The 'weight of evidence' concerning tobacco harm: beliefs in mid-twentieth century America

We present a version of Chern et al.'s (1995) Bayesian model of `health risk belief' to track the evolution of the `weight' of epidemiological evidence concerning tobacco harm that was in the possession of the U.S. Tobacco Industry Research Committee (T.I.R.C.) and the U.S. Public Health Service and related groups during the 1950s and early 1960s. We compare our results with public statements assessing the evidence that were made by the organisations during the same period. The results from the models for the U.S. Public Health Service and related groups are not in disagreement with the public statements of these organisations; the results from the lung cancer model for the T.I.R.C. are in disagreement with the assessments of the evidence made by the T.I.R.C.'s Scientific Director in his annual reports. We discuss possible reasons for this, relating our findings to present-day academic and legal debates about the `controversy' surrounding tobacco harm during the mid-twentieth century.

Surviving Slavery. Mortality at Mesopotamia, a Jamaican sugar estate, 1762 - 1832

We use survival analysis to study the mortality experience of 1111 slaves living on the British West Indian sugar plantation of Mesopotamia for seven decades prior to the Emancipation Act of 1833. Using three different concepts of analysis time and employing non-parametric and semi-parametric models, our results suggest that female slaves first observed under Joseph Foster Barham II's period of ownership (1789-1832) faced an increased hazard of death compared with those first observed during his predecessor's tenure. We find no such relationship for males. We cite as a possible explanation the employment regime operated by Foster Barham II, which allocated increasing numbers of females to gang labour in the cane fields. A G-estimation model used to compensate for the 'healthy worker survivor effect' estimates that continuous exposure to such work reduced survival times by between 20 and 40 per cent. Our findings are compared with previous studies of Mesopotamia and related to the wider literature investigating the roles of fertility and mortality in undermining the sustainability of Caribbean slave populations.

The role of tobacco taxes in starting and quitting smoking

The annual five per cent in real terms increase in tobacco taxes proposed in the recent White Paper on smoking has reaffirmed the commitment of successive United Kingdom governments to above inflation increases in tobacco taxation to encourage people to stop smoking. This paper presents evidence on the determinants of starting and quitting smoking using data from the British 'Health and Lifestyle Survey' and is the first to identify tax elasticities for starting and quitting smoking using British data. Self-reported individual smoking histories are coupled with a long time series for the tax rate on cigarettes to construct a longitudinal data set. Estimates are obtained for the impact of above inflation tax rises on the age of starting smoking and the number of years of smoking. The estimates of the tax elasticity of the age of starting smoking are +0.16 for men and +0.08 for women. The estimates of the tax elasticity of quitting are - 0.60 for men and -0.46 for women. These are robust to different specifications.Smoking initiation and cessation; Tobacco taxes; Duration analysis.

Pan-STARRS1 Discovery of Two Ultraluminous Supernovae at z ≈ 0.9

We present the discovery of two ultraluminous supernovae (SNe) at z ≈ 0.9 with the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey. These SNe, PS1-10ky and PS1-10awh, are among the most luminous SNe ever discovered, comparable to the unusual transients SN 2005ap and SCP 06F6. Like SN 2005ap and SCP 06F6, they show characteristic high luminosities (M_(bol) ≈ –22.5 mag), blue spectra with a few broad absorption lines, and no evidence for H or He. We have constructed a full multi-color light curve sensitive to the peak of the spectral energy distribution in the rest-frame ultraviolet, and we have obtained time series spectroscopy for these SNe. Given the similarities between the SNe, we combine their light curves to estimate a total radiated energy over the course of explosion of (0.9-1.4) × 10^(51) erg. We find photospheric velocities of 12,000-19,000 km s^(–1) with no evidence for deceleration measured across ~3 rest-frame weeks around light curve peak, consistent with the expansion of an optically thick massive shell of material. We show that, consistent with findings for other ultraluminous SNe in this class, radioactive decay is not sufficient to power PS1-10ky, and we discuss two plausible origins for these events: the initial spin-down of a newborn magnetar in a core-collapse SN, or SN shock breakout from the dense circumstellar wind surrounding a Wolf-Rayet star

The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Galaxy Evolution at 0.25 ≤ z ≤ 0.75 Using the Second Red-Sequence Cluster Survey

