West Virginia instructional technology program design for economic development

The expansion of technology throughout the entire technical education spectrum is linked to the successful implementation, integration and support of the new educational paradigm. Education must build on a strong technical infrastructure. Common strategies in physical infrastructure connectivity, philosophies, training and support will build the firm foundation upon which all other advances can be successfully sustained. West Virginia technical education must move in a sound collaborative mode that improves workforce preparedness. No matter where the company is located, workforce development is a vital component of the overall strategic economic development plan and must occur concurrently with development efforts, distance learning may be a key to training delivery. Industry consistently indicates that certification is much more important than college degrees. College and universities should look to inclusion of these certification skills into their degree programs. The formation of this delivery model will involve a cooperative effort of the State Colleges, Universities, Community Colleges and Technical Education Centers

An Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Addiction

We use a framework suggested by a model of rational addiction to analyze empirically the demand for cigarettes. The data consist of per capita cigarettes sales (in packs) annually by state for the period 1955 through 1985. The empirical results provide support for the implications of a rational addiction model that cross price effects are negative (consumption in different periods are complements), that long-run price responses exceed short-run responses, and that permanent price effects exceed temporary price effects. A 10 percent permanent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces current consumption by 4 percent in the short run and by 7.5 percent in the long run. In contrast, a 10 percent increase in the price for only one period decreases consumption by only 3 percent. In addition, a one period price increase of 10 percent reduces consumption in the previous period by approximately .7 percent and consumption in the subsequent period by 1.5 percent. These estimates illustrate the importance of the intertemporal linkages in cigarette demand implied by rational addictive behavior.

The Economic Theory of Illegal Goods: The Case of Drugs

This paper concentrates on both the positive and normative effects of punishments that enforce laws to make production and consumption of particular goods illegal, with illegal drugs as the main example. Optimal public expenditures on apprehension and conviction of illegal suppliers obviously depend on the extent of the difference between the social and private value of consumption of illegal goods, but they also depend crucially on the elasticity of demand for these goods. In particular, when demand is inelastic, it does not pay to enforce any prohibition unless the social value is negative and not merely less than the private value. We also compare outputs and prices when a good is legal and taxed with outputs and prices when the good is illegal. We show that a monetary tax on a legal good could cause a greater reduction in output and increase in price than would optimal enforcement, even recognizing that producers may want to go underground to try to avoid a monetary tax. This means that fighting a war on drugs by legalizing drug use and taxing consumption may be more effective than continuing to prohibit the legal use of drugs.

MAGIICAT V. Orientation of Outflows and Accretion Determine the Kinematics and Column Densities of the Circumgalactic Medium

We investigate the dependence of gas kinematics and column densities in the MgII-absorbing circumgalactic medium on galaxy color, azimuthal angle, and inclination to trace baryon cycle processes. Our sample of 30 foreground isolated galaxies at $0.3<z_{\rm gal}<1.0$, imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope, are probed by background quasars within a projected distance of $20<D<110$ kpc. From the high-resolution ($\Delta v\simeq 6.6$ km s$^{-1}$) quasar spectra, we quantify the extent of the absorber velocity structure with pixel-velocity two-point correlation functions. Absorbers with the largest velocity dispersions are associated with blue, face-on ($i<57^{\circ}$) galaxies probed along the projected minor axis ($\Phi \geq 45^{\circ}$), while those with the smallest velocity dispersions belong to red, face-on galaxies along the minor axis. The velocity structure is similar for edge-on ($i \geq 57^{\circ}$) galaxies regardless of galaxy color or azimuthal angle, for red galaxies with azimuthal angle, and for blue and red galaxies probed along the projected major axis ($\Phi<45^{\circ}$). The cloud column densities for face-on galaxies and red galaxies are smaller than for edge-on galaxies and blue galaxies, respectively. These results are consistent with biconical outflows along the minor axis for star-forming galaxies and accreting and/or rotating gas, which is most easily observed in edge-on galaxies probed along the major axis. Gas entrained in outflows may be fragmented with large velocity dispersions, while gas accreting onto or rotating around galaxies may be more coherent due to large path lengths and smaller velocity dispersions. Quiescent galaxies may exhibit little-to-no outflows along the minor axis, while accretion/rotation may exist along the major axis.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Ap

Towards an experimentally feasible controlled-phase gate on two blockaded Rydberg atoms

We investigate the implementation of a controlled-Z gate on a pair of Rydberg atoms in spatially separated dipole traps where the joint excitation of both atoms into the Rydberg level is strongly suppressed (the Rydberg blockade). We follow the adiabatic gate scheme of Jaksch et al. [1], where the pair of atoms are coherently excited using lasers, and apply it to the experimental setup outlined in Ga\"etan et al. [2]. We apply optimisation to the experimental parameters to improve gate fidelity, and consider the impact of several experimental constraints on the gate success.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figure