Spousal Dictator Game: Household Decisions and Other-Regarding Preferences

Using a laboratory experiment, we collected data on dictator giving among student strangers and married couples in a suburban area in the United States. Confirming common belief and prior empirical evidence, we find that giving among spouses is greater than giving among anonymous students. We further investigated factors associated with spousal giving which may provide insight for the development of future theories, or into explaining other-regarding preferences. Our data shows that giving is positively associated with who manages household money and controls household income. This result is robust after controlling for each spouse’s personal income and using various econometric specifications. The results suggest that spousal giving may be due to household economic roles in addition to other-regarding preferences

The Effect of Experience and Quantity-Based Pricing on the Valuation of a Curbside Recycling Program

Quantity-based pricing for garbage collection services and recycling programs are becoming increasingly popular methods of meeting municipal solid waste diversion objectives. This article investigates household willingness to pay (WTP) for a pilot curbside recycling program (CRP) in the presence of a quantity-based pricing scheme for garbage collection services. The pilot CRP provides a unique treatment effect that more precisely determines a household\u27s level of real experience with curbside recycling than may be accomplished by respondents simply stating their experience levels. Moreover, unlike previous studies that have modeled the simultaneity of these household decisions as a two-step process, we jointly estimate the household\u27s intentions using a full-information maximum-likelihood (FIML) approach. We find that participants in the pilot CRP are more likely than non-participants to reduce their container size and that for those that intend to reduce their container size, WTP for participants is larger than for non-participants. Taken together, these results suggest that the benefits of curbside recycling may be closely linked with the availability of a quantity-based pricing scheme for garbage collection. In particular, there appears to be a virtuous cycle for the household between choosing to recycle and reducing the size of its garbage container

Conditions for Estimation of Sensitivities of Voltage Magnitudes to Complex Power Injections

Voltage phase angle measurements are often unavailable from sensors in distribution networks and transmission network boundaries. Therefore, this paper addresses the conditions for estimating sensitivities of voltage magnitudes with respect to complex (active and reactive) electric power injections based on sensor measurements. These sensitivities represent submatrices of the inverse power flow Jacobian. We extend previous results to show that the sensitivities of a bus voltage magnitude with respect to active power injections are unique and different from those with respect to reactive power. The classical Newton-Raphson power flow model is used to derive a novel representation of bus voltage magnitudes as an underdetermined linear operator of the active and reactive power injections; parameterized by the bus power factors. Two conditions that ensure the existence of unique complex power injections given voltage magnitudes are established for this underdetermined linear system, thereby compressing the solution space. The first is a sufficient condition based on the bus power factors. The second is a necessary and sufficient condition based on the system eigenvalues. We use matrix completion theory to develop estimation methods for recovering sensitivity matrices with varying levels of sensor availability. Simulations verify the results and demonstrate engineering use of the proposed methods.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures. Code corresponding to this work is publicly available at https://github.com/samtalki/PowerSensitivities.j

Upper mantle rheology from GRACE and GPS postseismic deformation after the 2004 Sumatra‐Andaman earthquake

International audience[1] Mantle rheology is one of the essential, yet least understood, material properties of our planet, controlling the dynamic processes inside the Earth's mantle and the Earth's response to various forces. With the advent of GRACE satellite gravity, measurements of mass displacements associated with many processes are now available. In the case of mass displacements related to postseismic deformation, these data may provide new constraints on the mantle rheology. We consider the postseismic deformation due to the M w = 9.2 Sumatra 26 December 2004 and M w = 8.7 Nias 28 March 2005 earthquakes. Applying wavelet analyses to enhance those local signals in the GRACE time varying geoids up to September 2007, we detect a clear postseismic gravity signal. We supplement these gravity variations with GPS measurements of postseismic crustal displacements to constrain postseismic relaxation processes throughout the upper mantle. The observed GPS displacements and gravity variations are well explained by a model of visco-elastic relaxation plus a small amount of afterslip at the downdip extension of the coseismically ruptured fault planes. Our model uses a 60 km thick elastic layer above a viscoelastic asthenosphere with Burgers body rheology. The mantle below depth 220 km has a Maxwell rheology. Assuming a low transient viscosity in the 60–220 km depth range, the GRACE data are best explained by a constant steady state viscosity throughout the ductile portion of the upper mantle (e.g., 60–660 km). This suggests that the localization of relatively low viscosity in the asthenosphere is chiefly in the transient viscosity rather than the steady state viscosity. We find a 8.10 18 Pa s mantle viscosity in the 220–660 km depth range. This may indicate a transient response of the upper mantle to the high amount of stress released by the earthquakes. To fit the remaining misfit to the GRACE data, larger at the smaller spatial scales, cumulative afterslip of about 75 cm at depth should be added over the period spanned by the GRACE models. It produces only small crustal displacements. Our results confirm that satellite gravity data are an essential complement to ground geodetic and geophysical networks in order to understand the seismic cycle and the Earth's inner structure

Seroprevalence of Trypanosoma cruzi in Rural Ecuador and Clustering of Seropositivity within Households

We performed a cross-sectional study of Trypanosoma cruzi seroprevalence in 14 communities in three provinces of Ecuador and estimated the magnitude of the association of seropositive individuals within households. A total of 3,286 subjects from 997 households were included. Seroprevalence was 5.7%, 1.0%, and 3.6% in subjects in the Manabí, Guayas, and Loja provinces, respectively. Seroprevalence increased with increasing age in Manabí and Guayas, whereas in Loja, the highest prevalence occurred in children ≤ 10 years of age. In the coastal provinces, clustering of seropositives within households was not observed after adjustment for other household factors. However, in the Andean province of Loja, the odds of seropositivity were more than two times greater for an individual living in a household with another seropositive person. Our results indicate that transmission of T. cruzi is ongoing in Ecuador, although intensity of transmission and mechanisms of interaction between humans and the insect vectors of disease vary between geographic regions

