Giant dipole resonance with exact treatment of thermal fluctuations

The shape fluctuations due to thermal effects in the giant dipole resonance (GDR) observables are calculated using the exact free energies evaluated at fixed spin and temperature. The results obtained are compared with Landau theory calculations done by parameterizing the free energy. The Landau theory is found to be insufficient when the shell effects are dominating.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

The shared learning journey: effective partnerships to deliver health promotion

Health promotion is a key role for healthcare professionals. It is based on effective collaboration between the healthcare professional and the public. Healthcare education has the challenge of future-proofing its curricula to meet the challenges laid out in health promotion strategies. However, engaging students in health promotion has traditionally been challenging within the delivery of an academic and largely theoretical module.This paper provides a practice example of an initiative in which partnerships between students, academic staff and community partners are key to the effective delivery of a health promotion module within a pre-registration healthcare programme.The partnerships were developed in two stages and use a social constructivist and assets-based approach to create a shared learning journey. Working in partnership has led to positive student engagement and has been beneficial to all those involved. It has led to positive changes within the module and beyond

Sources of Output Growth in Indian Agriculture during the Post-Reform Period

Economic growth has failed to be sufficiently inclusive, particularly after the mid-nineties. Although agriculture is still a single major sector providing livelihood to more than 60 percent of the population, it has lost its growth momentum and the share has been declining continuously for a variety of reasons like low income due to inadequate output growth, low productivity, lack of credit at reasonable rates, natural calamities and unavailability of proper extension services. Realizing the importance of this sector and its current crisis, the Eleventh Plan aims to reverse this trend. Output growth could be possible by increasing input growth, technical progress and improvement in technical efficiency. In order to identify the source of the problem, this paper attempts to decompose the agricultural output growth obtained in 15 major states for the period 1994-95 to 2003-04 into the above three components using the random coefficients frontier production function model. Results of the study indicate that the efficiency has declined over time for all the states and the average technical efficiency is only 72 percent. This means that there is a potential to increase the existing output by 28 percent without increasing inputs.We found that inmost of the states, growth was only due to higher inputs. Investment in extension services along with sustained investment in agricultural research and development, and infrastructure is the need of the hour. West Bengal is the most efficient state in applying labor and fertilizer inputs and also has a very high over all efficiency. This can be linked to the successful land reform policies of the state.economic growth, technical efficiency, Eleventh Plan, frontier production function, land reform

Lessons construction can learn from other sectors

The construction industry is traditionally considered a white, maledominated industry. The UK construction industry is at its busiest for a decade and is suffering from skill shortages in both craft and manual trades, and at the professional level. The issue regarding the lack of women in construction has become more prominent recently, attracting government and industry-wide attention due to this potential skill shortage facing the industry. To meet these targets the industry cannot rely on recruiting the traditional male- dominated workforce. Therefore the UK government is examining ways to encourage women into traditionally male-dominated jobs. Since then a number of initiatives have been introduced promoting construction careers to women; however they have yet to achieve the desired effect. The main aim of this paper is to investigate how the construction industry can successfully recruit and retain professional women by looking at what lessons can be learnt from other sectors such as medicine. Hence this paper looks into other sectors, in particular the medical sector and how it has become an accessible career for women. It also focuses on the culture of other sectors to establish the influence this has over the employment of female professionals

Strategy of Growth for Substantial Reduction of Poverty and Reversal of Trend towards Increasing Regional Divide

While Development as Freedom is considered to be one of the objectives of our national economic endeavors, and poverty reduction and fairly balanced regional development are high on the economic agenda, it is well known that our planning and economic policies have failed to produce inclusive growth to enable substantial parts of country to get the benefits of developments. The Approach Paper to 11th Five Year Plan declares its objective to be faster and more inclusive growth, but the Planning Commission or the Central Government do not put forward any significant change in the plan principles or strategies. In this paper we are suggesting a set of new innovative policies as additions to the policies already being implemented.poverty, Regional Divide, 11th Five Year Plan, innovative policies

Local Graph Coloring and Index Coding

We present a novel upper bound for the optimal index coding rate. Our bound uses a graph theoretic quantity called the local chromatic number. We show how a good local coloring can be used to create a good index code. The local coloring is used as an alignment guide to assign index coding vectors from a general position MDS code. We further show that a natural LP relaxation yields an even stronger index code. Our bounds provably outperform the state of the art on index coding but at most by a constant factor.Comment: 14 Pages, 3 Figures; A conference version submitted to ISIT 2013; typos correcte