Geo-additive models of Childhood Undernutrition in three Sub-Saharan African Countries

We investigate the geographical and socioeconomic determinants of childhood undernutrition in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, three neighboring countries in Southern Africa using the 1992 Demographic and Health Surveys. We estimate models of undernutrition jointly for the three countries to explore regional patterns of undernutrition that transcend boundaries, while allowing for country-specific interactions. We use semiparametric models to flexibly model the effects of selected so-cioeconomic covariates and spatial effects. Our spatial analysis is based on a flexible geo-additive model using the district as the geographic unit of anal-ysis, which allows to separate smooth structured spatial effects from random effect. Inference is fully Bayesian and uses recent Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques. While the socioeconomic determinants generally confirm what is known in the literature, we find distinct residual spatial patterns that are not explained by the socioeconomic determinants. In particular, there appears to be a belt run-ning from Southern Tanzania to Northeastern Zambia which exhibits much worse undernutrition, even after controlling for socioeconomic effects. These effects do transcend borders between the countries, but to a varying degree. These findings have important implications for targeting policy as well as the search for left-out variables that might account for these residual spatial patterns

Vertical Field-Effect Transistor Based on Wavefunction Extension

We demonstrate a mechanism for a dual layer, vertical field-effect transistor, in which nearly-depleting one layer will extend its wavefunction to overlap the other layer and increase tunnel current. We characterize this effect in a specially designed GaAs/AlGaAs device, observing a tunnel current increase of two orders of magnitude at cryogenic temperatures, and we suggest extrapolations of the design to other material systems such as graphene

Capital structure and its determinants in the United Kingdom – a decompositional analysis

Prior research on capital structure by Rajan and Zingales (1995) suggests that the level of gearing in UK companies is positively related to size and tangibility, and negatively correlated with profitability and the level of growth opportunities. However, as argued by Harris and Raviv (1991), 'The interpretation of results must be tempered by an awareness of the difficulties involved in measuring both leverage and the explanatory variables of interest'. In this study the focus is on the difficulties of measuring gearing, and the sensitivity of Rajan and Zingales' results to variations in gearing measures are tested. Based on an analysis of the capital structure of 822 UK companies, Rajan and Zingales' results are found to be highly definitional-dependent. The determinants of gearing appear to vary significantly, depending upon which component of debt is being analysed. In particular, significant differences are found in the determinants of long- and short-term forms of debt. Given that trade credit and equivalent, on average, accounts for more than 62% of total debt, the results are particularly sensitive to whether such debt is included in the gearing measure. It is argued, therefore, that analysis of capital structure is incomplete without a detailed examination of all forms of corporate debt

Sovereign debt restructuring : the judge, the vultures and creditor rights

What role did the US courts play in the Argentine debt swap of 2005? What implications does this have for the future of creditor rights in sovereign bond markets? The judge in the Argentine case has, it appears, deftly exploited creditor heterogeneity – between holdouts seeking capital gains and institutional investors wanting a settlement – to promote a swap with a supermajority of creditors. Our analysis of Argentine debt litigation reveals a ‘judge-mediated’ sovereign debt restructuring, which resolves the key issues of Transition and Aggregation - two of the tasks envisaged for the IMF’s still-born Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism. For the future, we discuss how judge-mediated sovereign debt restructuring (together with creditor committees) could complement the alternative promoted by the US Treasury, namely collective action clauses in sovereign bond contracts

Did Ebola emerge in West Africa by a policy-driven phase change in agroecology? Ebola's social context

SCOPUS: no.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Stability analysis of static solutions in a Josephson junction

We present all the possible solutions of a Josephson junction with bias current and magnetic field with both inline and overlap geometry, and examine their stability. We follow the bifurcation of new solutions as we increase the junction length. The analytical results, in terms of elliptic functions in the case of inline geometry, are in agreement with the numerical calculations and explain the strong hysteretic phenomena typically seen in the calculation of the maximum tunneling current. This suggests a different experimental approach based on the use, instead of the external magnetic field the modulus of the elliptic function or the related quantity the total magnetic flux to avoid hysteretic behavior and unfold the overlapping $I_{max}(H)$ curves.Comment: 36 pages with 17 figure

A Toy Model for Testing Finite Element Methods to Simulate Extreme-Mass-Ratio Binary Systems

