Do Electoral Institutions Have an Impact on Population Health?

Cataloged from PDF version of article.There is an emerging political economics literature which purports to show that legislatures elected based on proportional electoral rules spend more and redistribute more than legislatures elected based on majoritarian electoral rules. Going a step further the authors of this paper consider whether degree of electoral proportionality has an impact on population health and, in particular, the health of the least advantaged members of society. A panel of 24 parliamentary democracies for the years 1960–2004 is used to examine the relationship between electoral institutions and health. The authors find that greater electoral proportionality is positively associated with overall population health (as indicated by life expectancy) and with the health of the poorest (as indicated by a reduction in infant mortality). A panel of 17 countries for the years 1970–2004 is then used to show to that electoral permissiveness modifies the impact of health spending on infant mortality

The impact of regime-type on health: does redistribution explain everything?

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Many scholars claim that democracy improves population health. The prevailing explanation for this is that democratic regimes distribute health-promoting resources more widely than autocratic regimes. The central contention of this article is that democracies also have a significant pro-health effect regardless of public redistributive policies. After establishing the theoretical plausibility of the nondistributive effect, a panel of 153 countries for the years 1972 to 2000 is used to examine the relationship between extent of democratic experience and life expectancy. The authors find that democratic governance continues to have a salutary effect on population health even when controls are introduced for the distribution of health-enhancing resources. Data for fifty autocratic countries for the years 1994 to 2007 are then used to examine whether media freedom-independent of government responsiveness-has a positive impact on life expectancy

Environmental Racism and Biased Methods of Risk Assessment

Based on analysis of a risk assessment for a proposed Louisiana uranium enrichment facility, the authors argue that environmental injustice occurs when assessors\u27 scientific methods cause de facto discrimination

Moving Beyond Concentrations: The Challenge of Limiting Temperature Change

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change shifted the attention of the policy community from stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions to stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. While this represents a step forward, it does not go far enough. We find that, given the uncertainty in the climate system, focusing on atmospheric concentrations is likely to convey a false sense of precision. The causal chain between human activity and impacts is laden with uncertainty. From a benefit-cost perspective, it would be desirable to minimize the sum of mitigation costs and damages. Unfortunately, our ability to quantify and value impacts is limited. For the time being, we must rely on a surrogate. Focusing on temperature rather than on concentrations provides much more information on what constitutes an ample margin of safety. Concentrations mask too many uncertainties that are crucial for policy making.

The use of demineralisation and torrefaction to improve the properties of biomass intended as a feedstock for fast pyrolysis

Pre-treatments of biomass were investigated to reduce its undesirable properties which may affect the quality of fast pyrolysis bio-oil. A pre-treatment sequence was developed in this study to incorporate both biomass demineralisation and torrefaction. Demineralisation was performed by dilute acid leaching, primarily to reduce the inorganic concentration in raw biomass, whereas torrefaction targeted a reduction of the carboxyl, moisture and oxygen content. The liquid produced during torrefaction was recycled back as the leaching reagent for demineralisation. This solution contained dilute organic acids; therefore, the viability of leaching with organic acids (acetic and formic acid) compared to commonly used mineral acids (sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric acid) was validated. Synthetic leaching solutions reduced the inorganic content in raw biomass from 0.41 wt% to 0.14 wt% when leached with 1% formic acid and to 0.16 wt% when leached with 1% acetic acid, which was comparable to leaching with the mineral acids. Recycled torrefaction liquid that contained other acidic compounds in small quantities reduced the inorganic content to 0.14 wt%, suggesting it is effective to use the recycled torrefaction liquid as the leaching solution. From the experimental results, the optimal conditions for biomass torrefaction were 260 °C for 20 min to minimise the char formation during pyrolysis, based on the increase in the acid-insoluble fraction of the biomass. However, the torrefaction temperature may be increased to 280 °C if further reductions in acetyl and oxygen content are required. Higher temperatures are associated with severe biomass loss and the initiation of hydrogen loss. It should be noted that even at 280 °C, the oxygen reduction is minimal. If oxygen reduction is the principal target when pre-treating biomass, it is suggested that torrefaction alone is not a suitable method to obtain bio-oil with a low oxygen content due to the low pyrolysis yields obtainable. This study demonstrated that the combined use of demineralisation and torrefaction as biomass pre-treatments has the ability to decrease the inorganic, acetyl and moisture content of biomass, which reduces undesirable catalytic reactions during fast pyrolysis to improve the quality of bio-oil produced

Crystallization and preliminary crystallographic analysis of the DNA gyrase B protein from B-stearothermophilus

DNA gyrase B (GyrB) from B. stearothermophilus has been crystallized in the presence of the non-hydrolyzable ATP analogue, 5'-adenylpl-beta-gamma-imidodiphosphate (ADPNP), by the dialysis method. A complete native data set to 3.7 Angstrom has been collected from crystals which belonged to the cubic space group I23 with unit-cell dimension a = 250.6 Angstrom. Self-rotation function analysis indicates the position of a molecular twofold axis. Low-resolution data sets of a thimerosal and a selenomethionine derivative have also been analysed. The heavy-atom positions are consistent with one dimer in the asymmetric unit

The impact of democracy and media freedom on under-5 mortality, 1961–2011

Do democracies produce better health outcomes for children than autocracies? We argue that (1) democratic governments have an incentive to reduce child mortality among low-income families and (2) that media freedom enhances their ability to deliver mortality-reducing resources to the poorest. A panel of 167 countries for the years 1961–2011 is used to test those two theoretical claims. We find that level of democracy is negatively associated with under-5 mortality, and that that negative association is greater in the presence of media freedom. These results are robust to the inclusion of country and year fixed effects, time-varying control variables, and the multiple imputation of missing values. © 2017 Elsevier Lt

Does control of rheumatic disease raise the standard of living in developing countries?

[No abstract available

Quantum tunneling dynamics of an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate through a Gaussian barrier

The transmission of an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate incident on a repulsive Gaussian barrier is investigated through numerical simulation. The dynamics associated with interatomic interactions are studied across a broad parameter range not previously explored. Effective 1D Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) simulations are compared to classical Boltzmann-Vlasov equation (BVE) simulations in order to isolate purely coherent matterwave effects. Quantum tunneling is then defined as the portion of the GPE transmission not described by the classical BVE. An exponential dependence of transmission on barrier height is observed in the purely classical simulation, suggesting that observing such exponential dependence is not a sufficient condition for quantum tunneling. Furthermore, the transmission is found to be predominately described by classical effects, although interatomic interactions are shown to modify the magnitude of the quantum tunneling. Interactions are also seen to affect the amount of classical transmission, producing transmission in regions where the non-interacting equivalent has none. This theoretical investigation clarifies the contribution quantum tunneling makes to overall transmission in many-particle interacting systems, potentially informing future tunneling experiments with ultracold atoms.Comment: Close to the published versio