The design of government portfolios – that is, the distribution of competencies among government ministries and office holders – has been largely ignored in the study of executive and coalition politics. This article argues that portfolio design is a substantively and theoretically relevant phenomenon that has major implications for the study of institutional design and coalition politics. The authors use comparative data on portfolio design reforms in nine Western European countries since the 1970s to demonstrate how the design of government portfolios changes over time. Specifically, they show that portfolios are changed frequently (on average about once a year) and that such shifts are more likely after changes in the prime ministership or the party composition of the government. These findings suggest a political logic behind these reforms based on the preferences and power of political parties and politicians. They have major implications for the study of institutional design and coalition politics.

We report on a setup for the investigation of proton acceleration in the regime of target normal sheath acceleration. The main interest here is to focus on stable laser beam parameters as well as a reliable target setup and diagnostics in order to do extensive and systematic studies on the acceleration mechanism. A motorized target alignment system in combination with large target mounts allows for up to 340 shots with high repetition rate without breaking the vacuum. This performance is used to conduct experiments with a split mirror setup exploring the effect of spatial and temporal separation between the pulses on the acceleration mechanism and on the resulting proton beam.

Prenatal events can affect neonatal thymus size and adult immune function. The causal insults are unknown, although fetal nutrient restriction is suspected. We used ultrasound at three time points during pregnancy (14, 19 and 30 weeks) to measure the growth of six fetal dimensions in rural Bangladeshi women participating in the Maternal and Infant Nutrition Interventions, Matlab study. Postnatal ultrasound was used to calculate thymic index (TI) at birth, 2, 6 and 12 m. Of the 3267 women recruited, 2861 participated by providing data at least at one fetal biometry and one TI time point. Patterns of fetal growth were summarized using principal components calculated from fetal dimension z-scores. Random effects regression, controlling for infant size and season of measurement were used to relate these patterns to TI. We found that smaller leg length relative to head circumference, characteristic of head-sparing growth restriction, was predictive of lower TI. This association was significant at all time points but strongest in earlier pregnancy. Each standard deviation increase in leg–head proportion was associated with an increase in TI of ∼5%. We conclude that growth patterns typical of poor fetal nutrition are associated with poor thymic development. The greater strength of this association in the first trimester is consistent with a period of vulnerability during the early ontogeny of the thymus and suggests that preventative intervention would need to be given in early pregnancy.

The Carnegie Hubble Program (CHP) is a Warm Spitzer program with the aim of reducing the uncertainty in the Hubble constant to below 3%. The program is calibrated using Galactic Cepheids with precise parallax distances from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), combined with a large sample of Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We extend the Cepheid distance scale to the Local Group and beyond, into the regime probed by the Tully–Fisher relation. The entire program—from Galactic Cepheids to the most distant galaxies—uses the Spitzer/IRAC instrument. Completing the entire program with a single instrument on a single telescope virtually eliminates instrumental effects, whilst moving to the mid-infrared drastically reduces the reddening and metallicity effects that trouble the optical Cepheid distance scale. Our first measurement of the Hubble constant, using only two CHP galaxies tied into the HST Key Project results has produced a measurement of H0 = 74.3 ± 2.1 (systematic) km s−1 Mpc−1, which corresponds to a systematic uncertainty of 2.8%.

The processes by which methanol, one of the most abundant interstellar organics, is formed in the interstellar medium are not yet accurately known. Pure gas-phase chemistry models fail to reproduce observed abundances by orders of magnitude, pointing to formation on grains and subsequent desorption.

Observations of methanol and its isotopologue 13CH3OH in several sources have been used to trace the origin, and thus the formation routes of methanol on interstellar grains, by means of isotope labelling a posteriori.

Some new integral conditions characterising the embedding ∧p(v) ↪ Γq(w), 0 < p, q ≤ ∞ are presented, including proofs also for the cases (i) p = ∞, 0 < q < ∞, (ii) q = ∞, I < p < ∞ and (iii) p = q = ∞. Only one condition is necessary for each case which means that our conditions are different from and simpler than other corresponding conditions in the literature. We even prove our results in a more general frame namely when the space Γq(w) is replaced by the more general space . In our proof we use a technique of discretisation and anti-discretisation developed by A. Gogatishvili and L. Pick, where they considered the opposite embedding.

The temporal contrast is classified into two main regimes, the nanosecond-scale and the picosecond-scale contrast prior to the main pulse. The Lund terawatt laser system is shown to be improved on the nano- and picosecond-scale by a factor of 10 and 50, respectively, when it was optimized for contrast but not for energy. Calculations are also presented to emphasize the role of angular dispersion on the picosecond contrast. Finally we show a compromise between the duration and contrast of femtosecond laser pulses amplified in an optical parametric (chirped pulse) amplifier.

Intense continua of electromagnetic radiation of very brief duration are formed in the interaction of focused ultra-short terawatt laser pulses with matter. Two different kinds of experiments, which have been performed utilizing the Lund 10 Hz titanium-doped sapphire terawatt laser system are being described, where visible radiation and X-rays, respectively, have been generated. Focusing into water leads to the generation of a light continuum through self-phase modulation. The propagation of the light through tissue was studied addressing questions related to optical mammography and specific chromophore absorption. When terawatt laser pulses are focused onto a solid target with high nuclear charge Z, intense X-ray radiation of few ps duration and with energies exceeding hundreds of keV is emitted. Biomedical applications of this radiation are described, including differential absorption and gated-viewing imaging.

This is a presentation of a full band Monte Carlo (MC) study, which compares electron transport and device performance for 4H and 6H-SiC 100 nm n-channel MOSFETs. The model used for the electrons is based on data from a full potential band structure calculation using the Local Density Approximation (LDA) to the Density Functional Theory (DFT). For the holes the transport is based on a three band k-p model including spin orbit interaction. The two polytypes are compared regarding surface mobilities obtained with the program, as well as transconductance, unit current gain frequency, carrier velocity, I-V characteristics and energy distribution in the channel for the MOSFETs.