Time preferences and risk aversion: tests on domain differences

The design and evaluation of environmental policy requires the incorporation of time and risk elements as many environmental outcomes extend over long time periods and involve a large degree of uncertainty. Understanding how individuals discount and evaluate risks with respect to environmental outcomes is a prime component in designing effective environmental policy to address issues of environmental sustainability, such as climate change. Our objective in this study is to investigate whether subjects' time preferences and risk aversion across the monetary domain and the environmental domain differ. Crucially, our experimental design is incentivized: in the monetary domain, time preferences and risk aversion are elicited with real monetary payoffs, whereas in the environmental domain, we elicit time preferences and risk aversion using real (bee-friendly) plants. We find that subjects' time preferences are not significantly different across the monetary and environmental domains. In contrast, subjects' risk aversion is significantly different across the two domains. More specifically, subjects (men and women) exhibit a higher degree of risk aversion in the environmental domain relative to the monetary domain. Finally, we corroborate earlier results, which document that women are more risk averse than men in the monetary domain. We show this finding to, also, hold in the environmental domain

A rapid method for negative staining of fecal samples for diagnosis of viral-induced gastroenteritis by Transmission Electron Microscopy

The most common etiologic agents for viral gastroenteritis are rotavirus, adenovirus, and members of the “small round structure virus” category (enterovirus, norwalk virus, calicivirus, astrovirus). A rapid diagnosis of viral infection can avoid unnecessary antibiotic therapy, extensive and costly medical workups and reduce the patient’s hospital stay. Pseudoreplication has been the preparation method of choice at many institutions, because of its concentrating effect on viral particles. Unfortunately, in addition to concentrating viral particles, this method also concentrates fecal debris, making the screening process quite difficult at times and time consuming.A rapid method of negative staining for viral particle identification in fecal samples is presented. The method first described by Cubitt et al has been modified, resulting in a reduction in the amount of debris and improved staining quality of the viral particles, while still concentrating the number of viral particles. This method requires less than 1 ml of stool specimen and may be prepared in less than three minutes.</jats:p

Comparison of Age-Stratified Seroprevalence of Antibodies against Norovirus GII in India and the United Kingdom

Noroviruses are a common cause of gastroenteritis worldwide, but outbreaks appear to be more common in industrialized countries than in developing countries, possibly reflecting differences in exposure and immunity. In this study, age-stratified sera from India and UK populations were analysed for the presence of norovirus-genogroup II specific IgG by a time resolved immunofluorescence assay and relative levels of antibodies in the two populations were compared. Antibody levels were higher among all age groups in India than in UK and increased with age in India, whereas in the UK, levels of antibody decreased in adulthood. These results indicate different patterns of exposure to noroviruses in the two countries