The Effect of Gambling on Health: Evidence from Canada

The relationship between gambling and health has important economic and public policy implications. We develop causal evidence about the relationship between recreational gambling and health using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) cycles 2.1, 3.1 and 4.1. Recreational gamblers are gamblers who are classifi ed as "non-problem" gamblers according to the Canadian Problem Gambling Index (CPGI). Gambling is treated as an endogenous regressor in the health equations. The results of instrumental variable and bivariate probit models of participation in gambling and health outcomes indicate that recreational gambling has either no or a negative impact on the probability of having certain chronic conditions. These results diff er from studies that find a positive association between problem gambling and adverse health outcomes. Exogeneity tests suggest that gambling is endogenous; hence, empirical methods that address endogeneity are necessary to develop causal evidence of a relationship between gambling and health.health; government policy; sports; gambling; recreation; tourism

Two-player envy-free multi-cake division

We introduce a generalized cake-cutting problem in which we seek to divide multiple cakes so that two players may get their most-preferred piece selections: a choice of one piece from each cake, allowing for the possibility of linked preferences over the cakes. For two players, we show that disjoint envy-free piece selections may not exist for two cakes cut into two pieces each, and they may not exist for three cakes cut into three pieces each. However, there do exist such divisions for two cakes cut into three pieces each, and for three cakes cut into four pieces each. The resulting allocations of pieces to players are Pareto-optimal with respect to the division. We use a generalization of Sperner's lemma on the polytope of divisions to locate solutions to our generalized cake-cutting problem.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, see related work at http://www.math.hmc.edu/~su/papers.htm

Double/Cross: Erasure in Theory and Poetry

This dissertation investigates the implications of overt textual erasure on literary and philosophical meaning, especially with reference to the poststructuralist phenomenological tradition culminating in the work of Jacques Derrida. Responding both to the emergence of “erasure poetry” as a recognizable genre of experimental literature and to the relative paucity of serious scholarship on Derrida’s “writing under erasure,” I focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary and philosophical works in which visible evidence of erasure is an intended component of the finished (i.e., printed and disseminated) document. Erasure, I argue, performs a complex doubling or double/crossing of meaning according to two asymmetrically mobilized aspects of the text: textual thickness and responsibility. On one hand, erasure ensures that texts are doubled both within themselves and throughout their various contexts; thus, textual meaning is dispersed, branched, or thickened across multiple dimensions as texts are constituted in space and time. On the other hand, this sprawling, decentralized thickness is persistently juxtaposed with the fact of particular individuals’ responsibility for the concrete texts they write. In the course of developing my argument, I analyze Martin Heidegger’s striking out of “Being” in The Question of Being, Derrida’s use of strikethroughs in his early philosophical works, John Cage and Jackson Mac Low’s incorporation of erasure into their poetry of “chance operations,” Jean-Luc Marion’s negative theology, William S. Burroughs’s cut-up method, Tom Phillips’s erasure-based artist’s book A Humument, and contemporary erasures including Ronald Johnson’s Radi os, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, and Jordan Abel’s The Place of Scraps. I conclude by discussing some of my own creative explorations using the erasure technique

Some Effects of 30 Years of Weir-Management on Coastal Marsh Aquatic Vegetation and Implications to Waterfowl Management

Aquatic vegetation was compared between weir-managed and unmanaged brackish marsh ponds at Marsh Island, Louisiana, parts of which have been weir-managed since 1958. Coverage by aquatic vegetation was greater in weir-managed ponds than in unmanaged ponds, but weir-management affected individual species differently. Eleocharis parvula was more common in unmanaged ponds than in managed ponds during the early 1960s but has not occurred in any ponds sampled since then. Ceratophyllum demersum and the dominant plants Myriophyllum spicatum and Ruppia maritima were more common in weir-managed ponds than in unmanaged ponds, although the magnitude of the difference varied greatly among sample dates. Because Myriophyllum spicatum and Ruppia maritima are important and preferred duck foods in Louisiana brackish marsh, it was concluded that weir-management improved habitat quality for migrant and resident ducks at Marsh Island. Weir-managed ponds contained more aquatic vegetation than unmanaged ponds in 1988, even though the crest of weirs had lost 15 cm of elevation relative to rising sea level and the accreting marsh surface. This suggests that aquatic vegetation can be increased with a greater degree of water exchange than previously believed, which is desired to reduce interference to juvenile fish and crustacean movement. Weir-managed and unmanaged ponds did not differ in pond depth, which suggests that weir-management did not affect sedimentation

