Informal sanctions and conditional cooperation: : A natural experiment on voluntary contributions to a public good.

In a natural experiment, this paper studies the impact of an informal sanctioning mechanism on individuals’ voluntary contribution to a public good. Cross-country skiers’ actual cash contributions in two ski resorts, one with and one without an informal sanctioning system, are used. I find the contributing share to be higher in the informal sanctioning system (79 percent) than in the non-sanctioning system (36 percent). Previous studies in one-shot public good situations have found an increasing conditional contribution (CC) function, i.e. the relationship between expected average contributions of other group members and the individual’s own contribution. In contrast, the present results suggest that the CC-function in the non-sanctioning system is non-increasing at high perceived levels of others’ contribution. This relationship deserves further testing in lab.

Cell Phone Tower Location and Size in Maine

http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/atlasofmaine2009/1023/thumbnail.jpg

Medical treatment and the good death: an ethical analysis of euthanasia, physician assisted suicide, and the right to die

Frequent advances in medical technologies have brought fonh many innovative treatments that allow medical teams to treal many patients with grave illness and serious trauma who would have died only a few years earlier. These changes have given some patients a second chance at life, but for others. these new treatments have merely prolonged their dying. Instead of dying relatively painlessly, these unfortunate patients often suffer from painful tenninal illnesses or exist in a comatose state that robs them of their dignity, since they cannot survive without advanced and often dehumanizing forms of treatment. Due to many of these concerns, euthanasia has become a central issue in medical ethics. Additionally, the debate is impacted by those who believe that patients have the right make choices about the method and timing of their deaths. Euthanasia is defined as a deliberate act by a physician to hasten the death of a patient, whether through active methods such as an injection of morphine, or through the withdrawal of advanced forms of medical care, for reasons of mercy because of a medical condition that they have. This study explores the question of whether euthanasia is an ethical practice and, as determined by ethical theories and professional codes of ethics, whether the physician is allowed to provide the means to give the patient a path to a "good death," rather than one filled with physical and mental suffering. The paper also asks if there is a relevant moral difference between the active and passive forms of euthanasia and seeks to define requirements to ensure fully voluntary decision making through an evaluation of the factors necessary to produce fully informed consent. Additionally, the proper treatments for patients who suffer from painful terminal illnesses, those who exist in persistent vegetative states and infants born with many diverse medical problems are examined. The ultimate conclusions that are reached in the paper are that euthanasia is an ethical practice in certain specific circumstances for patients who have a very low quality of life due to pain, illness or serious mental deficits as a result of irreversible coma, persistent vegetative state or end-stage clinical dementia. This is defended by the fact that the rights of the patient to determine his or her own fate and to autonomously decide the way that he or she dies are paramount to all other factors in decisions of life and death. There are also circumstances where decisions can be made by health care teams in conjunction with the family to hasten the deaths of incompetent patients when continued existence is clearly not in their best interest, as is the case of infants who are born with serious physical anomalies, who are either 'born dying' or have no prospect for a life that is of a reasonable quality. I have rejected the distinction between active and passive methods of euthanasia and have instead chosen to focus on the intentions of the treating physician and the voluntary nature of the patient's request. When applied in equivalent circumstances, active and passive methods of euthanasia produce the same effects, and if the choice to hasten the death of the patient is ethical, then the use of either method can be accepted. The use of active methods of euthanasia and active forms of withdrawal of life support, such as the removal of a respirator are both conscious decisions to end the life of the patient and both bring death within a short period of time. It is false to maintain a distinction that believes that one is active killing. whereas the other form only allows nature to take it's course. Both are conscious choices to hasten the patient's death and should be evaluated as such. Additionally, through an examination of the Hippocratic Oath, and statements made by the American Medical Association and the American College of physicians, it can be shown that the ideals that the medical profession maintains and the respect for the interests of the patient that it holds allows the physician to give aid to patients who wish to choose death as an alternative to continued suffering. The physician is also allowed to and in some circumstances, is morally required, to help dying patients whether through active or passive forms of euthanasia or through assisted suicide. Euthanasia is a difficult topic to think about, but in the end, we should support the choice that respects the patient's autonomous choice or clear best interest and the respect that we have for their dignity and personal worth.

Is the Google Book Decision an Unqualified Good?

Unless you’ve been living on a deserted island or stranded (or not?) like the pelagic castaway Jose Ivan (http://bit.ly/1fq6JsJ) for over a year, you could not possibly have missed the news thatGoogle’s mass digitization project, Google Books, won its case.

