New public management reform in European countries: The retreat of the state from telecommunication services

In the post war period, telecommunications - being services of 'general economic interest' - were initially managed by public administrative bodies in many Western European countries. With the rise of New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, these bodies were often transformed into public corporations or joint stock companies. Following corporatisation, the provision and the management of these services of general economic interest was gradually transferred to private actors. This paper analyses whether privatisation, as part of NPM reforms, has benefited the consumer. We have, therefore, compiled data on privatisation in the telecommunication sector for 15 European countries from 1980 to 2006. The data set covers the corporatisation process, as well as the transfer of the service provision to the private sector. Three empirical findings stand out: first, the reform processes have differed widely from each other. Second, it's not just the transfer of ownership to the private sector that has ensured efficiency gains and increased consumer benefits; corporatisation has done this as well. Third, efficiency gains have been transferred to the consumer, especially at the beginning of the reform process. -- In der Nachkriegszeit wurden Telekommunikationsdienstleistungen in vielen westeuropäischen Ländern zumeist von Verwaltungseinheiten bereitgestellt. Mit dem Aufkommen des New Public Managements (NPMs) in den 1980er Jahren wurden diese Verwaltungseinheiten in öffentlich-rechtliche Unternehmen oder Aktiengesellschaften umgewandelt (=formelle Privatisierung) und anschließend stückweise an private Akteure übertragen (=materielle Privatisierung). Dieser Beitrag untersucht, ob die Konsumenten von diesen Privatisierungsmaßnahmen profitieren konnten. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wurde ein vollständig neuer Paneldatensatz zusammengestellt, mit dem die Privatisierung im Telekommunikationssektor für 15 europäische Länder von 1980 bis 2006 abgebildet werden kann. Der Datensatz umfasst erstmals sowohl formelle als auch materielle Privatisierungsschritte. Drei empirische Ergebnisse sind besonders hervorzuheben. Erstens, der Privatisierungsprozess unterscheidet sich teilweise erheblich zwischen den Ländern. Zweitens, die Konsumenten konnten nicht nur vom Verkauf von Unternehmensanteilen profitieren, sondern auch von formellen Privatisierungsmaßnahmen. Drittens, Effizienzgewinne wurden insbesondere am Anfang des Reformprozesses an die Konsumenten weitergegeben.

Quantization of the electromagnetic field outside static black holes and its application to low-energy phenomena

We discuss the Gupta-Bleuler quantization of the free electromagnetic field outside static black holes in the Boulware vacuum. We use a gauge which reduces to the Feynman gauge in Minkowski spacetime. We also discuss its relation with gauges used previously. Then we apply the low-energy sector of this field theory to investigate some low-energy phenomena. First, we discuss the response rate of a static charge outside the Schwarzschild black hole in four dimensions. Next, motivated by string physics, we compute the absorption cross sections of low-energy plane waves for the Schwarzschild and extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes in arbitrary dimensions higher than three.Comment: 26 pages (revtex), no figures, misprints in some conditions correcte

Fade depth scaling with channel bandwidth

The dependence of small-scale fading on bandwidth is quantified experimentally in the 3.1–10.6 GHz band for indoor channels. The fade depth converges to 4 dB at 1 GHz bandwidth, with little reduction for further increase in bandwidth. A simple yet accurate empirical fade depth model is developed, enabling convenient evaluation of the link budget for a channel with given bandwidth

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN PASSALID BEETLES (COLEOPTERA: PASSALIDAE): COOPERATIVE BROOD CARE

A brief summary is given concerning passalid social behavior in relation to their life cycle. Passalid pairs defend log tunnels and remain with off- spring from egg to adulthood. Parent-offspring cooperation involving care of other offspring is a step in the evolution of eusociality. Young adult passalids cooperated with their parents in repair of sibling pupal cases. Co- operative brood care between parents and juveniles has not been reported previously for non-Hymenopterous or non-Isopterous arthropods. The pres- ence of overlap of generations and cooperative brood care by at least temporarily non-reproductive adult individuals in certain passalid species suggest that we might consider these passalids to possess one of the highest levels of subsocial behavior known for arthropods. Habitat, trophic relations between individuals, and sex determination mechanisms suggest parallels with the evolution of termite sociality. Se resumen brevemente lo que se conoce acerca del comportamiento social de passalidor en relaci6n a su ciclo de vida. Parejas de pasalidos difienden tu\u27neles en palos y se quedan con su prole desde huevo hasta adulto. Cooperacion entre padres y prole involucrando cuidado de otra prole, es una etapa en la evolucion de la eusocialidad. Jovenes adultos cooperaron con sus padres en la reparaci6n de capullos pupales de sus hermanos. Cuidado de la cria en cooperaci6n entre padres y juveniles no ha sido reportado anterior- mente para los artropodos no-Hymenopteros o no-Isopteros. La presencia de traslape de generaciones y cooperaci6n entre adultos y prole que son temporalmente no-reproductivas en algunas especies de pasalidos, sugiere que estos pasalidos poseen uno de los niveles conocidos mas altos de com- portamiento subsocial entre los artr6podos. Habitat, relaciones troficas entre individuos y mecanismos de determinacion de sexo, sugieren paralelas con la evolucion de la eusocialidad en termitas

