Logarithm laws and shrinking target properties

We survey some of the recent developments in the study of logarithm laws and shrinking target properties for various families of dynamical systems. We discuss connections to geometry, diophantine approximation, and probability theory.Comment: This is a survey paper written following the Conference on Measures and Dyanmics on groups and homogeneous spaces, at TIFR, Mumbai, in Dec. 2007. It is in honor of Prof. S.G. Dani's 60th Birthda

Global Governance and Human Development: Promoting Democratic Accountability and Institutional Experimentation

This paper seeks to critically examine recent debates on global governance, albeit from a human development perspective. In doing so it identifies and describes two important principles for building institutions for the advancing of human development: what may be termed the imperative of democratic accountability (most closely associated with the work of Amartya Sen) and the imperative of institutional experimentation (which has been theorized most extensively by Roberto Unger). The paper discusses these two principles in light of some of the major challenges that can and do affect the international community as a whole. It reviews some of the decentralized forms of governance which are evolving as developing countries assert themselves in debates on institutional organization. It then focuses more extensively on the global financial crisis as a case study in the inadequacies of current global governance. Finally, it uses the two imperatives mentioned to review the lessons that the crisis has provided, before describing specific proposals to redesign systems of global economic governance. Chief among these are the reforms advocated by the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.Human Development, Economic Development, Inequality, Human Rights, Capabilities, Health, Governance

Molecular gas associated with the IRAS-Vela shell

We present a survey of molecular gas in the J = 1 -> 0 transition of 12CO towards the IRAS Vela shell. The shell, previously identified from IRAS maps, is a ring-like structure seen in the region of the Gum Nebula. We confirm the presence of molecular gas associated with some of the infrared point sources seen along the Shell. We have studied the morphology and kinematics of the gas and conclude that the shell is expanding at the rate of ~ 13 km/s from a common center. We go on to include in this study the Southern Dark Clouds seen in the region. The distribution and motion of these objects firmly identify them as being part of the shell of molecular gas. Estimates of the mass of gas involved in this expansion reveal that the shell is a massive object comparable to a GMC. From the expansion and various other signatures like the presence of bright-rimmed clouds with head-tail morphology, clumpy distribution of the gas etc., we conjecture that the molecular gas we have detected is the remnant of a GMC in the process of being disrupted and swept outwards through the influence of a central OB association, itself born of the parent cloud.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. Figure 1 is a separate jpeg file. To appear in Journal of Astrophysics and Astronom