Evaluating the Impact of a Smoking Ban in Las Vegas Casino Resorts

Worldwide, the smoking population decreases, leaving hospitality venues to decide how a change in policy affects their revenues. In spite of the ban, bars, pubs, and restaurants in countries with a smoking ban report a consistent level of revenue. Within the United States, there are varying degrees of a smoking ban, with minimal effect on revenue. In Nevada, the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act’s commencement coincided with the Great Recession, skewing hospitality revenue numbers as tourism dwindled. Behaviorally, nonsmokers are more likely to avoid areas with smoke, whereas smokers are not as affected by nonsmoking areas. Casinos in Las Vegas have been operating with smoker comforts in mind, whereas majority of their patrons are nonsmokers. A discussion of compromises to cater more towards nonsmoking guests leads to a method for casinos for implementation. Without a clear and definite change in policy or a casino resort apply a self-imposed ban, smoking is still permitted in the resort

Marketing Ecosystem Services from Agricultural Land: Stated Preferences over Payment Mechanisms and Actual Sales of Farm-Wildlife Contracts

Agriculture conventionally supplies food, fiber and fuel that consumers can purchase through the market. With the right incentives, farmers can also provide ecosystem services such as wildlife habitat, climate regulation, surface water flows and waste absorption and breakdown. Such incentives have so far come almost entirely from government-sponsored programs that rely on financial assistance to farmers to encourage them to alter agricultural practices or input mix to enhance ecosystem services. Programs recently implemented in Costa Rica and Columbia rely on payments by the beneficiaries of the ecosystem services, such as municipal water companies and water users (Pagiola et al. 2002). Few of these programs, however, have attempted to establish a market for ecosystem services in which the beneficiaries of such services pay the suppliers their personal values of ecosystem services in an actual market. Markets for ecosystem services must overcome two major challenges. In order to set prices for ecosystem services at the right level, it is imperative to understand consumers preferences. Farmland, however, has multiple attributes such as wildlife habitat services and landscape view; the marginal rate of substitution among those attributes must be understood to design marketable products for ecosystem services. Moreover, many ecosystem services are public goods for which traditional markets are ill-suited, because many individuals can receive benefits simultaneously regardless of whether they have paid part of the cost of provision. Therefore, consumers have an incentive to free-ride on others. Evidence from previous research on public goods clearly suggests that under-contribution is typical (e.g., Ledyard 1995). The overall goal of this study is to explore the potential to establish an actual market in which the public can purchase ecosystem services generated by agricultural land. More specifically, this paper evaluates the performance of alternative elicitation methods that are intended to reduce individuals incentives to free-ride on others payments for ecosystem services. Using a choice experiment involving a large-scale mail survey, we first estimate the marginal rate of substitution consumers place on various attributes of farmland including the ecosystem services such land can provide. We further compare the results across different payment mechanisms and examine which ones are capable of revealing demand that is closer to consumers true value. Second, we attempt to establish an actual market in which individuals are asked to purchase a share of a farm contract to provide ecosystem service with real money under different payment mechanisms. We compare the market outcomes with the choice experiments. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the performance of different payment mechanisms for provision of ecosystem services using field experiments both within a hypothetical setting and by developing an actual market. The ecosystem service in question in this study is habitat for a grassland-nesting bird called the Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryivorus). Yellow and black Bobolinks establish ground nests in hay fields from mid-May into early June. Their visibility and entertaining character, combined with evidence that many birds, including bobolinks, are experiencing population declines (Sauer et al. 2004), make the bird a leading candidate to attract public interest in efforts to manage farmland for vulnerable wildlife. Previous studies have established that hay harvesting conducted during the birds five to six week nesting period is devastating to fledgling success (e.g., Mitchell et al. 2000). A fairly moderate shift in the harvest schedule could provide significant refuge for nesting birds while causing some losses of the quantity and quality of the hay harvested. If a market developed that paid farmers acceptable compensation to protect grassland birds, then farmers would have an incentive to add an ecosystem service to their revenue base while enhancing environmental quality for wildlife. In this study, we compare four payment mechanisms applied in field experiments: 1) voluntary contribution mechanism, 2) provision point with a money-back guarantee and proportional rebate of excess contributions (PPMBG-PR), 3) uniform-price, multi-buyer auction and 4) pivotal mechanism. Voluntary contribution mechanism has no provision point but has a money-back guarantee if enough money is not raised. Under PPMBG-PR, the public good is supplied only if a pre-specified amount of money (the provision point) is raised, and contributors receive their money back if the market fails to raise that amount. Under a multi-buyer auction, everyone who is willing to pay above a certain price will pay a price such that the total sum will be enough to cover the cost for a farmer to change harvest practices. Under a pivotal mechanism only those consumers whose payments make a difference in the provision of the good would pay. The pivotal mechanism is incentive compatible and is used as the baseline. We test the following hypotheses on the WTP, market participation rate and total revenue collection: (1) WTP: Voluntary contribution < Multi-buyer Auction < PPMBG-PR < Pivotal (2) Participation rate: Voluntary contribution < PPMBG-PR < Multi-buyer auction < Pivotal (3) Revenue collection: Pivotal < Voluntary < Multi-buyer auction < PPMBG-PR We perform a large-scale cross-mechanism comparison using two types of field experiments, a survey involving hypothetical questions and a functioning market for an ecosystem service. In the survey, the subjects are randomly assigned to one of the elicitation methods. We posit a hypothetical situation involving a market for contracts with farmers, describe the assigned elicitation method and ask respondents to compare several sets of two alternative farm wildlife contracts, each with five attributes presented in a stated-choice format. One of the attributes is to change the timing of hay harvesting to enhance the success of a specified number of bobolink fledglings on a given size of farm. The survey data were collected in fall of 2006. Survey questionnaires were sent to all of the 2,987 households in Jamestown, Rhode Island. The response rate was about 37% after accounting for undelivered surveys. Although still preliminary, a key result from the choice experiment is that consumers are least willing to pay for farm wildlife contracts under the voluntary contribution mechanism. The payment method that generated the greatest total purchases of farm wildlife contracts was the multi-buyer auction, followed by the pivotal mechanism and PPMBG-PR, respectively. This result suggests that some features of the payment mechanisms (such as setting of a provision point, fairness and a money-back guarantee) encourage consumers to reveal demand that is closer to each consumer true value of the good than the demand revealed by a simple voluntary contribution mechanism in a field experiment using a hypothetical situation. We are currently in the process of launching an ecosystem-service market in Jamestown by establishing actual farm wildlife contracts with farmers and selling shares of those contracts to consumers. The market will be open to the public for two months during March and April, 2007. Each farm wildlife contract will be tied to one or more of the payment mechanisms and whether each contract will remain effective during the breeding season will depend on the market outcome under each mechanism. Consumers will be randomly assigned to one of the elicitation methods. Using market data, we will compare the actual consumer behavior across alternative methods and also to their willingness to pay as estimated in the survey choice experiment.Land Economics/Use,

