OPEN SPACE ALLOCATION AND TRAVEL COSTS

The gain from dividing parks into smaller pieces to reduce travel costs is weighed against the loss in services the parks provide since they are smaller. The optimal number of parks is dependent on whether travel costs are concentrated in parts of the town.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Development Patterns and the Recreation Value of Amenities

Public open spaces around and within urban areas have been increasingly developed due to greater population pressures. My paper investigates if land around public open spaces is likely to get developed faster since households are attracted to the recreation value as well as the environmental amenities of the public open space. There has been inadequate attention in the literature to the influence of the different sources of value of open space on housing prices. While views of open space are certainly an important source of value to households, public open space is also valued because households enjoy recreation at the open space. Adopting the monocentric city model, simulations examine how the different sources of value of public open space influence the developed area, rent gradient and the development density of an urban area. The monocentric city model has residents competing for housing around a single central business district (CBD) while developers choose the density of development from the expected prices of the homes at that location in the city. Simulations of the closed city model result in equilibrium rent gradients for land and the housing, a utility level, and a city boundary. By referencing the monocentric city model with two-dimensional coordinates, Wu and Plantinga (2003) are able to more spatially explicitly examine the influence of amenities on the equilibrium state of the city. Amenities are shown to generate leap-frog development, influence the developed area of the city, the population density, rent gradients and location of different income groups. Although different shapes and areas of amenities are examined in their paper, there is no investigation of the proper proximity of these amenities to each other. Several small amenities dispersed far apart from each other in the city may result in less total amount of developed land than if there is only a single large amenity. Another reason that the proximity of amenities to each other matters is that the net benefits from recreation are influenced by the spatial arrangement of the amenities. Consumer´s surplus from recreation trips to the amenity is the net benefit of the amenity, with the price of a recreation trip including the travel cost to the amenity. The travel costs from recreation at amenities depend on how widely dispersed the amenities are in the city. While several amenities located widely throughout a city lower the travel costs of recreation, the city tends to diffuse more too resulting in a larger developed area. On the other hand, a single centrally located amenity contracts the city resulting in a smaller developed area although the travel costs of recreation rise slightly. Simulations from the model collect information on the aggregate amount of recreation trips, recreational net benefits, and the developed area. More localized benefits of amenities like nice views and cleaner air have a stronger influence on housing prices and development densities than the less localized benefits of amenities like recreation. If the travel costs for recreation are low, then only the localized benefits of amenities influence housing prices and development densities. However, if the demand for recreation and the travel costs to reach the amenity is high, the benefits of recreation have the potential to influence the housing prices and development densities in that area of the city. There are several potential solutions to the problem of recreation benefits of the amenities leading to the unwanted development of natural or agricultural land. The simplest solution is to regulate that no recreation take place at the amenity. Of course, the nice views and cleaner air may still draw development outward, and the enforcement of no recreation is necessary. Rather than prohibit recreation, raising user fees at recreation sites is a way to generate revenue for the city while simultaneously restraining sprawl. If the cost of travel to a recreation site is high, development is more likely near the site since households want the benefit of a trip without the high cost of travel to the site. If roads to the recreation site are improved to reduce the cost of travel, households will prefer to locate close to the central business district rather than the recreation site to reduce the cost of their daily commutes.Public Economics,

Identifying Individual Discount Rates and Valuing Public Open Space with Stated Preference Models

An individual's rate of time preference is an important consideration for individuals deciding whether to support a public good since the benefits of a public good often come in the future. Our study finds individual discount rates from a contingent valuation method (CVM) question where the time frame of the payment schedule is varied across surveys. We find discount rates similar to the rates found in the recent revealed preference and experimental literature of around 30%. Our CVM question addresses the preservation of additional open space adjacent to a large regional park at the urban fringe of Portland, Oregon.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, H43, Q51, Q15,

Zero temperature properties of mesons in a vector meson extended linear sigma model

A three flavor linear sigma model with vector and axial-vector mesons is discussed. Preliminary results concerning on the symmetry breaking pattern, the question of parameterization, as well as the resulting meson masses are presented.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figures, submitted to the Hot and Cold Baryonic Matter (HCBM 2010) conference proceeding

