Curbing Corruption, Financial Development and Income Inequality

In recent years, many of the Commonwealth countries have experienced a reduction in income inequalities due to the development of financial markets and intermediaries. At the same time, widespread corruption among public officials, civil servants, or politicians from these countries have been well documented. A key public policy question is whether the return to financial sector development at the level of massive corruption, exacerbate income inequality, offsetting the benefits of financial development. Using a panel data of 30 Commonwealth countries over the period of 1995–2008, it is found that the high rates of corruption in the Commonwealth countries are crowding out the return to financial development. The return to financial development on income inequality, at the level of higher corruption, are positive for all countries and significantly larger for the low- and middle-income countries compared to high-income countries, which suggest that the complementary nature of policies that simultaneously reduce corruption and promote financial development have a greater impact in reducing income inequality than implementing these policies separately

Charged anisotropic strange stars in Finslerian geometry

We investigate a simplified model for the strange stars in the framework of Finslerian spacetime geometry, composed of charged fluid. It is considered that the fluid consisting of three flavor quarks including a small amount of non-interacting electrons to maintain the chemical equilibrium and assumed that the fluid is compressible by nature. To obtain the simplified form of charged strange star we considered constant flag curvature. Based on geometry, we have developed the field equations within the localized charge distribution. We considered that the strange quarks distributed within the stellar system are compiled with the MIT bag model type of equation of state (EOS) and the charge distribution within the system follows a power law. We represent the exterior spacetime by the Finslerian Ressiner-Nordstr{\"o}m space-time. The maximum anisotropic stress is obtained at the surface of the system. Whether the system is in equilibrium or not, has been examined with respect to the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equation, Herrera cracking concept, different energy conditions and adiabatic index. We obtain that the total charge is of the order of 10$^{20}$ C and the corresponding electric field is of around 10$^{22}$ V/m. The central density and central pressure vary inversely with the charge. Varying the free parameter (charge constant) of the model, we find the generalized mass-radius variation of strange stars and determine the maximum limited mass with the corresponding radius. Furthermore, we also considered the variation of mass and radius against central density respectively.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, 4 table

STUDY OF CONDENSATION OF REFRIGERANTS IN MICRO-CHANNELS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF FUTURE COMPACT MICRO-CHANNEL CONDENSERS

Mini- and micro- channel technology has gained considerable ground in the recent years in industry and is favored due to its several advantages stemming from its high surface to volume ratio and high values of proof pressure it can withstand. Micro-channel technology has paved the way to development of highly compact heat exchangers with low cost and mass penalties. In the present work, the issues related to the sizing of compact micro-channel condensers have been explored. The considered designs encompass both the conventional and MEMS fabrication techniques. In case of MEMS-fabricated micro-channel condenser, wet etching of the micro-channel structures, followed by bonding of two such wafers with silicon nitride layers at the interface was attempted. It was concluded that the silicon nitride bonding requires great care in terms of high degree of surface flatness and absence of roughness and also high degree of surface purity and thus cannot be recommended for mass fabrication. Following this investigation, a carefully prepared experimental setup and test micro-channel with hydraulic diameter 700 microns and aspect ratio 7:1 was fabricated and overall heat transfer and pressure drop aspects of two condensing refrigerants, R134a and R245fa were studied at a variety of test conditions. To the best of author's knowledge, so far no data has been reported in the literature on condensation in such high aspect ratio micro-channels. Most of the published experimental works on condensation of refrigerants are concerning conventional hydraulic diameter channels (> 3mm) and only recently some experimental data has been reported in the sub-millimeter scale channels for which the surface tension and viscosity effects play a dominant role and the effect of gravity is diminished. It is found that both experimental data and empirically-derived correlations tend to under-predict the present data by an average of 25%. The reason for this deviation could be because a high aspect ratio channel tends to collect the condensate in the corners of its cross-section leaving only a thin liquid film on the flat side surfaces for better heat transfer than in circular or low aspect ratio channels

Anisotropic strange stars in Tolman-Kuchowicz spacetime

We attempt to study a singularity-free model for the spherically symmetric anisotropic strange stars under Einstein's general theory of relativity by exploiting the Tolman-Kuchowicz metric. Further, we have assumed that the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ is a scalar variable dependent on the spatial coordinate $r$. To describe the strange star candidates we have considered that they are made of strange quark matter (SQM) distribution, which is assumed to be governed by the MIT bag equation of state. To obtain unknown constants of the stellar system we match the interior Tolman-Kuchowicz metric to the exterior modified Schwarzschild metric with the cosmological constant, at the surface of the system. Following Deb et al. we have predicted the exact values of the radii for different strange star candidates based on the observed values of the masses of the stellar objects and the chosen parametric values of the $\Lambda$ as well as the bag constant $\mathcal{B}$. The set of solutions satisfies all the physical requirements to represent strange stars. Interestingly, our study reveals that as the values of the $\Lambda$ and $\mathcal{B}$ increase the anisotropic system becomes gradually smaller in size turning the whole system into a more compact ultra-dense stellar object.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure