"Rural-Urban Migration and Urban Poverty: Socio-Economic Profiles of Rickshaw Pullers and Owner-Contractors in North-East Delhi"

In December 2005 and January 2006, we conducted a pilot survey to collect detailed information on eighty rickshaw pullers and twenty-six rickshaw owner-contractors in north-east Delhi. This is a preliminary report based on the data thus collected.

Relaxation Theory for Point Vortices

We study relaxation dynamics of the mean field of many point vortices from quasi-equilibrium to equilibrium. Maximum entropy production principle implies four consistent equations concerning relaxation-equilibrium states and patch-point vortex models. Point vortex relaxation equation coincides with Brownian point vortex equation in micro-canonical setting. Mathematical analysis to point vortex relaxation equation is done in accordance with the Smoluchowski-Poisson equation

Aging and Degradation Behavior Elucidated by Viscoelasticity Aiming Protection of Smart City Facilities

Polymer coatings play a crucially important role in protecting smart city facilities against the harsh factors of outdoor environments. Recent increased awareness of eco‐friendliness has led to the use of waterborne organic coatings. Research into the bulk material properties of these coatings is necessary in order to understand their degradation process in the field. The present work focuses attention on a unique rheological property, which has both elastic and viscous characteristics, as a means of assessing the stability of the coating. The viscoelastic property determines whether it presents solid‐like or liquid‐like response from the comparison of relative strengths of the relaxation time (τ) and operating time (t). In the process of degradation, both the storage (E′) and loss modulus (E″), which represent the elastic and viscous components, respectively, decrease accordingly, reflecting the deterioration of coating. The majority of the water molecules absorbed in a coating are strongly bound to the polymer network through hydrogen bonds with polar functional groups, which destroys intermolecular bonding between macromolecules and reduces the bulk materials’ ability to diffuse stress concentrations and thereby lowers a coating’s overall strength

Relations between the ionization or recombination flux and the emission radiation for hydrogen and helium in plasma

On the basis of the collisional-radiative models for neutral hydrogen, and neutral and ionized helium, the relationship between the ionization flux or the recombination flux and the photon emission rate of a representative visible line of each species is investigated. It is found that both fluxes are proportional to the photon emission rate and that the proportionality factor depends rather weakly on the plasma parameters in the ranges of practical interest. This implies that the observed emission line intensity can be a good measure of the ionization flux or the recombination flux. The relation between the total radiation power rate and the ionization or recombination flux is also considered. For a hydrogen plasma in ionization balance the Balmer-alpha line intensity takes the maximum value near the optimum temperature of 1.3 eV, while for plasmas out of ionization balance it takes the minimum near that temperature. This latter characteristic corresponds to the recently observed "inverse edge-localized mode" in divertor plasmas. For neutral hydrogen and ionized helium, it is found that in the recombining plasma of low electron temperature, T_e, and density, n_e, the radiation energy close to the ionization potential of the ground state is emitted during one recombination event. In the ionizing plasma of high Te and low n_e, a similar amount of energy is emitted during one ionization event. Emission line intensities of hydrogen and helium were measured in the Large Helical Device, and the time variation of n_e at the initial and final phases of a discharge was estimated. The results agreed well with the interferometer measurement, and this indicated that the variation of n_e was dominated by their ionization or recombination processes rather than by diffusion. The total radiation energy of hydrogen and helium in the recombining phase was found to be less than 1% of the stored energy of the plasma

Is Aid Allocation Consistent with Global Poverty Reduction?: A Cross-Donor Comparison

In this paper, we investigate the gap between the first target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the actual allocation of grant aid in the late-1990s and the early-2000s in order to identify necessary policy adjustments to achieve the goal. As a theoretical framework, we extend the poverty-targeting model of Besley and Kanbur (1988) by considering multiple donors and possible strategic interactions among them. To test theoretical predictions, we employ detailed data on grant aid allocation of eleven major aid donor countries and on aid disbursement of six international institutions including the IBRD, IDA, and UN organizations. Four main empirical results emerged. First, both in the late-1990s and the early-2000s, grant allocations from Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, and UK are consistent with the necessary conditions of optimal poverty targeting. Second, we found that there is a negative population scale effect for aid allocation, suggesting that strategic motives may also exist. Third, the overall results for multilateral donors indicate that allocation patterns are consistent with the theory of poverty targeting. Finally, there has been a recent improvement in coordination among major donors in reducing global poverty.

Role of tight junctions in signal transduction: an update

Tight junctions (TJs), which are the most apically located of the intercellular junctional complexes, have a barrier function and a fence function. Recent studies show that they also participate in signal transduction mechanisms. TJs are modulated by intracellular signaling pathways including protein kinase C, mitogen-activated protein kinase, and NF-κB, to affect the epithelial barrier function in response to diverse stimuli. TJs are also regulated by various cytokines, growth factors, and hormones via signaling pathways. To investigate the regulation of TJ molecules via signaling pathways in human epithelial cells under normal and pathological conditions, we established a novel model of human telomerase reverse transcriptase-transfected human epithelial cells. In this review, we describe the recent progress in our understanding of the role of TJs for signal transduction under normal conditions in upper airway epithelium, pancreatic duct epithelial cells, hepatocytes, and endometrial epithelial cells, and in pathological conditions including cancer and infection

The Osher Upwind Scheme and its Application to Cosmic Gas Dynamics

Details of the second order Osher scheme for the multi-dimensional Euler equation are presented. The adopted method to attain the second order of accuracy differs from the existing second order formulation by Osher. The present method is easy to be implemented and can be applied to other first order upwind schemes. Two types of numerical integration forms are coded. One is written in the integral form (cell method), and the other is the usual finite-difference form. Both forms work well and can capture strong shocks without any auxiliary artificial damping. The integration form strictly satisfies the flux conservation even on geometrical singular coordinate lines, which inevitably appear in three dimensional calculations with bodies embedded. Hydrodynamic calculations of the interaction between a stellar wind and an accretion flow are performed to demonstrate the ability of the present method

Relaxation Dynamics of Point Vortices

We study a model describing relaxation dynamics of point vortices, from quasi-stationary state to the stationary state. It takes the form of a mean field equation of Brownian point vortices derived from Chavanis, and is formulated by our previous work as a limit equation of the patch model studied by Robert-Someria. This model is subject to the micro-canonical statistic laws; conservation of energy, that of mass, and increasing of the entropy. We study the existence and nonexistence of the global-in-time solution. It is known that this profile is controlled by a bound of the negative inverse temperature. Here we prove a rigorous result for radially symmetric case. Hence E/M2 large and small imply the global-in-time and blowup in finite time of the solution, respectively. Where E and M denote the total energy and the total mass, respectively