VOLUNTARY EFFORT AS A TAX SUBSTITUTE IN THE REVENUE-SHARING ALLOCATION FORMULA

Public Economics,

Analysis of cost and supply for fire protection services in the smaller municipalities and rural areas of Tennessee

Fire protection is a public service that plays a unique role protecting human life and property in a community. Recent studies indicate that fire protection is one of the key community characteris-tics in the plant location and expansion decisions made by industrial leaders, yet fire protection services are recognized to be severely inadequate in the rural areas of Tennessee. For these reasons, the specific public service to be analyzed in this study is fire protection. The problem faced by local government officials is to maintain and/or increase the quantity and quality of local public services in the face of a generally unfavorable financial situation. This issue, as it relates to the delivery of fire protection services, will be the focal point of the theoretical and policy considerations found in the study. The overall purpose of this study is to gain a fuller understanding of the economic costs of supplying fire protection services to the smaller communities and rural areas of Tennessee. The specific objectives are: 1) To examine topics of importance to the economic analysis of fire protection and to discuss the theoretical viewpoints relevant to the economic analysis of the cost and supply of a public service. 2) To specify and analyze models of the total and average cost of supplying fire protection services. a. To incorporate within the cost models a measure of quality and an imputed value for voluntary effort. b. To determine the existence and magnitude of economies or diseconomies of size associated with the cost of supply-ing fire protection services. 3) To delineate a supply function for fire protection services. An economic model of the cost of supplying fire protection services is presented that incorporates an imputed value for voluntary effort. The basic concern is with those variables that are hypothesized to be determinants of cost. A total cost model is specified with con-sideration given to the measurement of quantity and quality of output, and the definition of the environment in which this public service is delivered. The basic economic model of total cost and two modifications of the model were analyzed by using multiple regression techniques. Data requirements necessary for the analysis were fulfilled from a combination of primary and secondary data sources. Secondary data were supplemented by primary data obtained from a comprehensive survey of fire chiefs in Tennessee. Each estimation is discussed in terms of the explanatory power of the model and the level of significance, behavior, and magnitude of the results displayed by the variables considered. The major conclusions from the study are as follows: 1) The evaluation system for fire departments needs to incorporate within it indicators of individual quality performance such as actual response time, fire suppression effectiveness, and specialized rural equipment. 2) The total cost of supplying fire protection services is more dependent upon the quantity and quality of output supplied, the number of alarms related to fire protection, and the number of professional firemen than the physical environment in which the service is delivered. 3) The average cost function was hypothesized and shown to be L-shaped indicating the presence of economies of scale for the delivery of fire protection service beginning very gradually at a population protected level of 2,000. A stable low point nearly parallel to the quantity of output axis is reached beginning at a population protected level of around 12,000. 4) General revenue sharing is assumed to decrease the risk and uncertainty for local decision makers in terms of finances for public purposes and politics for selfish motives. By the use of specific economic assumptions and analytical techniques, it was shown that this influence of revenue sharing causes the supply function of a public service such as fire protection to be more responsive in terms of increasing the quantity and quality of the output supplied of the public service. The improvement of the level of public services in a community improves the quality of life for the citizens, but more importantly, this improvement may provide the needed emphasis for a sustained period of economic development. Employment providing industries are attracted to communities with good public services, and in particular, a high level of fire protection service

Feasibility of wood industries in Model Valley

Important areas of distress in the American economy have been identified, and the people living in these areas and their problems are major concerns of national, state, and local governments. One such area is Appalachia and within Appalachia there are many valleys that have all the characteristics associated with distressed areas. Model Valley, where this study was made, is one of these areas. This study is concerned with one aspect of alleviating such distress, namely, the creation of job opportunities through the development of an integrated wood industry to use the limited resources of the area. One hope is that the development of an integrated wood industry in Model Valley would offer a partial solution to the problem of economic decline in the area. The objective of this study, therefore, is to deter-mine whether it would be feasible to locate an integrated wood industry in the area. The study was divided into the following sections: a review of the existing wood industries in the area; a compilation of forest inven-tory data; a selection of the wood industries that the available wood resource base can support; the further selection of the wood industries that appear to be feasible for development and an economic analysis of each of these industries. Finally, a set of recommendations was made stating the requirements necessary for the successful establishment and maintenance of the selected wood industries

Effect of high glucose concentration on the synthesis of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 in human peritoneal mesothelial cells: Involvement of protein kinase C

Human peritoneal mesothelial cells (HMC) contribute to the activation and control of inflammatory processes in the peritoneum by their potential to produce various inflammatory mediators. The present study was designed to assess the effect of glucose, the osmotic active compound in most commercially available peritoneal dialysis fluids, on the synthesis of the C-C chemokine monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) in cultured HMC. The MCP-1 concentration in the cell supernatants was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and the MCP-1 mRNA expression was examined using Northern blot analysis. Incubation of HMC with glucose (30-120 mM) resulted in a time- and concentration-dependent increase in MCP-1 protein secretion and mRNA expression. After 24 h the MCP-1 synthesis was increased from 2.8 +/- 0.46 to 4.2 +/- 0.32 ng/10(5) cells (n = 5, p 2001 S. Karger AG. Basel

Non-invasive monitoring of renal transplant recipients: Urinary excretion of soluble adhesion molecules and of the complement-split product C4d

