Toward establishing a universal basic health norm.

Vast improvements in human health have been made during the past century. Indeed, gains in increased life expectancy and reduced physical impediments for much of the population were greater than in any previous century. Yet the gains were not uniform across the world or even within individual countries. The variations in health status among people cannot for the most part be explained through genetic differences. Instead, in most instances the variations in the last century and at the turn of the current century correspond to the variations in the distribution of control over material resources.</jats:p

Electronic Transport and Thermopower in 2D and 3D Heterostructures--A Theory Perspective

In this review, we discuss the impact of interfaces and heterojuctions on the electronic and thermoelectric transport properties of materials. We review recent progress in understanding electronic transport in two-dimensional (2D) materials ranging from graphene to transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), their homojunctions (grain boundaries), lateral heterojunctions (such as graphene/MoS$_2$ lateral interfaces), and vertical van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures. We also review work in thermoelectric properties of 2D heterojunctions, as well as their applications in creating devices such as resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs). Lastly, we turn our focus to work in three-dimensional (3D) heterostructures. While transport in 3D heterostructures has been researched for several decades, here we review recent progress in theory and simulation of quantum effects on transport via the Wigner and non-equilibrium Green's functions (NEGF) approaches. These simulation techniques have been successfully applied toward understanding the impact of heterojunctions on the thermoelectric properties, with applications in energy harvesting, and electron resonant tunneling, with applications in RTDs. We conclude that tremendous progress has been made in both simulation and experiments toward the goal of understanding transport in heterostructures and this progress will soon be parlayed into improved energy converters and quantum nanoelectronic devices.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, review article, v2 expanded the figure

Impact of Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes on Seasonal Labor Markets: Optimum Compensation and Workers' Welfare

The recent enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India has been widely hailed a policy that provides a safety net for the rural poor with the potential to boost rural income, stabilize agricultural production and reduce rural-urban migration. This paper, models the impact of such employment guarantee schemes in the context of an agrarian economy characterized by lean season involuntary unemployment as a consequence of tied-labor contracts. Specifically, we examine labor and output market responses to a productive rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) and determine the optimal compensation to public work employees consistent with the objectives of (i) productive efficiency in agriculture and (ii) welfare maximization of the laborers. Our framework provides a theoretical framework for the evaluation of a number of (sometimes) conflicting observations and empirical results on the impact of an EGS on agricultural wages, employment and output, and underscores the importance of the relative productivity of workers in the EGS program vis-à-vis their counterparts engaged in agricultural production in determining the success of these programs.labor contracts, rural unemployment, employment guarantee schemes, public input, optimal wage

Hydraulic Jump in One-dimensional Flow

In the presence of viscosity the hydraulic jump in one dimension is seen to be a first-order transition. A scaling relation for the position of the jump has been determined by applying an averaging technique on the stationary hydrodynamic equations. This gives a linear height profile before the jump, as well as a clear dependence of the magnitude of the jump on the outer boundary condition. The importance of viscosity in the jump formation has been convincingly established, and its physical basis has been understood by a time-dependent analysis of the flow equations. In doing so, a very close correspondence has been revealed between a perturbation equation for the flow rate and the metric of an acoustic white hole. We finally provide experimental support for our heuristically developed theory.Comment: 17 Pages, 8 Figures, 1 Table. To appear in European Physical Journal