Obesity and Unhealthy Consumption: The Public-Policy Case for Placing a Federal Sin Tax on Sugary Beverages

A growing body of research has established an empirical link between consumption of sugary beverages and numerous health problems. Yet, while few people disagree that reduced consumption of sugary beverages is a desirable goal for American society, many people disagree about how to reduce it. This Comment argues that a proposed sin tax on sugary beverages is sound policy, and Congress should implement the tax in order to combat and address the obesity epidemic because (1) consumers are subject to cognitive and informational defects that affect consumers’ abilities to make the best welfare-generating decisions, and (2) sugary-beverage consumption causes healthcare-related externalities that the current price of sugary beverages do not reflect

'Muddling through' hasbara: Israeli government communications policy, 1966-1975

This thesis is the history of an intense period of Israeli attempts to address the issue of how the state should communicate its national image, particularly on the international stage. Between 1966 and 1975, the Eshkol, Meir and Rabin governments invested far more time and energy in the management of Israel’s international image than the governments before or after. Those responsible for this policy were informed by a developing Israeli national political culture that bore the strong influence of pre-independence Jewish history and which reinforced the simple and pervasive concept of hasbara (literally ‘explaining’) as Israel’s communications strategy. At the same time external factors, particularly the wars of 1967 and 1973, made government information efforts and Israel’s international image far more politically important. Yet, by the end of the period, nothing much had changed. This thesis examines why that should be the case. Using newly-released archive material, personal interviews and existing research, this thesis presents a new assessment of the domestic determinants that shaped the formulation, institutionalization, and execution of Israeli policy in the period under review. Three themes emerge from examining the domestic sources of Israeli government communications strategy in the period under question. Together, they explain why such an intense period of activity should produce such limited results. Firstly, the political culture of hasbara, an instinctively defensive, tactical, persuasive and Jewishly-rooted approach to generation and maintenance of international support for Israeli foreign policy aims, itself a residue of the pre-state period, proved an imperfect lens through which to view the world, and was an obstacle to cogent policy-making. Secondly, structural features of Israeli politics contributed to the lack of substantive progress in addressing the perceived failures of hasbara. The ruling Mapai party was split between the dominant ‘activist’ camp, which broadly dismissed the pursuit of international legitimacy in favour of the ‘practical Zionism’ of David Ben-Gurion, and the ‘diplomats’ who attached a much greater value to it. However, whilst the Mapai ‘diplomats’ were sometimes strong enough to limit ‘activist’ policy, they lacked the power to articulate or pursue a real alternative. Given Mapai’s unchallenged leadership at a national level, the sporadic bursts of opposition – in parliamentary or public debate - on this issue in the period under review produced very little real change. In addition, the environment in which these issues were discussed accentuated the role of personality in foreign policy decision-making. Finally, in the absence of clear political leadership, policy was often decided by bureaucratic ‘muddling through’, a model that describes incremental change from a limited set of options, an already-familiar feature of Israeli political culture

Obesity and Unhealthy Consumption: The Public-Policy Case for Placing a Federal Sin Tax on Sugary Beverages

A growing body of research has established an empirical link between consumption of sugary beverages and numerous health problems. Yet, while few people disagree that reduced consumption of sugary beverages is a desirable goal for American society, many people disagree about how to reduce it. This Comment argues that a proposed sin tax on sugary beverages is sound policy, and Congress should implement the tax in order to combat and address the obesity epidemic because (1) consumers are subject to cognitive and informational defects that affect consumers’ abilities to make the best welfare-generating decisions, and (2) sugary-beverage consumption causes healthcare-related externalities that the current price of sugary beverages do not reflect

Uncertainty of flow in porous media

The problem posed to the Study Group was, in essence, how to estimate the probability distribution of f(x) from the probability distribution of x. Here x is a large vector and f is a complicated function which can be expensive to evaluate. For Schlumberger's applications f is a computer simulator of a hydrocarbon reservoir, and x is a description of the geology of the reservoir, which is uncertain

UBOT-7: THE DESIGN OF A COMPLIANT DEXTEROUS MOBILE MANIPULATOR

This thesis presents the design of uBot-7, the latest version of a dexterous mobile manipulator. This platform has been iteratively developed to realize a high performance-to-cost dexterous whole body manipulator with respect to mobile manipulation. The semi-anthropomorphic design of the uBot is a demonstrated and functional research platform for developing advanced autonomous perception, manipulation, and mobility tasks. The goal of this work is to improve the uBot’s ability to sense and interact with its environment in order to increase the platforms capability to operate dexterously, through the incorporation of joint torque feedback, and safely, through the implementation of passive and active compliance. This is accomplished through incorporating series elastic actuators in its arms and torso joints, improving the mechanical design to reduce backlash, and incorporating impedance controllers in the robot. The focus of this thesis is the development of the mechanical, sensor, and controller design for the uBot-7 platform. An impedance controller is developed and evaluated on a bench top prototype series elastic actuator

Multi-graded Macaulay Dual Spaces

We describe an algorithm for computing Macaulay dual spaces for multi-graded ideals. For homogeneous ideals, the natural grading is inherited by the Macaulay dual space which has been leveraged to develop algorithms to compute the Macaulay dual space in each homogeneous degree. Our main theoretical result extends this idea to multi-graded Macaulay dual spaces inherited from multi-graded ideals. This natural duality allows ideal operations to be translated from homogeneous ideals to their corresponding operations on the multi-graded Macaulay dual spaces. In particular, we describe a linear operator with a right inverse for computing quotients by a multi-graded polynomial. By using a total ordering on the homogeneous components of the Macaulay dual space, we also describe how to recursively construct a basis for each component. Several examples are included to demonstrate this new approach

A Faultine-Based Model of Team Leadership

Modern work teams operate in environments where increasingly salient member differences lead to the emergence of subgroups. Building on findings from the faultline literature, we propose that team members typically organize into three types of subgorups—cliques, coalitions, and cohorts, and that different leader orientations are mandated by each subgroup type

Decision Support for Natural Resource Management

This research spans a variety of research topics with a common theme, providing decision support through the development and analysis of methods that assist decision making for natural resource and wildlife management. I used components of structured decision making and decision analysis to address natural resources management problems, specifically monitoring and estimating the status of harvested populations, as well as data collection decisions for landscape conservation. My results have implications for the way populations are monitored and their status is estimated. I find that the inclusion of error in data collection can have a substantial impact of the performance of abundance and growth rate estimates of harvested species and that the selection of estimation methods depends on what management objectives are most important. For example, the Sex-Age-Kill population estimation method best estimates the size of populations, while the Downing population reconstruction method better estimates trends in population growth rates. I provide a framework to support selection of the best estimation method while considering a monitoring program as a whole. Based on this framework the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department will obtain the most benefits from a monitoring program including necropsy analysis that uses the Downing method to track population status. Finally, I demonstrated the use of value of information analysis as a tool to determine the relative expected benefits of addition spatial data collection for use in landscape mapping and conservation. This type of analysis can provide conservation agencies with a planning tool to direct budgets and mapping efforts