An Empirical Study of the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis, National Savings, and Interest Rates

This study examines the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis by testing the correlation between net government savings and its effect on yields of Treasury bills, bonds, and notes. The United States federal government has borrowed extensively in recent years to finance stimulus projects and to make up for the lost government revenue due to the 2008-2009 recession. In addition, the government will have to increase debt held by the public to finance the $4.5 trillion in intragovernmental holdings which are needed to finance Medicare and Social Security. Running a time-series ordinary least squared regression, I examined Treasury yields with maturity dates from one month to thirty years. I used quarterly data of Treasury yields from the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis and macroeconomic data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis was examined going back to the year 1962. The Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis was validated to an extent, with net government savings having a combined contemporary and one year lag effect of -0.618 on net private savings. Upon running multiple regressions, I could not establish a significant relationship between net government savings (either in a contemporary or previous period) and Treasury interest rates for any Treasury security, indicating that the crowding out effect does not necessarily have as strong of an effect on the private bond market

Low level remote sensing: The Doppler Radar wind profiler

Mesoscale phenomena such as thunderstorm and sea breeze frontal circulations are being investigated using a 50 MHz Doppler wind profiler at the Kennedy Space Center. The profiler installation will begin October 1, 1988 and will be completed by February 17, 1989. The focus of current research and plans for next year include: examination of vertical velocities associated with local thunderstorm activity and sea breeze frontal circulations and compare the vertical velocities to conceptual mesoscale models; implementation of space-time conversion analysis techniques to blend profiler data with National Meteorological Center's model output and other wind data such as jimsphere, windsonde and rawinsonde for mesoscale analysis; development of suggestions for use of wind profiler data in mesoscale analysis and forecasting at Kennedy Space Center; and problems detection in the quality of the profiler data during this research project. Researchers will work closely with MSFC to identify and solve the data quality problems

Self-selection of animal by-product by poultry through utilization of choice feeding

"The emergence of animal welfare provisions by humane societies has limited management practices. One of these provisions is the animal's freedom to express normal behavior. Animal by-product feeding to livestock and poultry is a common management practice and it is stigmatized in the public eye and some animal welfare activists. Certification processes by organizations like the Humane Farm Animal Care association are trying to remove the use of animal by-products from animal feed and move to more "vegetarian diets" due to the belief that the consumption of animal by-product is not part of the animal's normal behavior. In the United States, animal by-product is everything produced by the animal except for the dressed meat which is used for human consumption (Jayathilakan, 2011). Animal by-products have a variety of uses, in both edible and inedible forms. In the agriculture industry, all the animal is utilized to maximize profits and minimize waste. ... Choice feeding allows for animals to express normal behavior, which is important in today's societal climate where pressure to change animal welfare standards is prevalent. The freedom to express normal behavior falls under one of the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare (Farm Animal Welfare Council). With increasing competitiveness of the poultry industry, the need to cut costs while maximizing feed efficiency and growth of the animals is a recurring theme. Use of animal by-products allows for efficient production of poultry. Use of animal by-products is a cheap and effective alternative to plant-based protein sources in the feed industry. Additionally, the importance of utilizing animal by-products is undervalued as it impacts several industries outside animal feed. Allowing poultry to choose between various feed ingredients including animal by-products should be considered an expression of normal behavior."--IntroductionIncludes bibliographical reference

Black hole evolution by spectral methods

Current methods of evolving a spacetime containing one or more black holes are plagued by instabilities that prohibit long-term evolution. Some of these instabilities may be due to the numerical method used, traditionally finite differencing. In this paper, we explore the use of a pseudospectral collocation (PSC) method for the evolution of a spherically symmetric black hole spacetime in one dimension using a hyperbolic formulation of Einstein's equations. We demonstrate that our PSC method is able to evolve a spherically symmetric black hole spacetime forever without enforcing constraints, even if we add dynamics via a Klein-Gordon scalar field. We find that, in contrast to finite-differencing methods, black hole excision is a trivial operation using PSC applied to a hyperbolic formulation of Einstein's equations. We discuss the extension of this method to three spatial dimensions.Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures, submitted to PR

