Premium Copayments and the Trade-off between Wages and Employer-Provided Health Insurance

This paper estimates the trade-off between salary and health insurance costs using data on Illinois school teachers between 1991 and 2008 that allow us to address several common empirical challenges in this literature. We find no evidence that changes in teachers’ salaries respond to changes in insurance cost, but teachers paid about 17 percent of the cost of individual health insurance and about 46 percent of the cost of their family members’ plans through increased premium copayments. Our results indicate that premium increases were not associated with commensurate increases in teachers’ valuation of their health insurance plans

Multiproduct Pricing in Major League Baseball: A Principal Components Analysis

The empirical analysis of multiproduct pricing suffers from a lack of clear theoretical guidance and appropriate data, limitations which often render traditional regression-based analyses impractical. This paper analyzes ticket, parking, and concession pricing in Major League Baseball for the period 1991-2003 using a new methodology based on principal components, which allows inferences to be formed about the factors underlying price variation without strong theoretical guidance or abundant information about costs and demand. While general demand shifts are the most important factor, they explain only half of overall price variation. Also important are price interactions that derive from demand interrelationships between goods and the desire to maximize the capture of consumer surplus in the presence of heterogeneous demand.

Intraseasonal circulation on the Western Antarctic Peninsula Shelf with implications for shelf-slope exchange

The continental shelf on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula is a region of substantial climate and ecosystem change. The Long Term Ecological Research project at Palmer Station has been sampling and studying the shelf ecosystem and physical environment since 1990. This dissertation seeks to improve our understanding of the subtidal and intraseasonal (hereafter defined together as 3-100 days) circulation on the neighboring continental shelf and is particularly motivated by the aims of the project to understand (1) how lateral transports of scalar parameters such as heat affect the vertical stratification and (2) how coastal canyon heads are linked to the larger-scale shelf circulation and why they are such ecologically productive environments. In this dissertation we study: (1) the origin and mixing of mesoscale eddies as agents of heat transport and stirring; (2) the spatial coherence of shelf-scale barotropic velocity fluctuations, their origin through flow-topography interaction with Marguerite Trough Canyon, and their associated heat transports; and (3) the wind-driven dynamics of the long-shore flow manifested through coastal trapped waves and their ability to both induce upwelling at a coastal canyon head and to modulate isopycnal depth at the continental shelf-break. This work takes an observational approach, utilizing the rare and expansive data set afforded by the long-term sampling program including shipboard CTD and ADCP profiles, moored current meter time series, and CTD profiles from an autonomous underwater vehicle

Novel morphological and physiological scaling relationships in the southern red wood ant

Red wood ants (Formica rufa) are visual navigators whose colonies contain workers that differ substantially in size. By investigating the allometry of the ants’ compound eyes, and the regions within them, I showed that facets in particular regions scaled differently: both grade and slope shifts occurred. Facets in some eye regions were absolutely larger than others, while other facet regions scaled at different rates with body size. I next compared eye scaling between nests from the same population. Nevertheless, the method by which ants increased their eye size differed between nests. I found that ants from some nests primarily increased eye size through facet number and others through facet diameter. This showed that scaling rules at the cellular levels can differ even within a single population. Comparisons among Formica species revealed that differential eye scaling was not restricted to just F. rufa. Differential scaling was found in F. sanguinea but not F. lugubris or F. fusca. Surprisingly, scaling between facet diameter and number was conserved across all four species, demonstrating that whole-organ scaling among species can be conservative whilst differing vastly between organ-regions. Moving beyond morphology, I next investigated whether physiological scaling was equally as variable among nests. Metabolic rate scaling was negatively allometric and the same among four nests. Respiratory water loss was found to be determined solely by metabolic rate. Metabolic rate co-varies with different ventilation types, however, switches in ventilation type are driven by movement. This demonstrates that increases in metabolic rate are not sufficient to explain changes in ventilation type but are sufficient to explain respiratory water loss

Studies in acute liver failure

Acute liver failure (ALF) is a devastating condition with a high associated mortality rate. Paracetamol hepatotoxicity remains the leading cause of ALF in the developed world. The studies outlined in this thesis explore the current management of ALF, and systematically review the prognostic tests currently used in paracetamol-induced ALF. Using a database of over 900 acute liver injury patients, the impact of unintentional paracetamol overdose is retrospectively analysed, demonstrating a strong association between this mode of paracetamol overdose and adverse clinical outcomes, including the requirement for emergency orthotopic liver transplantation.Current prognostic tests for severe paracetamol-induced hepatotoxicity have been criticised for their relatively low sensitivity, with the result that not all patients who might benefit from tertiary level care are identified. This thesis demonstrates that the development of the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) or extrahepatic organ failure is strongly associated with death following paracetamol overdose. Due to their very high sensitivity in this condition, both the SIRS and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores have potential as future gatekeepers to improve the triage of paracetamol overdose patients, thereby delivering tertiary level care to those most likely to require emergency transplantation.A greater understanding of the pathophysiological links between the initial hepatic injury and development of the SIRS could help to identify novel biomarkers for ALF, and help guide future therapeutic avenues. Using serum samples from a prospectively collected cohort of acute liver injury patients, this thesis identifies two novel biomarkers, serum ferritin and the long pentraxin PTX3, which show a strong association with outcome following paracetamol hepatotoxicity. These biomarkers illustrate the importance that the innate immune system plays in the pathogenesis of paracetamol-induced ALF, and identifies several exciting areas for future cellular and animal-based studies

Performance Hero

The Guitar Hero series of video games and their spin-offs have provided millions with a new way to interact with music. These games are not only culturally significant but also philosophically significant. Based on the way that these games allow people to interact with music we must decide that either playing a song in one of these games can be a legitimate performance of that song or that our current accounts of performance are inadequate

On Canon

Canon is a concept from aesthetics that has become a regular subject of commonplace discussions. The nature of canon, especially as it is used in these commonplace discussions, has not been subject to adequate philosophical scrutiny. We attempt to remedy that by placing canon in its historical and philosophical context, exploring and rejecting several common accounts, and presenting some basics of how canon works. We reject the accounts that place control with the author or the legal property holder, which appear to be the most commonly held accounts

DNA barcodes confirm the taxonomic and conservation status of a species of tree on the brink of extinction in the Pacific

The taxonomic status of a single island, narrow range endemic plant species from Palau, Micronesia (Timonius salsedoi) was assessed using DNA barcode markers, additional plastid loci, and morphology in order to verify its conservation status. DNA barcode loci distinguished T. salsedoi from all other Timonius species sampled from Palau, and were supported by sequence data from the atpB-rbcL intergenic spacer region. Timonius salsedoi was only known from two mature individual trees in 2012. Due to its extremely narrow range and population size, it had previously been recommended to be listed as Critically Endangered Status under three separate IUCN Criteria. In 2014 a second survey of the population following a typhoon revealed that the only two known trees had died suggesting that this species may now be extinct. Comprehensive follow up surveys of suitable habitat for this species are urgently required