Intergenerational persistence in health in developing countries : the penalty of gender inequality?

This paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes. This paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health. It uses comparable microdata on as many as 2.24 million children born of about 0.6 million mothers in 38 developing countries in the 31 year period, 1970–2000. Mother's health is indicated by her height, BMI and anemia status. Child health is indicated by mortality risk and anthropometric failure. We find a positive relationship between maternal and child health across indicators and highlight non-linearities in these relationships. The results suggest that both contemporary and childhood health of the mother matter and that the benefits to the next generation are likely to be persistent. Averaging across the sample, persistence shows a considerable decline over time. Disaggregation shows that the decline is only significant in Latin America. Persistence has remained largely constant in Asia and has risen in Africa. The paper provides the first cross-country estimates of the intergenerational persistence in health and the first estimates of trends.

Three-dimensional finite element analysis of MHD duct flow by the penalty function formulation

A numerical scheme based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) is presented to calculate the full solution of a three-dimensional steady magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow with moderately high Hartmann numbers and interaction parameters. An incompressible, viscous and electrically conducting liquid-metal is considered. Assuming a low magnetic Reynolds number, the solution method solves the coupled Navier-Stokes and Maxwell's equations through the use of a penalty function method. Results are presented for Hartmann numbers in the range 10(2)-10(3).

Penalty-based nonlinear solver for optimal reactive power dispatch with discrete controls

The optimal reactive dispatch problem is a nonlinear programming problem containing continuous and discrete control variables. Owing to the difficulty caused by discrete variables, this problem is usually solved assuming all variables as continuous variables, therefore the original discrete variables are rounded off to the closest discrete value. This approach may provide solutions far from optimal or even unfeasible solutions. This paper presents an efficient handling of discrete variables by penalty function so that the problem becomes continuous and differentiable. Simulations with the IEEE test systems were performed showing the efficiency of the proposed approach. © 1969-2012 IEEE.

Arbitrage-Free Conditions and Hedging Strategies for Markets with Penalty Costs on Short Positions

We consider a discrete-time financial model in a general sample space with penalty costs on short positions. We consider a friction market closely related to the standard one except that withdrawals from the portfolio value proportional to short positions are made. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the nonexistence of arbitrages in this situation and for a self-financing strategy to replicate a contingent claim. For the finite-sample space case, this result leads to an explicit and constructive procedure for obtaining perfect hedging strategies.

Augmented Lagrangian method with nonmonotone penalty parameters for constrained optimization

At each outer iteration of standard Augmented Lagrangian methods one tries to solve a box-constrained optimization problem with some prescribed tolerance. In the continuous world, using exact arithmetic, this subproblem is always solvable. Therefore, the possibility of finishing the subproblem resolution without satisfying the theoretical stopping conditions is not contemplated in usual convergence theories. However, in practice, one might not be able to solve the subproblem up to the required precision. This may be due to different reasons. One of them is that the presence of an excessively large penalty parameter could impair the performance of the box-constraint optimization solver. In this paper a practical strategy for decreasing the penalty parameter in situations like the one mentioned above is proposed. More generally, the different decisions that may be taken when, in practice, one is not able to solve the Augmented Lagrangian subproblem will be discussed. As a result, an improved Augmented Lagrangian method is presented, which takes into account numerical difficulties in a satisfactory way, preserving suitable convergence theory. Numerical experiments are presented involving all the CUTEr collection test problems.

The boundedness of penalty parameters in an augmented Lagrangian method with constrained subproblems

Augmented Lagrangian methods are effective tools for solving large-scale nonlinear programming problems. At each outer iteration, a minimization subproblem with simple constraints, whose objective function depends on updated Lagrange multipliers and penalty parameters, is approximately solved. When the penalty parameter becomes very large, solving the subproblem becomes difficult; therefore, the effectiveness of this approach is associated with the boundedness of the penalty parameters. In this paper, it is proved that under more natural assumptions than the ones employed until now, penalty parameters are bounded. For proving the new boundedness result, the original algorithm has been slightly modified. Numerical consequences of the modifications are discussed and computational experiments are presented.

Differential effects of task-specific practice on performance in a simulated penalty kick under high-pressure

Objectives The current study investigated to what extent task-specific practice can help reduce the adverse effects of high-pressure on performance in a simulated penalty kick task. Based on the assumption that practice attenuates the required attentional resources, it was hypothesized that task-specific practice would enhance resilience against high-pressure. Method Participants practiced a simulated penalty kick in which they had to move a lever to the side opposite to the goalkeeper's dive. The goalkeeper moved at different times before ball-contact. Design Before and after task-specific practice, participants were tested on the same task both under low- and high-pressure conditions. Results Before practice, performance of all participants worsened under high-pressure; however, whereas one group of participants merely required more time to correctly respond to the goalkeeper movement and showed a typical logistic relation between the percentage of correct responses and the time available to respond, a second group of participants showed a linear relationship between the percentage of correct responses and the time available to respond. This implies that they tended to make systematic errors for the shortest times available. Practice eliminated the debilitating effects of high-pressure in the former group, whereas in the latter group high-pressure continued to negatively affect performance. Conclusions Task-specific practice increased resilience to high-pressure. However, the effect was a function of how participants responded initially to high-pressure, that is, prior to practice. The results are discussed within the framework of attentional control theory (ACT).