58 research outputs found
Which doctor? Combining vignettes and item response to measure doctor quality
Get PDFThe authors develop a method in which vignettes-a battery of questions for hypothetical cases-are evaluated with item response theory to create a metric for doctor quality. The method allows a simultaneous estimation of quality and validation of the test instrument that can be used for further refinements. The authors apply the method to a sample of medical practitioners in Delhi, India. The method gives plausible results, rationalizes different perceptions of quality in the public and private sectors, and pinpoints several serious problems with health care delivery in urban India. The findings confirm, for instance, that the quality of private providers located in poorer areas of the city is significantly lower than those in richer neighborhoods. Surprisingly, similar results hold for providers in the public sector, with important implications for inequities in the availability of health care.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Disease Control&Prevention,Health Systems Development&Reform,Public Health Promotion,Educational Sciences,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Educational Sciences,Information and Records Management,Health Systems Development&Reform,Health Economics&Finance
Microfluidic rectifier for polymer solutions flowing through porous media
No full textFluidic rectification refers to anisotropic flow resistance upon changing the flow direction. Polymeric solutions, in contrast to Newtonian fluids, can exhibit an anisotropic flow resistance in microfluidic devices by tuning the channel shape at low Reynolds number. Such a concept has not been investigated in an anisotropic porous medium. We have developed a fluidic rectifier based on an anisotropic porous medium consisting of a periodic array of triangular pillars that can operate at a low Reynolds number. Rectification is achieved, when the type of high Weissenberg number elastic instabilities changes with the flow direction. The flow resistance differs across the two directions of the anisotropic porous medium geometry. We have identified the type of elastic instabilities that appear in both forward and backward directions. Particularly, we found a qualitative relation between the dead-zone instability and the onset of fluidic rectification.Accepted Author ManuscriptChemE/Product and Process EngineeringReservoir Engineerin
On characteristic power series of dual signed Selmer groups
Get PDFWe relate the cardinality of the -primary part of the Bloch-Kato Selmer
group over attached to a modular form at a non-ordinary prime
to the constant term of the characteristic power series of the signed Selmer
groups over the cyclotomic -extension of . This
generalizes a result of Vigni and Longo in the ordinary case. In the case of
elliptic curves, such results follow from earlier works by Greenberg, Kim, the
second author, and Ahmed-Lim, covering both the ordinary and most of the
supersingular case.Comment: Accepted in Annales de l'Institut Fourie
On the signed Selmer groups for motives at non-ordinary primes in -extensions
Get PDFGeneralizing the work of Kobayashi and the second author for elliptic curves
with supersingular reduction at the prime , B\"uy\"ukboduk and Lei
constructed multi-signed Selmer groups over the cyclotomic
-extension of a number field for more general non-ordinary
motives. In particular, their construction applies to abelian varieties over
with good supersingular reduction at all the primes of above . In
this article, we scrutinize the case in which is imaginary quadratic, and
prove a control theorem (that generalizes Kim's control theorem for elliptic
curves) of multi-signed Selmer groups of non-ordinary motives over the maximal
abelian pro- extension of that is unramified outside , which is the
-extension of . We apply it to derive a sufficient condition
when these multi-signed Selmer groups are cotorsion over the corresponding
two-variable Iwasawa algebra. Furthermore, we compare the Iwasawa
-invariants of multi-signed Selmer groups over the
-extension for two such representations which are congruent
modulo
Effect of variation of strain rate on the tensile properties of Coconut leaf midrib - A sustainable material for ground improvement
No full textMental health patterns and consequences : results from survey data in five developing countries
Get PDFThe social and economic consequences of poor mental health in the developing world are presumed to be significant, yet are largely under-researched. The authors argue that mental health modules can be meaningfully added to multi-purpose household surveys in developing countries, and used to investigate this relationship. Data from nationally representative surveys in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Mexico, along with special surveys from India and Tonga, show similar patterns of association between mental health and socioeconomic characteristics across countries. Individuals who are older, female, widowed, and report poor physical health are more likely to report worse mental health outcomes. Individuals living with others with poor mental health are also significantly more likely to report worse mental health themselves. In contrast, there is little observed relationship between mental health and poverty or education, common measures of socio-economic status. The results instead suggest that economic and multi-dimensional shocks such as illness or crisis can have a greater impact on mental healththan overall levels of poverty. This may have important implications for social protection policy. The authors also find significant associations between poor mental health and lowered labor force participation (especially for women) and higher frequency visits to health centers, suggesting that poor mental health can have significant economic consequences for households and the health system. Finally, the paper discusses how measures of mental health are distinct from general subjective welfare measures such as happiness and indicate useful directions of future research.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Disease Control&Prevention,Gender and Health,Health Systems Development&Reform,Mental Health
A Novel Relay Station Deployment Scheme for beyond 4G Multi-hop Network
No full textAbstractIn Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) and Worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) systems, the coverage area, signal strength and transmission quality are affected by white Gaussian noise, shadowing, wireless interference etc. This effect can be decreased by using more number of evolved NodeBs (eNB), but problem is that eNBs are expensive and it will increase network cost. Relay Stations (RS) are less expensive than eNBs, hence we go for RS deployment instead of eNBs. Thus this paper proposes a cost effective deployment of RSs using dynamic cost based deployment of RS (DCDR) approach. This approach first analyse the impact parameters and then finds the dynamic weighting and network cost for different deployment combination. Simulation result shows that DCDR approach gives a cost effective solution for the deployment of RSs
Experimental Study on the Behavior of One Part Geopolymer Concrete Using Natural Binders and Activators
No full textThe cement industry is one of the primary factors contributing to the process of global warming with a large carbon footprint. Approximately 8% of global CO2 emissions are attributed to cement. The development of cement substitute materials has advanced with the discovery of geopolymer concrete. The conventional geopolymers are two part mixes made up of an activator-containing liquid phase and an aluminum-silicate material-containing solid phase. Among the many benefits of geopolymers are their increased environmental friendliness, better workability, greater compressive strength, increased resistance to sulfate and acids, increased temperature resistance, and decreased drying shrinkage and creep. However, geopolymerization is a difficult procedure. Furthermore, there are still certain drawbacks to geopolymer concrete, such as the fact that alkaline solutions are difficult to handle and apply because they are viscous, corrosive, difficult to transport, as well as challenging to store in huge quantities. As a result, the creation of one-part geopolymer concrete gained more advantages over the traditional two part geopolymer. Solid aluminosilicate and solid alkali activator combine to form one part geopolymer concrete. The creation of one-part geopolymer concrete with natural binders is the primary goal of this research. It should be highlighted that GGBS based geopolymer concrete is challenging to make and has poor workability. As a result, various proportions of GGBS and silica fume are utilized as binders in this experiment. Powdered NaOH is utilized as alkaline activator. The mechanical properties are established by conducting necessary experiments for finding the best concrete mixture for this present work.The concrete mix with 80%, GGBS, 10% silica fume and 10% NaOH exhibits the expected quality of fresh properties and mechanical
characteristics
Day ahead optimal scheduling of an islanded urban micro grid with distributed active generator units
No full textFlocking of egrets in shrimp waste drying beaches of Kerala, India
Get PDFCoastal and sea birds form an integral part of the
marine ecosystem. Though occurrence of different
avian fauna has been reported sporadically, detailed
information on their interactions with the ecosystem
is not extensively studied. Bubul cusibis, known as
the cattle egret is commonly seen in paddy fields
and wetlands in association with grazing cattle to
catch the insects from the grassland being disturbed
by the moving cattle. In a recent survey in central
Kerala, these egrets were seen in flock on the
beaches
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