Ironing Out Anemia: Assessing the Role of Marketplace Factors and Government Investment Incentives in Shaping East African Pharmaceutical Markets

Africa suffers from the highest disease burden in the world, with over half of the population lacking regular access to essential medicines (Owoeye, 2014, p.214; Chaudhuri & West, 2015, p.23). Following two decades of reform, the continent has now emerged one of the fastest-growing economic regions, shifting public health focus toward non-communicable diseases (NCDs) (Holt et al., 2015, p.2). Among these NCDs is anemia, which has direct and indirect economic effects as large as 4.05% of GDP (Horton & Ross, 2003, p.51). Encouraged by the rapid growth of liberalized markets, African governments and health officials are now considering local pharmaceutical production as a way to unlock the economic, social, and political benefits of improved public health. This thesis explores two hypotheses: (a) tax incentives effectively induce greater foreign direct investment in East Africa, including pharmaceutical production, and (b) local pharmaceutical production in East Africa provides better access to essential medicines like haematinics (anti-anemia drugs) as measured by anemia prevalence in children under five. We study these questions using Ethiopia and Rwanda as representative countries. Taking effect in 2012, Ethiopia’s Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with India created local investment incentives via low tax rates as compared to Rwanda, which has no such agreement. We perform a difference-in-differences (DID) regression using data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to estimate the causal relationship between favorable investment conditions and anemia rates among children. Our results are inconclusive and suggest determinants of anemia are numerous and interconnected

Dissipative dynamics of vortex arrays in trapped Bose-condensed gases: neutron stars physics on μ\muK scale

We develop a theory of dissipative dynamics of large vortex arrays in trapped Bose-condensed gases. We show that in a static trap the interaction of the vortex array with thermal excitations leads to a non-exponential decay of the vortex structure, and the characteristic lifetime depends on the initial density of vortices. Drawing an analogy with physics of pulsar glitches, we propose an experiment which employs the heating of the thermal cloud in the course of the decay of the vortex array as a tool for a non-destructive study of the vortex dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, revtex; revised versio

A Comparative Test of Creative Thinking in Preschool Children and Dolphins

Creativity is considered one aspect of intelligence. Including creativity allows for more room for expression (e.g., participants can respond with movement instead of written or verbal responses) than in standard intelligence assessments. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1974) are the leading method of assessing creative abilities in school-aged humans and above. To assess creativity in young humans and nonhuman animals, modifications must be made to facilitate nonverbal responses. In the current study, a cross-species comparison was conducted between preschoolers and bottlenose dolphins to examine responses to a modified creativity task in which both species were trained to demonstrate non-repeated behaviors to an “innovate” prompt. The resulting behaviors for the first test session were coded for fluency (number of non-repeated behaviors demonstrated), originality, and flexibility (low, moderate, or high activity level). Children and dolphins produced a similar number of non-repeated behaviors during individual test trials and also had similar originality scores. Related to flexibility, dolphins displayed more low energy activity levels compared to the children. Given the limited understanding of creative abilities in animals and young children, this comparison using a modified version of the TTCT offers exciting possibilities. These results could provide further evidence of similarities in cognitive processes for humans and nonhuman animals

Stability of multiquantum vortices in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates

Multiply quantized vortices in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates are studied using the Bogoliubov theory. Suitable combinations of a localized pinning potential and external rotation of the system are found to energetically stabilize, both locally and globally, vortices with multiple circulation quanta. We present a phase diagram for stable multiply quantized vortices in terms of the angular rotation frequency and the width of the pinning potential. We argue that multiquantum vortices could be experimentally created using these two expedients.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Rotational Dynamics of Vortices in Confined Bose-Einstein Condensates

We derive the frequency of precession and conditions for stability for a quantized vortex in a single-component and a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate. The frequency of precession is proportional to the gradient of the free energy with respect to displacement of the vortex core. In a two-component system, it is possible to achieve a local minimum in the free energy at the center of the trap. The presence of such a minimum implies the existence of a region of energetic stability where the vortex cannot escape and where one may be able to generate a persistent current.Comment: 6 Pages, 6 Figure

Bose-Fermi Mixtures in Optical Lattices

Using mean field theory, we have studied Bose-Fermi mixtures in a one-dimensional optical lattice in the case of an attractive boson-fermion interaction. We consider that the fermions are in the degenerate regime and that the laser intensities are such that quantum coherence across the condensate is ensured. We discuss the effect of the optical lattice on the critical rotational frequency for vortex line creation in the Bose-Einstein condensate, as well as how it affects the stability of the boson-fermion mixture. A reduction of the critical frequency for nucleating a vortex is observed as the strength of the applied laser is increased. The onset of instability of the mixture occurs for a sizeably lower number of fermions in the presence of a deep optical lattice.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, revtex4, 14th International Laser Physics Workshop (LPHYS'05

A method for collective excitation of Bose-Einstein condensate

It is shown that by an appropriate modification of the trapping potential one may create collective excitation in cold atom Bose-Einstein condensate. The proposed method is complementary to earlier suggestions. It seems to be feasible experimentally --- it requires only a proper change in time of the potential in atomic traps, as realized in laboratories already.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; major revision, several references added, interacting particles case adde

Stabilization and pumping of giant vortices in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates

Recently, it was shown that giant vortices with arbitrarily large quantum numbers can possibly be created in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates by cyclically pumping vorticity into the condensate. However, multiply quantized vortices are typically dynamically unstable in harmonically trapped nonrotated condensates, which poses a serious challenge to the vortex pump procedure. In this theoretical study, we investigate how the giant vortices can be stabilized by the application of a Gaussian potential peak along the vortex core. We find that achieving dynamical stability is feasible up to high quantum numbers. To demonstrate the efficiency of the stabilization method, we simulate the adiabatic creation of an unsplit 20-quantum vortex with the vortex pump.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures; to be published in J. Low Temp. Phys., online publication available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10909-010-0216-

Rotating Bose gas with hard-core repulsion in a quasi-2D harmonic trap: vortices in BEC

We consider a gas of N(=6, 10, 15) Bose particles with hard-core repulsion, contained in a quasi-2D harmonic trap and subjected to an overall angular velocity $\Omega$ about the z-axis. Exact diagonalization of the $n\times n$ many-body Hamiltonian matrix in given subspaces of the total (quantized) angular momentum L$_{z}$, with $n\sim 10^{5}$(e.g. for L$_{z}$=N=15, n =240782) was carried out using Davidson's algorithm. The many-body variational ground state wavefunction, as also the corresponding energy and the reduced one-particle density-matrix were calculated. With the usual identification of $\Omega$ as the Lagrange multiplier associated with L$_{z}$ for a rotating system, the $L_{z}-\Omega$ phase diagram (or the stability line) was determined that gave a number of critical angular velocities $\Omega_{{\bf c}i}, i=1,2,3,... ,$ at which the ground state angular momentum and the associated condensate fraction undergo abrupt jumps. A number of (total) angular momentum states were found to be stable at successively higher critical angular velocities $\Omega_{{\bf c}i}, \ i=1,2,3,...$for a given N. For$L_{z}>N$, the condensate was strongly depleted. The critical$\Omega_{{\bf c}i}$values, however, decreased with increasing interaction strength as well as the particle number, and were systematically greater than the non-variational Yrast-state values for the single vortex state with L$_{z}$=N. We have also observed that the condensate fraction for the single vortex state (as also for the higher vortex states) did not change significantly even as the 2-body interaction strength was varied over several$(\sim 4)$ orders of magnitude in the moderately to the weakly interacting regime.Comment: Revtex, 11 pages, 1 table as ps file, 4 figures as ps file

Exact Eignstates for Trapped Weakly Interacting Bosons in Two Dimensions

A system of N two-dimensional weakly interacting bosons in a harmonic trap is considered. When the two-particle potential is a delta function Smith and Wilkin have analytically proved that the elementary symmetric polynomials of particle coordinates measured from the center of mass are exact eigenstates. In this study, we point out that their proof works equally well for an arbitrary two-particle potential which possesses the translational and rotational symmetries. We find that the interaction energy associated with the eigenstate with angular momentum L is equal to aN(N-1)/2+(b-a)NL/2, where a and b are the interaction energies of two bosons in the lowest-energy one-particle state with zero and one unit of angular momentum, respectively. Additionally, we study briefly the case of attractive quartic interactions. We prove rigorously that the lowest-energy state is the one in which all angular momentum is carried by the center of mass motion.Comment: 4 pages, minor changes made, to appear in PRA Brie