protons. With the first Fermi LAT SNR Catalog, we have systematically characterized the GeV gamma-rays emitted by 279 SNRs known primarily from radio surveys. We present these sources in a multiwavelength context, including studies of correlations between GeV and radio size, flux, and index, TeV index, and age and environment tracers, in order to better understand effects of evolution and environment on the GeV emission. We show that previously sufficient models of SNRs' GeV emission no longer adequately describe the data. To address the question of CR origins, we also examine the SNRs' maximal CR contribution assuming the GeV emission arises solely from proton interactions. Improved breadth and quality of multiwavelength data, including distances and local densities, and more, higher resolution gamma-ray data with correspondingly improved Galactic diffuse models will strengthen this constraint.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures; in Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015), The Hague (The Netherlands

Cluster Algorithm Renormalization Group Study of Universal Fluctuations in the 2D Ising Model

In this paper we propose a novel method to study critical systems numerically by a combined collective-mode algorithm and Renormalization Group on the lattice. This method is an improved version of MCRG in the sense that it has all the advantages of cluster algorithms. As an application we considered the 2D Ising model and studied wether scale invariance or universality are possible underlying mechanisms responsible for the approximate "universal fluctuations" close to a so-called bulk temperature $T^*(L)$. "Universal fluctuations" was first proposed in [1] and stated that the probability density function of a global quantity for very dissimilar systems, like a confined turbulent flow and a 2D magnetic system, properly normalized to the first two moments, becomes similar to the "universal distribution", originally obtained for the magnetization in the 2D XY model in the low temperature region. The results for the critical exponents and the renormalization group flow of the probability density function are very accurate and show no evidence to support that the approximate common shape of the PDF should be related to both scale invariance or universal behavior.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures and 3 table

Reversible and irreversible dynamics of a qubit interacting with a small environment

We analyze the dynamics of a system qubit interacting by means a sequence of pairwise collisions with an environment consisting of just two qubits. We show that the density operator of the qubits approaches a common time averaged equilibrium state, characterized by large fluctuations, only for a random sequence of collisions. For a regular sequence of collisions the qubitstates of the system and of the reservoir undergo instantaneous periodic oscillations and do not relax to a common state. Furthermore we show that pure bipartite entanglement is developed only when at least two qubits are initially in the same purestate while otherwise also genuine multipartite entanglement builds up.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure