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Fiscal decentralization and development: How crucial is local politics?
Does fiscal decentralization in a politically decentralized less developed country help strengthen democratic institutions at the grass root level? And is the impact of such decentralization on local politics important in determining local development? Our study on Indonesia suggests that fiscal decentralization enhanced free and fair local elections, though the incidence of elite capture, and the consequent breakdown of local democracy, was also present in significant proportions. Fiscal decentralization promoted development mostly in communities which transited out from elite capture to embrace free and fair elections. This was followed by communities that experienced the emergence of elite capture. Communities that continued to remain under either elite capture or free and fair elections did the worst. These findings suggest that while the emergence of elite capture exists, it may not necessarily
be the most harmful. Instead, and surprisingly so, stability of local polity hurts development the most
Autonomous and controlled motivational regulations for multiple health related behaviors: between- and within-participants analyses
Self-determination theory has been applied to the prediction of a number of health-related behaviors with self-determined or autonomous forms of motivation generally more effective in predicting health behavior than non-self-determined or controlled forms. Research has been confined to examining the motivational predictors in single health behaviors rather than comparing effects across multiple behaviors. The present study addressed this gap in the literature by testing the relative contribution of autonomous and controlling motivation to the prediction of a large number of health-related behaviors, and examining individual differences in self-determined motivation as a moderator of the effects of autonomous and controlling motivation on health behavior. Participants were undergraduate students (N = 140) who completed measures of autonomous and controlled motivational regulations and behavioral intention for 20 health-related behaviors at an initial occasion with follow-up behavioral measures taken four weeks later. Path analysis was used to test a process model for each behavior in which motivational regulations predicted behavior mediated by intentions. Some minor idiosyncratic findings aside, between-participants analyses revealed significant effects for autonomous motivational regulations on intentions and behavior across the 20 behaviors. Effects for controlled motivation on intentions and behavior were relatively modest by comparison. Intentions mediated the effect of autonomous motivation on behavior. Within-participants analyses were used to segregate the sample into individuals who based their intentions on autonomous motivation (autonomy-oriented) and controlled motivation (control-oriented). Replicating the between-participants path analyses for the process model in the autonomy- and control-oriented samples did not alter the relative effects of the motivational orientations on intention and behavior. Results provide evidence for consistent effects of autonomous motivation on intentions and behavior across multiple health-related behaviors with little evidence of moderation by individual differences. Findings have implications for the generalizability of proposed effects in self-determination theory and intentions as a mediator of distal motivational factors on health-related behavior
Study of Ni and Zn doped CeOFeAs: Effect on the structural transition and specific heat capacity
We have systematically studied the substitution of nonmagnetic Zn and
magnetic Ni at iron sites in Ce based oxypnictide. The parent compound
(CeOFeAs) shows an anomaly in resistivity around 150 K due to structural
transition from tetragonal (space group: P4/nmm) to orthorhombic structure
(space group: Cmma). Substitution of Zn suppresses this anomaly to lower
temperature (~130 K) but Ni substitution does not show any anomaly around this
temperature and the compound behaves like a metal. Further, we find that non
magnetic (Zn) doping leads to higher impurity scattering as compared to
magnetic Ni doping. Similar to the resistivity measurement, the specific heat
shows another jump near 4 K for CeOFeAs. This is attributed to the ordering of
Ce3+ moments. This peak shifts to 3.8 K for Zn substituted compound and there
is no change in the ordering temperature in the Ni substituted CeOFeAs. These
peaks are broadened in applied magnetic field (5 T) and the calculated magnetic
entropy tends to saturate at the same value for 0 T and 5 T external magnetic
field.Comment: 16 pages Text+Fig
Isotope thermometery in nuclear multifragmentation
A systematic study of the effect of fragmentfragment interaction, quantum
statistics, -feeding and collective flow is made in the extraction of
the nuclear temperature from the double ratio of the isotopic yields in the
statistical model of one-step (Prompt) multifragmentation. Temperature is also
extracted from the isotope yield ratios generated in the sequential
binary-decay model. Comparison of the thermodynamic temperature with the
extracted temperatures for different isotope ratios show some anomaly in both
models which is discussed in the context of experimentally measured caloric
curves.Comment: uuencoded gzipped file containing 20 pages of text in REVTEX format
and 12 figures (Postscript files). Physical Review C (in press
Neutron star properties in a chiral SU(3) model
We investigate various properties of neutron star matter within an effective
chiral model. The predictions of this model are
compared with a Walecka-type model. It is demonstrated that the importance of
hyperon degrees are strongly depending on the interaction used, even if the
equation of state near saturation density is nearly the same in both models.
While the Walecka-type model predicts a strange star core with strangeness
fraction , the chiral model allows only for
and predicts that , and will not exist in star, in
contrast to the Walecka-type model.Comment: 13 pages, Revtex, 5 figs include
Medium information from anisotropic flow and jet quenching in relativistic heavy ion collisions
Within a multiphase transport (AMPT) model, where the initial conditions are
obtained from the recently updated HIJING 2.0 model, the recent anisotropic
flow and suppression data for charged hadrons in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC
center of mass energy of 2.76 TeV are explored to constrain the properties of
the partonic medium formed. In contrast to RHIC, the measured centrality
dependence of charged hadron multiplicity dN_ch/deta at LHC provides severe
constraint to the largely uncertain gluon shadowing parameter s_g. We find
final-state parton scatterings reduce considerably hadron yield at midrapidity
and enforces a smaller s_g to be consistent with dN_ch/deta data at LHC. With
the parton shadowing so constrained, hadron production and flow over a wide
transverse momenta range are investigated in AMPT. The model calculations for
the elliptic and triangular flow are found to be in excellent agreement with
the RHIC data, and predictions for the flow coefficients v_n(p_T, cent) at LHC
are given. The magnitude and pattern of suppression of the hadrons in AMPT are
found consistent with the measurements at RHIC. However, the suppression is
distinctly overpredicted in Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC energy. Reduction of
the QCD coupling constant alpha_s by ~30% in the higher temperature plasma
formed at LHC reproduces the measured hadron suppression.Comment: Talk given by Subrata Pal at the 11th International Conference on
Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1,
2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference
Series (JPCS
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