Fundações superficiais para linhas de transmissão em argilas moles saturadas

As fundações empregadas para linhas de transmissão de alta tensão em depósitos de argilas moles saturadas são geralmente estacas. No Rio Grande do Sul, projetos alternativos com fundações superficiais foram empregados em forma experimental para torres de suspensão, as quais apresentaram bom desempenho com menor custo. Esta pesquisa visa apontar critérios racionais da mecânica dos solos que permitam projetar, a partir do conhecimento do perfil de resistência não drenada, fundações superficiais em depósitos de argilas moles saturadas com maior confiabilidade. Para a determinaçao do perfil de resistência não drenada foi desenvolvido um cone manual com leituras elétricas, o qual foi testado apresentando bons resultados. A vantagem do uso deste equipamento reside no fato de que pode ser transportado manualmente a locais de difícil acesso, onde são implantadas as torres de alta tensão. Os demais parâmetros de solos do local de estudo, situado no município de Canoas no Rio Grande do Sul, foram obtidos a partir de ensaios de compressão triaxial do tipo adensado isotropicamente não drenado (CIU) com medida de poro pressão e de ensaios de adensamento. Foram analisadas as fundações superficiais das torres de suspensão projetadas, empregando teorias analíticas convencionais, baseadas no conhecimento da resistência não drenada, e o método de elementos finitos. A partir deste estudo, é sugerida uma metodologia para projetos de fundações superficiais de torres de suspensão em argilas moles saturadas.

On the limits of cheap talk for public good provision

This article studies a model where, as a consequence of private information, agents do not have incentive to invest in a desired joint project, or a public good, when they are unable to have prior discussion with their partners. As a result, the joint project is never undertaken and inefficiency is observed. Agastya, Menezes and Sengupta (2007) prove that with a prior stage of communication, with a binary message space, it is possible to have some efficiency gain since "all ex-ante and interim efficient equilibria exhibit a simple structure". We show that any finite message space does not provide efficiency gain on the simple structure discussed in that article. We use laboratory experiments to test these results. We find that people do contribute, even without communication, and that any kind of communication increases the probability of project implementation. We also observed that communication reduces the unproductive contribution, and that a large message space cannot provide efficiency gain relative to the binary one.

The good, the bad and the ugly: estudo sobre pequenas e médias empresas familiares brasileiras a partir da teoria da ação de Pierre Bourdieu

According to Bourdieu (1994), there are social camps where the economic logic works upside down. Therefore, the expression ¿family business¿ is paradoxical because inside it resides two distinct and, sometimes, antagonistic logics: the business logic, whose goal is the profit, and the family logic, which aims at the common welfare. That is why one must consider the symbolical exchanges influences on the social relations more than in any other kind of company. Based on these concepts, this research presents an overview of the small and medium brazilian family business universe.

Inada conditions imply that production function must be asymptotically Cobb-Douglas

We show that every twice-continuously differentiable and strictly concave function f : R+ → R+ can be bracketed between two C.E.S. functions at each open interval. In particular, for the Inada conditions to hold, a production function must be asymptotically Cobb-Douglas.

Temporal aggregation and bandwidth selection in estimating long memory

This paper reinterprets results of Ohanissian et al (2003) to show the asymptotic equivalence of temporally aggregating series and using less bandwidth in estimating long memory by Geweke and Porter-Hudak’s (1983) estimator, provided that the same number of periodogram ordinates is used in both cases. This equivalence is in the sense that their joint distribution is asymptotically normal with common mean and variance and unity correlation. Furthermore, I prove that the same applies to the estimator of Robinson (1995). Monte Carlo simulations show that this asymptotic equivalence is a good approximation in finite samples. Moreover, a real example with the daily US Dollar/French Franc exchange rate series is provided.

Mortalidade de Blattella germanica (L. 1767) (Blattodea: blattellidae) sob diferentes áreas e períodos de exposição a diferentes inseticidas

The great importance of cockroaches as household pest have been on their ability to spread microorganisms harmful to humans and animals. Rest during the day in dark, humid and hot as sewerage. At night go into stores and kitchens or places to deposit and manipulation of food as bakeries, restaurants, hospitals and homes wich requires clinig operations. This work aimed to evaluate mortality of B. germanica ( L., 1767) ( Blattodea: Blattellidae) under different periods and exposure area treated by insecticides in laboratory. The tests were carried out at Department of Fitossanidade at UNESP, Campus of Jaboticabal, SP, Brasil. The insecticides were applied by Potter's tower sprayer on Petri dishes. Three times of exposure (2, 8 and 32 min) and four exposure areas ( 25, 50, 75 and 100%) and volume of 0,5 ml for the second experiment were tested. It was used the insecticides Pyrethroids gammacyalothrine, deltamethrine, lambdacialothrine, alfacipermethrine, cipermethrine and carbamates bendiocarb, in the dosages recommended by the manufacturers, and I was used control without application. Five adult cockroaches was confined in the dishes for both experiments. The mortality evaluation was done 0, 1, 2, 4, 24, 48 and 72 hours after of the confinement on the treated surface. It was concluded that for exposure duration experiment all the insecticides have a good efficiency. The exposure area experiment the insecticide cipermethrine was what the one which had the higher mortality. Regarding to the effect of exposure duration on the accumulated mortality every duration times had a high mortality. In relation to the exposure area the highest mortality reached to 100% of treated area.