Background: The number of inducible adhesion molecules known to be involved in cell-mediated allograft rejection is still increasing. In addition, recent data describe complement activation during acute humoral allograft rejection. The aim of this study was to assess whether specific molecules from either pathway are excreted into urine and whether they can provide useful diagnostic tools for the monitoring of renal transplant recipients. Methods: Urinary concentrations of soluble adhesion molecules (sICAM-1, sVCAM-1) and of the complement degradation product C4d were determined by standardized ELISA technique in 75 recipients of renal allografts and 29 healthy controls. Patient samples were assigned to four categories according to clinical criteria: group 1: acute steroid-sensitive rejection (ASSR, n=14), group 2: acute steroid-resistant rejection (ASRR, n=12), group 3: chronic allograft dysfunction (CAD, n=20) and group 4: stable graft function (SGF, n=29). Results: All patients with rejection episodes (groups 1-3) had significantly higher values of urinary sC4d compared with healthy controls and patients with stable graft function (p<0.05). The urinary levels of sVCAM-1 were significantly higher in group 2 (ASRR) compared with all other groups (p<0.001). Uniformly low amounts of s-VCAM-1 and complement-split product C4d were excreted by healthy controls (group 0). In contrast, urinary sICAM-1 concentration in healthy controls was almost as high as in group 2 (ASRR) whereas patients with a stable functioning graft (group 4) excreted significantly less sICAM-1 (p<0.05). Conclusion: The evaluation of sVCAM-1 and sC4d excretion in urine can provide a valuable tool with regard to the severity and type of allograft rejection. With respect to long-term allograft survival, serial measurements of these markers should have the potential to detect rejection episodes and prompt immediate treatment. Copyright (C) 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel

Reduced CD40L expression on ex vivo activated CD4+T-lymphocytes from patients with excellent renal allograft function measured with a rapid whole blood flow cytometry procedure

Background: The CD40-CD40L (CD154) costimulatory pathway plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of kidney allograft rejection. In renal transplant biopsies, CD4+ CD40L+ graft-infiltrating cells were detected during chronic rejection in contrast to acute rejection episodes. Using a rapid noninvasive FACS procedure, we were able to demonstrate CD40L upregulation in peripheral blood of patients with chronic renal allograft dysfunction. Materials and Methods: Whole blood from recipients of renal allografts was stimulated with PMA and ion-omycin and measured by flow cytometry. Patients were assigned to three groups based on transplant function. Group 1: 26 patients with excellent renal transplant function; group 2: 28 patients with impaired transplant function; group 3: 14 patients with chronic allograft dysfunction and group 4: 8 healthy controls. Results: The median percentage +/-SEM of CD4+/ CD40L+ cells stimulated ex vivo at 10 ng/ml PMA was as follows: group 1: 28.3 +/- 4.1%; group 2: 18.4 +/- 2.4%; group 3: 50.1 +/- 5.0% and group 4: 40.4 +/- 3.4%. Subdivisions of groups 2 and 3 resulted in different CD40L expression patterns. Patients with increased serum creatinine since the initial phase after transplantation ( groups 2a and 3a) revealed a higher percentage of CD4+ CD40L+ cells than patients showing a gradual increase over time ( groups 2b and 3b). Consequently, patients of group 3a exhibited a significantly reduced transplant function compared with those of group 3b. Conclusion: After PMA + ionomycin stimulation, patients with excellent kidney graft function displayed significantly reduced expression of CD40L surface molecules on CD4+ cells early after transplantation. Those with a chronic dysfunction of the renal graft showed significantly more CD4+ cells expressing CD40L compared to the other transplanted groups. These results demonstrate that the percentage of CD4+ CD40L+ cells stimulated ex vivo in peripheral blood may be a valuable marker for chronic allograft nephropathy. Copyright (C) 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

The MIGenAS integrated bioinformatics toolkit for web-based sequence analysis

We describe a versatile and extensible integrated bioinformatics toolkit for the analysis of biological sequences over the Internet. The web portal offers convenient interactive access to a growing pool of chainable bioinformatics software tools and databases that are centrally installed and maintained by the RZG. Currently, supported tasks comprise sequence similarity searches in public or user-supplied databases, computation and validation of multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetic analysis and protein–structure prediction. Individual tools can be seamlessly chained into pipelines allowing the user to conveniently process complex workflows without the necessity to take care of any format conversions or tedious parsing of intermediate results. The toolkit is part of the Max-Planck Integrated Gene Analysis System (MIGenAS) of the Max Planck Society available at (click ‘Start Toolkit’)

Validity of effective material parameters for optical fishnet metamaterials

Although optical metamaterials that show artificial magnetism are mesoscopic systems, they are frequently described in terms of effective material parameters. But due to intrinsic nonlocal (or spatially dispersive) effects it may be anticipated that this approach is usually only a crude approximation and is physically meaningless. In order to study the limitations regarding the assignment of effective material parameters, we present a technique to retrieve the frequency-dependent elements of the effective permittivity and permeability tensors for arbitrary angles of incidence and apply the method exemplarily to the fishnet metamaterial. It turns out that for the fishnet metamaterial, genuine effective material parameters can only be introduced if quite stringent constraints are imposed on the wavelength/unit cell size ratio. Unfortunately they are only met far away from the resonances that induce a magnetic response required for many envisioned applications of such a fishnet metamaterial. Our work clearly indicates that the mesoscopic nature and the related spatial dispersion of contemporary optical metamaterials that show artificial magnetism prohibits the meaningful introduction of conventional effective material parameters