Taxation and regulation of smoking, drinking and gambling in the European Union

Smoking is the single largest cause of avoidable death in the European Union accounting for over half a million deaths each year. One in ten of all 11-year olds have been drunk twice or more times, possibly causing lasting physical and mental harm. Electronic gaming machines are the crack cocaine of gambling. Consumer sovereignty, on the other hand, indicates that people should be allowed to smoke as long as they do not harm others. There is sound medical evidence, furthermore, that a drink each day keeps the doctor away, while recreational gambling can be an enjoyable form of entertainment for many people. These and other salient facts about the harmful and positive effects of smoking, drinking and gambling provide the background for a dispassionate economic analysis of the taxation and regulation of these activities. The main message the studies convey is that it would be unrealistic to rely solely on duty levels and differentiation to curb abusive use. Duty levels do have a clear impact in restraining consumption by children and young adults - an important priority for policy. But complementary policies - including direct regulation and provision of information - also have a meaningful role to play in each of the markets for tobacco, alcohol and gambling.

Spitzer Mid-Infrared Imaging of Nearby Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies

We have observed 14 nearby (z<0.16) Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs) with Spitzer at 3.6-24 microns. The underlying host galaxies are well-detected, in addition to the luminous nuclear cores. While the spatial resolution of Spitzer is poor, the great sensitivity of the data reveals the underlying galaxy merger remnant, and provides the first look at off-nuclear mid-infrared activity.Comment: To appear in the conference proceedings for Spitzer New Views of the Universe, held Nov. 2004 in Pasadena, C

Soil Modification as a Restoration Tool to Reduce Old World Bluestems in Texas Coastal Prairies

Nonnative Old World bluestem (OWB) grasses (e.g., Bothriochloas, Dichanthium spp.) have become dominant throughout the southern and central Great Plains, altering native plant communities and habitat quality for wildlife. Although conventional management strategies have not resulted in elimination or reduction of these grasses, modifying soil conditions to favor native plants may be an alternative restoration tool. We examined efficacy of 10 soil modification treatments (soil disturbance alone, pH increase, pH reduction, carbon addition, addition of soil mycorrhizae, and each combined with seeding of native vegetation) on 60 research plots at the Welder Wildlife Foundation Refuge in southern Texas in summer 2011. We sampled soil chemistry, vegetation density, cover, and height, and abundance of soil, terrestrial, and flying arthropods four and eight weeks after initial treatments. Severe drought prevented plant growth on treated plots and may have decreased the efficacy of soil treatments, especially pH reduction. As such, we compared vegetation and arthropod communities only between undisturbed plots dominated by native vegetation and dominated by OWBs. Species richness of vegetation was higher on plots dominated by native vegetation (4.4 species/m2, SE = 0.6) compared to plots dominated by OWBs (2 species/m2, SE = 0.5). Arthropods were more abundant in native vegetation (175 individuals/m2, SE = 4.1) relative to OWB-dominated plant communities (41, 1.3). Isopods and ants were the most abundant groups overall, although some of these taxa are nonnative. We will continue to collect data over the next two years to explore further soil modification as a restoration tool in grasslands impacted by OWBs

Decreased Plant and Arthropod Richness in Landscapes Dominated by Old World Bluestem Grasses: Implications for Wildlife

Old World bluestem grasses (OWBs, e.g., Bothriochloa, Dichanthium spp.) have become dominant throughout the southern and central Great Plains, altering native plant communities with concomitant effects for native wildlife. We examined plant and arthropod communities in areas dominated by native plants and areas dominated by OWBs at the Welder Wildlife Refuge in southern Texas. We sampled vegetation and arthropods on research plots (6 x 9-m, 5 each) every 4 weeks during summer 2011 and 2012. We found, on average, 2 (SE=0.2) more plant species, and 12-13 (SE=1.0) more arthropod species on native plant-dominated plots compared to OWB-dominated plots. Native plant-dominated plots also had 273 (SE=18.8) more individual arthropods in 2011, but 75 (SE=16.6) fewer than OWB-dominant plots in 2012, resulting from a population explosion and crash of woodlice in native plant-dominated plots. We recorded only 1 species of herbivorous arthropod from OWB-dominated plots in 2012; native plant-dominated plots had 5-6 (SE=0.68) additional herbivore species, suggesting that increased dominance by OWBs may create cascading effects on trophic dynamics. Because many species of wildlife depend on plants and arthropods for food, these changes in species richness and abundance suggest that restoration tools are required to reduce the competitive ability of OWBs. Traditional management strategies have not successfully reduced OWBs; as part of our research, we are modifying soil properties to attempt to provide novel management strategies for landowners to increase diversity of native species and habitat quality in grasslands impacted by OWBs

On-the-fly doppler broadening of unresolved resonance region cross sections via probability band interpolation

In this work we present a scheme for computing temperature-dependent unresolved resonance region cross sections in Monte Carlo neutron transport simulations. This approach relies on the generation of equiprobable cross section magnitude bands on an energy-temperature mesh. The bands are then interpolated in energy and temperature to obtain a cross section value. This is in contrast to the typical procedure of pre-generating probability tables at all temperatures present in the simulation. As part of this work, a flexible probability table generation capability is integrated into the continuous-energy neutron transport code OpenMC [1]. Both single-level and multi-level Breit-Wigner formalisms are supported, as is modeling of the resonance structure of competitive reactions. A user-specified cross section band tolerance is enabled with batch statistics. Probability tables are generated for all 268 ENDF/B-VII.1 [2] isotopes that have an unresolved resonance region evaluation. Integral benchmark simulations of the Big Ten critical assembly show that, for a system that is sensitive to the unresolved resonance region, a temperature interval of ∼200 K around 293.6 K is sufficient to reproduce the keff value that is obtained with probability tables generated exactly at room temperature. A finer mesh of < 50 K is required to reproduce some cross section values at the common target relative difference of 0.1