Linguistic Polarization and Conflict in the Basque Country

This paper investigates the relationship between linguistic polarization and conflict in the Basque Country. During the 40 years of Franco’s dictatorship the use of the Basque language was banned. Therefore, there may be some linguistic roots underlying the conflict in the Basque Country. We show that at the municipality level, linguistic polarization reduces the level of conflict. This finding is robust to various ways of measuring linguistic and ideological polarization and the inclusion of other covariates. In addition, we find that a high level of the stock of human capital is beneficial for reducing conflict intensity.

Magnetization reversal and exchange bias effects in hard/soft ferromagnetic bilayers with orthogonal anisotropies

21 p.

The impact of the great recession on employment polarization in Spain

This article analyzes changes in the occupational employment share in Spain for the period 1997-2012 and the way particular sociodemographic groups adapt to those changes. There seems to be clear evidence of employment polarization between 1997 and 2012 that accelerates over the recession. Changes in the composition of the labour supply cannot explain the increase in the share of occupations at the low end of the wage distribution. Sector reallocation may have partially contributed to explain the polarization process in Spain during the years of expansion (1997-2007) but it is a minor factor during the recession. The polarization of occupations within sectors observed, especially during the recession, appears to be related to a decline in routine tasks which is compensated by an increase in occupations with non-routine service contents, which are found both in the low and high end of the wage distribution. Instead, jobs with a higher degree of abstract contents do not appear to increase their share in total employment during these 15 years. The paper finds that this process has affected males more strongly than females because of their higher concentration in occupations more focused on routine tasks. Among males, for workers under 30 years old, we find a decrease in the share of occupations with more routine tasks which turns into increases in those with more abstract content and particularly with more non-routine service content. Instead, male workers over 30 years old seem to remain in declining occupations to a greater extent. Females of different ages are not affected by the abovementioned changes.

Higher order vortex gyrotropic modes in circular ferromagnetic nanodots

Magnetic vortex that consists of an in-plane curling magnetization configuration and a needle-like core region with out-of-plane magnetization is known to be the ground state of geometrically confined submicron soft magnetic elements. Here magnetodynamics of relatively thick (50-100 nm) circular Ni80Fe20 dots were probed by broadband ferromagnetic resonance in the absence of external magnetic field. Spin excitation modes related to the thickness dependent vortex core gyrotropic dynamics were detected experimentally in the gigahertz frequency range. Both analytical theory and micromagnetic simulations revealed that these exchange dominated modes are flexure oscillations of the vortex core string with n = 0,1,2 nodes along the dot thickness. The intensity of the mode with n = 1 depends significantly on both dot thickness and diameter and in some cases is higher than the one of the uniform mode with n = 0. This opens promising perspectives in the area of spin transfer torque oscillators.

Surface plasmons and effects of losses in propagating modes in a chain of silver nanoparticles

In this work a chain of 4000 silver nanoparticles embedded in a glass medium is considered, and its leftmost particle is excited by an electric field pulse of Gaussian shape. Considering Drude’s model, losses of the system are taken into account by γ factor, which stands for the Ohmic losses, and different quantities, such as frequencies of excited modes and group velocities are calculated. Besides, these results are compared to those obtained from the dispersion relation of an infinite chain. The increase of losses affects the lifetime and propagation length of the plasmon; besides, although the response dispersion relation for an infinite chain seems to remain invariable, this is not the case for a finite chain. The mismatches are bigger for higher losses. Furthermore, plasmon propagation velocities are analysed, and an explanation for the mismatch of longitudinal modes close to the intersection point with the dispersion of light is suggested. Finally, some concepts to treat this problem from the energy transport point of view are introduced.