No abstract

Homophily – the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others – is one of the most persistent findings in social network analysis. Its importance is established along the lines of a multitude of sociologically relevant dimensions, e.g. sex, ethnicity and social class. Existing research, however, mostly focuses on one dimension at a time. But people are inherently multidimensional, have many attributes and are members of multiple groups. In this article, we explore such multidimensionality further in the context of network dynamics. Are friendship ties increasingly likely to emerge and persist when individuals have an increasing number of attributes in common? We analyze eleven friendship networks of adolescents, draw on stochastic actor-oriented network models and focus on the interaction of established homophily effects. Our results indicate that main effects for homophily on various dimensions are positive. At the same time, the interaction of these homophily effects is negative. There seems to be a diminishing effect for having more than one attribute in common. We conclude that studies of homophily and friendship formation need to address such multidimensionality further.

Differential phase contrast X-ray imaging (DPCI) has gained a lot of interest in the past years. It is based on X-ray grating interferometry and the image quality is strongly dependant on the grating quality. Periodic line and space structures with periods in the micron range are required for the source and absorption grating. In case of energies > 30 keV their height should be larger than 100 µm resulting in aspect ratios of more than 100. Deep X-ray lithography and gold electroforming (LIGA technology) is used to fabricate these challenging structures. After resist, design and process optimization gratings with 2.4 µm period have been electroformed up to 120 µm, Visibilities of up to 70% for 29 keV and up to 20% for 52 keV have been achieved for monochromatic synchrotron light. Structures with larger periods could be manufactured up to 200 µm; further increase of the height and the gratings quality is possible yielding to high performance gratings also for high energies.