Political agency and public healthcare

The development of institutions of self-governance in India, and specifically the 2005 reform—the National Rural Health Mission that introduced village health and sanitation committees—provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of the strengthening of the political agency on collective healthcare decision-making in rural areas. We use data from the District Level Household Survey and take advantage of the heterogeneity of maternal and child healthcare use, before and after the introduction of village health and sanitation committees. Specifically, we examine the effect of village health and sanitation committees on use of both public and preventive healthcare among children. Our results suggest that local democracy has increased access to preventive child healthcare services. Part of the effect is driven by an increase in the utilization of the public healthcare network. We find some evidence of an effect of village residence heads of a Panchayat on preventive healthcare use

Concentration indices of income related self-reported health: a meta-regression analysis

Proliferating evidence reporting on standardised cross-country concentration indexes of income related self-reported health is increasingly being used for policy evaluation. Nonetheless, limited efforts have been put forward to examine the extent to which such evidence is subject to any specific methodological and publication biases, given that studies rely upon survey data form different samples and both heterogeneous health system institutions and empirical strategies. We conduct the first study drawing upon appropriate statistical methods to examine the presence of publication bias in the health economics literature measuring health inequalities of self-reported health. We test for other biases including the effect of precision estimates based on meta-regression analysis (MRA). We account for a set of biases in estimates of income-related health inequalities that rely on concentration index-related methods and self-reported health measures. Our findings suggest evidence of publication bias that primarily depends on the cardinalisation of self-reported health and some evidence of study-specific precision

Anorexia, Body Image and Peer Effects: Evidence from a Sample of European Women

Excessive preoccupation with self-image (or identity) is regarded as a factor contributing to the proliferation of food disorders, especially among young women. This paper models how self-image and peer effects influence health-related behaviours, specifically food disorders. We empirically test this claim using data from the European survey. Our findings suggest that the larger the peers‟ body-mass, the lower the likelihood of being anorexic. Self-image is correlated with body weight. We use several definitions of peers‟ body mass and we find that all are negatively associated with the likelihood of women being thin or extremely thin

New topologies in pentanuclear nickel/oximato clusters: structural and magnetic characterization

In the present work, five new Ni5 clusters employing the versatile 2-pyridylcyanoxime ligand have been synthesized and chemically, structurally, and magnetically characterized. The crystallographic examination of these Ni5 clusters together with those already published in the literature, giving a total number of 14 complexes, exhibiting up to 8 different topologies for which the relationship between topology, reaction conditions and magnetic response has been analyzed. DC magnetic measurements were carried in the 300-2 K range for the new complexes and the analysis of the experimental data revealed an antiferromagnetic response for the oximato mediated interactions with a variety of ground states (S = 0, 1, 3) as function of the cluster topology

A new scenario for string unification

We present a new scenario for gauge coupling unification in flipped SU(5) string models, which identifies the $M_{32}$ scale of SU(3) and SU(2) unification with the empirical $M_{\rm LEP}\sim10^{15-16}$~GeV scale, and the $M_{51}$ scale of SU(5) and U(1) unification with the theoretical $M_{\rm string}\sim5\times10^{17}$~GeV string unification scale. The vacuum shift necessary for the cancellation of the anomalous $\rm U_A(1)$ and an SU(4) hidden sector with fractionally-charged particles, play a crucial role in the dynamical determination of all intermediate mass scales in this scenario.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures (uuencoded

Paying for Care Costs in Later Life Using the Value in People’s Homes

With the number of U.K. citizens aged 75+ doubling to 10 million by 2040, and with 1.3 million people already receiving social care services in England alone, social care funding is a key public policy challenge. The government has launched a set of reforms designed to get social care funding onto a sustainable footing by establishing a new level for what individuals and the state will pay. The reforms are designed to encourage individuals to explore how best to use their available wealth and assets to meet care costs through a mixed system of local authority and private sector care-funding options. One option is to use the value in the home to bridge the cost between out-of-pocket costs and care home fees. In this article, we consider two new financial arrangements designed to meet the needs of people in different financial circumstances based on releasing equity from the home. These are an equity-backed insurance product and an “equity bank” that lets a person draw down an income from their hom

Constraints on the ionizing flux emitted by T Tauri stars

We present the results of an analysis of ultraviolet observations of T Tauri Stars (TTS). By analysing emission measures taken from the literature we derive rates of ionizing photons from the chromospheres of 5 classical TTS in the range ~10^41-10^44 photons/s, although these values are subject to large uncertainties. We propose that the HeII/CIV line ratio can be used as a reddening-independent indicator of the hardness of the ultraviolet spectrum emitted by TTS. By studying this line ratio in a much larger sample of objects we find evidence for an ionizing flux which does not decrease, and may even increase, as TTS evolve. This implies that a significant fraction of the ionizing flux from TTS is not powered by the accretion of disc material onto the central object, and we discuss the significance of this result and its implications for models of disc evolution. The presence of a significant ionizing flux in the later stages of circumstellar disc evolution provides an important new constraint on disc photoevaporation models.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA