THE LAND DIVISION AMENDMENTS TO THE SUBDIVISION CONTROL ACT

On January 21, 1997, Governor Engler signed into law 1996 P.A. 591, the Land Division Act. This Act replaced the Subdivision Control Act after 30 years and changed the rules on how land is divided in Michigan. 1997 P.A. 87, effective July 28, 1997, amended the recently created 1996 Land Division Act. While some hailed these as positive changes allowing improved land use, others strongly disagree. This paper is an attempt to alleviate the frustration by providing a history of land division legislation in Michigan because past laws creates an assumed set of rights which are not easily changes. The second focus of the paper is to lessen the confusion level by defining the main points of the law.Land Economics/Use,

A Spatial Model of Dolphin Avoidance in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean

This paper examines the impact of dolphin-safe eco-labeling and how it fundamentally altered the spatial distribution of fishing effort and fishermen's willingness to pay to avoid dolphins. To do this, a dynamic discrete choice econometric model is applied to the Eastern Tropical Pacific tuna fishery. This econometric approach combines a dynamic programming component with the static discrete site choice model. This estimator couples the current period projected profits associated with fishing a specific site with the value of all future location choices on the cruise, assuming choices are made optimally. The key feature of this model is that it recovers behavioral parameters and solves the dynamic programming problem recursively. The dynamic site choice model reveals a markedly higher impact on producers as compared to the commonly used static model following the labeling regime. Further, in all but a few cases the common practice in dynamic choice models of setting discount factors equal to one is rejected.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Impact of a community pharmacist-led medication review on medicines use in patients on polypharmacy - a prospective randomised controlled trial

In 2010 the 'Polymedication Check' (PMC), a pharmacist-led medication review, was newly introduced to be delivered independently from the prescriber and reimbursed by the Swiss health insurances. This study aimed at evaluating the impact of this new cognitive service focusing on medicines use and patients' adherence in everyday life.; This randomised controlled trial was conducted in 54 Swiss community pharmacies. Eligible patients used ≥4 prescribed medicines over >3 months. The intervention group received a PMC at study start (T-0) and after 28 weeks (T-28) while the control group received only a PMC at T-28. Primary outcome measure was change in patients' objective adherence, calculated as Medication Possession Ratio (MPR) and Daily Polypharmacy Possession Ratio (DPPR), using refill data from the pharmacies and patient information of dosing. Subjective adherence was assessed as secondary outcome by self-report questionnaires (at T-0 and T-28) and telephone interviews (at T-2 and T-16), where participants estimated their overall adherence on a scale from 0-100 %.; A total of 450 patients were randomly allocated to intervention (N = 218, 48.4 %) and control group (N = 232, 51.6 %). Dropout rate was fairly low and comparable for both groups (N Int = 37 (17.0 %), NCont = 41 (17.7 %), p = 0.845). Main addressed drug-related problem (DRP) during PMC at T-0 was insufficient adherence to at least one medicine (N = 69, 26.7 %). At T-28, 1020 chronic therapies fulfilled inclusion criteria for MPR calculation, representing 293 of 372 patients (78.8 %). Mean MPR and adherence to polypharmacy (DPPR) for both groups were equally high (MPRInt = 88.3, SD = 19.03; MPRCont = 87.5, SD = 20.75 (p = 0.811) and DPPRInt = 88.0, SD = 13.31; DPPRCont = 87.5, SD = 20.75 (p = 0.906), respectively). Mean absolute change of subjective adherence between T-0 and T-2 was +1.03 % in the intervention and -0.41 % in the control group (p = 0.058). The number of patients reporting a change of their adherence of more than ±5 points on a scale 0-100 % between T-0 and T-2 was significantly higher in the intervention group (NImprovement = 30; NWorsening = 14) than in the control group (NImprovement = 20; NWorsening = 24; p = 0.028).; Through the PMC pharmacist were able to identify a significant number of DRPs. Participants showed high baseline objective adherence of 87.5 %, providing little potential for improvement. Hence, no significant increase of objective adherence was observed. However, regarding changes in subjective adherence of more than ±5 % the PMC showed a positive effect.; Clinical trial registry database, NCT01739816 ; first entry on November 27, 2012

From Classical to Quantum and Back: Hamiltonian Adaptive Resolution Path Integral, Ring Polymer, and Centroid Molecular Dynamics

Path integral-based simulation methodologies play a crucial role for the investigation of nuclear quantum effects by means of computer simulations. However, these techniques are significantly more demanding than corresponding classical simulations. To reduce this numerical effort, we recently proposed a method, based on a rigorous Hamiltonian formulation, which restricts the quantum modeling to a small but relevant spatial region within a larger reservoir where particles are treated classically. In this work, we extend this idea and show how it can be implemented along with state-of-the-art path integral simulation techniques, such as ring polymer and centroid molecular dynamics, which allow the approximate calculation of both quantum statistical and quantum dynamical properties. To this end, we derive a new integration algorithm which also makes use of multiple time-stepping. The scheme is validated via adaptive classical--path-integral simulations of liquid water. Potential applications of the proposed multiresolution method are diverse and include efficient quantum simulations of interfaces as well as complex biomolecular systems such as membranes and proteins

Competitive Advantage for Multiple-Memory Strategies in an Artificial Market

We consider a simple binary market model containing $N$ competitive agents. The novel feature of our model is that it incorporates the tendency shown by traders to look for patterns in past price movements over multiple time scales, i.e. {\em multiple memory-lengths}. In the regime where these memory-lengths are all small, the average winnings per agent exceed those obtained for either (1) a pure population where all agents have equal memory-length, or (2) a mixed population comprising sub-populations of equal-memory agents with each sub-population having a different memory-length. Agents who consistently play strategies of a given memory-length, are found to win more on average -- switching between strategies with different memory lengths incurs an effective penalty, while switching between strategies of equal memory does not. Agents employing short-memory strategies can outperform agents using long-memory strategies, even in the regime where an equal-memory system would have favored the use of long-memory strategies. Using the many-body `Crowd-Anticrowd' theory, we obtain analytic expressions which are in good agreement with the observed numerical results. In the context of financial markets, our results suggest that multiple-memory agents have a better chance of identifying price patterns of unknown length and hence will typically have higher winnings.Comment: Talk to be given at the SPIE conference on Econophysics and Finance, in the International Symposium 'Fluctuations and Noise', 23-26 May 2005 in Austin, Texa

DBI Realizations of the Pseudo-Conformal Universe and Galilean Genesis Scenarios

The pseudo-conformal universe is an alternative to inflation in which the early universe is described by a conformal field theory on approximately flat space-time. The fields develop time-dependent expectation values, spontaneously breaking the conformal symmetries to a de Sitter subalgebra, and fields of conformal weight zero acquire a scale invariant spectrum of perturbations. In this paper, we show that the pseudo-conformal scenario can be naturally realized within theories that would ordinarily be of interest for DBI inflation, such as the world-volume theory of a probe brane in an AdS bulk space-time. In this approach, the weight zero spectator field can be associated with a geometric flat direction in the bulk, and its scale invariance is protected by a shift symmetry.Comment: 34 page