Extreme mass ratio binary systems, binaries involving stellar mass objects orbiting massive black holes, are considered to be a primary source of gravitational radiation to be detected by the space-based interferometer LISA. The numerical modelling of these binary systems is extremely challenging because the scales involved expand over several orders of magnitude. One needs to handle large wavelength scales comparable to the size of the massive black hole and, at the same time, to resolve the scales in the vicinity of the small companion where radiation reaction effects play a crucial role. Adaptive finite element methods, in which quantitative control of errors is achieved automatically by finite element mesh adaptivity based on posteriori error estimation, are a natural choice that has great potential for achieving the high level of adaptivity required in these simulations. To demonstrate this, we present the results of simulations of a toy model, consisting of a point-like source orbiting a black hole under the action of a scalar gravitational field.Comment: 29 pages, 37 figures. RevTeX 4.0. Minor changes to match the published versio

Human resources for health at the district level in Indonesia: the smoke and mirrors of decentralization

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In 2001 Indonesia embarked on a rapid decentralization of government finances and functions to district governments. One of the results is that government has less information about its most valuable resource, the people who provide the services. The objective of the work reported here is to determine the stock of human resources for health in 15 districts, their service status and primary place of work. It also assesses the effect of decentralization on management of human resources and the implications for the future.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We enumerated all health care providers (doctors, nurses and midwives), including information on their employment status and primary place of work, in each of 15 districts in Java. Data were collected by three teams, one for each province.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Provider density (number of doctors, nurses and midwives/1000 population) was low by international standards – 11 out of 15 districts had provider densities less than 1.0. Approximately half of all three professional groups were permanent public servants. Contractual employment was also important for both nurses and midwives. The private sector as the primary source of employment is most important for doctors (37% overall) and increasingly so for midwives (10%). For those employed in the public sector, two-thirds of doctors and nurses work in health centres, while most midwives are located at village-level health facilities.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In the health system established after Independence, the facilities established were staffed through a period of obligatory service for all new graduates in medicine, nursing and midwifery. The last elements of that staffing system ended in 2007 and the government has not been able to replace it. The private sector is expanding and, despite the fact that it will be of increasing importance in the coming decades, government information about providers in private practice is decreasing. Despite the promise of decentralization to increase sectoral "decision space" at the district level, the central government now has control over essentially all public sector health staff at the district level, marking a return to the situation of 20 years ago. At the same time, Indonesia has changed dramatically. The challenge now is to envision a new health system that takes account of these changes. Envisioning the new system is a crucial first step for development of a human resources policy which, in turn, will require more information about health care providers, public and private, and increased capacity for human resource planning.</p

Gender gaps in the path to adulthood for young females and males in six African countries from the 1990s to the 2010s

In this paper, we study on a comparative basis the school-to-work transition of young women and young men in six countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and we examine how this has evolved over recent years, based on the data collected by Demographic and Health Surveys. We examine educational attainments and the nature of early jobs young people are able to obtain, as well as considering their relationship to marriage and fertility outcomes, factors which are likely to be particularly relevant for young women. A pooled regression analysis shows that educational levels have increased substantially and gender gaps have narrowed in most countries. Access to better jobs has improved much more slowly with unchanging gender gaps in most countries, so that agriculture is still the dominant sector of employment for most young men and women. We model correlates of key educational outcomes and access to different types of jobs those controlling for individual- and household-level characteristics, including marital status, presence of children and wealth. Attaining a high level of education is unsurprisingly critical for access to the best jobs and is also associated with young women delaying marriage and childbearing

Distributional impact of taxes and social transfers in Russia over the downturn

Low oil prices and the recession in Russia which started in 2014 are increasing pressures for fiscal consolidation, after more than a decade of prosperity. This paper assesses the distributional impact of the main tax and social spending programs in Russia in 2014 by applying a state-of-the-art incidence analysis. Overall, the Russian welfare state achieves a moderate reduction in inequality through tax-benefit policies by international standards. Most redistribution occurs through pensions. Major limits on the redistributive effect of tax-benefit policy include the large share of tax revenues that come from (regressive) indirect taxes, the neutral impact of personal income taxes and the low share of spending that goes on social assistance targeted to low-income groups. Tax-benefit policy also has an important impact on the age distribution of income, as households of working-age people (with and without children) subsidize pensioner households