Resistivity noise in crystalline magnetic nanowires and its implications to domain formation and kinetics

We have investigated the time-dependent fluctuations in electrical resistance, or noise, in high quality crystalline magnetic nanowires within nanoporous templates. The noise increases exponentially with increasing temperature and magnetic field, and has been analyzed in terms of domain wall depinning within the Neel-Brown framework. The frequency-dependence of noise also indicates a crossover from nondiffusive kinetics to long-range diffusion at higher temperatures, as well as a strong collective depinning, which need to be considered when implementing these nanowires in magnetoelectronic devices.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Field-tunable stochasticity in the magnetization reversal of a cylindrical nanomagnet

The nature of magnetization reversal in an isolated cylindrical nanomagnet has been studied employing time-resolved magnetoresistance measurement. We find that the reversal mode is highly stochastic, occurring either by multimode or single-step switching. Intriguingly, the stochasticity was found to depend on the alignment of the driving magnetic field to the long axis of the nanowires, where predominantly multimode switching gives way to single-step switching behavior as the field direction is rotated from parallel to transverse with respect to the nanowire axis.Comment: Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Navier-Stokes Equations with Navier Boundary Condition

164 p.En esta tesis se estudian diversos problemas relacionados con las ecuaciones de Stokes y Navier Stokes en dominios acotados y con condiciones de contorno de Navier.Por una parte se han obtenido resultados de existencia de soluciones de la ecuación estacionaria de Stokes con condiciones de contorno de Navier y se han obtenido estimaciones uniformes con respecto del coeficiente de fricción. Ello ha permitido demostrar la convergencia de estas soluciones a las soluciones de la ecuación estacionaria de Stokes con condición de contorno de Dirichlet cuando el coeficiente de fricción converge a infinito.Con estos resultados sobre la ecuación estacionaria de Stokes se ha estudiado el problema para las ecuaciones de evolución de Stokes y Navier Stokes con condiciones de Navier. Se ha obtenido una teoría de semigrupos en espacios Lp que extiende los resultados conocidos correspondientes a otra condiciones de contorno (como Dirichlet o de tipo Navier). Se ha demostrado aquí también la convergencia de las soluciones de estas ecuaciones con condiciones de Navier a las soluciones de la misma ecuación con condiciones Dirichlet cuando el coeficiente de fricción tiende a infinito.En un último capítulo se han obtenido estimaciones uniformes, con respecto del parámetro de fricción, de la regularidad de las soluciones de un operador elíptico en forma de divergencia con condiciones de tipo Robin en un dominio cuya frontera es de clase C1

From Myth to Contemporaneity: A Study of Gender Identity and Split Personality in Girish Karnad’s Nagamandala and The Fire and the Rain

Girish Karnad presents the individual as well as social predicaments, resulting from the dichotomy between instinct and reason, body and mind, male and female psyche in his plays like Nagamandala and The Fire and the Rain. In Karnad’s plays, while the female characters search for a completeness within their partners, the men fail to achieve a harmonious existence of their body and mind. Karnad’s plays become aesthetic experiences, which release multiple connotations with their rootedness in human emotions and instinct.  Nagamandala as well as The Fire and the Rain becomes universal, timeless plays, where myth and reality, fact and fiction get fused in order to unravel the complex, discursive demands of contemporary socio-cultural paradigm. The plots of these two plays, Nagamandala and The Fire and the Rain are drawn from myths and folk tales. Karnad, for whatever the causes may be, derives the plot of most of his plays from pre-existing materials like myths, legends, folklore, history, yet like any great craftsman like Shakespeare, he transforms the raw material into a unique drama of human emotions and feelings. Karnad recreates, adapts and relates these mythic as well as the folkloric tales in order to relate them to the predicament of split personality of modern man. These plays also latently manifest Karnad’s concern with the issue of gender identity. Karnad’s plays are, thus, not mere imitations of life, but are representations of existential predicament and concretizations of philosophical abstractions.&nbsp

Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Aid, and Socioeconomic Infrastructure in Developing Countries

