"Closed-loop" analysis of a thermo-charged capacitor

In this Letter, an explicit application of conservation of energy and zero net work principle around a closed path ("closed-loop" analysis) is carried out on a thermo-charged capacitor at equilibrium with ambient heat at uniform temperature. This analysis corroborates the results of previous studies [Phys.Lett.A 374 (2010) 1801, Physica A 390 (2011) 481] that a potential drop $\Delta V$ does actually occur at capacitor terminals. Finally, a conventional photoelectric emission experiment is proposed to indirectly text thermo-charged capacitor functioning.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Typos corrected. One section adde

Working Paper 38 - Health Development in Africa

The aim of this paper is to provide a framework that national governments and international agencies can use to accelerate health development in Africa. It shows the respective roles of socioeconomic, political and medical factors in the determination of health status of a population. Using measures of health development such as infant mortality, crude death rate, fertility and longevity, the paper finds that there has been progress in health development in Africa over the past 15 years. In particular, life expectancy for the whole continent increased by some 5 years, a finding consistent with a steady decline in infant mortality over the same period. Even so, the level of health development in the continent remains quite low compared with measures of health status in continents at similar stages of socioeconomic development. Moreover, the quality of life in Africa may not have improved at the same rate as the indicators of health development because of probable increases in morbidity and in psycho-social stress due to economic hardships of the continent over the past 15 years.

On commercial media bias

Within the spokes model of Chen and Riordan (2007) that allows for non-localized competition among arbitrary numbers of media outlets, we quantify the effect of concentration of ownership on quality and bias of media content. A main result shows that too few commercial outlets, or better, too few separate owners of commercial outlets can lead to substantial bias in equilibrium. Increasing the number of outlets (commercial and non-commercial) tends to bring down this bias; but the strongest effect occurs when the number of owners is increased. Allowing for free entry provides lower bounds on fixed costs above which substantial commercial bias occurs in equilibrium.Commercial media, concentration and consolidation, media bias, self-censorship, ownership structure