Uso urbano não potável de água de lagoas do sistema de drenagem de Natal

The detention and infiltration ponds of urban drainage system has function to protect the population from undesirable effects of floods. In general these ponds are not completly used and it potential is wasted. As it are disseminated at different places at cities it can reduce costs with water transport and permit water preservation of best quality. Some it utilities includes use in green areas irrigation, industrial among than cooling towers and boiler, soil compaction, cleaning urban road, pisciculture and fire fighting system. The quality these water is influenced by anauthorized sewage in the drainage system. This study was performed in six detention and infiltration ponds at drainage system of Natal, which aim was to verify the non-portable use these ponds on urban environment. As indirect aim would to incentive the water utilization these ponds as a water source to another uses in urban environment. These ponds represents the characteristics of detention and infiltration of Natal city and consequently of Brazil. As the water quality, the ponds presents following characteristics: three has apparently good quality, other showed intermediate condition and two had water polluted. Were performed twenty sample in each ponds and the following parameters assessed: pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, electrical conductivity, coliform thermotolerant, ammonia, organic nitrogen, TKN, nitrate, total phosphorus and alkalinity, bicarbonate, chloride, total hardness, calcium and magnesium hardness, total solids, TSS, TDS, COD and SAR°. To utilization on pisciculture we recommend use in ponds which presents the best quality. Only one pond presented higher pollutants and it not being appropriated for use in cooling tower. The content of solids suspension restricted the water use in all ponds in boilers. As water use in soil compaction, cleaning urban road and fire fighting system the water from these ponds are not appropriated. However, the recommended limits from literature are to domestic sewage, due to this, the parameters are restrictive to diminish the sanitary risk that could be offered with it utilization. The infiltration velocity of water these assessed ponds restrict a moderato use, however the effects are potentiated only in soil less sandy, which not occur in Natal. It is recommend the unrestricted irrigation utilization in ponds with best quality of water, and a restricted irrigation to ponds with worst quality of water. As load of pollutants, it is recommended a complementary treatment in those ponds whit higher load to diminish sanitary risks. In only one pond was found one helminth eggs and due to the convention formula of results, it was found for all ponds less than 1 helminth/liter eggs.

Adjuvant therapy with GnRH agonists/tamoxifen in breast cancer should be a good council for patients with hormone receptor-positive tumours and wish to preserve fertility

Infertility represents one of the main long-term consequences of the chemotherapy used for the adjuvant treatment of breast cancer. Approximately 60-65% of breast cancers express the nuclear hormone receptor in premenopausal women. Adjuvant endocrine therapy is an integral component of care for patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+) tumours. The GnRH agonist (GnRHa) alone or in combination with tamoxifen produces results at least similar to those obtained with the different chemotherapy protocols in patients with HR+ breast cancer with respect to recurrence-free survival and overall survival. It is time to indicate adjuvant therapy with GnRHa associated with tamoxifen for patients with breast cancer (HR+ tumours) if they want to preserve their reproductive function. The evaluation of ovarian reserve tests: follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH), inhibin B, antral follicle count (AFC) and ovarian volume 6 months, and 1 year after the end of therapy with GnRHa/tamoxifen must be realised. The recurrence-free survival and overall survival should be analysed. The major implication of this hypothesis will be to avoid adjuvant chemotherapy for patients with breast cancer (HR+ tumours) that request fertility preservation. It is expected that ovarian function should not be altered in almost all cases and subsequent pregnancy a real possibility. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Age-related histopathological lesions in the Mongolian gerbil ventral prostate as a good model for studies of spontaneous hormone-related disorders

The Meriones unguiculatus (Mongolian) gerbil has demonstrated significant prostatic responses to hormonal treatments, and to drugs against human prostatic hyperplasia Spontaneous neoplasia develops in the older animals. Thirty gerbils (age 18 months) were divided into non-affected and prostatic lesion bearers and the prostate lesions were evaluated morphologically, immunohistochemically and quantitatively. The most frequent changes were in epithelial sites and, namely prostatic intraepithelial neoplasias, microinvasive carcinomas and adenocarcinomas. In the stromal compartment, cellular hyperplasia, when verified, was always associated with the sites of anomalous epithelium. Additionally, larger deposition of collagen fibrils, generating stromal fibrosis, was found in all the old gerbils analysed. The quantitative analysis showed that prostatic tissue proportions differed in altered areas, being specific for each lesion type. Isolated nuclear and nucleolar parameters were not effective in diagnosing the malign potential of lesions. However, the cellular proliferation and death indexes indicated larger cellular turnover in invasive lesions such as carcinomas. With these analyses, it could be verified that old gerbils present high propensity to develop spontaneous prostate changes and this may aid in a better understanding of the biological behaviour of human prostate cancer.