An Assessment of Health-Economic Burden of Obesity Trends with Population-Based Preventive Strategies in a Developed Economy

The burden of obesity varies with age, ethnicity, socio-economic status and state economies. All new projections should hence accommodate population ageing, and other population changes such as immigration, health-care system reform, or technological advances for disease treatment for a comprehensible assessment of global burden. The unfordable and expensive nature for reversing the obesity tide arises from policies developed to combat obesity. Most of these approaches aim at bringing the problem under control, rather than affecting a cure, and obviously require a multi-disciplinary and intensive regimen. Prevention is the only feasible option and is essential for all affected countries. Yet it is not simple to have population based UK-wide strategic framework for tackling obesity. Besides existence of multiple layers of governance, there are clear demarcations between targets in diet; nutrition and physical activity level between regions some of which are not realistic. Population based approaches target policies and process, aiming for a transition towards healthy population diets, activity levels and weight status. It is essential to understand these aspects differ culturally and between and within countries. There are still no clear and appropriate answers about answer when, where, why, and, how costs accrue in obese populations, further long term commitments are required for the same. Most population-based prevention policies are cost effective, largely paying for themselves through future health gains and resulting reductions in health expenditures. Therefore these prevention programs should be high on the scientific and political agendas

Indo-US FTA: Prospects for the Telecommunication Sector

Since telecommunication is one of the main drivers of economic growth and globalization, WTO (World Trade Organization) negotiations and New Age FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) have focused on liberalizing trade in this sector. The present paper analyses the possibilities of liberalizing trade in telecommunication services if India and its largest trading partner-the US-enter into a bilateral agreement. The study found that India and the US have trade complementarities in telecommunication services and that it should be a priority sector in the FTA negotiations. The study identified certain areas such as R&D related to telecommunication and broadband infrastructure where collaboration between companies of both countries would be mutually beneficial. The study found that telecommunication services have been significantly liberalized in the US FTAs-much beyond the scope of the GATS and the Reference Paper on Basic Telecommunications. While the current policy regime in India is consistent with some of the requests made by the US in its bilateral negotiations, for meeting others, the policy regime needs to be examined and, if required, reformed. The present paper suggests certain reforms which would enhance the productivity, efficiency and global competitiveness of the sector and enable the country to benefit from the bilateral liberalization.Indo-US FTA, GATS, bilateral agreements, telecommunication, services

Constructing Truth in The Waste Land

This paper won a third place writing flag award in the critical/persuasive category. Prerna Sachdeva, writing for David Kornhaber’s E 343L class, “Modernism and Literature”.Kornhaber, DavidUndergraduate Studie

Re-enterant efficiency of phototaxis in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cells

Phototaxis is one of the most fundamental stimulus-response behaviors in biology wherein motile micro-organisms sense light gradients to swim towards the light source. Apart from single cell survival and growth, it plays a major role at the global scale of aquatic ecosystem and bio-reactors. We study photoaxis of single celled algae Chalmydomonas reinhardtii as a function of cell number density and light stimulus using high spatio-temporal video microscopy. Surprisingly, the phototactic efficiency has a minimum at a well-defined number density, for a given light gradient, above which the phototaxis behaviour of collection of cells can even exceed the performance obtainable from single isolated cells. We show that the origin of enhancement of performance above the critical concentration lies in the slowing down of the cells which enables them to sense light more effectively. We also show that this steady state phenomenology is well captured by a modelling the phototactic response as a density dependent torque acting on an active Brownian particle

Stochastic Phase Segregation on Surfaces

Phase separation and coarsening is a phenomenon commonly seen in binary physical and chemical systems that occur in nature. Often times, thermal fluctuations, modeled as stochastic noise, are present in the system and the phase segregation process occurs on a surface. In this work, the segregation process is modeled via the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook model, which is a fourth-order parabolic stochastic system. Coarsening is analyzed on two sample surfaces: a unit sphere and a dumbbell using a variety and a statistical analysis of the growth rate is performed. The influence of noise level and mobility is also investigated. It is also shown that a log-normal distribution fits the results well