Demographic and Socio-economic Determinants of Birth Interval Dynamics in Manipur: A Survival Analysis

The birth interval is a major determinant of levels of fertility in high fertility populations. A house-to-house survey of 1225 women in Manipur, a tiny state in North Eastern India was carried out to investigate birth interval patterns and its determinants. Using survival analysis, among the nine explanatory variables of interest, only three factors – infant mortality, Lactation and use of contraceptive devices have highly significant effect (P<0.01) on the duration of birth interval and only three factors – age at marriage of wife, parity and sex of child are found to be significant (P<0.05) on the duration variable

Effects of the Scale-dependent Vacuum Expectation Values in the Renormalization Group Analysis of Neutrino Masses

The contribution of scale-dependent vacuum expectation values (VEVs) of Higgs scalars, which gives significant effects in the evolution of fundamental fermion masses in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM), is now considered in the derivation of the one-loop analytic expression for the evolution of the left-handed Majorana neutrino masses with energies. The inclusion of such effect of the running VEV increases the stability of the neutrino masses under quantum corrections and leads to a mild decrease of neutrino masses with higher energies.Comment: 11 Pages, 4 Figure

Arcing and discharges in high-voltage subsystems of Space Station

Arcing and other types of electrical discharges are likely to occur in high-voltage subsystems of the Space Station. Results from ground and space experiments on the arcing of solar cell arrays are briefly reviewed, showing that the arcing occurs when the conducting interconnects in the arrays are at negative potential above a threshold, which decreases with the increasing plasma density. Furthermore, above the threshold voltages the arcing rate increases with the plasma density. At the expected operating voltages (approximately 200 V) in the solar array for the space station, arcing is expected to occur even in the ambient ionospheric plasma. If the ionization of the contaminants increases the plasma density near the high-voltage systems, the adverse effects of arcing on the solar arrays and the space station are likely to be enhanced, In addition to arcing other discharge processes are likely to occur in high-voltage subsystems. For example, Paschen discharge is likely to occur when the neutral density N sub n greater that 10 to the 12th cu cm, the corresponding neutral pressure P greater than 3 x 10 to the -5 Torr

Dissipative electron-phonon system photoexcited far from equilibrium

We derive the steady-state electron distribution function for a semiconductor driven far from equilibrium by the inter-band photoexcitation assumed homogeneous over the nanoscale sample. Our analytical treatment is based on the generalization of a stochastic model known for a driven dissipative granular gas. The generalization is physically realizable in a semiconducting sample where electrons are injected into the conduction band by photoexcitation, and removed through the electron-hole recombination process at the bottom of the conduction band. Here the kinetics of the electron-electron and the electron-phonon (bath) scattering processes, as also the partitioning of the total energy in the inelastic collisions, are duly parametrized by certain rate constants. Our analytical results give the steady-state-energy distribution of the classical (non-degenerate) electron gas as function of the phonon (bath) temperature and the rates of injection (cw pump) and depletion (recombination). Interestingly, we obtain an accumulation of the electrons at the bottom of the conduction band in the form of a delta-function peak $-$ a non-equilibrium classical analogue of condensation. Our model is specially appropriate to a disordered, indirect band-gap, polar semiconducting sample where energy is the only state label, and the electron-phonon coupling is strong while the recombination rate is slow. A possible mechanism for the dissipative inelastic collisions between the electrons is also suggested.Comment: 4 page