The Role of Compensation in Nicotine Reduction.

The available research on switching from normal nicotine to very low nicotine content cigarettes shows minimal evidence of compensatory smoking. Mathematical estimations suggest that substantial compensation after switching to very low nicotine cigarettes would be impossible. It is likely that smokers who are unable to tolerate the extent of proposed nicotine reduction would switch to other sources of nicotine, rather than try to compensate by smoking more very low nicotine content cigarettes more intensely

The Economics of Groundwater Governance Institutions Around the Globe

This article provides an economic framework for understanding and evaluating groundwater governance across the globe. We provide an assessment of groundwater management along three dimensions: characteristics of the groundwater resource; externality problems; and governance institutions. We examine 10 basins located on six continents which vary in terms of intensity and type of water demand, hydrogeological properties, climate, and social and institutional traditions via an integrated assessment along three dimensions: characteristics of the groundwater resource; externality problems; and governance institutions. Our framework suggests these characteristics, along with the high cost of governance, have left many basins in a state of de facto open access. However, governance of the highest value water resources suggest that rules can emerge at relatively low costs that partially address externality problems. We identify these conditions and discuss key challenges and opportunities for additional research

A Guide to Municipal Water Conservation Pricing in Utah

This fact sheet provides information on the use of price to encourage water conservation in Utah

Water Scarcity and Water Markets: A Comparison of Institutions and Practices in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia and the Western US

Water markets in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and the US west are compared in terms of their ability to allocate scarce water resources among competing uses. Both locations have been in the forefront of the development of water markets with defined water rights and conveyance structures to assist in the reallocation of water across competing demands. They also share the challenge of managing water with climate variability and climate change. As these two markets occur in developed, wealthy countries, their experiences in water markets with different water rights (appropriative, riparian and statutory rights) provide ‘best-case’ scenarios of what institutional arrangements work best, indicate which are less effective, and demonstrate what might be possible for greater use of water markets elsewhere in the world. The paper finds that the gains from trade in the MDB is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in per year, total turnover in water rights exceeds $2 billion per year and the volume of trade accounts for over 20$4.3 billion (2008 $) spent or committed by urban buyers between 1987 and 2008. Despite the clear benefits of water markets in both locations, there are on-going restrictions to trade that limit the potential gains and also third-party effects from use that require resolution.

A Comparative Assessment of Water Markets: Insights from the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia and the Western US

Water markets in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and the US west are compared in terms of their ability to allocate scarce water resources. The study finds that the gains from trade in the MDB are worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Total market turnover in water rights exceeds $2 billion per year while the volume of trade exceeds over 20$4.3 billion (2008 $) spent or committed by urban buyers between 1987 and 2008. The two-market comparison suggests that policy attention should be directed towards ways to promote water trade while simultaneously mitigating the legitimate thirdparty concerns about how and where water is used, especially conflicts between consumptive and in situ uses of water. The study finds that institutional innovation is feasible in both countries and that further understanding about the size, duration, and distribution of third-party effects from water trade, and how these effects might be regulated, can improve water markets to better manage water scarcity.water markets, US west, Murray-Darling Basin, gains from trade

Annual Timing of Elk Abortions and Potential Brucellosis Risk

The transmission of Brucella abortus, the bacteria causing brucellosis, occurs through abortion events. In this study, we investigated the timing of those abortion events using vaginal implant transmitters (VITs) in pregnant elk (Cervus elaphus) from the Jackson and Pinedale regions of Wyoming. From 2006 to 2013, we captured 463 pregnant female elk and 136 of those were seropositive (29%, 95% CI = [25, 34]). We had a total of 29 abortion events with 20 percent (95%CI = [13, 29]) of seropositive elk aborting compared to 2.2 percent (95% CI =[0.8, 4.5]) of seronegative elk aborting. VIT data are left-truncated, right and interval censored. We analyzed these data in a Bayesian framework borrowing from the survival analysis literature to estimate the baseline hazard and how it changes during the year. When we conducted a joint analysis of both abortions and births our preliminary results indicated that elk abortions are concentrated in March and April. Only three abortions occurred after 20 May  and one may have occurred as late as 10 July. These results are relevant to mitigating the risk of transmission between elk and cattle. Future work can build upon these results to assess the amount of brucellosis transmission risk during the winter on private land compared to public grazing allotments, which are used later in the year

Avian Hosts for West Nile Virus in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, 2002

West Nile virus (WNV) infections in free-ranging birds were studied in Slidell, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, after a human encephalitis outbreak peaked there in July 2002. Seroprevalence in resident, free-ranging wild birds in one suburban site was 25% and 24% in August and October, respectively, indicating that most transmission had ceased by early August. Mortality rates, seroprevalence rates, host competence, and crude population estimates were used in mathematical models to predict actual infection rates, population impacts, and importance as amplifying hosts for several common passerine birds. Northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) and house sparrow (Passer domesticus) were the principal amplifying hosts, but blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) and northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) also contributed. The blue jay population was reduced by an estimated 47%. A variety of passerine bird species combined to play an important role as amplifying hosts in the WNV transmission cycle

Direct Measurement of Interstellar Extinction toward Young Stars Using Atomic Hydrogen Lyα Absorption

Interstellar reddening corrections are necessary to reconstruct the intrinsic spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of accreting protostellar systems. The stellar SED determines the heating and chemical processes that can occur in circumstellar disks. Measurement of neutral hydrogen absorption against broad Lyα emission profiles in young stars can be used to obtain the total H i column density (N(H i)) along the line of sight. We measure N(H i) with new and archival ultraviolet observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of 31 classical T Tauri and Herbig Ae/Be stars. The H i column densities range from log_10(N(H i)) ≈19.6–21.1, with corresponding visual extinctions of A_V =0.02–0.72 mag, assuming an RV of 3.1. We find that the majority of the H i absorption along the line of sight likely comes from interstellar rather than circumstellar material. Extinctions derived from new HST blue-optical spectral analyses, previous IR and optical measurements, and new X-ray column densities on average overestimate the interstellar extinction toward young stars compared to the N(H i) values by ~0.6 mag. We discuss possible explanations for this discrepancy in the context of a protoplanetary disk geometry

Green's function probe of a static granular piling

We present an experiment which aim is to investigate the mechanical properties of a static granular assembly. The piling is an horizontal 3D granular layer confined in a box, we apply a localized extra force at the surface and the spatial distribution of stresses at the bottom is obtained (the mechanical Green's function). For different types of granular media, we observe a linear pressure response which profile shows one peak centered at the vertical of the point of application. The peak's width increases linearly when increasing the depth. This green function seems to be in -at least- qualitative agreement with predictions of elastic theory.Comment: 9 pages, 3 .eps figures, submitted to PR