Ecosystem Services Beyond Valuation, Regulation and Philanthropy: Integrating Consumer Values into the Economy

Environmental Markets, Ecosystem Service Markets, Payment For Ecosystem Services, Incentives, Nature's Services, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q20, Q57, C93, H41,

Do Stated Preference Values Predict Revealed Behavior in “New” Markets for Ecosystem Services? A Comparison of Experiments Addressing Establishing A Market for Farmland Ecosystem Services

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Degranulating mast cells in fibrotic regions of human tumors and evidence that mast cell heparin interferes with the growth of tumor cells through a mechanism involving fibroblasts

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that mast cells that are present in fibrotic regions of cancer can suppress the growth of tumor cells through an indirect mechanism involving peri-tumoral fibroblasts. METHODS: We first immunostained a wide variety of human cancers for the presence of degranulated mast cells. In a subsequent series of controlled in vitro experiments, we then co-cultured UACC-812 human breast cancer cells with normal fibroblasts in the presence or absence of different combinations and doses of mast cell tryptase, mast cell heparin, a lysate of the human mast cell line HMC-1, and fibroblast growth factor-7 (FGF-7), a powerful, heparin-binding growth factor for breast epithelial cells. RESULTS: Degranulating mast cells were localized predominantly in the fibrous tissue of every case of breast cancer, head and neck cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Hodgkin's disease that we examined. Mast cell tryptase and HMC-1 lysate had no significant effect on the clonogenic growth of cancer cells co-cultured with fibroblasts. By contrast, mast cell heparin at multiple doses significantly reduced the size and number of colonies of tumor cells co-cultured with fibroblasts, especially in the presence of FGF-7. Neither heparin nor FGF-7, individually or in combination, produced any significant effect on the clonogenic growth of breast cancer cells cultured without fibroblasts. CONCLUSION: Degranulating mast cells are restricted to peri-tumoral fibrous tissue, and mast cell heparin is a powerful inhibitor of clonogenic growth of tumor cells co-cultured with fibroblasts. These results may help to explain the well-known ability of heparin to inhibit the growth of primary and metastatic tumors

Ecosystem Services beyond Valuation, Regulation, and Philanthropy: Integrating Consumer Values into the Economy