We study the evolution of galaxy populations around the spectroscopic WiggleZ sample of star-forming galaxies at 0.25 ≤ z ≤ 0.75 using the photometric catalog from the Second Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS2). We probe the optical photometric properties of the net excess neighbor galaxies. The key concept is that the marker galaxies and their neighbors are located at the same redshift, providing a sample of galaxies representing a complete census of galaxies in the neighborhood of star-forming galaxies. The results are compared with those using the RCS WiggleZ Spare-Fibre (RCS-WSF) sample as markers, representing galaxies in cluster environments at 0.25 ≤ z ≤ 0.45. By analyzing the stacked color-color properties of the WiggleZ neighbor galaxies, we find that their optical colors are not a strong function of indicators of star-forming activities such as EW([O II]) or Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) near-UV luminosity of the markers. The galaxies around the WiggleZ markers exhibit a bimodal distribution on the color-magnitude diagram, with most of them located in the blue cloud. The optical galaxy luminosity functions (GLFs) of the blue neighbor galaxies have a faint-end slope α of ~ –1.3, similar to that for galaxies in cluster environments drawn from the RCS-WSF sample. The faint-end slope of the GLF for the red neighbors, however, is ~ –0.4, significantly shallower than the ~ –0.7 found for those in cluster environments. This suggests that the buildup of the faint end of the red sequence in cluster environments is in a significantly more advanced stage than that in the star-forming and lower galaxy density WiggleZ neighborhoods. We find that the red galaxy fraction (f_red) around the star-forming WiggleZ galaxies has similar values from z ~ 0.3 to z ~ 0.6 with f_red ~ 0.28, but drops to f_red ~ 0.20 at z gsim 0.7. This change of f_red with redshift suggests that there is either a higher rate of star-forming galaxies entering the luminosity-limited sample at z ≳ 0.7, or a decrease in the quenching rate of star formation at that redshift. Comparing to that in a dense cluster environment, the f_red of the WiggleZ neighbors is both considerably smaller and has a more moderate change with redshift, pointing to the stronger and more prevalent environmental influences on galaxy evolution in high-density regions

WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Cosmological neutrino mass constraint from blue high-redshift galaxies

The absolute neutrino mass scale is currently unknown, but can be constrained by cosmology. The WiggleZ high redshift, star-forming, and blue galaxy sample offers a complementary data set to previous surveys for performing these measurements, with potentially different systematics from nonlinear structure formation, redshift-space distortions, and galaxy bias. We obtain a limit of ∑m_ν<0.60  eV (95% confidence) for WiggleZ+Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Combining with priors on the Hubble parameter and the baryon acoustic oscillation scale gives ∑m_ν<0.29  eV, which is the strongest neutrino mass constraint derived from spectroscopic galaxy redshift surveys

Optimal plans and timing under additive transformations to rewards

The nature and role of additive transformations to rewards are elucidated for a general class of deterministic, nonautonomous, optimal control problems with many state and control variables. Conditions relating to the optimal choice of initial and terminal times and initial and terminal values of state variables are identified such that additive transformations affect optimal plans. General comparative static results are derived and the framework is extended to cover two common classes of stochastic control problems. Three applications are presented: the canonical adjustment cost model of a firm, a stochastic extension of an irreversible pollution accumulation problem with regime-switching, and an extension of a lifecycle model of retirement in which an agent\u27s retirement wealth evolves stochastically

Supernova 2009kf: An Ultraviolet Bright Type IIP Supernova Discovered with Pan-STARRS 1 and GALEX

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of a luminous Type IIP Supernova (SN) 2009kf discovered by the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) survey and also detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The SN shows a plateau in its optical and bolometric light curves, lasting approximately 70 days in the rest frame, with an absolute magnitude of M_V = -18.4 mag. The P-Cygni profiles of hydrogen indicate expansion velocities of 9000 km s^(-1) at 61 days after discovery which is extremely high for a Type IIP SN. SN 2009kf is also remarkably bright in the near-ultraviolet (NUV) and shows a slow evolution 10-20 days after optical discovery. The NUV and optical luminosity at these epochs can be modeled with a blackbody with a hot effective temperature (T ~ 16,000 K) and a large radius (R ~ 1 × 10^(15) cm). The bright bolometric and NUV luminosity, the light curve peak and plateau duration, the high velocities, and temperatures suggest that 2009kf is a Type IIP SN powered by a larger than normal explosion energy. Recently discovered high-z SNe (0.7 < z < 2.3) have been assumed to be IIn SNe, with the bright UV luminosities due to the interaction of SN ejecta with a dense circumstellar medium. UV-bright SNe similar to SN 2009kf could also account for these high-z events, and its absolute magnitude M_(NUV) = -21.5 ± 0.5 mag suggests such SNe could be discovered out to z ~ 2.5 in the PS1 survey

Dynamic, economic approaches to HTA under uncertainty

A simple, two period framework is used to interpret existing contributions to the literature on decision rules for HTA under uncertainty and to contrast them with a dynamic, economic model solved using backward induction.economic evaluation, dynamic programming

Biases in Bias Elicitation

We consider the biases that can arise in bias elicitation when expert assessors make random errors. We illustrate the phenomenon for two sources of bias: that due to omitting important variables in a least squares regression and that which arises in adjusting relative risks for treatment effects using an elicitation scale. Results show that, even when assessors' elicitations of bias have desirable properties (such as unbiasedness and independence), the nonlinear nature of biases can lead to elicitations of bias that are, themselves, biased. We show the corrections which can be made to remove this bias and discuss the implications for the applied literature which employs these methods.bias reduction, expert elicitation, elicitation scales, omitted cariable bias