Rural Income Dynamics in Post-Crisis Indonesia

Indonesia is, what the World Development Report 2008 calls, a transforming country characterized by increasing rural-urban income disparities and high poverty rates. Bearing these facts in mind, it is striking how little is known about causes and mechanism of the underlying determinants of poverty in rural Indonesia. In this study we aim to shed more light on the determinants of rural incomes and poverty in Indonesia. Drawing on a unique and highly detailed rural household panel data set for Central Sulawesi we investigate what are the drivers of rural income growth. Moreover, exploiting the panel structure of our data set we are able to control explicitly for individual- and time-specific effects and for endogeneity issues in our estimations. In addition, in order to identify whether our findings might hold lessons for all of Indonesia, we upscale our analysis to the national level by comparing our results with the national household data survey SUSENAS. Our results indicate that a sharp increase in rural incomes took place in the post-crisis period. Moreover, the ability to alleviate poverty and to enjoy income growth has been strongly associated with a households ability to diversify into the non-farm sector of the economy, to focus on higher value-added agricultural activities and its ability to invest into new production techniques. These results seem to hold for most of rural Indonesia and are robust to various model specifications. --Rural non-farm income,agricultural productivity growth,rural poverty

Dns of supersonic turbulent boundary layers over weakly and strongly adiabatic walls

We present spatially developing direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent boundary layers at Mach 3 and Mach 7 with Reτ ≈ 600. In this work we make an explicit distinction in the wall thermal boundary condition, which, to our knowledge, has not been addressed in the literature. Namely, we deem "weakly adiabatic" walls as those whose temperature is fixed at the recovery temperature, and "strongly adiabatic" walls as those that enforce null heat transfer in the local and instantaneous sense. These two boundary conditions are bracketing cases for real materials that have finite, non-zero thermal diffusivities. Using scaling arguments, we propose a dimensionless quantity, the "fluctuation Nusselt number," as the relevant similarity parameter describing the thermal damping at the wall. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this parameter can vary by many orders of magnitude due to different thermal diffusivities of relevant wall materials and different edge Mach numbers. By design, the "weakly adiabatic" boundary condition damps near wall temperature fluctuations, which helps to enforce the assumption of weak total temperature fluctuations built into much of the theory for compressible boundary layers. Adopting a "strongly adiabatic" wall will place greater strain on these assumptions and may be more relevant to flight conditions of interest. Here we present data at Mach 3 for both boundary conditions, and at Mach 7 for the "strongly adiabatic" case. The simulations are spatially developing and have large domains to prevent unphysical forcing due to the inflow and spanwise boundary conditions, as discussed in Beekman, Priebe, Kan & Martin. 1 For all three data sets we present basic turbulence statistics and note that a non negligible effect is observed due to the differences in wall boundary condition

Predictors of remission from PTSD symptoms after sexual and non-sexual trauma in the community: A mediated survival-analytic approach.

Epidemiological data on the chronicity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in relation to trauma type and underlying pathways are rare. The current study explored how PTSD symptoms change over time across different trauma types and examined mediators of their persistence. A trauma-exposed community sample, whereof approximately one quarter met diagnostic criteria for PTSD, provided retrospective data on the duration of PTSD symptoms. Those who remitted and those who had not at the time of assessment were compared regarding worst trauma, symptom severity, comorbidity, demographic and treatment-seeking variables. Time to remission was estimated using Cox proportional hazard models including candidate predictors of remission. A mediated survival analysis was used to explore indirect pathways that explain trauma-specific differences in remission times. Both the full sample and PTSD subgroup were analyzed separately. Overall, lower socio-economic status, lifetime and childhood sexual trauma, symptom severity, comorbid depression and past treatment were associated with non- and longer remissions. PTSD avoidance symptoms and comorbid depression were found to mediate longer remission times after lifetime or childhood sexual trauma. Our findings provide insight into the mechanisms and complicating factors of remission from PTSD symptoms after trauma, which might have important implications for therapeutic interventions

Conserved genes and pathways in primary human fibroblast strains undergoing replicative and radiation induced senescence

Additional file 3: Figure S3. Regulation of genes of Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy pathway during senescence induction in HFF strains Genes of the “Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy” pathway which are significantly up- (green) and down- (red) regulated (log2 fold change >1) during irradiation induced senescence (120 h after 20 Gy irradiation) in HFF strains. Orange color signifies genes which are commonly up-regulated during both, irradiation induced and replicative senescence

Direct Numerical Simulation of Two Shock Wave/Turbulent Boundary Layer Interactions

Direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of two shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interactions (STBLIs) are presented in this thesis. The first interaction is a 24° compression ramp at Mach 2.9, and the second interaction is an 8° compression ramp at Mach 7.2. The large-scale low-frequency unsteadiness in the Mach 2.9 DNS is investigated with the aim of shedding some light on its physical origin. Previous experimental and computational works have linked the unsteadiness either to fluctuations in the incoming boundary layer or to a mechanism in the downstream separated flow. Consistent with experimental observations, the shock in the DNS is found to undergo streamwise oscillations, which are broadband and occur at frequencies that are about two orders of magnitude lower than the characteristic frequency of the energy-containing turbulent scales in the incoming boundary layer. Based on a coherence and phase analysis of signals at the wall and in the flow field, it is found that the low frequency shock unsteadiness is statistically linked to pulsations of the downstream separated flow. The statistical link with fluctuations in the upstream boundary layer is also investigated. A weak link is observed: the value of the low-frequency coherence with the upstream flow is found to lie just above the limit of statistical significance, which is determined by means of a Monte Carlo study. The dynamics of the downstream separated flow are characterized further based on low-pass filtered DNS fields. The results suggest that structural changes occur in the downstream separated flow during the low-frequency motions, including the breaking-up of the separation bubble, which is observed when the shock moves downstream. The structural changes are described based on the Cf distribution through the interaction, as well as the velocity and vorticity fields. The possible link between the low-frequency dynamics observed in the DNS and results from global instability theory is explored. It is observed that the structural changes in the downstream separated flow are reminiscent of certain global linear instability modes reported in the literature, suggesting that an inherent instability of the separated flow could be the driving mechanism for the unsteadiness. The separated shear layer in the DNS is characterized: the self-similarity of the shear layer profiles, the formation of vortical structures in the shear layer, and the low-frequency behavior of the shear layer are investigated. Based on the results, possible low-frequency mechanisms involving the shear layer are discussed. The second DNS presented in this thesis is of an attached hypersonic STBLI (8° compression ramp at Mach 7.2). The flow is described based on flow visualizations, distributions of wall quantities, as well as mean and fluctuating fields. Wall heat transfer scalings and the turbulence amplification in the interaction are discussed. The DNS results are compared to experiments performed by Smits and co-workers at similar flow conditions, and excellent qualitative agreement is observed

Long-Term Quiescent Fibroblast Cells Transit into Senescence

Cellular senescence is described to be a consequence of telomere erosion during the replicative life span of primary human cells. Quiescence should therefore not contribute to cellular aging but rather extend lifespan. Here we tested this hypothesis and demonstrate that cultured long-term quiescent human fibroblasts transit into senescence due to similar cellular mechanisms with similar dynamics and with a similar maximum life span as proliferating controls, even under physiological oxygen conditions. Both, long-term quiescent and senescent fibroblasts almost completely fail to undergo apoptosis. The transition of long-term quiescent fibroblasts into senescence is also independent of HES1 which protects short-term quiescent cells from becoming senescent. Most significantly, DNA damage accumulates during senescence as well as during long-term quiescence at physiological oxygen levels. We suggest that telomere-independent, potentially maintenance driven gradual induction of cellular senescence during quiescence is a counterbalance to tumor development

Göttingen for valuable comments. The paper benefited from discussions with Michael

Exploiting DHS data from 235 regions in 29 Sub-Saharan Africa countries, we find that the combination of low levels of malnutrition together with dramatically high rates of mortality, encountered in Kenya’s Lake Victoria territory, is unique for Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the causes of this paradox for the Kenyan context. Our identification strategy consists of two parts. First of all, we apply multilevel regression models to control simultaneously for family and community clustering of the observed malnutrition and mortality outcomes. Secondly, to address unobserved but correlated factors, we exploit information from GIS and malaria databases to construct variables that capture additional components of children’s geographic, political and cultural environment. Our analysis reveals that beneficial agricultural conditions and feeding practices lead to the observed sound anthropometric outcomes around Lake Victoria. In contrast, high mortality rates rest upon an adverse disease environment (malaria prevalence, water pollution, HIV rates) and a policy neglect (underprovision of health care services). Nonetheless, a significant effect of the local ethnic group, the Luo, on mortality remains

Loss Analysis of Unsteady Turbomachinery Flows Based on the Mechanical Work Potential

Loss analysis is a valuable technique for improving the thermodynamic performance of turbomachines. Analyzing loss in terms of the “mechanical work potential” (Miller, R.J., ASME Turbo Expo 2013, GT2013-95488) provides an instantaneous and local account of the thermal and aerodynamic mechanisms contributing to the loss of thermodynamic performance. This study develops the practical application of mechanical work potential loss analysis, providing the mathematical formulations necessary to perform loss analysis using practical Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) or large eddy simulations (LES). The analysis approach is demonstrated using RANS and LES of a linear compressor cascade, both with and without incoming wakes. Spatial segmentation is used to attribute loss contributions to specific regions of the flow, and phase-averaging is performed in order to associate the variation of different loss contributions with the periodic passage of wakes through the cascade. For this un-cooled linear cascade, viscous dissipation is the dominant source of loss. The analysis shows that the contribution of the viscous reheat effect depends on the operating pressure of the compressor stage relative to the ambient “dead state” pressure—implying that the optimal blade profile for a low-pressure compressor stage may be different from the optimal profile for a high-pressure compressor stage in the same engine, even if the operating conditions for both stages are dynamically similar