Hostility enacted

In seeking to intensify the “hostile environment” for illegal migrants in the UK, the Immigration Act 2016 makes important changes likely to affect both private and public law practitioner

Seabird and Plastic Ingestion Data Set

Plastic debris is a pervasive and critical environmental challenge that is being described as a world-wide crisis for marine life. Seabirds are sensitive to pollutants and are of critical conservation concern. Because seabirds are excellent bioindicators of marine ecosystem health, information about their plastic ingestion can serve as an indicator of plastic exposure across multiple marine trophic levels. Our study describes the prevalence of plastic ingestion for four seabird species: Great Black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus), Herring Gulls (L. argentatus), Common Terns (Sterna hirundo), and Roseate Terns (S. dougallii) nesting in the Gulf of Maine. Samples were collected opportunistically, including pellets, regurgitant, discarded fish, and deceased seabirds. Plastics were primarily found in pellet samples, and common types included fragments and sheets. Herring Gulls displayed significantly higher plastic exposure than the other three species across all metrics analyzed (p-valu

Draft Genome Sequences of Antibiotic-Resistant Commensal Escherichia coli

Antimicrobial resistance is a significant public health issue. We report here the draft genome sequences of three drug-resistant strains of commensal Escherichia coli isolated from a single healthy college student. Each strain has a distinct genome, but two of the three contain an identical large plasmid with multiple resistance genes

VALUE OF SHIPWRECK DATA IN DATABASES

Shipwrecks are valuable archaeological sites that can contribute enormous amounts of information to Social/Natural Sciences and Humanities. This paper discusses how data from shipwreck sites can expand a multidisciplinary database. Their value is highlighted with examples of shipwrecks in Southeast Asia and their contribution to an ongoing database project at McGill University’s Indian Ocean World Center.

The Introduction of the Reserve Clause in Major League Baseball: Evidence of its Impact on Select Player Salaries During the 1880s

This paper investigates the introduction of the reserve clause in Major League Baseball during the 1880s. Taking advantage of a unique data set describing the salaries for twenty nine high-quality players throughout the decade of the 1880s, we investigate the impact of the reserve clause as it evolved from a "gentleman's agreement" to a formal contract stipulation. We test three specific hypotheses concerning the reserve clause: its effect on average salaries, on the remuneration to marginal product, and the premium paid to a player for changing teams. The evidence suggests that introducing the reserve clause reduced average salaries and the premium for changing teams; detectable monopsony power was transferred to team owners almost immediately. However, there was no statistically significant impact of the reserve clause on how much players were paid for their marginal product. The empirical results indicate that reserve clause shifted considerable monopsony power to team owners immediately after it was instituted.Sports economics, monopsony, free agency, negotiation

Consumer Preferences for Locally Made Specialty Food Products Across Northern New England

Does willingness to pay a premium for local specialty food products differ between consumers in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont? Two food categories are investigated: low-end ($5) and high-end ($20) products. Premia estimates are compared across states and across base prices within states using dichotomous choice contingent valuation methods. Results suggest that the three states of northern New England have many similarities, including comparable price premia for the lower-priced good. However, there is some evidence that the premium for the higher-priced good is greater for the pooled Vermont and Maine treatment than for the New Hampshire treatment. Vermont and New Hampshire residents are willing to pay a higher premium for a $20 than for a$5 food item, while the evidence suggests that Maine residents are not.local specialty foods, willingness to pay, contingent valuation, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

What to Choose? The Value of Label Claims to Produce Consumers

This paper addresses three key empirical questions related to health, nutrient, and process claims on front-label packaging; namely, 1) How do consumers value alternative claims on product and process-based attributes for fresh produce; 2) Are these values additively separable; and 3) To what degree is there heterogeneity between consumers on these values? We use a hypothetical choice experiment on red leaf lettuce attribute bundles, and estimate several logit models (MNL and ML) that provide estimates of marginal utilities (and with the inclusion of varying prices, marginal values) of various attributes related to general health claims, specific nutrition and health claims, certification logos related to health and nutrition currently found in the marketplace, as well as certified organic claims (relative to the conventional reference group). The results showed that consumers do distinguish between competing claims and logos, though the impacts are not always as expected, likely due to the information set used at the time of the choice. We found some evidence of attribute bundling between the health claims and the familiar Five-a-day program logo, and between organic production and a claim regarding vitamin C content. Finally, we found that use of the unconditional distributions (relative to the conditional)in a ML model overstates the degree of preference heterogeneity across the sample and overstates the magnitude of the marginal effects of the random parameters. This may create misleading impressions regarding the existence and size of specialized niche markets, the response of consumers to varying health, nutrition, or process claims, and/or the response of consumers to the introduction of new products with these (or similar) claims.Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis,

Modeling Multivocality in a U.S.-Mexican Collaboration in Writing Across the Curriculum

Since 2006 the ‘Antwerp Group’ group has explored student writing from various country perspectives to understand what practices and pedagogies are country specific and what issues cut across national borders. The insights of the Antwerp Group helped inform a 2009–2010 collaboration between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in which we combined Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and English as Foreign Language (EFL) instruction. This paper describes how a theoretical model used by the Antwerp Group helped us identify the multivocality that each collaborating group brought to this new partnership. In the end, theorizing multivocality helped us recognize our diverse perspectives as a resource even as we sought to find a collaborative voice in setting project goals, defining a student survey, and implementing a curricular design for a WAC-EFL writing course