The present study reviews previous published estimates as to the scale of food waste in the USA and its ecological toll (e.g., in terms of methane emissions and water usage to support the production of wasted food). The review further discusses recent public policy and private action designed to curb food waste or to apply wasted food toward hunger alleviation, biofuel production and soil nourishment. We further consider and expand upon previous estimates comparing the scale of food waste to the present scale of the US hunger problem. These estimates suggest that the recovery and redirection of an additional 15% of the present stock ofediblefood waste would meet 35% of the caloric needs of all Americans living in a food insecure household or very low food security household. Then, a modest to moderate proportional increase in edible food waste recovery could greatly reduce the US hunger problem in its present state. We estimate that the successful redirection of 15% of presently-wasted (edible) food in the USA would be sufficient to fully sustain 18.45 million individuals. Given available data, we cannot precisely assess the nutritional characteristics of this potential stock of food. The present study emphasizes the traditional and future importance of integrated public policy and private action at the municipal level, as food waste is typically disposed of or recovered at this level.

Background: The effects of behavioral addiction to video games has received increasing attention in the literature, given increased use intensity among subgroups of video game players. Objective: This study seeks to empirically determine the relationship between intensity of video gaming and hedonic experience of the player. Methods: We conducted a survey of 835 individuals who regularly play video games to determine the relationship between intensity of use and hedonic experience. We divided the sample into quartiles by self-reported video game addictive symptom level (from the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale) and conducted polynomial regressions separately for each quartile. Results: We found that the higher video game addictive symptom level groups experienced a U-shaped (curvilinear) relationship between hedonic experience and intensity of play, whereas groups with lower video game addictive symptom levels exhibited no such relationship. The coefficients for the highest addictive symptom level group (quartile 4) for marginal effects for hours played per week and hours played per week squared were significantly negative (P=.005) and significantly positive (P=.004), respectively. Conclusions: Our results are consistent with sensitization and tolerance theories, which suggest that high-symptom groups experience frustration and disappointment until they achieve excessive dopamine release, at which point their hedonic experience is expected to improve with additional play. Conversely, low-symptom groups experience no such fall-and-rise pattern. This result is consistent with the outcome that members of the latter group play the game for the direct experience, such that their hedonic experience is more directly related to events occurring in the game than to the increasingly elusive pursuit of excessive dopamine release. We also find that high-symptom groups spend substantially more time and money to support video game use and are much more likely to engage in video game use at the expense of other important activities, such as working, sleeping, and eating.

In basketball, a point scored on offense carries a nearly identical on-court (win) value as a point denied on defense (e.g. within the Pythagorean expected wins model). Both outcomes bear the same score margin implication. As such, a win-maximizing team is expected to value the two outcomes equally. We ask whether the salaries of NBA players reveal such an equality among NBA teams. If not, a win-maximizing team would enjoy a disequilibrium arbitrage opportunity, whereby the team could improve, in expectation, even while reducing roster payroll. We considered the 322 National Basketball Association (NBA) players during the 2016–2017 season who were on a full-season contract for which the salary was not stipulated under the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement. We estimated the implied marginal wage of an additional point created on offense (denied on defense) per 100 possessions. Namely, we constructed a set of fixed effects, ordinary least squares regression models that specify a player’s pre-assigned 2016–2017 player salary as a function of primary team fixed effects, offensive adjusted plus minus, defensive adjusted plus minus, position-of-play, and control variables such as age. We conclude that a win-maximizing NBA team currently faces a substantial arbitrage opportunity. Namely, one unit of offense carries the same estimated implicit salary as approximately two and a half to four units of defense. We also find moderate between-team variation in adjusted plus minus return on payroll allocations.