Environment

Applications of remote sensing technology to wildlife preservation, pest control, strip mining, water quality monitoring, and wetlands mapping were discussed. Economic, political and social factors were also considered

The effect of total knee arthroplasty on joint movement during functional activities and joint range of motion with particular regard to higher flexion users

Study aimed to evaluate active and functional knee excursion of patients before and after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) and to determine whether TKA restores quality of life related to functional activities of daily living. Found that although TKA offers excellent pain relief and contributes to the overall well-being of the patient, these results suggest that it also leads to a reduced range of active and functional motion in the majority of patients. This is associated with a lower-than-normal physical quality of life. The design of implants and rehabilitation programmes should be reconsidered so that better range of motion and quality of life can be achieved for patients

THE PROPER PREEMINENT ROLE OF PARENT DISCIPLINES AND LEARNED SOCIETIES IN SETTING THE AGENDA AT LAND GRANT UNIVERSITIES

Contrary to recent commentary, reliance on individual faculty initiative and learned societies in setting the academic agenda has greater promise for contributing to the land grant mission than more administratively driven and dominated systems. Learned societies have the advantage in evaluating disciplinary content and are thereby the appropriate evaluators of quality. A distinguishing characteristic of all university professors should be a continuing commitment to active participation in research in support of their principle function, teaching, be their students on-campus undergraduate or graduates, off-campus clientele, or professional peers. The popular notion that all, or even most recognized peer-review journals are oriented mainly to disciplinary (versus problem-focused) research is challenged.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

The Benefits of Costly Voting

We present a costly voting model in which each voter has a private valuation for their preferred outcome of a vote. When there is a zero cost to voting, all voters vote and hence all values are counted equally regardless of how high they may be. By having a cost to voting, only those with high enough values would choose to incur this cost. Hence, the outcome will be determined by voters with higher valuations. We show that in such a case welfare may be enhanced. Such an effect occurs when there is both a large enough density of voters with low values and a high enough expected value.costly voting, externalities.

The challenge of reporting an unreported world

This report by Polis Summer School student David R Myles on how one foreign correspondent deals with the unique challenges of invetigating original stories around the world. Imagine this: You are a journalist sitting in the passenger seat of a rickety SUV, traversing the crowded streets of Kabul, with a local guide behind the wheel and your producer nervously fidgeting in the backseat. Your safety belt grips you to the seat, and your head is on a swivel, watching for any and all potential threats, as you make your way to a neutral location to interview a Taliban commander about death threats he has ordered against Afghani filmmakers. Would you be able to handle the stress? Would you be able to stay objective and ask provocative questions without letting your fear shine through? This is the kind of challenge Jenny Kleeman faces reporting the Unreported World for the UK’s Channel 4

A New Experiment on Rational Behavior

Behavioral economics is widely recognized as a rising field in economics, one whose discoveries and implications are not yet completed or understood. At the same time, economic theory plays an enormous role in our governmental and legal system. In particular, the Coase Theorem and its implications have affected nearly every area in the field of law and economics. This paper proposes a experimental test of Coasean bargaining in situations using two competitive players whose payoffs depend on minimizing their costs of mitigating the externality. A rational player’s action can be predicted ahead of time, and the rationality of the game’s outcome can be objectively measured. If behavioral effects found in consumer goods situations by other experimenters carry over to competitive business situations, then a substantial review of law regarding such situations is in order

Challenging the Cost Effectiveness of Medi-Cal Managed Care

Some researchers and consulting groups have promoted managed care as a way to provide cost-effective quality care to Medicaid patients, based on assertions that are often poorly substantiated. Unfortunately, politicians and policy makers in California and other states have adopted the presumption of the cost-effectiveness of Medicaid Managed Care as a rationale for expanding the use of managed care programs to include a larger share of more Medicaid eligible enrollees, and expand coverage and services to the currently uninsured. This paper challenges the assertion that Medi-Cal Managed Care is cost effective, by demonstrating that the unique and idiosyncratic manner in which Medi-Cal managed care has been implemented in California (and other states) creates perverse incentives leading to cost-shifting and selective enrollment and dis-enrollment of costly beneficiaries. This places an unfair burden on fee-for-service Medi-Cal providers, who are expected to provide more services for less reimbursement. Administrators of Medicaid Managed Care programs need to consider risk adjusted rates for beneficiaries enrolled in plans in order to align incentives with program objectives. [WestJEM. 2009;10:124-129.

Colombia and the United States--The Partnership: But What Is the Endgame?

American Ambassador to Colombia, 1994-97, Myles R. R. Frechette provides authoritative, eloquent, and impassioned perspectives on both the achievements and failures of American and Colombian efforts. He argues that American policy made analytical errors that need to be rectified, including underestimating the long-term complexity and interrelated nature of the problem, while both nations overestimated the amount of support that Colombia would receive from the international community. Moreover, nation-building and the rule of law are strategic imperatives which American policy must take seriously. Finally, it is critical to appreciate that Colombian cultural characteristics sharply influence what Colombians will do on their own behalf.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1361/thumbnail.jp

The Graduate Tax when Education is a Signal

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Research in Economics.This paper investigates the effects of a graduate tax when the return to education is uncertain and wages are determined through equilibrium in a labor market with signalling. The consequence of uncertainty is that both ability and initial wealth matter for educational choice. Compared to a constrained first-best the market outcome with uncertainty and signalling results in an inefficiently high number of people entering higher education. Due to the positive wealth effect over-entry is proportionately greater for high-wealth individuals. The graduate tax reduces entry into education so enhances efficiency. However, it has undesirable distributional consequences: low-wealth individuals are deterred from entering education but high-wealth are encouraged. In this respect, the graduate tax has clear failings as a method of financing higher education

Are changes in global precipitation constrained by the tropospheric energy budget?

Copyright © 2009 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or [email protected] tropospheric energy budget argument is used to analyze twentieth-century precipitation changes. It is found that global and ocean-mean general circulation model (GCM) precipitation changes can be understood as being due to the competing direct and surface-temperature-dependent effects of external climate forcings. In agreement with previous work, precipitation is found to respond more strongly to anthropogenic and volcanic sulfate aerosol and solar forcing than to greenhouse gas and black carbon aerosol forcing per unit temperature. This is due to the significant direct effects of greenhouse gas and black carbon forcing. Given that the relative importance of different forcings may change in the twenty-first century, the ratio of global precipitation change to global temperature change may be quite different. Differences in GCM twentieth- and twenty-first-century values are tractable via the energy budget framework in some, but not all, models. Changes in land-mean precipitation, on the other hand, cannot be understood at all with the method used here, even if land–ocean heat transfer is considered. In conclusion, the tropospheric energy budget is a useful concept for understanding the precipitation response to different forcings but it does not fully explain precipitation changes even in the global mean