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN PASSALID BEETLES (COLEOPTERA: PASSALIDAE): COOPERATIVE BROOD CARE

A brief summary is given concerning passalid social behavior in relation to their life cycle. Passalid pairs defend log tunnels and remain with off- spring from egg to adulthood. Parent-offspring cooperation involving care of other offspring is a step in the evolution of eusociality. Young adult passalids cooperated with their parents in repair of sibling pupal cases. Co- operative brood care between parents and juveniles has not been reported previously for non-Hymenopterous or non-Isopterous arthropods. The pres- ence of overlap of generations and cooperative brood care by at least temporarily non-reproductive adult individuals in certain passalid species suggest that we might consider these passalids to possess one of the highest levels of subsocial behavior known for arthropods. Habitat, trophic relations between individuals, and sex determination mechanisms suggest parallels with the evolution of termite sociality. Se resumen brevemente lo que se conoce acerca del comportamiento social de passalidor en relaci6n a su ciclo de vida. Parejas de pasalidos difienden tu\u27neles en palos y se quedan con su prole desde huevo hasta adulto. Cooperacion entre padres y prole involucrando cuidado de otra prole, es una etapa en la evolucion de la eusocialidad. Jovenes adultos cooperaron con sus padres en la reparaci6n de capullos pupales de sus hermanos. Cuidado de la cria en cooperaci6n entre padres y juveniles no ha sido reportado anterior- mente para los artropodos no-Hymenopteros o no-Isopteros. La presencia de traslape de generaciones y cooperaci6n entre adultos y prole que son temporalmente no-reproductivas en algunas especies de pasalidos, sugiere que estos pasalidos poseen uno de los niveles conocidos mas altos de com- portamiento subsocial entre los artr6podos. Habitat, relaciones troficas entre individuos y mecanismos de determinacion de sexo, sugieren paralelas con la evolucion de la eusocialidad en termitas

Polarization of the \lya Halos Around Sources Before Cosmological Reionization

In Loeb & Rybicki (1999; paper I) it was shown that before reionization, the scattering of \lya photons from a cosmological source might lead to a fairly compact ($\sim 15''$) \lya halo around the source. Observations of such halos could constrain the properties of the neutral intergalactic medium (IGM), and in particular yield the cosmological density parameters of baryons and matter on scales where the Hubble flow is unperturbed. Paper I did not treat the polarization of this scattered radiation, but did suggest that the degree of such polarization might be large. In this Letter we report on improved calculations for these \lya halos, now accounting for the polarization of the radiation field. The polarization is linear and is oriented tangentially to the projected displacement from the center of the source. The degree of polarization is found to be 14% at the core radius, where the intensity has fallen to half of the central value. It rises to 32% and 45% at the radii where the intensity has fallen to one-tenth and one-hundreth of the central intensity, respectively. At larger radii the degree of polarization rises further, asymptotically to 60%. Such high values of polarization should be easily observable and provide a clear signature of the phenomenon of \lya halos surrounding sources prior to reionization.Comment: 8 pages, 2 Postscript figures, accepted by Astrophysical Journal Letters; some typos corrected; added two paragraphs at the end of section 3 concerning detectability of Lyman alpha halo

Deep learning based pulse shape discrimination for germanium detectors

Experiments searching for rare processes like neutrinoless double beta decay heavily rely on the identification of background events to reduce their background level and increase their sensitivity. We present a novel machine learning based method to recognize one of the most abundant classes of background events in these experiments. By combining a neural network for feature extraction with a smaller classification network, our method can be trained with only a small number of labeled events. To validate our method, we use signals from a broad-energy germanium detector irradiated with a $^{228}$Th gamma source. We find that it matches the performance of state-of-the-art algorithms commonly used for this detector type. However, it requires less tuning and calibration and shows potential to identify certain types of background events missed by other methods.Comment: Published in Eur. Phys. J. C. 9 pages, 10 figures, 3 table