The Bretton Woods agencies and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s : facing the tough questions

Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank recognize that sub - Saharan Africa (SSA) represents a difficult and complex development challenge. The author proposes that the Bank and the IMF take four institutional steps to deal effectively with the region's problems in the near term. First, the agencies should reconsider their planned net capital contribution to help overcome the region's severe foreign exchange constraints. Secondly, the Brady proposals represented a major conceptual step forward toward alleviating the private debt overhang that seriously burdens at least a dozen countries in the region. Additional efforts to reduce the private debts of the low-income countries will be needed to achieve the objectives of the proposals. Thirdly, the Bank's analysis of the problems facing the region argues for a faster and more comprehensive reform program. In the 1990s the Bretton Woods agencies will face increasing pressures to give more weight to issues of social equity and political variables. Lastly, the Bank and Fund will have to improve their ability to work together to maximize their effectiveness. The Bank and Fund should collaborate in long-term planning for SSA. Policy Framework Papers should go beyond the current three year horizon and plan some issues for five to ten years. The Bank should also take the lead in organizing external assistance efforts and policy reform programs.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Strategic Debt Management,Economic Theory&Research

Deconfinement of Constituent Quarks and the Hagedorn Temperature

The double phase transition of hadronic matter, $H$, first, to the gas of deconfined constituent quarks (for brevity called {\it valons}), $Q$, and then, secondly, the phase transition from $Q$ to quark-gluon plasma, $QGP$, is considered within bag model ideology. In distinction from previous double phase transition investigations, it is not supposed that at zero chemical potential (~$\mu=0$~) transition temperatures $T_d$ (for $H~\leftrightarrow~Q$) and $T_{ch}$ (for $Q~\leftrightarrow~ QGP$, chiral restoration) coincide. Then for plausible range of chosen bag constants, $B_Q$ for $Q$ and $B_q$ for $QGP$ the phase transition $H~ \leftrightarrow~ QGP$ can proceed {\it only via the $Q$ phase} (at least at not too much $\mu$). For small $\mu$ the gap, $T_{ch}~-~T_d$, is quite essential, up to $\approx~50$ MeV. The physical meaning of the $H~ \leftrightarrow~ Q$ transition temperature, $T_d$, coincide with that of the Hagedorn temperature, $T_H$.Comment: 9 pages, 11 Postscript figure

Long Range Forces from Two Neutrino Exchange Revisited

The exchange of two massless neutrinos gives rise to a long range force which couples to weakly charged matter. As has been noted previously in the literature, the potential for this force is \VN \propto G_{F}^2 / r^5 with monopole-monople, spin-spin and more complicated interactions. Unfortunately, this is far too small to be observed in present day experiments. We calculate \VN explicitly in the electroweak theory, and show that under very general assumptions forces arising from the exchange of two massless fermions can at best yield $1 / r^5$ potentials.Comment: 5 pages + 1 figure (not included), UFIFT-HEP-92-28/HUTP-92-A04

Conformal anomaly as a source of soft photons in heavy ion collisions

We introduce a novel photon production mechanism stemming from the conformal anomaly of QCDxQED and the existence of strong (electro)magnetic fields in heavy ion collisions. Using the hydrodynamical description of the bulk modes of QCD plasma, we show that this mechanism leads to the photon production yield that is comparable to the yield from conventional sources. This mechanism also provides a significant positive contribution to the azimuthal anisotropy of photons, $v_2$, as well as to the radial "flow". We compare our results to the data from the PHENIX Collaboration.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; version accepted to Phys. Rev. Let

School Accommodations to Support Psychosocial Functioning and Self-Esteem in Adolescents with Long QT Syndrome

The current manuscript, as part of a larger program of research, intended to examine whether long QT syndrome (LQTS), a chronic and life-threatening genetic cardiac illness, impacts adolescents\u27 psychosocial functioning. After 2 1/2 years of involvement in the study and 13 months of attempted data collection, it was determined by the research team that the benefits of proceeding with an intervention plan outweighed the costs of waiting for data. Although the study was not able to be conducted within the anticipated time frame due to unforeseen logistical challenges, the study hypothesized that adolescents with higher ratings of self-reported social and school functioning have higher levels of self esteem (SE) and that social and co curricular restrictions, school accommodations, age of diagnosis, medical event frequency, social functioning, and school functioning predict ratings of SE. Given the hypothesized needs of the population and support based on previous literature and corroborating theories, this manuscript resulted in a detailed school-based accommodation plan, along with a crisis response plan, which will ultimately help advocate for the needs of adolescents with LQTS. The intervention plan will be revised as planned future work, once data has been obtained and analyzed and/or the intervention plan has been field tested