Ecosystem services have been identified as a central link between society, or human systems, and the structure and function of natural systems (e.g., U.S. LTER 2007, MEA 2005). A fundamental economic problem is that while almost everyone—environmental groups, policy makers, and broad segments of the general public—seems to believe ecosystem services are valuable, the available public policy tools and approaches for private action fall short, and often omit, a direct link to the real values of the people. If ecosystem services are of economic value, then a fundamental challenge concerns how to identify the link between ecosystem services and the quality of life of individual households, and how to use that link to integrate ecosystem service values into the decisions of businesses and individuals in society. Given current markets and policies decision–makers are unable to recognize the full value of services ecosystems provide. What can be done to integrate ecosystem service values into the economy? After reviewing a fundamental cause for why markets often overlook ecosystem services, and after considering some limitations of the often effective approaches of philanthropy and government, we consider the potential to leverage experimental economics to create and test approaches to integrate values at the individual level into markets addressing ecosystem services

Occurrence control of charged exciton for a single CdSe quantum dot at cryogenic temperatures on an optical nanofiber

We discuss photo-luminescence characteristics of CdSe core/shell quantum dots at cryogenic temperatures using a hybrid system of a single quantum dot and an optical nanofiber. The key point is to control the emission species of quantum dot to charged excitons, known as trions, which have superior characteristics to neutral excitons. We investigate the photocharging behavior for the quantum dots by varying the wavelength and intensity of irradiating laser light, and establish a method to create a permanently charged situation which lasts as long as the cryogenic temperature is maintained. The present photocharging method may open a new route to applying the CdSe quantum dots in quantum photonics, and the hybrid system of photocharged quantum-dot and optical nanofiber may readily be applicable to a fiber-in-line single-photon generator

Pembuatan Nata de Cheese dari Whey Keju Menggunakan Bakteri Acetobacter xylinum

Cheese production produce waste namely whey cheese. This research studies the effect of concentration (7%, 10%, 20% v/v)  and pH (4, 4.25, 4.5.) on the fermentation of whey cheese and to investigate Michaelis-Menten constant and maximum productivity. Whey cheeses were made from amount of 500 mL whey cheese waste, added 50 g of sugar, 6 g of ammonium sulfate and 20% w/w Acetobacter xylinum. The whey cheese wastes were fermentation processes for 0, 4, and 8 days. Every 0, 4, and 8 days wastes were measured for calculating glucose and ethanol level. The Michaelis-Menten constant and Vmax have been evaluated. Fermentation of cheese waste was carried out at room temperature for 8 days. The results showed the highest ethanol percentage at pH 4 and concentration of 10% v/v are 57.2521% and 30.8540% respectively. On the other hand the highest glucose percentage in the variation pH of 4 and concentration of 20% v/v are 16.99%. From the calculation of the kinetic reaction using Lineweaver-Burk plot in the variation of concentration get Vmax and KM obtained are 5.106 ppm.day-1 and KM 2,9266.107 ppm1 in that order. While in the variation of pH get Vmax and KM are 1.106 ppm.day-1 and KM 4,95.106 ppm-1 separately

On the Nature of AX J2049.6+2939 and AX J2050.0+2914

AX J2049.6+2939 is a compact X-ray source in the vicinity of the southern blow-up region of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant (Miyata et al. 1998a). This source was the brightest X-ray source inside the Cygnus Loop observed during the ASCA survey project. The X-ray spectrum was well fitted by a power-law function with a photon index of $-2.1 \pm 0.1$. Short-term timing analysis was performed and no coherent pulsation was found. Follow-up observations with ASCA have revealed a large variation in X-ray intensity by a factor of $\simeq$ 50, whereas the spectral shape did not change within the statistical uncertainties. In the second ASCA observation, we found another X-ray source, AX J2050.0+2941, at the north east of AX J2049.6+2939. During the three ASCA observations, the X-ray intensity of AX J2050.0+2941 varied by a factor of $\simeq$4. No coherent pulsations could be found for AX J2050.0+2941. We have performed optical photometric and spectroscopic observations in the vicinity of AX J2049.6+2939 at the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). As a result, all objects brighter than $B$-band magnitude of 22 in the error box can be identified with normal stars. Combined with the X-ray results and the fact that there are no radio counterparts, AX J2049.6+2939 is not likely to be either an ordinary rotation-powered pulsar or an AGN. The nature of AX J2049.6+2939 is still unclear and further observations over a wide energy band are strongly required. As to AX J2050.0+2941, the long-term X-ray variability and the radio counterpart suggests that it is an AGN.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication by Astrophysical Journa