Fitness Tax Credits: Costs, Benefits, and Viability

As the number of overweight and obese Americans rises, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans need further incentives to stimulate lasting lifestyle changes. Tax incentives focused on exercise, which have been largely unexplored to this point, are an effective response to the growing obesity problem in the United States that would largely avoid the political opposition that tax policies focused on diet have encountered. In addition, they would also provide a more palatable solution for the taxpayer beneficiaries with a relatively low impact on government revenues. Viable tax incentives to encourage greater fitness include tax credits and sales tax breaks, or, alternatively, direct subsidies can be used to facilitate similar behavior. This Article posits that, from this menu of options, tax credits to encourage exercise stand to create the most lasting positive results. Further, it presents a proposed fitness tax credit usable by state, local, or national government bodies and demonstrates that the most effective way to garner support for a fitness-based tax credit in the United States is to couple the credit with a broader emphasis on healthier lifestyles and to emphasize its potential long-term revenue gains

Fitness Tax Credits: Costs, Benefits, and Viability

As the number of overweight and obese Americans rises, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans need further incentives to stimulate lasting lifestyle changes. Tax incentives focused on exercise, which have been largely unexplored to this point, are an effective response to the growing obesity problem in the United States that would largely avoid the political opposition that tax policies focused on diet have encountered. In addition, they would also provide a more palatable solution for the taxpayer beneficiaries with a relatively low impact on government revenues. Viable tax incentives to encourage greater fitness include tax credits and sales tax breaks, or, alternatively, direct subsidies can be used to facilitate similar behavior. This Article posits that, from this menu of options, tax credits to encourage exercise stand to create the most lasting positive results. Further, it presents a proposed fitness tax credit usable by state, local, or national government bodies and demonstrates that the most effective way to garner support for a fitness-based tax credit in the United States is to couple the credit with a broader emphasis on healthier lifestyles and to emphasize its potential long-term revenue gains

Detection of Far-Infrared Water Vapor, Hydroxyl, and Carbon Monoxide Emissions from the Supernova Remnant 3C 391

We report the detection of shock-excited far-infrared emission of H2O, OH, and CO from the supernova remnant 3C 391, using the ISO Long-Wavelength Spectrometer. This is the first detection of thermal H2O and OH emission from a supernova remnant. For two other remnants, W~28 and W~44, CO emission was detected but OH was only detected in absorption. The observed H2O and OH emission lines arise from levels within ~400 K of the ground state, consistent with collisional excitation in warm, dense gas created after the passage of the shock front through the dense clumps in the pre-shock cloud. The post-shock gas we observe has a density ~2x10^5 cm^{-3} and temperature 100-1000 K, and the relative abundances of CO:OH:H2O in the emitting region are 100:1:7 for a temperature of 200 K. The presence of a significant column of warm H2O suggests that the chemistry has been significantly changed by the shock. The existence of significant column densities of both OH and H2O, which is at odds with models for non-dissociative shocks into dense gas, could be due to photodissociation of H2O or a mix of fast and slow shocks through regions with different pre-shock density.Comment: AASTeX manuscript and 4 postscript figure

Discovery of Broad Molecular lines and of Shocked Molecular Hydrogen from the Supernova Remnant G357.7+0.3: HHSMT, APEX, Spitzer and SOFIA Observations

We report a discovery of shocked gas from the supernova remnant (SNR) G357.7+0.3. Our millimeter and submillimeter observations reveal broad molecular lines of CO(2-1), CO(3-2), CO(4-3), 13CO (2-1) and 13CO (3-2), HCO^+ and HCN using HHSMT, Arizona 12-Meter Telescope, APEX and MOPRA Telescope. The widths of the broad lines are 15-30 kms, and the detection of such broad lines is unambiguous, dynamic evidence showing that the SNR G357.7+0.3 is interacting with molecular clouds. The broad lines appear in extended regions (>4.5'x5'). We also present detection of shocked H2 emission in mid-infrared but lacking ionic lines using the Spitzer IRS observations to map a few arcmin area. The H2 excitation diagram shows a best-fit with a two-temperature LTE model with the temperatures of ~200 and 660 K. We observed [C II] at 158um and high-J CO(11-10) with the GREAT on SOFIA. The GREAT spectrum of [C II], a 3 sigma detection, shows a broad line profile with a width of 15.7 km/s that is similar to those of broad CO molecular lines. The line width of [C~II] implies that ionic lines can come from a low-velocity C-shock. Comparison of H2 emission with shock models shows that a combination of two C-shock models is favored over a combination of C- and J-shocks or a single shock. We estimate the CO density, column density, and temperature using a RADEX model. The best-fit model with n(H2) = 1.7x10^{4} cm^{-3}, N(CO) = 5.6x10^{16} cm^{-2}, and T = 75 K can reproduce the observed millimeter CO brightnesses.Comment: 19 pages, 22 figure

Grain Survival in Supernova Remnants and Herbig-Haro Objects

By using the flux ratio [FeII]8617/[OI]6300, we demonstrate that most of the interstellar dust grains survive in shocks associated with supernova remnants and Herbig-Haro objects. The [FeII]/[OI] flux ratio is sensitive to the gas-phase Fe/O abundance ratio, but is insensitive to the ionization state, temperature, and density of the gas. We calculate the [FeII]/[OI] flux ratio in shocks, and compare the results with the observational data. When only 20% of iron is in the gas phase, the models reproduce most successfully the observations. This finding is in conflict with the current consensus that shocks destroy almost all the grains and 100% of metals are in the gas phase. We comment on previous works on grain destruction, and discuss why grains are not destroyed in shocks.Comment: 8 pages (AASTex v5.0), 3 figures. To be published in ApJ Letters (accepted 3/10/2000