Coping with economic shocks: Consumption Smoothing and the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis

Applying quantile regression techniques to Russian data we investigate the channels through which individuals experience changes in their well being. We find that married individuals in non-rural households with university-educated heads are less vulnerable to severe welfare shocks. For the most vulnerable individuals the labour market plays a key role in transmitting the effects of aggregate shocks through the unemployment channel whereas those individuals able to maintain their employment status are more able to cope with economic shocks. While increases in pension payments help individuals to cope with shocks, it transpires that vulnerable individuals rely more broadly on the support of relatives and the produce of their garden plots and dachas

Current commercialization status of electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) digital microfluidics.

The emergence of electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) in the early 2000s made the once-obscure electrowetting phenomenon practical and led to numerous activities over the last two decades. As an eloquent microscale liquid handling technology that gave birth to digital microfluidics, EWOD has served as the basis for many commercial products over two major application areas: optical, such as liquid lenses and reflective displays, and biomedical, such as DNA library preparation and molecular diagnostics. A number of research or start-up companies (e.g., Phillips Research, Varioptic, Liquavista, and Advanced Liquid Logic) led the early commercialization efforts and eventually attracted major companies from various industry sectors (e.g., Corning, Amazon, and Illumina). Although not all of the pioneering products became an instant success, the persistent growth of liquid lenses and the recent FDA approvals of biomedical analyzers proved that EWOD is a powerful tool that deserves a wider recognition and more aggressive exploration. This review presents the history around major EWOD products that hit the market to show their winding paths to commercialization and summarizes the current state of product development to peek into the future. In providing the readers with a big picture of commercializing EWOD and digital microfluidics technology, our goal is to inspire further research exploration and new entrepreneurial adventures

Surface coating with Ca(OH)2 for improvement of the transport of nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) in porous media

A novel thermal deposition method was developed to coat Ca(OH)2 on the surface of nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI). The nZVI particles with the Ca(OH)2 coating layer, nZVI/Ca(OH)2, had a clear core-shell structure based on the transmission electron microscopy observations, and the Ca(OH)2 shell was identified as an amorphous phase. The Ca(OH)2 coating shell would not only function as an effective protection layer for nZVI but also improve the mobility of nZVI in porous media for its use in environmental decontamination. A 10% Ca/Fe mass ratio was found to result in a proper thickness of the Ca(OH)2 shell on the nZVI surface. Based on the filtration tests in sand columns, the Ca(OH)2-based surface coating could greatly improve the mobility and transport of nZVI particles in porous media. In addition, batch experiments were conducted to evaluate the reactivity of Ca(OH)2-coated nZVI particles for the reduction of Cr(VI) and its removal from water.postprin

The orientation-preserving diffeomorphism group of S^2 deforms to SO(3) smoothly

Smale proved that the orientation-preserving diffeomorphism group of S^2 has a continuous strong deformation retraction to SO(3). In this paper, we construct such a strong deformation retraction which is diffeologically smooth.Comment: 16 page

Control of a Single-Star Flying Capacitor Converter Modular Multi-level Cascaded Converter (SSFCC-MMCC) STATCOM for Unbalanced Load Compensation

This paper presents a simulation study into the implementation of the single star flying capacitor converter modular multi-level cascaded converter (SSFCC-MMCC) as a STATCOM for unbalanced load compensation. The paper proposes a new concept of voltage source current control for the reference current tracking of the compensated currents. This control strategy enables the STATCOM system to compensate for both positive sequence reactive and negative sequence currents. Not only compensates for unbalanced load, but also keep the module Dc-link and flying capacitor voltages maintained at their rated values. Simulation results verify the performance of the chosen topology

Coronal jets, magnetic topologies, and the production of interplanetary electron streams

We investigate the acceleration source of the impulsive solar energetic particle (SEP) events on 2007 January 24. Combining the in situ electron measurements and remote-sensing solar observations, as well as the calculated magnetic fields obtained from a potential-field source-surface model, we demonstrate that the jets associated with the hard X-ray flares and type-III radio bursts, rather than the slow and partial coronal mass ejections, are closely related to the production of interplanetary electron streams. The jets, originated from the well-connected active region (AR 10939) whose magnetic polarity structure favors the eruption, are observed to be forming in a coronal site, extending to a few solar radii, and having a good temporal correlation with the electron solar release. The open-field lines near the jet site are rooted in a negative polarity, along which energetic particles escape from the flaring AR to the near-Earth space, consistent with the in situ electron pitch angle distribution. The analysis enables us to propose a coronal magnetic topology relating the impulsive SEP events to their solar source