Collaborative tools for systematic revisions

En una Revisión Sistemática (RS), se sintetiza y analiza la información recopilada de diversas fuentes, siguiendo un proceso o protocolo. El objetivo de la investigación fue describir cómo las diferentes herramientas de software, utilizadas por los investigadores, se adaptan al protocolo para una revisión sistemática y cómo apoyan al trabajo colaborativo. Se realizó una búsqueda de las principales herramientas, analizando sus características y cumplimiento al protocolo, evaluando el trabajo colaborativo de RevMan que cumplió con el protocolo completo de RS.The objective of the Systematic Review (RS) is to synthesize the information gathered from different sources, organize it and validate it to optimize time. This article seeks to describe how different software tools support the research process, how they adapt to the protocol for carrying out systematic reviews, and how they contribute to collaborative work. An exhaustive research about the main tools was made, analyzing each of their characteristics and protocol compliance, evaluating Revman collaborative work, which fulfilled RS’s complete protocol.Facultad de Informátic

Polyphenols: A concise overview on the chemistry, occurrence, and human health

This review gives an updated picture of each class of phenolic compounds and their properties. The most common classification implies the subdivision of phenolics in two main groups: flavonoids (e.g., anthocyanins, flavanols, flavanones, flavonols, flavonones, and isoflavones) and non-flavonoids (e.g., phenolic acids, xanthones, stilbens, lignans, and tannins) polyphenols. The great interest in polyphenols is associated with their high potential application for food preservation and for therapeutic beneficial use. The relationship between polyphenol intake and human health has been exploited with special reference to cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and cancer. The use of current existing databases of bioactive compounds including polyphenols is described as key tools for human health research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Heat stress and β-adrenergic agonists alter the adipose transcriptome and fatty acid mobilization in ruminant livestock

Growth and feed efficiency of cattle are improved by supplementation with the beta-adrenergic agonists (βAA), ractopamine hydrochloride (RH; β1AA) or zilpaterol hydrochloride (ZH; β2AA) (Elam et al., 2009). βAA supplementation alters adipose deposition by inhibiting fatty acid biosynthesis and promoting lipolysis of stored triacylglycerols into free fatty acids (FFAs) (Johnson et al., 2014). However, β2 adrenoceptors (βAR) desensitize with chronic activation (Re et al., 1997); supplementation is thus limited to the last 20 to 40 d of feeding. The annual economic impact of heat stress (HS) has been estimated to exceed $2.4 billion (St-Pierre et al., 2003). Heat-stressed livestock have reduced growth rates, dry matter intake, and average daily gain (Mitlöhner et al., 2001; St-Pierre et al., 2003). In response to acute stress, signaling pathways for lipolysis of circulating and stored triglycerides are activated, while chronic stress increases lipogenesis and adipogenesis (Campbell et al., 2009; Peckett et al., 2011). In cattle, HS also increases the responsiveness of adipocytes to lipolytic signals, increasing lipolysis (Faylon et al., 2015). The objective of this study was to understand how HS and βAA independently and interactively affect adipose tissue. Prior work identified minimal impact of RH on metabolic properties (Barnes et al., 2019) and on the transcriptome of skeletal muscle (Kubik et al., 2018). We therefore hypothesized that RH may be primarily affecting adipose; specifically, that lipolytic activity is increased due to heat and βAA in an additive fashion. We tested this hypothesis in RH-supplemented lambs and ZH-supplemented cattle exposed to HS for 30 and 21 d, respectively

Development of peptide-based lineage-specific serology for chronic Chagas disease: geographical and clinical distribution of epitope recognition.

BACKGROUND: Chagas disease, caused by infection with the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, remains a serious public health issue in Latin America. Genetically diverse, the species is sub-divided into six lineages, known as TcI-TcVI, which have disparate geographical and ecological distributions. TcII, TcV, and TcVI are associated with severe human disease in the Southern Cone countries, whereas TcI is associated with cardiomyopathy north of the Amazon. T. cruzi persists as a chronic infection, with cardiac and/or gastrointestinal symptoms developing years or decades after initial infection. Identifying an individual's history of T. cruzi lineage infection directly by genotyping of the parasite is complicated by the low parasitaemia and sequestration in the host tissues. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We have applied here serology against lineage-specific epitopes of the T. cruzi surface antigen TSSA, as an indirect approach to allow identification of infecting lineage. Chagasic sera from chronic patients from a range of endemic countries were tested by ELISA against synthetic peptides representing lineage-specific TSSA epitopes bound to avidin-coated ELISA plates via a biotin labelled polyethylene glycol-glycine spacer to increase rotation and ensure each amino acid side chain could freely interact with their antibodies. 79/113 (70%) of samples from Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina recognised the TSSA epitope common to lineages TcII/TcV/TcVI. Comparison with clinical information showed that a higher proportion of Brazilian TSSApep-II/V/VI responders had ECG abnormalities than non-responders (38% vs 17%; p<0.0001). Among northern chagasic sera 4/20 (20%) from Ecuador reacted with this peptide; 1/12 Venezuelan and 1/34 Colombian samples reacted with TSSApep-IV. In addition, a proposed TcI-specific epitope, described elsewhere, was demonstrated here to be highly conserved across lineages and therefore not applicable to lineage-specific serology. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results demonstrate the considerable potential for synthetic peptide serology to investigate the infection history of individuals, geographical and clinical associations of T. cruzi lineages