Factors Associated with Adults’ Perceptions of Nicotine and Nicotine e-Liquid Harm to Young Children and Associations with Nicotine Handling Behaviors in the Home

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) use has grown rapidly over the past decade. ENDS-specific harms have emerged among children (particularly those \u3c 6 years), related to exposures to nicotine e-liquids (NEL) used in ENDS. Children have been identified as a priority population in terms of the potential and actual NEL-caused harm in the United States (US). Evidence is lacking examining contextual factors such as adults’ risk perceptions related to child NEL exposures and how these materials are handled in homes where children are present. Guided by the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT), this dissertation focuses on adults’ risk perceptions of children’s exposure to nicotine and NEL handling practices in the home. Study 1 examined risk perceptions related to children’s (\u3c 13 years) exposure to nicotine generally (not product-specific) among a representative sample of US adults, and found that current tobacco product users, males, and persons from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds were significantly less likely to perceive nicotine as harmful to children. Study 2 examined risk perceptions related to children’s (\u3c 6 years) exposure to NEL in two dose-levels by five exposure modes, among adults who lived with at least one child (\u3c 6 years) and were ENDS users, non-users living with a user, or never-users in never using homes. Study 2 found that ENDS-users were significantly less likely (versus never users from never-user homes) to perceive NEL exposure as moderately or very dangerous in 7/10 of dose/mode dyads examined. Study 3 examined relationships between perceptions of NEL-related risk to children and NEL handling practices among adult ENDS-users and non-users living in ENDS using homes who also had a child (\u3c 6 years). This study found that being a non-user was significantly associated with not knowing about the NEL handling practices in their home, and perceiving child NEL exposure as very dangerous was significantly associated with always using childproof caps. These findings highlight the need to educate adults about nicotine’s harmfulness to children and to develop measures to protect children from nicotine and NEL exposures. Opportunities to improve all adults’ NEL-related knowledge to improve safety for children are also discussed

Our Changing Institutions: A Challenge to the Liberally Educated

Address to the graduating class of 1974 by Catherine Blanchard Cleary, president of the First Wisconsin Trust Company

Remedies for Non-Citizens under Provincial Nominee Programs: Judicial Review and Fiduciary Relationships

In Canada, more and more people get permanent residency under Provincial and Territorial Nominee Programs (PTNPs). Despite this new reality, there is today no detailed examination of the consequences of PTNPs for immigrants\u27 rights and protections. In this paper, we seek to fill this gap. As we show, PTNPs have no statutory basis and officials who administer these programs do not exercise statutory authority of any kind. An alternative would be that these programs become law ; then the decisions made under them would bejudicially reviewable for conformity with that law. However, it is unlikely to happen because flexibility is seen as the key characteristic of PTNPs. We contend that the concept of a fiduciary relationship and fiduciary obligation has evolved greatly in the last decades in Canadian law, and we suggest, as an alternative to judicial review, extending a fiduciary duty to public decision makers. As in any new subject area of research, we hope that our findings will form the basis for further study on this understudied, and yet very important topic

Why do manufacturing firms produce services ? Evidence for the servitization paradox in Belgium. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 330

The increasing role of services in GDP results from the growing share of service industries, but also from the fact that firms produce services along with goods. This paper investigates the determinants of service provision by manufacturing firms. First, it develops a model of differentiated products with, on the demand side, complementarities between the firm’s goods and services, and, on the supply side, rivalry in the allocation of expertise between the production of goods and the provision of services. Second, it provides an econometric assessment of the determinants of servitization for manufacturing firms, using a fractional Probit model with heterogeneity, controlling for endogeneity with respect to unobserved firm characteristics. Both the theoretical model and empirical estimates point to a non-linear relationship between servitization and firm productivity. The relationship is further shaped by the sector environment as well as intrinsic characteristics of the goods and services supplied

Mathematics and Morphogenesis of the City: A Geometrical Approach

Cities are living organisms. They are out of equilibrium, open systems that never stop developing and sometimes die. The local geography can be compared to a shell constraining its development. In brief, a city's current layout is a step in a running morphogenesis process. Thus cities display a huge diversity of shapes and none of traditional models from random graphs, complex networks theory or stochastic geometry takes into account geometrical, functional and dynamical aspects of a city in the same framework. We present here a global mathematical model dedicated to cities that permits describing, manipulating and explaining cities' overall shape and layout of their street systems. This street-based framework conciliates the topological and geometrical sides of the problem. From the static analysis of several French towns (topology of first and second order, anisotropy, streets scaling) we make the hypothesis that the development of a city follows a logic of division / extension of space. We propose a dynamical model that mimics this logic and which from simple general rules and a few parameters succeeds in generating a large diversity of cities and in reproducing the general features the static analysis has pointed out.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure

Area-based management tools to protect unique hydrothermal vents from harmful effects from deep-sea mining: A review of ongoing developments

The deep seabed in areas beyond national jurisdiction, or what is referred to as “the Area,” is the common heritage of humankind, safeguarded by mandating the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to protect the marine environment and to regulate all mining-related activities on the seabed in areas beyond national jurisdiction. So far, the ISA has 7 contracts for polymetallic sulfide (PMS) exploration. PMS deposits are located at and near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, one of the most remarkable ecosystems on Earth. Where hot and mineral rich vent fluids escape from the earth's crusts, minerals precipitate and are deposited, and unique biomass rich microbial and animal communities are thriving. Several intergovernmental organizations suggest that active vents classify as areas in need of conservation. The ISA is currently developing regional environmental plans for PMS and has set some first steps to protect active vents from mining impacts. We review the current regulatory and policy framework for deep-sea spatial management, and set it into the environmental context. We conclude that all current management measures of the ISA would not be suited to protect the marine environment from harmful mining impact. We recognize that ISA's area-based management tools are under development, and suggest that improvements can be achieved by studying and recognizing the ecological attributes of ecosystems and their connectivity, as well as governance connectivity, taking into account area-based management tools of different users in the same area

The Current Status of Deep-Sea Mining Governance at the International Seabed Authority

This article describes the current state of deep-sea mining governance in areas beyond national jurisdiction, providing an accessible overview of the structure and functioning of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), as well as some background information on the different instruments developed by the ISA for deep-sea mining regulation, control and management. In particular, the article focuses on the way environmental considerations are currently being discussed and negotiated under the Draft Exploitation Regulations. Given that there are no official records kept of ISA meetings, this article thereby also provides an overview of a body of information that is difficult to access

The current status of deep-sea mining governance at the International Seabed Authority

This article describes the current state of deep-sea mining governance in areas beyond national jurisdiction, providing an accessible overview of the structure and functioning of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), as well as some background information on the different instruments developed by the ISA for deep-sea mining regulation, control and management. In particular, the article focuses on the way environmental considerations are currently being discussed and negotiated under the Draft Exploitation Regulations. Given that there are no official records kept of ISA meetings, this article thereby also provides an overview of a body of information that is difficult to access

No-Fly Zones: Strategic, Operational, and Legal Considerations for Congress

This report discusses the establishment of no-fly zones and several related issues for Congress surrounding the strategy, including international authorization, congressional authorization, operations, and costs of establishing and maintaining no-fly zones

Disentangling diverse responses to climate change among global marine ecosystem models

Climate change is warming the ocean and impacting lower trophic level (LTL) organisms. Marine ecosystem models can provide estimates of how these changes will propagate to larger animals and impact societal services such as fisheries, but at present these estimates vary widely. A better understanding of what drives this inter-model variation will improve our ability to project fisheries and other ecosystem services into the future, while also helping to identify uncertainties in process understanding. Here, we explore the mechanisms that underlie the diversity of responses to changes in temperature and LTLs in eight global marine ecosystem models from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project (FishMIP). Temperature and LTL impacts on total consumer biomass and ecosystem structure (defined as the relative change of small and large organism biomass) were isolated using a comparative experimental protocol. Total model biomass varied between −35% to +3% in response to warming, and -17% to +15% in response to LTL changes. There was little consensus about the spatial redistribution of biomass or changes in the balance between small and large organisms (ecosystem structure) in response to warming, an LTL impacts on total consumer biomass varied depending on the choice of LTL forcing terms. Overall, climate change impacts on consumer biomass and ecosystem structure are well approximated by the sum of temperature and LTL impacts, indicating an absence of nonlinear interaction between the models’ drivers. Our results highlight a lack of theoretical clarity about how to represent fundamental ecological mechanisms, most importantly how temperature impacts scale from individual to ecosystem level, and the need to better understand the two-way coupling between LTL organisms and consumers. We finish by identifying future research needs to strengthen global marine ecosystem modelling and improve projections of climate change impacts