The status of pentaquark spectroscopy on the lattice

The present work is a summary of the status of lattice pentaquark calculations. After a pedagogic introduction to the basics of lattice hadron spectroscopy we give a critical comparison of results presently available in the literature. Special emphasis is put on presenting some of the possible pitfalls of these calculations. In particular we discuss at length the choice of the hadronic operators and the separation of genuine five-quark states from meson-baryon scattering states.Comment: 13 pages LaTeX, 1 eps figur

Sanctifying Ethnic Memory and Reinforcing Place Attachment: Cultural Identity, Sacred Place, and Pilgrimage in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan

On November 8,1908, the Our Lady of Assumption Church was opened in the Hungarian Catholic community of Kaposvar, Saskatchewan (located 4 km south of the present-day town of Esterhazy). Nearly a century later, the focal point of the early farming district remains an important commemorative site in eastern Saskatchewan for descendants of the pioneers who settled in the Kaposvar district under Count Paul d'Esterhazy's 1886 Hungarian colonization initiative. Centred on the church grounds, commemorative celebration and an annual pilgrimage have served as important agencies of cultural retention for local Hungarian-Canadians. This paper explores the evolution of cultural identity in the former ethnic enclave of Kaposvar and reveals the role of a traditional religious pilgrimage in reinforcing identity forming place attachment.Le 8 novembre 1908, l’église Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption a ouvert ses portes dans la communauté catholique hongroise de Kaposvar en Saskatchewan (située à 4 km au sud de la Ville actuelle d’Esterhazy). Près d’un siècle plus tard, le centre de ce district agricole demeure un important lieu commémoratif de l’est de la Saskatchewan pour les descendants des pionniers qui se sont établis en 1886 dans le district de Kaposvar dans le cadre du projet de colonisation hongroise du comte Paul d’Esterhazy. Tenus sur les terrains de l’église, la célébration commémorative et le pèlerinage annuel ont constitué d’importants moyens de conservation de la culture des Canadiens hongrois de la région. Ce document porte sur l’évolution de l’identité culturelle dans l’ancienne enclave ethnique de Kaposvar et révèle le rôle d’un pèlerinage religieux traditionnel dans le renforcement de l’attachement à un lieu porteur d’identité

Pentaquark hadrons from lattice QCD

We study spin 1/2 isoscalar and isovector candidates in both parity channels for the recently discovered \Theta^+(1540) pentaquark particle in quenched lattice QCD. Our analysis takes into account all possible uncertainties, such as statistical, finite size and quenching errors when performing the chiral and continuum extrapolations and we have indications that our signal is separated from scattering states. The lowest mass that we find in the I^P=0^- channel is in complete agreement with the experimental value of the \Theta^+ mass. On the other hand, the lowest mass state in the opposite parity I^P=0^+ channel is much higher. Our findings suggests that the parity of the \Theta^+ is negative.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Final version, appeared in JHE

Scalar mesons in a linear sigma model with (axial-)vector mesons

The structure of the scalar mesons has been a subject of debate for many decades. In this work we look for $\bar{q}q$ states among the physical resonances using an extended Linear Sigma Model that contains scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, and axial-vector mesons both in the non-strange and strange sectors. We perform global fits of meson masses, decay widths and amplitudes in order to ascertain whether the scalar $\bar{q}q$ states are below or above 1 GeV. We find the scalar states above 1 GeV to be preferred as $\bar{q}q$ states.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, To appear in the proceedings of the XII. Hadron Physics Conference, Bento Goncalves, Brasil, April, 22 - 27, 201

Anderson localization through Polyakov loops: lattice evidence and Random matrix model

We investigate low-lying fermion modes in SU(2) gauge theory at temperatures above the phase transition. Both staggered and overlap spectra reveal transitions from chaotic (random matrix) to integrable (Poissonian) behavior accompanied by an increasing localization of the eigenmodes. We show that the latter are trapped by local Polyakov loop fluctuations. Islands of such "wrong" Polyakov loops can therefore be viewed as defects leading to Anderson localization in gauge theories. We find strong similarities in the spatial profile of these localized staggered and overlap eigenmodes. We discuss possible interpretations of this finding and present a sparse random matrix model that reproduces these features.Comment: 11 pages, 23 plots in 11 figures; some comments and references added, some axis labels corrected; journal versio