During the 1970s and 1980s, developing countries, skeptical of foreign investment, imposed several barriers on entry of foreign capital. However, the late 1980s and 1990s marked the onset of globalization, which integrated the whole world into a single global economy. The once-conservative developing nations, realizing the multifarious benefits of foreign direct investment (FDI), began encouraging entry of foreign firms, using various incentives, such as tax holidays, production subsidies, cash grants, labor training grants, and import duty exemptions. Gradually, FDI and foreign aid became two very important sources of foreign capital for these capital-constrained economies. This dissertation is focused on studying if there is any kind of relationship between foreign aid and private investment in recipient countries. FDI is a decision made by foreign investors on the basis of profitability of investment, whereas foreign aid is a political decision made by governments of donor countries on the basis of need for financial assistance by developing countries. We model foreign aid as an exogenous factor in allocation of foreign direct investment, along with other variables, to estimate the effect of aid on investment. Among the factors affecting FDI, infrastructure is considered to be an important one, in allocation of funds across developing countries. This dissertation is arranged as follows. In chapter 2, we introduce the term ``socioeconomic\u27\u27 infrastructure and create an index, by combining several components of infrastructure, using the multivariate technique of principal components. Prior to creating the index, we employ the technique of multiple imputation to deal with missing data. Our measure of socioeconomic infrastructure contains elements of physical infrastructure, such as transportation facilities, telecommunication facilities, consumption demand for energy and electricity, as well as social infrastructure components, such as voice and accountability, political stability and the absence of violence and terrorism, rule of law, control of corruption, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality. In chapter 3, we develop a theoretical model to address the research question: Does foreign aid impede or encourage foreign direct investment in developing nations? Our theory demonstrates that foreign aid used by the recipient country in financing a public input (known as development aid) encourages foreign direct investment. We also empirically address the same issue by modeling foreign aid as a determinant of foreign direct investment, along with a host of other factors, including our computed index of socioeconomic infrastructure. Our analysis shows that public consumption aid (foreign aid used for financing consumption expenses) does crowd out private investment in current account surplus developing countries, whereas development aid crowds in private investment in the presence of sound macroeconomic, political, legal, and administrative machineries. In chapter 4, we build a panel econometric model to explain the factors underlying socioeconomic infrastructure in developing countries. Our results indicate that countries with higher per capita income, a prominently large government, high investment demand, and large government revenue tend to have better infrastructure

Positive Psychology Interventions for Chronic Physical Illnesses: A Systematic Review

Positive health focuses on enhancing health along with curing illness to bring about well-being. Treatment for physical illness generally involves drug therapy, while the psycho-social aspects, specifically the positive psychology perspectives, are largely ignored; nevertheless, a growing number of investigations are now studying the effects of positive psychology interventions on health outcomes. The objective of this paper is to systematically review positive psychology interventions in chronic physical illness. A literature search through the databases of EBSCO, PubMed and PsycINFO, reference lists of significant papers and grey literature was conducted following four criteria set for this review. The number of studies selected finally that acceded to the criteria was 14. These studies were analysed by focusing on the study characteristics, kinds of intervention and outcomes of positive psychology interventions. Overall findings reveal that different intervention programmes have been devised by combining various exercises, writing is the most commonly used method for administration and positive psychology interventions are considered feasible and acceptable by patients, but findings about their usefulness are inconclusive. Suggestions for future research, clinical practice and application in communities have been provided which may be useful for clinicians, practitioners and caregivers

Positive Psychology Progress in India: Accomplishments and Pathways Ahead

The aim of this study is to summarize the developments in the field of positive psychology in India by focusing on research and applications. Since the emergence of the positive psychology movement in the West in 1998, researchers worldwide including India have been influenced by its strength-based approach. Over time, positive psychology in India has garnered an empirical base. This paper attempts to trace the development of the field within India. Various databases such as PsycINFO, Science Direct, PubMed, EBSCO and Shodhganga were searched along with the gray literature according to a set of criteria. Relevant researches were categorized under study characteristics, variables studied and assessment of positive psychology variables. Findings show that well-being is the most widely studied topic in positive psychology in India. Other topics including character strengths and posttraumatic growth also seem to be gaining popularity. Future directions on investigating topics that have not received adequate attention, making efforts to bridge the gap between Indian psychology and positive psychology, addressing cultural issues in positive psychology research, focusing on interdisciplinary and multi-method approach and finally making positive psychology available to the non-scientific community, have been provided. It is hoped that these efforts will enable us to build a positive psychology community. On the basis of this analysis, it may be derived that psychology research in India has started focusing on prevention along with cure