Treatment Response of Opium Smoking Hmong Refugees to Methadone Maintenance

Objective: To examine the outcome of methadone maintenance in opium dependent Hmong refugees. Methods: Medical records were searched for Hmong patients in methadone treatment between 01/1995 and 09/1997. Patient\u27s progress was assessed over nine months. Results: 44 Hmong patients were found. Data was available on 40 patients, mean age of 47.7 years, 33 males/7 females. At admission 100% met the DSM-IV criteria for Opium Dependence, 75% Major Depressive Disorder and 68% PTSD. Patients showed marked improvement by having mostly negative urine drug screens, improvement on Addiction Severity Index and 70% being highly successful on outcome criteria modified by Drug Abuse Research Project over 9 months. Conclusions: These findings suggest that opium dependent Hmong patients can show marked improvement while in methadone maintenance program. Prospective controlled studies are warranted

Radiculopathy and myelopathy at segments adjacent to the site of a previous anterior cervical arthrodesis.

BACKGROUND: We studied the incidence, prevalence, and radiographic progression of symptomatic adjacent-segment disease, which we defined as the development of new radiculopathy or myelopathy referable to a motion segment adjacent to the site of a previous anterior arthrodesis of the cervical spine. METHODS: A consecutive series of 374 patients who had a total of 409 anterior cervical arthrodeses for the treatment of cervical spondylosis with radiculopathy or myelopathy, or both, were followed for a maximum of twenty-one years after the operation. The annual incidence of symptomatic adjacent-segment disease was defined as the percentage of patients who had been disease-free at the start of a given year of follow-up in whom new disease developed during that year. The prevalence was defined as the percentage of all patients in whom symptomatic adjacent-segment disease developed within a given period of follow-up. The natural history of the disease was predicted with use of a Kaplan-Meier survivorship analysis. The hypothesis that new disease at an adjacent level is more likely to develop following a multilevel arthrodesis than it is following a single-level arthrodesis was tested with logistic regression. RESULTS: Symptomatic adjacent-segment disease occurred at a relatively constant incidence of 2.9 percent per year (range, 0.0 to 4.8 percent per year) during the ten years after the operation. Survivorship analysis predicted that 25.6 percent of the patients (95 percent confidence interval, 20 to 32 percent) who had an anterior cervical arthrodesis would have new disease at an adjacent level within ten years after the operation. There were highly significant differences among the motion segments with regard to the likelihood of symptomatic adjacent-segment disease (p CONCLUSIONS: Symptomatic adjacent-segment disease may affect more than one-fourth of all patients within ten years after an anterior cervical arthrodesis. A single-level arthrodesis involving the fifth or sixth cervical vertebra and preexisting radiographic evidence of degeneration at adjacent levels appear to be the greatest risk factors for new disease. Therefore, we believe that all degenerated segments causing radiculopathy or myelopathy should be included in an anterior cervical arthrodesis. Although our findings suggest that symptomatic adjacent-segment disease is the result of progressive spondylosis, patients should be informed of the substantial possibility that new disease will develop at an adjacent level over the long term

Reliability and validity of brief psychosocial measures related to dietary behaviors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Measures of psychosocial constructs are required to assess dietary interventions. This study evaluated brief psychosocial scales related to 4 dietary behaviors (consumption of fat, fiber/whole grains, fruits, and vegetables).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Two studies were conducted. Study 1 assessed two-week reliability of the psychosocial measures with a sample of 49 college students. Study 2 assessed convergent and discriminant validity of the psychosocial measures with dietary nutrient estimates from a Food Frequency Questionnaire on 441 men and 401 women enrolled in an Internet-based weight loss intervention study.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Study 1 test-retest reliability ICCs were strong and ranged from .63 to .79. In study 2, dietary fat cons, fiber/whole grain cons and self-efficacy, fruit and vegetable cons and self-efficacy, and healthy eating social support, environmental factors, enjoyment, and change strategies demonstrated adequate correlations with the corresponding dietary nutrient estimates.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Brief psychosocial measures related to dietary behaviors demonstrated adequate reliability and in most cases validity. The strongest and most consistent scales related to dietary behaviors were healthy eating change strategies and enjoyment. Consistent convergent validity was also found for the cons of change scales. These measures can be used in intervention studies to evaluate psychosocial mediators of dietary change in overweight and obese individuals.</p

Wood dynamics in headwater streams of the Colorado Rocky Mountains

Peer reviewedPublisher PD