Keeping up with the Joneses and staying ahead of the Smiths: evidence from suicide data

This paper empirically assesses the theory of interpersonal income comparison using a unique data set on suicide deaths in the United States. We treat suicide as a choice variable, conditional on exogenous risk factors, reflecting one's assessment of current and expected future utility. Using this framework we examine whether differences in group-specific suicide rates are systematically related to income dispersion, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics and income level. The results strongly support the notion that individuals consider relative income in addition to absolute income when evaluating their own utility. Importantly, the findings suggest that relative income affects utility in a two-sided manner, meaning that individuals care about the incomes of those above them (the Joneses) and those below them (the Smiths). Our results complement and extend those from studies using subjective survey data or data from controlled experiments.Income distribution

Happiness, unhappiness, and suicide: an empirical assessment

The use of subjective well-being (SWB) data for investigating the nature of individual preferences has increased tremendously in recent years. There has been much debate about the cross-sectional and time series patterns found in these data, particularly with respect to the relationship between SWB and relative status. Part of this debate concerns how well SWB data measures true utility or preferences. In a recent paper, Daly, Wilson, and Johnson (2007) propose using data on suicide as a revealed preference (outcome-based) measure of well-being and find strong evidence that reference-group income negatively affects suicide risk. In this paper, we compare and contrast the empirical patterns of SWB and suicide data. We find that the two have very little in common in aggregate data (time series and cross-sectional), but have a strikingly strong relationship in terms of their determinants in individual-level, multivariate regressions. ; This latter result cross-validates suicide and SWB micro data as useful and complementary indicators of latent utility.Happiness ; Suicide

Synchronization issues of the parallel A* Search

Thesis (B.S. and M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 29).An experimental study was carried out on the performance of synchronous and asynchronous implementations of the A* Search on a multiprocessor network. Master-Slave parallelism was used to distribute the Search among the 8 processor nodes of a transputer network. The test programs were run on 4 different types of maps. Measurements were taken in the form of percentages of time spent in computation and communication in each cycle of the search as an artificial delay in the computation phase was increased. The results from the map tests showed that the asynchronous implementation spent a larger percentage of each cycle performing calculations rather than communicating or waiting for communications as the artificial delay was increased. This means that the efficiency of the asynchronous approach increases more rapidly than the efficiency of the synchronous approach as the computational complexity of a parallel program is increased. This was found to be true for all artificial delays on all test maps for the Master-Slave A* Search. The results might vary with different implementations and search methodologies.by Daniel Cameron Daly.B.S.and M.S

The cycle of the seasons in selected works of Willa Cather

Willa Cather’s reputation as a coherent symbolist needs no real amplification. Starting with O Pioneers!, her novels are emphatic manifestations of her artistic use of symbolism. Cather\u27s poems and short stories are in some cases earlier evidence of her skill in this area. Moreover, a clearly observable pattern of symbolism, motif-like in its coherency and regularity, manifests itself throughout her works. Cather, and her poetry, short fiction, and novels, exhibits a sensitivity to the seasonal cycle, an attention which exerts a strong influence upon the total meaning of her art

Stratigraphy and depositional environments of the Fox Hills Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Bowman County, North Dakota

The sedimentary structures, trace fossils, and lithology of the Upper Cretaceous Fox Hills Formation in Bowman County, North Dakota, were studied during the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1983. Twenty-three stratigraphic sections were measured and described and lithologic samples were collected for textural and mineralogical analysis, also, the major outcrops of the formation in the Dakotas and Montana were visited. The formation in the study area was previously defined as a 27-mthick sandstone unit, containing three members--ascending, Trail City, Timber Lake, and Colgate--that was conformable with the underlying Pierre and overlying Hell Creek Formations. The Fox Hills, as here defined, is a tabular, upward-coarsening unit, typically 37 m thick, of a newly included 10-m-thick basal silt-clay unit and an overlying unit of muddy, subarkosic to sublithic, very fine to medium sand that represents the formation as previously defined. The conformable Pierre-Fox Hills contact marks the horizon above which: clay changes to silt-clay; mixed or interbedded strata occur; and trace fossils become plentiful. The Hell Creek-Fox Hills contact remains at the base of the lowest substantial carbonaceous bed. The Fox Hills Formation contains three membem, that correspond to three sedimentary structure facies, as follows (from the base): Trail City Member (massive-hummocky facies; 10 m thick); Timber Lake Member (hummocky bedded facies; 19-22 m): and Colgate Member (crossxiii bedded facies; 6-9 m). The Trail City and Timber Lake Members (lower Fox Hills), dominated by hummocky bedding, contain a limited suite of trace fossils; two species of the trace fossil Ophiomorpha are the most abundant. The Colgate Member (upper Fox Hills), separated from the strata below by an erosional surface, contains root molds and leaves at its upper contact with the Hell Creek. The Fox Hills Formation in Bowman County differs from that in the type area in South Dakota in that hummocky bedding is plentiful, the strata are one-third as thick, body fossils are absent, and the Bullhead strata are absent. In a model based on the storm-origin interpretation of hummocky bedding and the occurrence of trace fossils, the Fox Hills Formation represents shallow marine regressional deposits, predominately of storm origin, that were laid down in depths of less than 37 m, on a broad shelf, marginal and seaward of the advancing Hell Creek delta system. Deposition occurred: (1) steadily, from suspension fallout, on the outer shelf (Trail City Member); (2) episodically, in the wake of storms, on the inner shelf (Trail City and Timber Lake Members); and (3) continually by currentdominated shoreline or tidal(?) channel processes (Colgate Member). In contrast to the depositional conditions that existed later to the east in the type area (i.e., deep water and subsidence or sea level rise), deposition on the southwest basin rim was characterized by rapid progradation over a shallow shelf under local tectonic quiescence