Essays in Health and Public Economics

In this dissertation, I present three distinct essays in health and public economics. In chapter 2, using Vital Statistics data from National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and a Difference in Difference methodology, I investigate the impact of the Paid Family Leave (PFL) of California on birth delay, infant health, and labor market outcomes of mothers after first childbirth. I find that PFL of California reduces birth delay by encouraging women to have their first child earlier. Results are more pronounced for older women who are over the age of 35. This policy also improves infant health by reducing incidence of low birth weight (\u3c2500 grams), premature (\u3c37 weeks of gestation), and cesarean-born infants of older mothers. Furthermore, results show that PFL policy improves labor market attachment by increasing the likelihood of employment after childbirth for college educated women who are more likely to exit the labor force after childbirth. Chapter 3, investigates the impact of the biggest oil spill in the U.S. history in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 on air quality and health outcomes of newborns. Using Vital Statistics data from National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), air quality data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a Difference in Difference methodology, I find that oil spill of 2010 reduces air quality and increases the incidence of low birth weight and premature newborns. Heterogeneity effects show higher adverse health impacts for black mothers, less educated mothers, unmarried, and mothers less than 20 years old. Chapter 4 examines whether the party affiliation of governors (Democrat or Republican) has an impact on the allocation of state expenditures. Exploiting gubernatorial election results from 1960 to 2012 and a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), we find that Democratic governors allocate a larger share of their budget to health/hospitals and education sectors. We find no significant impact of the political party of governors on total spending, only on the allocation of funds. The results are robust to a wide range of controls and model specifications

Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Diversity of <i>Escherichia coli</i>

Escherichia coli (E. coli) strains are normal flora of human gastrointestinal tract. The evolution encoded by horizontally-transferred genetic (HGT) elements has been perceived in several species. E. coli strains have acquired virulence potential factors by attainment of particular loci through HGT, transposons or phages. The heterogeneous nature of these strains is because of HGT through mobile genetic elements. These genetic exchanges that occur in bacteria provide the genetic diversity

Biological study on Gorganrood River

Biological study on Gorganrood River was performed from November 1990 until October 1991. Fourteen sampling Stations along the 200km distance from Chai Qushan to estuary. Fish distribution was not similar in all parts and was more dense in lower parts. Density Of common carp, roach and white fish were more considerable particularly in spawning season. Density of benthic organism was very low and blood worms (Chironomidae) and shells of dead mollusca were obtained. Frequency of phytoplankton maximum in September and minimum in January. Bacilliarophyceae, Chlorophyceae and Mynophyceae had more biomass during studying period. Zooplankton had maximum biomass in September and minimum in February and March. Among zooplankton, Protozoa and Rotatoria had maximum biomass

Designing and Teaching Multidisciplinary Project-Based Courses to Satisfy the ABET 2000 Engineering Criteria

One important educational outcome required of any engineering programme, as per ABET 2000 Criteria 3, is the ability of engineering graduates to function in multidisciplinary teams. In order to address this requirement, the curriculum committees of the engineering programmes at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), Fort Wayne, USA, have designed several multidisciplinary project-based courses. These courses involve computer, electrical and mechanical engineering students. Five multidisciplinary project-based courses, which are distributed over the freshman, sophomore and senior years, have been developed and implemented. In these courses, real world multidisciplinary design experiences are used to prepare IPFW graduates to enter today’s workforce. In this article, the authors present a brief description of these courses along with the authors’ experiences in the development and teaching of the five multidisciplinary project-based courses

The response of the competitive balance model to the external field

The competitive balance model was proposed as an extension of the balance theory to address heterogeneities in real-world networks. In this model, different paradigms lead to form different friendship and enmity. As an example, friendship or enmity between countries can have a political or religious basis. The suggested Hamiltonian is symmetrical between paradigms. In this paper, we investigate the influence of the external field on the evolution of the network. We drive the mean-field solutions of the model and verify the accuracy of our analytical solutions by performing Monte-Carlo simulations. We observe that the external field breaks the symmetry of the system. The response of the system to the external field, depending on the temperature, is paramagnetic or ferromagnetic. Similar to the magnetic systems, susceptibility follows Curie's law. We also observed a hysteresis behavior. Once communities are formed based on a certain paradigm, then they resist change.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure

Designing novel construction for cell surface display of protein E on Escherichia coli using non-classical pathway based on Lpp-OmpA

Additional file 2. pNon-OmpA-PE. ab1. Sequencing result of pNon-OmpA-PE