Utility engagement with payments for watershed services in the United States

We review 15 forest watershed protection programs in the United States in which a local government agency or water provider collects payments from downstream service beneficiaries, such as water consumers, and pays upstream forest landowners for provision of watershed services. We describe the features of these Payments for Watershed Services (PWS) programs, focusing on funding sources, how the payment mechanisms work, and outcomes achieved. We also assess the extent to which the programs adhere to the economic principles that are associated with efficient or cost effective PWS schemes. In general, we find that payments in the programs do not closely reflect the marginal value of the service provided. Payments received by landowners mainly reflect the landowners’ opportunity costs. Fees paid by water consumers are set to yield revenue targets and/or reflect the avoided cost of additional water filtration and treatment. The programs appear to yield societal benefits, primarily through cost savings, but data from program outcomes is limited and more rigorous analysis of both the benefits and costs would be worthwhile.

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Party Strength in the United States: Some Corrections

The Journal of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0022381600041591 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 641-642 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Paul T. David

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Party Strength

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Correlative microscopy in distrubuted (client/server) computing environments: tools for catalyzing the rapid dissemination of information about the cell biology of the human prostate

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100139780 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 53 ◽

pp. 682-683

Author(s):

A. Hakam ◽

J.T. Gau ◽

M.L. Grove ◽

B.A. Evans ◽

M. Shuman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Cell Biology ◽

Tissue Bank ◽

The United States ◽

Prostate Adenocarcinoma ◽

Correlative Microscopy ◽

Client Server ◽

Critical Elements ◽

Transplant Organ

Prostate adenocarcinoma is the most common malignant tumor of men in the United States and is the third leading cause of death in men. Despite attempts at early detection, there will be 244,000 new cases and 44,000 deaths from the disease in the United States in 1995. Therapeutic progress against this disease is hindered by an incomplete understanding of prostate epithelial cell biology, the availability of human tissues for in vitro experimentation, slow dissemination of information between prostate cancer research teams and the increasing pressure to “ stretch” research dollars at the same time staff reductions are occurring.To meet these challenges, we have used the correlative microscopy (CM) and client/server (C/S) computing to increase productivity while decreasing costs. Critical elements of our program are as follows:1) Establishing the Western Pennsylvania Genitourinary (GU) Tissue Bank which includes >100 prostates from patients with prostate adenocarcinoma as well as >20 normal prostates from transplant organ donors.

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Digital image acquisition, processing, and analysis in a polymer microscopy laboratory

Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America ◽

10.1017/s0424820100170001 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 52 ◽

pp. 454-455

Author(s):

Vinod K. Berry ◽

Xiao Zhang

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Image Analysis ◽

Digital Image ◽

Image Acquisition ◽

Image Transmission ◽

The United States ◽

Quantitative Image Analysis ◽

Quantitative Image

In recent years it became apparent that we needed to improve productivity and efficiency in the Microscopy Laboratories in GE Plastics. It was realized that digital image acquisition, archiving, processing, analysis, and transmission over a network would be the best way to achieve this goal. Also, the capabilities of quantitative image analysis, image transmission etc. available with this approach would help us to increase our efficiency. Although the advantages of digital image acquisition, processing, archiving, etc. have been described and are being practiced in many SEM, laboratories, they have not been generally applied in microscopy laboratories (TEM, Optical, SEM and others) and impact on increased productivity has not been yet exploited as well.In order to attain our objective we have acquired a SEMICAPS imaging workstation for each of the GE Plastic sites in the United States. We have integrated the workstation with the microscopes and their peripherals as shown in Figure 1.

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Silence of the Land: On the Historical Irrelevance of Territory to Congressional Districting and Political Representation in the United States

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x01010045 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 15 (01) ◽

pp. 53-87 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Andrew Rehfeld

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

House Of Representatives ◽

Political Representation ◽

The United States ◽

Representative Government ◽

Congressional District ◽

Congressional Districts ◽

Communities Of Interest

Every ten years, the United States “constructs” itself politically. On a decennial basis, U.S. Congressional districts are quite literally drawn, physically constructing political representation in the House of Representatives on the basis of where one lives. Why does the United States do it this way? What justifies domicile as the sole criteria of constituency construction? These are the questions raised in this article. Contrary to many contemporary understandings of representation at the founding, I argue that there were no principled reasons for using domicile as the method of organizing for political representation. Even in 1787, the Congressional district was expected to be far too large to map onto existing communities of interest. Instead, territory should be understood as forming a habit of mind for the founders, even while it was necessary to achieve other democratic aims of representative government.

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