Contingent Valuation of Sports Stadiums and Arenas: Temporal Embedding and Order Effect

Using the Contingent Valuation Method, this paper estimates the value of public goods the National Football League’s Jaguars produce for Jacksonville, Florida, including the value of elevating Jacksonville to “major league” status and the value of improving racial relations. It also estimates the incremental value of public goods potentially produced by a National Basketball Association team in Jacksonville. The present value of public goods created by the Jaguars is $36.5 million or less, far below subsidies provided to attract the Jaguars. For a basketball team, the figure is less than$22.8 million. The results add to the growing body of CVM literature indicating that sports public goods probably cannot justify the large public expenditures on stadiums and arenas.

What is the Value of Public Goods Generated by a National Football League Team: A CVM Approach

Using the Contingent Valuation Method, this paper estimates the value of public goods the National Football League’s Jaguars produce for Jacksonville, Florida, including the value of elevating Jacksonville to major league status. It also estimates the incremental value of public goods potentially produced by a National Basketball Association team in Jacksonville. The present value of public goods created by the Jaguars is $25 million or less, far below subsidies provided to attract the Jaguars. For a basketball team, the figure is less than$12.7 million. Sports public goods probably cannot justify the large public expenditures on stadiums and arenas.

In vitro evaluation on HeLa cells of protective mechanisms of probiotic lactobacilli against Candida clinical isolates

Aims: To characterize in vitro the ability of human Lactobacillus strains to inhibit the adhesion, to displace and to compete with clinically isolated Candida strains. Methods and Results: Three types of assays were performed to determine the inhibitory effect of Lactobacillus plantarum 319, Lactobacillus rhamnosus IMC 501, Lactobacillus paracasei IMC 502 and a specific probiotic combination (SYNBIO) on adhesion of Candida pathogens to HeLa cells: blockage by exclusion (lactobacilli and HeLa followed by pathogens), competition (lactobacilli, HeLa and pathogens together) and displacement (pathogens and HeLa followed by the addition of lactobacilli). Bacterial adhesion to HeLa was quantified by microscopy after May-Grunwald/Giemsa stain. The inhibition results highlight a significant (P < 0.05) competition of the considered probiotics against all the Candida strains. The results suggest that the probiotic strains used in this study could prevent colonization of the urogenital tract by relevant pathogens such as Candida strains through barrier and interference mechanisms (mainly displacement and competition), but the degree of inhibition of adhesion was bacterial strain-dependent. Conclusions: The results support the potential of these Lactobacillus probiotic strains as anti-infective agents in the vagina and encourage further studies about their capacity to prevent and manage urogenital tract infections in females. Significance and Impact of the Study: To optimize the defensive properties of the vaginal microbiota, improving the health of many women by probiotic intervention

Filtered screens and augmented Teichm\"uller space

We study a new bordification of the decorated Teichm\"uller space for a multiply punctured surface F by a space of filtered screens on the surface that arises from a natural elaboration of earlier work of McShane-Penner. We identify necessary and sufficient conditions for paths in this space of filtered screens to yield short curves having vanishing length in the underlying surface F. As a result, an appropriate quotient of this space of filtered screens on F yields a decorated augmented Teichm\"uller space which is shown to admit a CW decomposition that naturally projects to the augmented Teichm\"uller space by forgetting decorations and whose strata are indexed by a new object termed partially oriented stratum graphs.Comment: Final version to appear in Geometriae Dedicat

Health-related quality of life and functional changes in DMD:A 12-month longitudinal cohort study

Family caregivers of people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) live stressful lives in which they spend most of their time caring for their loved ones and managing difficult situations, thereby reducing the time spent in taking care of themselves. This situation may last several years. Previous literature has widely highlighted that this situation reduces caregivers' quality of life and increases their psychological distress and risk of health problems, but there is a lack of studies that focus on psychological interventions for these situations. This qualitative study examined a pilot experience of two mutual support groups for family caregivers of people with ALS. The aim was to identify caregivers' needs, the prominent aspects of their experience, and to understand whether and how this intervention strategy might help them. Six partners (four men and two women) and six adult children (five women and one man) participated in the groups, which were conducted in northern Italy. After the support groups finished, participants underwent semi-structured interviews. The authors conducted a content analysis of the transcripts of the interviews and the 20 group sessions. The thematic areas identified were "caregiving," "being the son/daughter of a person with ALS," "being the partner of a person with ALS," "group experience" and "group evaluation." The caregiving experience was profoundly different depending on whether the caregiver was a son/daughter or a partner of a patient with ALS. Moreover, comparison with peers and mutual support helped participants to better cope with ALS and its consequences, to improve their care for their relatives and to overcome typical caregiver isolation. These results suggest the usefulness of involving communities in caregiver support in order to create new networks and activate personal and social resources for well-being

Multiscaling to Standard Scaling Crossover in the Bray-Humayun Model for Phase Ordering Kinetics

The Bray-Humayun model for phase ordering dynamics is solved numerically in one and two space dimensions with conserved and non conserved order parameter. The scaling properties are analysed in detail finding the crossover from multiscaling to standard scaling in the conserved case. Both in the nonconserved case and in the conserved case when standard scaling holds the novel feature of an exponential tail in the scaling function is found.Comment: 21 pages, 10 Postscript figure