Drivers and impacts of water level fluctuations in the Mississippi River delta: Implications for delta restoration

This review synthesizes the knowledge regarding the environmental forces affecting water level variability in the coastal waters of the Mississippi River delta and relates these fluctuations to planned river diversions. Water level fluctuations vary significantly across temporal and spatial scales, and are subject to influences from river flow, tides, vegetation, atmospheric forcing, climate change, and anthropogenic activities. Human impacts have strongly affected water level variability in the Mississippi River delta and other deltas worldwide. Collectively, the research reviewed in this article is important for enhancing environmental, economic, and social resilience and sustainability by assessing, mitigating, and adapting to geophysical changes that will cascade to societal systems in the coming decades in the economically and environmentally important Mississippi River delta. Specifically, this information provides a context within which to evaluate the impacts of diversions on the hydrology of the Mississippi delta and creates a benchmark for the evaluation of the impact of water level fluctuations on coastal restoration projects worldwide

Setting Physicians\u27 Prices in FFS Medicare: An Economic Perspective

Recent policy discussions by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) regarding physician prices in the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare Program reflect movement toward a market pricing model. Earlier objectives such as sustainable levels of spending have given way to concerns over the relationship between fees and actual costs, access to care, and the importance of demand and supply in local markets. An important objective in other policy settings is economically efficient distribution of services. We explain the meaning of economic efficiency for Medicare physician prices and explore difficulties one might encounter in pursuing economic efficiency, as well as the cost of not pursuing it

Soil Processes Related to Marsh Loss in Coastal Louisiana.

Marsh loss in Louisiana ($\sim$8,000 ha/yr) is attributed primarily to salt-water intrusion, flooding, and sediment starvation. Soil processes were studied to complement previous work identifying causes rather than mechanisms. Relationships between soil mineral and organic matter were examined to better understand accretion, which counters subsidence and sea-level rise. More soil volume was occupied by organic matter than mineral matter in fresh, intermediate, and brackish soil. Estimated mineral sediment requirements for accretion were 6.7 times greater in salt marsh than in fresh marsh. Sediment requirements probably increase seaward because of sulfate in seawater, reduction of sulfate to toxic sulfides in soil, and the interaction between soil iron and soil sulfides. Decomposition rates were studied because they varied among marsh types. Decomposition was greatest in fresh, and least in brackish soil at all drainage depths tested. Thus, different decomposition rates were attributed to the different plant species that create soil organic matter rather than different field hydrological conditions. Relationships among vegetation, soil, and marsh loss were studied in a deteriorating marsh near Lake Barre. Vegetation was stressed, which was attributed primarily to flooding. However, inadequate soil mineral matter also apparently prevented salt marsh from establishing in brackish areas experiencing salt-water intrusion, which suggested that the sediment regime was not changing although the salinity regime was changing. Excessive flooding resulted from inadequate accretion but accretion depended directly on peat accumulation, which indicated a positive feedback loop of inadequate plant production, inadequate accretion, and excessive flooding culminating in plant mortality and marsh loss. The hypothesis that marsh loss always results from plant stress and subsequent feedbacks between excessive flooding and inadequate accretion was tested at Marsh Island. Pilot and follow-up studies indicated that marsh loss there occurred in healthy marsh via erosion in the marsh interior. Thus, increasing sedimentation, or reducing flooding or salt-water intrusion will not reduce all marsh loss because all marsh loss is not associated with plant stress. Additional study is needed to determine if landscape patterns are related to marsh loss processes