The Response of Firms' Leverage to Uncertainty: Evidence from UK Public versus Non-Public Firms

This paper empirically investigates the effects of uncertainty on firms' leverage. The analysis is carried out for a large panel of public and non-public UK manufacturing rms over 1999-2008. The empirical results provide evidence that firms use less short-term debt as they go through periods of high uncertainty. The leverage of non-public firms is more sensitive to idiosyncratic uncertainty in comparison to their public counterparts, yet macroeconomic uncertainty a ects both types of firms similarly. We finally end our investigation showing that the total impact of either type of uncertainty on firms' leverage is related to the amount of the cash buffer each firm carries

Do Health Workers' Preferences Influence their Practices? Assessment of Providers' Attitude and Personal use of new Treatment Recommendations for Management of Uncomplicated Malaria, Tanzania.

\ud \ud Due to growing antimalarial drug resistance, Tanzania changed malaria treatment policies twice within a decade. First in 2001 chloroquine (CQ) was replaced by sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) for management of uncomplicated malaria and by late 2006, SP was replaced by artemether-lumefantrine (AL). We assessed health workers' attitudes and personal practices following the first treatment policy change, at six months post-change and two years later. Two cross-sectional surveys were conducted in 2002 and 2004 among healthcare workers in three districts in South-East Tanzania using semi-structured questionnaires. Attitudes were assessed by enquiring which antimalarial was considered most suitable for the management of uncomplicated malaria for the three patient categories: i) children below 5; ii) older children and adults; and iii) pregnant women. Practice was ascertained by asking which antimalarial was used in the last malaria episode by the health worker him/herself and/or dependants. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with reported attitudes and practices towards the new treatment recommendations. A total of 400 health workers were interviewed; 254 and 146 in the first and second surveys, respectively. SP was less preferred antimalarial in hospitals and private health facilities (p<0.01) in the first round, and the preference worsened in the second round. In the first round, clinicians did not prefer SP for children below age of 5 and pregnant women (p<0.01), but two years later, they did not prefer it for all patient scenarios. SP was the most commonly used antimalarial for management of the last malaria episode for health workers and their dependants in both rounds, in the public sector (p<0.01). Health workers in the dispensaries had the highest odds of using SP for their own treatment [adjusted OR- first round: 6.7 (95%CI: 1.9-23.4); crude OR- second round: 4.5 (1.5-13.3)]. Following changes in malaria treatment recommendations, most health workers did not prefer the new antimalarial drug, and their preferences worsened over time. However, many of them still used the newly recommended drug for management of their own or family members' malaria episode. This indicates that, other factors than providers' attitude may have more influence in their personal treatment practices

Role of non-timber forest products in sustaining forest-based livelihoods and rural households' resilience capacity in and around protected area- a Bangladesh study

People in developing world derive a significant part of their livelihoods from various forest products, particularly non-timber forest products. This article attempts to explore the contribution of NTFPs in sustaining forest-based rural livelihood in and around a protected area of Bangladesh, and their potential role in enhancing households resilience capacity. Based on empirical investigation our study revealed that, local communities gather a substantial amount of NTFPs from national park despite the official restrictions. 27 percent households of the area received at least some cash benefit from the collection, processing and selling of NTFPs, and NTFPs contribute as HHs primary, supplementary and emergency sources of income. NTFPs also constituted an estimated 19 percent of HHs net annual income, and were the primary occupation for about 18 percent of the HHs. HHs dependency on nearby forests for various NTFPs varied vis-a-vis their socio-economic condition as well as with their location from the park. Based on our case study the article also offers some clues for improving the situation in PA.Comment: To appear in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 201

Analytical and finite-element study of optimal strain distribution in various beam shapes for energy harvesting applications

Due to the increasing demand for harvesting energy from environmental vibration, for use in self-powered electronic applications, cantilever-based vibration energy harvesting has attracted great interest from various parties and become one of the most common approaches to convert redundant mechanical energy into electrical energy. As the output voltage produces from a piezoelectric material depends greatly on the geometric shape and the size of the beam, there is a need to model and compare the performance of cantilever beams of differing geometries. This paper presents the study of strain distribution in various shapes of cantilever beams, including a convex and concave edge profile elliptical beams that have been overseen in most of the prior literature. Both analytical and finite element models are derived and the resultant strain distributions in the beam are computed based on MATLAB solver and ANSYS finite element analysis tools. An optimum geometry for a vibration-based energy harvester system is verified. Lastly, experimental results comparing the power density for a triangular and rectangular piezoelectric beams are also presented to validate the finding of the study and the claim as suggested in the literature is verified

Testing collapse models with levitated nanoparticles: the detection challenge

We consider a nanoparticle levitated in a Paul trap in ultrahigh cryogenic vacuum, and look for the conditions which allow for a stringent noninterferometric test of spontaneous collapse models. In particular we compare different possible techniques to detect the particle motion. Key conditions which need to be achieved are extremely low residual pressure and the ability to detect the particle at ultralow power. We compare three different detection approaches based respectively on a optical cavity, optical tweezer and a electrical readout, and for each one we assess advantages, drawbacks and technical challenges