Are Alcohol Excise Taxes Good For Us? Short and Long-Term Effects on Mortality Rates

Regression results from a 30-year panel of the state-level data indicate that changes in alcohol-excise taxes cause a reduction in drinking and lower all-cause mortality in the short run. But those results do not fully capture the long-term mortality effects of a permanent change in drinking levels. In particular, since moderate drinking has a protective effect against heart disease in middle age, it is possible that a reduction in per capita drinking will result in some people drinking "too little" and dying sooner than they otherwise would. To explore that possibility, we simulate the effect of a one percent reduction in drinking on all-cause mortality for the age group 35-69, using several alternative assumptions about how the reduction is distributed across this population. We find that the long-term mortality effect of a one percent reduction in drinking is essentially nil.

Performance Benchmarking of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Clouds with CloudWorkBench

The continuing growth of the cloud computing market has led to an unprecedented diversity of cloud services with different performance characteristics. To support service selection, researchers and practitioners conduct cloud performance benchmarking by measuring and objectively comparing the performance of different providers and configurations (e.g., instance types in different data center regions). In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to write performance tests for IaaS clouds using the Web-based benchmarking tool Cloud WorkBench (CWB). We will motivate and introduce benchmarking of IaaS cloud in general, demonstrate the execution of a simple benchmark in a public cloud environment, summarize the CWB tool architecture, and interactively develop and deploy a more advanced benchmark together with the participants

Digitalization in psychology: A bit of challenge and a byte of success

Digitalization affects research in almost every scientific discipline. This becomes apparent in new approaches of data analysis and management, such as machine learning, but also in new therapeutic approaches using digital and virtual technologies in patient care. Thus, digitalization can be considered a promising area in the field of evidence-based health care. However, a glance at the history of such applications reveals that the interaction between psychology and digital technologies has a long tradition. This perspective gives a brief overview on how digital technologies have emerged into psychological science in the past and what future challenges and opportunities are

Concept for a Time-of-Flight Small Angle Neutron Scattering Instrument at the European Spallation Source

A new Small Angle Neutron Scattering instrument is proposed for the European Spallation Source. The pulsed source requires a time-of-flight analysis of the gathered neutrons at the detector. The optimal instrument length is found to be rather large, which allows for a polarizer and a versatile collimation. The polarizer allows for studying magnetic samples and incoherent background subtraction. The wide collimation will host VSANS and SESANS options that increase the resolution of the instrument towards um and tens of um, respectively. Two 1m2 area detectors will cover a large solid angle simultaneously. The expected gains for this new instrument will lie in the range between 20 and 36, depending on the assessment criteria, when compared to up-to-date reactor based instruments. This will open new perspectives for fast kinetics, weakly scattering samples, and multi-dimensional contrast variation studies.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Citizen science as a bottom‐up approach to address human–wildlife conflicts: From theories and methods to practical implications

Although biodiversity conservation is a prioritized topic globally, agreements and regulations at multiple levels often fail to meet the desired effects due to insufficient knowledge transmission about and tolerance toward environmental protection measures among the public. To find effective measures to solve human-wildlife conflicts (HWCs) and promote a sustainable coexistence, it is essential to gain the public's understanding of the importance of preserving biodiversity. To spur progress in solution-oriented conservation science, we examine how citizen science (CS) can complement research in the HWC field and coexistence/mitigation strategies. We find that CS (1) is an effective tool for gathering wildlife data and (2) empowers citizens to participate in or drive (in a bottom-up manner) wildlife research and management. Each HWC has a unique social, economic, and geographical context, which makes it challenging to find appropriate mitigation measures. We developed a Global and Local Geographic (GLG) model that provides practical guidelines for implementing CS in HWC research. We argue that the inclusion of youth is fundamental to achieving coexistence between people and wildlife; thus integrating CS into formal education or including an educational component in CS projects can support the sustainable conservation of wildlife species and foster environmentally aware future generations

CAMbase – A XML-based bibliographical database on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

The term "Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)" covers a variety of approaches to medical theory and practice, which are not commonly accepted by representatives of conventional medicine. In the past two decades, these approaches have been studied in various areas of medicine. Although there appears to be a growing number of scientific publications on CAM, the complete spectrum of complementary therapies still requires more information about published evidence. A majority of these research publications are still not listed in electronic bibliographical databases such as MEDLINE. However, with a growing demand by patients for such therapies, physicians increasingly need an overview of scientific publications on CAM. Bearing this in mind, CAMbase, a bibliographical database on CAM was launched in order to close this gap. It can be accessed online free of charge or additional costs. The user can peruse more than 80,000 records from over 30 journals and periodicals on CAM, which are stored in CAMbase. A special search engine performing syntactical and semantical analysis of textual phrases allows the user quickly to find relevant bibliographical information on CAM. Between August 2003 and July 2006, 43,299 search queries, an average of 38 search queries per day, were registered focussing on CAM topics such as acupuncture, cancer or general safety aspects. Analysis of the requests led to the conclusion that CAMbase is not only used by scientists and researchers but also by physicians and patients who want to find out more about CAM. Closely related to this effort is our aim to establish a modern library center on Complementary Medicine which offers the complete spectrum of a modern digital library including a document delivery-service for physicians, therapists, scientists and researchers