Heterogeneity, Intrafamily Distribution and Child Health

Health Economics and Policy,

Specific Experience, Household Structure and Intergenerational Transfers: Farm Family Land and Labor Arrangements in Developing Countries

Land Economics/Use,

Credit Market Constraints, Consumption Smoothing and the Accumulation of Durable Production Assets in Low-Income Countries: Investments in Bullocks in India

Financial Economics,

Migration Selectivity and the Effects of Public Programs

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Externalities, Heterogeneity and the Optimal Distribution of Public Programs: Child Health and Family Planning Interventions

Health Economics and Policy, Public Economics,

Hybrid modeling of relativistic underdense plasma photocathode injectors

The dynamics of laser ionization-based electron injection in the recently introduced plasma photocathode concept is analyzed analytically and with particle-in-cell simulations. The influence of the initial few-cycle laser pulse that liberates electrons through background gas ionization in a plasma wakefield accelerator on the final electron phase space is described through the use of Ammosov-Deloine-Krainov theory as well as nonadiabatic Yudin-Ivanov (YI) ionization theory and subsequent downstream dynamics in the combined laser and plasma wave fields. The photoelectrons are tracked by solving their relativistic equations of motion. They experience the analytically described transient laser field and the simulation-derived plasma wakefields. It is shown that the minimum normalized emittance of fs-scale electron bunches released in mulit-GV/m-scale plasma wakefields is of the order of 10-2 mm mrad. Such unprecedented values, combined with the dramatically increased controllability of electron bunch production, pave the way for highly compact yet ultrahigh quality plasma-based electron accelerators and light source applications

Stability of Cross-Feeding Polymorphisms in Microbial Communities

This is the final version of the article. Available from Public Library of Science via the DOI in this record.Cross-feeding, a relationship wherein one organism consumes metabolites excreted by another, is a ubiquitous feature of natural and clinically-relevant microbial communities and could be a key factor promoting diversity in extreme and/or nutrient-poor environments. However, it remains unclear how readily cross-feeding interactions form, and therefore our ability to predict their emergence is limited. In this paper we developed a mathematical model parameterized using data from the biochemistry and ecology of an E. coli cross-feeding laboratory system. The model accurately captures short-term dynamics of the two competitors that have been observed empirically and we use it to systematically explore the stability of cross-feeding interactions for a range of environmental conditions. We find that our simple system can display complex dynamics including multi-stable behavior separated by a critical point. Therefore whether cross-feeding interactions form depends on the complex interplay between density and frequency of the competitors as well as on the concentration of resources in the environment. Moreover, we find that subtly different environmental conditions can lead to dramatically different results regarding the establishment of cross-feeding, which could explain the apparently unpredictable between-population differences in experimental outcomes. We argue that mathematical models are essential tools for disentangling the complexities of cross-feeding interactions.IG was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Advanced Fellowship NE/E013007/3 and a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant MathModExp 647292, MK was funded by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) NPP Fellowship and NASA NNX12AD87G, IG and PR were funded by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant BB/J010340/1, KS was supported by National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) 2R01HG003328 - 07A1 and FR was supported by NASA NNX12AD87G. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript