Aid and AIDS: a delicate cocktail

Development assistance targeting health overwhelmingly concentrates on HIV/AIDS. This column argues that that focus neglects critical demographic issues and degrades health infrastructure, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The prime rule for AIDS aid should be “First, do no harm”.

The employer's perspective on retirement

In this chapter we discuss the literature with respect to the role of employers in retirement processes of older workers and provide suggestions for future research. In the first part of this chapter we will review existing theoretical insights regarding the employers’ actions and attitudes toward older workers and retirement. In the next section we will discuss empirical findings with regard to age related stereotypes in the workplace and age norms with respect to retirement and present some results form an international comparative employer study. We conclude with a section on the management of retirement processes, focussing on the exit and hiring of older workers.

Reproductive Health Aid: A Delicate Balancing Act

In this contribution the authors show that development assistance targeting reproductive health overwhelmingly concentrates on HIV/AIDS at the expense of family planning elements. Data on financial contributions disbursed by governments and private foundations are used as collected by the Resource Flows project as initiated by UNFPA/NIDI. The current allocation of aid does not accord well with the plans made in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994. Part of the explanation is that future health needs are difficult to predict, but it also shows how strong the influence of one donor, i.e. the United States, is in this setup. The landscape of population assistance is a highly volatile one, brought about not only by political issues like the Global Gag Rule, but also issues of collective action design as assistance under the heading of the Millennium Development Goals crowds out family planning. A complicating factor is that development assistance for reproductive health is at some points ill-adjusted towards the needs of developing countries.health;development aid;AIDS;fertility

What Drives Donor Funding in Population Assistance Programs?

The 1994 International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) established goals for the expansion of population assistance. This global effort has so far not sufficiently been supported by donor funds. Dynamic panel estimation methods are used to see what lies behind the sharing of burdens and level of donor contributions. Panel data on expenditures for population and AIDS activities have been collected for 21 donor countries for the years 1996-2002. Donor countries are willing to contribute to the ICPD agenda, but those contributions depend heavily on national interests and preferences and to a lesser extent on the development state of less developed countries. Political opportunism in the timing of funds is not strong. With respect to the sharing of the ICPD burden within the group of OECD/DAC countries one can say that on an aggregated scale the burden of population assistance programs is in line with the ability to pay of donor countries. Differences in funding are more connected to other factors such as the size of governments, the state of development of a country and the dominant religions in donor countries

Separable form of low-momentum realistic NN interaction

The low-momentum interaction $V_{\text{low-k}}$ derived from realistic models of the nucleon-nucleon interaction is presented in a separable form. This separable force is supported by a contact interaction in order to achieve the saturation properties of symmetric nuclear matter. Bulk properties of nuclear matter and finite nuclei are investigated for the separable form of $V_{\text{low-k}}$ and two different parameterizations of the contact term. The accuracy of the separable force in Hartree-Fock calculations with respect to the original interaction $V_{\text{low-k}}$ is discussed. For a cutoff parameter $\Lambda$ of 2 fm$^{-1}$ a representation by a rank 2 separable force yields a sufficient accuracy, while higher ranks are required for larger cut-off parameters. The resulting separable force is parameterized in a simple way to allow for an easy application in other nuclear structure calculations.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Neutron-proton mass difference in isospin asymmetric nuclear matter

Isospin-breaking effects in the baryonic sector are studied in the framework of a medium-modified Skyrme model. The neutron-proton mass difference in infinite, asymmetric nuclear matter is discussed. In order to describe the influence of the nuclear environment on the skyrmions, we include energy-dependent charged and neutral pion optical potentials in the s- and p-wave channels. The present approach predicts that the neutron-proton mass difference is mainly dictated by its strong part and that it strongly decreases in neutron matter.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; some new references adde

Comparison of Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck model with 4 π Heavy Ion Data

Streamer chamber data for collisions of Ar + KCl and Ar + BaI2 at 1.2 GeV/nucleon are compared with microscopic model predictions based on the Vlasov-Uehling-Uhlenbeck equation, for various density-dependent nuclear equations of state. Multiplicity distributions and inclusive rapidity and transverse momentum spectra are in good agreement. Rapidity spectra show evidence of being useful in determining whether the model uses the correct cross sections for binary collisions in the nuclear medium, and whether momentum-dependent interactions are correctly incorporated. Sideward flow results do not favor the same nuclear stiffness parameter at all multiplicities

Aspects of particle production in isospin asymmetric matter

The production/absorption rate of particles in compressed and heated asymmetric matter is studied using a Relativistic Mean Field (RMF) transport model with an isospin dependent collision term. Just from energy conservation in the elementary production/absorption processes we expect to see a strong dependence of the yields on the basic Lorentz structure of the isovector effective interaction, due to isospin effects on the scalar and vector self-energies of the hadrons. This will be particularly evident for the ratio of the rates of particles produced with different charges: results are shown for \pi(+)/\pi(-), K(+)/K(0) yields. In order to simplify the analysis we perform RMF cascade simulations in a box with periodic boundary conditions. In this way we can better pin down all such fine relativistic effects in particle production, that could likely show up even in realistic heavy ion collisions. In particular, K(+,0) production is expected to be directly related to the high density behaviour of the symmetry energy, since kaons are produced very early during the high density stage of the collision and their mean free path is rather large. We show that the K(+)/K(0) ratio reflects important isospin contributions on the production rates just because of the large sensitivity around the threshold. The results are very promising for the possibility of a direct link between particle production data in exotic Heavy Ion Collisions and the isospin dependent part of the Equation of State at high baryon densities.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures; Nucl.Phys. A, accepte