2001 Coastal Illicit Connection Identification and Elimination Grant Project

This final report describes a grant program funded by NHEP and administered by DES. A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between NHEP and DES created a grant program to provide assistance to coastal communities to identify and eliminate illicit discharges into the storm drain system. A total of $60,000 was available for grants to municipalities. DES issued a request for proposals (RFP), chose grant recipients, and managed the grant agreements. This report provides details on the projects completed by Exeter, Dover, and Somersworth. The deadline for completion of all grant projects was June 30, 200

2001 Storm Drain Monitoring and Municipal Training Project

This final report describes the training sessions held for municipal officials in the Seacoast on the topic of investigating and locating illicit discharges into the storm drainage system. A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between NHEP and DES established funding for this project. DES held two, half-day training sessions in January 2003, one in Dover and one in Epping. Each training session offered four presentations from DES staff. NHEP funding paid for the printing costs of an illicit discharge detection and elimination manual, handout materials, compact discs containing all of DES’s illicit discharge monitoring data in the coastal watershed, and food for the training sessions

2001 Coastal Municipal Stormwater Infrastructure Mapping Project

This final report describes a mapping project and grant program funded by NHEP and administered by DES. A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between NHEP and DES provided funding to map outfall pipes in the coastal area and created a grant program to provide assistance to coastal communities to develop storm sewer infrastructure maps. As part of the mapping project, DES collected global positioning system (GPS) readings of all outfall pipes in New Castle, Newington, Portsmouth, and parts of Durham and Madbury. For the grant project, DES issued a request for proposals (RFP), chose grant recipients, and managed the contracts. This report provides details on the grant projects completed by Exeter, Hampton, Newmarket, Seabrook, and Somersworth. The two grant projects that were terminated, Durham and Rochester, will not be discussed. The deadline for completion of all grant projects was June 30, 2003

Strong Raman-induced non-instantaneous soliton interactions in gas-filled photonic crystal fibers

We have developed an analytical model based on the perturbation theory in order to study the optical propagation of two successive intense solitons in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers filled with Raman-active gases. Based on the time delay between the two solitons, we have found that the trailing soliton dynamics can experience unusual nonlinear phenomena such as spectral and temporal soliton oscillations and transport towards the leading soliton. The overall dynamics can lead to a spatiotemporal modulation of the refractive index with a uniform temporal period and a uniform or chirped spatial period

The debt-growth nexus in poor countries: a reassessment

This paper investigates the relationship between external indebtedness and economic growth, with a particular attention to LICs, for which the theoretical arguments of debt overhang and liquidity constraint have to be reconsidered. The estimation of a growth model, with a panel of 121 developing countries, supports a negative and linear relationship between past values of the NPV of external public debt and current economic growth. This is due to the ?extended debt overhang?, according to which a large indebtedness leads to misallocation of capital and discourage long-term investment and structural reforms. This work underlines the critical role of economic policies and institutions, the necessity of focusing on LICs and fostering macroeconomic stability.External Debt,HIPC,Debt Relief,Economic Growth

Debt Relief Effectiveness and Institution Building

The history of debt relief is now particularly long, the associated costs are soaring and the outcomes are at least uncertain. This paper reviews and provides new evidence on the effects of recent debt relief programs on different macroeconomic indicators in developing countries, focusing on the Highly Indebted Poor Countries. Besides, the relationship between debt relief and institutional change is investigated to assess whether donors are moving towards and ex-post governance conditionality. Results show that debt relief is only weakly associated with subsequent improvements in economic performance but it is correlated with increasing domestic debt in HIPCs, undermining the positive achievements in reducing external debt service. Finally, there is evidence that donors are moving towards a more sensible allocation of debt forgiveness, rewarding countries with better policies and institutions.HIPC, Debt Relief, Institutions

On minimal Type IIB AdS6AdS_6 solutions with commuting 7-branes

We construct Type IIB supergravity solutions with geometry $AdS_6\times S^2$ warped over a disc with two boundary points where 5-branes emerge and punctures with 7-brane monodromy. They describe $(p,q)$ 5-brane junctions with two groups of like-charged external 5-branes that are unconstrained by the $s$-rule and an additional group of constrained 5-branes. The dual 5d SCFTs include various theories discussed previously in the literature. We match SCFT operators with scaling dimension of $\mathcal O(N)$ with their representation in supergravity to support the proposed dualities.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure

Total Public Debt and Growth in Developing Countries

The global crisis and the expansionary government reaction in many countries has revamped the at-tention of policy makers and academics on the growth effects of large public debts. Recent empiri-cal studies investigate the impact of public debt on growth in advanced and emerging countries. This paper aims at complementing the existing evidence focusing on developing countries, where the increase in domestic borrowing, already started before the crisis, requires a more comprehensive analysis, based not only on external debt, but on total public debt. Results on a panel of low- and middle-income countries over the period 1990-2007 show that public debt has a negative impact on output growth up to a threshold of 90 percent of GDP, beyond which its effect becomes irrelevant. This non-linear effect can be explained by country-specific factors since debt overhang is a growth constraint only in countries with sound macroeconomic policies and stable institutions.Domestic debt, Public debt, growth

A simplified algorithm for leaky network analyzer calibration

A new algorithm for network analyzer calibration is presented. The error model includes leakage effects and can be applied to a general n-port NWA. The 2-port 16-term model becomes a special case of this new technique which is also hopefully suitable for the calibration problems of multiport on-wafer probing systems. Experimental results testify the effectiveness of the new approach