The reliability of self-reported home values in a developing country context

We analyze the reliability of homeowners¿ estimates of the value of their houses, in a household survey (of poor suburbs) of a developing country. We show that non-response to the home value question by the owner is uncorrelated with the appraised value of the house and other demographic characteristics of the respondent. We also document that homeowners with long tenure largely overestimate the value of their home. Moreover, both the bias and the lack of precision in homeowners¿ estimates are correlated with tenure, but not with socioeconomic characteristics. However, we also show that self-reported home values from short-tenure homeowners can be used to obtain unbiased and precise estimates of the average house value at the census tract level.bias, inaccuracy, housing prices, owners¿ estimates, appraised values.

Predators do not spill over from forest fragments to maize fields in a landscape mosaic in central Argentina

South America is undergoing a rapid and large scale conversion of natural habitats to cultivated land. Ecosystem services (ESs) still remain important but their level and sustainability are not known. We quantified predation intensity in an Argentinian agricultural landscape containing remnants of the original chaco serrano forest by using artificial sentinel prey. We sought to identify the main predators, and the effect of landscape configuration and maize phenology on predation pressure by invertebrate and vertebrate predators in this landscape. The most common predators were chewing insects (50.4% predation events), birds (22.7%), and ants (17.5%). Overall predation rates in forest fragments (41.6% d-1) were significantly higher than in the surrounding maize fields (21.5% d-1). Invertebrate predation was higher inside and at the edge of forest fragments than within fields, and did not change with increasing distance from a fragment edge, indicating a lack of spillover from the native habitat remnants to the cultivated matrix at the local scale. Distance from a continuous forest had a positive impact on predation by invertebrates and a negative impact on vertebrate predation.Fil: Ferrante, Marco. Aarhus University. Flakkebjerg Research Centre. Department of Agroecology; DinamarcaFil: González, Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Gabor L., Lovei. Aarhus University. Flakkebjerg Research Centre. Department of Agroecology; Dinamarc

Impacts of Radar Echoes on Internal Calibration Signals in the TerraSAR-X Instrument

For calibrating and monitoring the required radiometric stability, the radar instrument of TerraSAR-X features an internal calibration facility coupling into an additional port of the TRMs. Calibration pulses are routed through the front-end to characterise critical elements and parameters of the transmit (TX) and receive (RX) path. Changes in the signal path appear due to thermal effects, degradation, or extreme conditions in space. Especially the front-end TRMs controlling the phased array antenna are of crucial significance for the instrument reliability. There are many indications that the interference of the RX-Calibration signals is caused by an echo from a transmitted TerraSAR-X chirp pulse of the same data take. As consequently implemented in the TerraSAR-X system, different approaches solve these effects of signal interference. In orbit, the commanding sequence can be optimised for avoiding interference. At processing level, averaging techniques minimise the noise effects inside the calibration signals. This paper presents the effects of the radar echoes on the whole internal calibration process and how they can be detected and minimised

Motion and collision of particles in rotating linear dilaton black hole

We study the motion of particles in the background of a four-dimensional linear dilaton black hole. We solve analytically the equations of motion of the test particles and we describe their motion. We show that the dilaton black hole acts as a particle accelerator by analyzing the energy in the center of mass (CM) frame of two colliding particles in the vicinity of its horizon. In particular we find that there is a critical value of the angular momentum, which depends on the string coupling, and a particle with this critical angular momentum can reach the inner horizon with an arbitrarily high CM energy. This is known as the Ba\~nados, Silk and West (BSW) process. We also show that the motion and collisions of particles have a similar behavior to the three-dimensional BTZ black hole. In fact, the photons can plunge into the horizon or escape to infinity, and they can not be deflected, while for massive particles there are no confined orbits of first kind, like planetary or circular orbits.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:hep-th/0208225 by other author

A new survey of cool supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds

In this study, we conduct a pilot program aimed at the red supergiant population of the Magellanic Clouds. We intend to extend the current known sample to the unexplored low end of the brightness distribution of these stars, building a more representative dataset with which to extrapolate their behaviour to other Galactic and extra-galactic environments. We select candidates using only near infrared photometry, and with medium resolution multi-object spectroscopy, we perform spectral classification and derive their line-of-sight velocities, confirming the nature of the candidates and their membership to the clouds. Around two hundred new RSGs have been detected, hinting at a yet to be observed large population. Using near and mid infrared photometry we study the brightness distribution of these stars, the onset of mass-loss and the effect of dust in their atmospheres. Based on this sample, new a priori classification criteria are investigated, combining mid and near infrared photometry to improve the observational efficiency of similar programs as this.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in A&

La construcción de un nuevo Estado y sus políticas públicas : El transporte colectivo urbano en Santiago de Chile, 1925-1957

El 2 de abril de 1957 se registró en Santiago de Chile una de las protesta urbanas de mayor trascendencia, tal conflicto develó tensiones económico-sociales que existían sobre las tarifas, la mantención de los vehículos, las subvenciones del petróleo. Todas estas demandas fueron mediadas por la negociación política del Estado, los empresarios del rubro y los usuarios. El Estado que enfrentó tal situación, se había constituido hacia 1925 distanciándose de la conceptualización liberal clásica, enfatizando un rol interventor, proteccionista y nacionalista. Las nuevas atribuciones del Estado permitieron conformar una nueva institucionalidad, que para el caso del transporte urbano, fue la creación de Empresa Nacional de Transportes Colectivos S.A. (ENT) en 1945 y la Empresa de Transportes Colectivos del Estado (ETC del E) en 1953, empresas que con el rápido crecimiento demográfico y su concentración en la capital, se mostró deficiente e insuficiente en un corto período. Los nuevos grupos de presión en búsqueda de mejor participación en el ingreso nacional, profundizaron la inflación que intensificó los desacuerdos sociales sobre las políticas públicas a implementar, reforzando la crisis integral del país, convirtiendo con ello, en palabras del economista Aníbal Pinto a Chile en un caso de desarrollo frustrado (1958). En relación a lo antes señalado, la presente ponencia tiene por objetivo ayudar en la comprensión del fracaso del sistema público de transporte colectivo de la capital chilena durante el período desarrollista, fracaso que aún en nuestros días, deja severos desencuentros sociales e incide directamente en la vida de millones de santiaguinos.Mesa 18: El Estado como problema y solución: Estado, administración y políticas públicasFacultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Motion and collision of particles near DST Black holes

We consider Deser-Sarioglu-Tekin (DST) black holes as background and we study such the motion of massive particles as the collision of two spinning particles in the vicinity of its horizon. New kinds of orbits are allowed for small deviations of General Relativity, but the behavior of the collision is similar to the one observed for General Relativity. Some observables like bending of light and the perihelion precession are analyzed.Comment: 21 pages and 10 figures. New versio

The population of M-type supergiants in the starburst cluster Stephenson 2

The open cluster Stephenson 2 contains the largest collection of red supergiants known in the Galaxy, and at present is the second most massive young cluster known in the Milky Way. We have obtained multi-epoch, intermediate-resolution spectra around the CaII triplet for more than 30 red supergiants in Stephenson~2 and its surroundings. We find a clear separation between a majority of RSGs having spectral types M0-M2 and the brightest members in the NIR, which have very late spectral types and show strong evidence for heavy mass loss. The distribution of spectral types is similar to that of RSGs in other clusters, such as NGC 7419, or associations, like Per OB1. The cluster data strongly support the idea that heavy mass loss and maser emission is preferentially associated with late-M spectral types, suggesting that they represent an evolutionary phase.Comment: Contribution to the Betelgeuse workshop, November 2012, Paris. To be published in the European Astronomical Society Publications Series, editors: Pierre Kervella, Thibaut Le Bertre & Guy Perri

Advances in developing a new test method to assess spray drift potential from air blast sprayers

Drift is one of the most important issues to consider for realising sustainable pesticide sprays. This study proposes and tests an alternative methodology for quantifying the drift potential (DP) of air blast sprayers, trying to avoid the difficulties faced in conducting field trials according to the standard protocol (ISO 22866:2005). For this purpose, an ad hoc test bench designed for DP comparative measurements was used. The proposed methodology was evaluated in terms of robustness, repetitiveness and coherence by arranging a series of trials at two laboratories. Representative orchard and vineyard air blast sprayers in eight configurations (combination of two forward speeds, two air fan flow rates, and two nozzle types) were tested. The test bench was placed perpendicular to the spray track to collect the fraction of spray liquid remaining in the air after the spray process and potentially susceptible to drift out of the treated area. Downwind spray deposition curves were obtained and a new approach was proposed to calculate an index value of the DP estimation that could allow the differences among the tested configurations to be described. Results indicated that forward speed of 1.67 m/s allows better discrimination among configurations tested. Highest DP reduction, over 87.5%, was achieved using the TVI nozzles in combination with low air fan flow rate in both laboratories; conversely, the highest DP value was obtained with the ATR nozzles in combination with high air fan flow rate. Although the proposed method shows a promising potential to evaluate drift potential of different sprayer types and nozzles types used for bush and tree crops further research and tests are necessary to improve and validate this method.Postprint (published version