Non standard parametrizations and adjoint invariants of classical groups

We obtain local parametrizations of classical non-compact Lie groups where adjoint invariants under maximal compact subgroups are manifest. Extension to non compact subgroups is straightforward. As a by-product parametrizations of the same type are obtained for compact groups. They are of physical interest in any theory gauge invariant under the adjoint action, typical examples being the two dimensional gauged Wess-Zumino-Witten-Novikov models where these coordinatizations become of extreme usefulness to get the background fields representing the vacuum expectation values of the massless modes of the associated (super) string theory.Comment: 11 pages, latex file, La Plata preprint Th-99/01. Minor changes in the introduction, version to appear in Physics Letters

Differences between sources of government expenditure in education and health, Tanzania

Reliable data on government expenditure in priority sectors, such as health and education, is a key ingredient into the analysis of public policy effectiveness. This brief note has two primary goals: (i) to document the increasing divergence over time between various official Tanzanian data sources on spending in these two sectors, and (ii) to outline possible explanations for this divergence and highlight its consequences for social expenditure analysis

A note on the non-commutative Chern-Simons model on manifolds with boundary

We study field theories defined in regions of the spatial non-commutative (NC) plane with a boundary present delimiting them, concentrating in particular on the U(1) NC Chern-Simons theory on the upper half plane. We find that classical consistency and gauge invariance lead necessary to the introduction of $K_0$-space of square integrable functions null together with all their derivatives at the origin. Furthermore the requirement of closure of $K_0$ under the *-product leads to the introduction of a novel notion of the *-product itself in regions where a boundary is present, that in turn yields the complexification of the gauge group and to consider chiral waves in one sense or other. The canonical quantization of the theory is sketched identifying the physical states and the physical operators. These last ones include ordinary NC Wilson lines starting and ending on the boundary that yield correlation functions depending on points on the one-dimensional boundary. We finally extend the definition of the *-product to a strip and comment on possible relevance of these results to finite Quantum Hall systems.Comment: 15 pages, references added, to appear in International Journal of Modern Physic

Fearless: Kevin Lugo

This summer, recent graduate Kevin Lugo will bike over 4,000 miles across the country to benefit the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. His choice to bike for seventy days from Baltimore to Seattle makes him fearless! His goal is to raise $7,476 for the organization, and he reached that goal last night (although more donations are always welcome in support of fighting cancer)! Kevin explains that when he studied abroad in Denmark in the fall of 2011, he “fell in love with sustainable transportation, especially cycling.” Not only does his fearless endeavor raise money to fight cancer, but he is also supporting healthy environmental practices. [excerpt

Multidimensional Poverty Measures from an Information Theory Perspective

This paper proposes to use an information theory approach to the design of multidimensional poverty indices. Traditional monetary approaches to poverty rely on the strong assumption that all relevant attributes of well-being are perfectly substitutable. Based on the idea of the essentiality of some attributes, scholars have recently suggested multidimensional poverty indices where the existence of a trade-off between attributes is relevant only for individuals who are below a poverty threshold in all of them (Bourguignon and Chakravarty 2003, Tsui 2002). The present paper proposes a method which encompasses both approaches and, moreover, it opens the door to an intermediate position which allows, to a certain extent, for substitution of attributes even in the case in which one or more (but not all) dimensions are above the set threshold. An application using individual well-being data from Indonesian households in 2000 is presented in order to compare the results under the different approaches.

Comparing Multidimensional Indices of Inequality: methods and application

The paper provides an examination into the measures of multidimensional inequality proposed in the past few years, their properties and majorization criteria. It offers a generalisation of Bourguignon index proposed so that it includes Tsui measures (1999) while preserving the virtues of Maasoumi’s method (1986) of explicitly acknowledging the role of parameters relevant of multivariate settings. An application to the Argentine data is provided to illustrate the decisions involved in the process of applying these measures and the usefulness of having appropriate criteria for the choice.Inequalities, Multidimensional Distributions, Well-being, Multivariate indices.