Samlande och visualiserande av verksamhetsstyrande data för en digital marknadsföringsbyrå

I dagens läge, med stor konkurrens mellan företag i samma bransch är det ytterst viktigt för företag att veta hur de når sina målgrupper. I detta examensarbete diskuteras vikten av verksamhetsstyrande data, hur det samlats och visualiserats tidigare jämfört med idag, och hur företag använder sig av den för att göra beslut och ändringar i sina strategier. Arbetet hänvisar till flera artiklar och intervjuer med experter inom visualisering av data, samt datadriven beslutsfattning inom företag. Målet med arbetet är att ha en fungerande nätverksapplikation, skriven i Node.js, som automatiskt sköter samlande av data från olika molntjänster ett företag använder. Utöver samlandet skall applikationen kunna utföra räkningar på data och skicka den vidare till en tjänst som visualiserar den i olika widgets på en dashboard.With increasing competition between companies within the same area, it is becoming more important than ever for companies to know how to reach their target groups. This thesis focus on the importance of performance related data, how it has been gathered and visualized earlier compared to today, and how companies use it to make data-based decisions for their strategies. Articles and interviews with experts in the fields of data visualization and data driven management are reviewed in the thesis. The goal is to have a working network application that gathers data from several online services in use by the company. In addition to gathering, the application will also perform calculations and format the data in such a way that it is easy to visualize using widgets on dashboards

Improving polymer solar cell performances by manipulating the self-organization of polymer

We have investigated driving force effects on the ordering of polymer, which is a key factor of self-assembly of soft materials. By turning the substrate up-side-down, the downward driving force can form in solution film-growth process and affect the self-organization of polymer chains and domains. We introduce Brown's capillarity theory [J. Polym. Sci., Polym. Phys. Ed. 22, 423 (1956)] to describe the film formation. Our results show that the better chain and lamellae packing of polymer make hole transport, carrier balance, and power conversion efficiency of annealed and unannealed devices improve even with thick active-layers as compared to conventional devices. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Design of bolted side-plated reinforced-concrete beams with partial interaction

Existing reinforced-concrete (RC) beams can be effectively strengthened by anchoring steel plates to the side faces of the beams using bolts, which is known as the bolted side-plating (BSP) technique. Previous studies have found that the performance of BSP beams is primarily controlled by the degree of partial interaction at the steel-RC interface, which can be conveniently quantified by the strain and curvature factors. In this paper, a new simplified flexural design procedure for BSP beams taking into account partial interaction is presented. Some optimum ranges of strain and curvature factors are first introduced to the flexural design of BSP beams. By ensuring the flexural capacity of a BSP beam is higher than the design moment, the preliminary size of steel plates and the arrangement of bolts can be determined. Following this, the maximum design slips and minimum design strain and curvature factors are calculated and back-checked to ensure the target flexural capacity of the BSP beam has been achieved. An example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the optimised design method for BSP beams, considering the effect of partial interaction under realistic loading conditions.published_or_final_versio

Dam inactivation in : prevalence among diverse hyperinvasive lineages

Abstract Background DNA adenine methyltransferase (Dam) activity is absent in many, but not all, disease isolates of Neisseria meningitidis, as a consequence of the insertion of a restriction endonuclease-encoding gene, the 'dam replacing gene' (drg) at the dam locus. Here, we report the results of a survey to assess the prevalence of drg in a globally representative panel of disease-associated meningococci. Results Of the known meningococcal hyper-invasive lineages investigated, drg was absent in all representatives of the ST-8 and ST-11 clonal complexes tested, but uniformly present in the representatives of the other hyper-invasive lineages present in the isolate collection (the ST-1, ST-4, ST-5, ST-32 and ST-41/44 clonal complexes). The patterns of sequence diversity observed in drg were consistent with acquisition of this gene from a source organism with a different G+C content, at some time prior to the emergence of present-day meningococcal clonal complexes, followed by spread through the meningococcal population by horizontal genetic exchange. During this spread a number of alleles have arisen by mutation and intragenic recombination. Conclusion These findings are consistent with the idea that possession of the drg gene may contribute to the divergence observed among meningococcal clonal complexes, but does not have a direct mechanistic involvement in virulence.</p