Preferences for Income Distribution and Distributive Justice: A Window on the Problems of Using Experimental Data in Economics and Ethics

This is a paper in response to the article "An Experimental Test of Preferences for the Distribution of Income and Individual Risk Aversion" by by John Beck (1994). Beck's experimental results on preferences for income distribution and our own findings on distributive justice are compared and contrasted. The relative roles of risk preference and impartial reasoning are discussed. A number of implications are drawn regarding the role of experimentation in economics and ethics.Distribution; Distributive Justice; Distributive; Income Distribution; Income; Justice

Floral gene resources from basal angiosperms for comparative genomics research

BACKGROUND: The Floral Genome Project was initiated to bridge the genomic gap between the most broadly studied plant model systems. Arabidopsis and rice, although now completely sequenced and under intensive comparative genomic investigation, are separated by at least 125 million years of evolutionary time, and cannot in isolation provide a comprehensive perspective on structural and functional aspects of flowering plant genome dynamics. Here we discuss new genomic resources available to the scientific community, comprising cDNA libraries and Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) sequences for a suite of phylogenetically basal angiosperms specifically selected to bridge the evolutionary gaps between model plants and provide insights into gene content and genome structure in the earliest flowering plants. RESULTS: Random sequencing of cDNAs from representatives of phylogenetically important eudicot, non-grass monocot, and gymnosperm lineages has so far (as of 12/1/04) generated 70,514 ESTs and 48,170 assembled unigenes. Efficient sorting of EST sequences into putative gene families based on whole Arabidopsis/rice proteome comparison has permitted ready identification of cDNA clones for finished sequencing. Preliminarily, (i) proportions of functional categories among sequenced floral genes seem representative of the entire Arabidopsis transcriptome, (ii) many known floral gene homologues have been captured, and (iii) phylogenetic analyses of ESTs are providing new insights into the process of gene family evolution in relation to the origin and diversification of the angiosperms. CONCLUSION: Initial comparisons illustrate the utility of the EST data sets toward discovery of the basic floral transcriptome. These first findings also afford the opportunity to address a number of conspicuous evolutionary genomic questions, including reproductive organ transcriptome overlap between angiosperms and gymnosperms, genome-wide duplication history, lineage-specific gene duplication and functional divergence, and analyses of adaptive molecular evolution. Since not all genes in the floral transcriptome will be associated with flowering, these EST resources will also be of interest to plant scientists working on other functions, such as photosynthesis, signal transduction, and metabolic pathways

Revisiting the role of high-energy Pacific events on the environmental and cultural history of Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

Pacific islands are spread over thousands of kilometers of the Oceanic Basin and are characterized by similar ecological features but very diverse geologic origins, from steep volcanoes to flat coral atolls. Several climatic phases have been shared among the region within the last 1000 years. Numerous and abrupt societal and cultural changes during the same period have been described for islands separated by thousands of kilometers. Conspicuous societal changes have been exclusively attributed to the main climatic patterns (changes in precipitation and temperature). The possible role of tsunamis and the occurrence of large volcanic eruptions as regional societal modulators, however, have traditionally received little attention from archeologists, mainly due to the difficulty of recognizing them in the sedimentary and geomorphological records. We explore the potential influence of the most important high-energy events in the Pacific on Polynesian societal changes, with a special focus on Easter Island. For example, the extreme Samalas eruption in AD1257 may have been an indirect driver of the sudden population decline, land degradation and decreased food resources on many Pacific islands between AD1250 and 1300, and the Kuwae eruption in AD1450 may have triggered the synchronous end of long voyaging expeditions across the Pacific. Important paleotsunamis have had unquestionable impacts on coastal and seafaring societies. A direct effect of the main eruptions of the last millennia (AD1257 and 1453) on Easter Island has not yet been identified by any record, but we have calculated, the likelihood of destructive tsunamis with an estimated period of recurrence for large events of less than a century.This insight is new and needs to be taken into account to complement what we already know about Easter Island cultural history and archeological sites, especially those in vulnerable coastal locations

Earthquake scaling relations for mid-ocean ridge transform faults

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 109 (2004): B12302, doi:10.1029/2004JB003110.A mid-ocean ridge transform fault (RTF) of length L, slip rate V, and moment release rate dot above M can be characterized by a seismic coupling coefficient χ = A E/A T, where A E ∼ dot above M/V is an effective seismic area and A T ∝ L 3/2 V −1/2 is the area above an isotherm T ref. A global set of 65 RTFs with a combined length of 16,410 km is well described by a linear scaling relation (1) A E ∝ A T, which yields χ = 0.15 ± 0.05 for T ref = 600°C. Therefore about 85% of the slip above the 600°C isotherm must be accommodated by subseismic mechanisms, and this slip partitioning does not depend systematically on either V or L. RTF seismicity can be fit by a truncated Gutenberg-Richter distribution with a slope β = 2/3 in which the cumulative number of events N 0 and the upper cutoff moment M C = μD C A C depend on A T. Data for the largest events are consistent with a self-similar slip scaling, D C ∝ A C 1/2, and a square root areal scaling (2) A C ∝ A T 1/2. If relations 1 and 2 apply, then moment balance requires that the dimensionless seismic productivity, ν0 ∝ inline equation 0/A T V, should scale as ν0 ∝ A T −1/4, which we confirm using small events. Hence the frequencies of both small and large earthquakes adjust with A T to maintain constant coupling. RTF scaling relations appear to violate the single-mode hypothesis, which states that a fault patch is either fully seismic or fully aseismic and thus implies A C ≤ A E. The heterogeneities in the stress distribution and fault structure responsible for relation 2 may arise from a thermally regulated, dynamic balance between the growth and coalescence of fault segments within a rapidly evolving fault zone.M.B. was supported by a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a MIT Presidential Fellowship, and the WHOI DOEI Fellowship. This research was supported by the Southern California Earthquake Center. SCEC is funded by NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR-0106924 and USGS Cooperative Agreement 02HQAG0008

Modern Political Economy

xiii.143 hal.;ill.;23 c

Choosing justice: an experimental approach to ethical theory

Comprend des réf. bibliogr. (p. 247-251) et un index