How Costly is Welfare Stigma? Separating Psychological Costs from Time Costs

This paper empirically decomposes the costs of welfare participation using a model of labor supply and participation in multiple welfare programs. Prior estimates of the cost of welfare participation have not differentiated psychological costs, or stigma, from the effort required to become eligible and maintain eligibility (time costs). The relative size of these two costs has implications for policy. We find that psychological costs are at least as large as the time costs associated with participation in food assistance programs. In addition, we find that the incidence of psychological costs is inconsistent with these costs acting as an effective screening mechanism.Program Participation, Welfare Stigma, Labor Supply, Structural Estimation

Investigating the benefits of virtual reality on student acquisition of 3D anatomical information

Virtual reality (VR) technology is becoming more accessible within educational settings due to price decreases and greater software availability. VR is particularly useful for teaching anatomy, as students often struggle to learn the three-dimensional relationships between body structures from two-dimensional images in textbooks. Using funds from Augustana’s Pedagogy and Technology Grant, we purchased and assembled a VR workstation and began researching the effectiveness of VR in anatomy education. The early results of this research show that students exhibited substantial increases in their knowledge anatomical structures and their ability to reconstruct the three-dimensional relationships between anatomical structures after 30 minutes using the 3D Organon VR Anatomy© program. This increase, however, was similar to the knowledge increase shown by students using an anatomy visualization program made for desktop computers from the same company. When asked to compare the two, students indicated a preference for the VR program because of the ability to interact with structures in three-dimensions. Furthermore, participants reported that the VR program was easy to use, even though very few of them had previously used VR. These results, while preliminary, indicate that VR has the potential to greatly enhance the student experience of learning anatomy when used in conjunction with traditional anatomical education methods

Debris Disks in the Scorpius-Centaurus OB Association Resolved by ALMA

We present a CO(2-1) and 1240 um continuum survey of 23 debris disks with spectral types B9-G1, observed at an angular resolution of 0.5-1 arcsec with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). The sample was selected for large infrared excess and age ~10 Myr, to characterize the prevalence of molecular gas emission in young debris disks. We identify three CO-rich debris disks, plus two additional tentative (3-sigma) CO detections. Twenty disks were detected in the continuum at the >3-sigma level. For the 12 disks in the sample that are spatially resolved by our observations, we perform an independent analysis of the interferometric continuum visibilities to constrain the basic dust disk geometry, as well as a simultaneous analysis of the visibilities and broad-band spectral energy distribution to constrain the characteristic grain size and disk mass. The gas-rich debris disks exhibit preferentially larger outer radii in their dust disks, and a higher prevalence of characteristic grain sizes smaller than the blowout size. The gas-rich disks do not exhibit preferentially larger dust masses, contrary to expectations for a scenario in which a higher cometary destruction rate would be expected to result in a larger mass of both CO and dust. The three debris disks in our sample with strong CO detections are all around A stars: the conditions in disks around intermediate-mass stars appear to be the most conducive to the survival or formation of CO.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Ap