Unelected oversight : the politics of government investigations and problem monitoring

How do elected officials and top decisionmakers receive information about the problems encountered in government agencies? Policymaking and agenda setting research primarily examines how elected officials directly gather information through mechanisms like oversight hearings or from outside interests. In this dissertation, I build on existing research by examining how agenda setting and problem identification take place in an oversight context with a specific focus on unelected means including bureaucrats themselves, Offices of Inspectors General, and the Government Accountability Office. In doing so, I extend and clarify existing theories of oversight, agenda setting, and problem identification to highlight three important but underappreciated and understudy sources of expert information. First, I consider oversight within public organizations performed by civil servants. Using survey data, I find that bureaucrats with greater knowledge of internal oversight processes and public service motivation are more likely to identify problems in their agency. Second, I consider the monitoring agendas of federal Offices of Inspectors General using an original dataset of reports. My findings suggest that OIGs monitor a greater variety of issues with larger budgets and when signals in the political environment become more diverse. Third, I use a new dataset of all Government Accountability Office reports from 1974-2018 to examine how Congress steers their auditing agenda, noting that it reflects a desire for information on technical agencies but still reflects members' political concerns in relation to individual agencies and the president. Taken together, these findings advance our understanding of oversight and accountability by demonstrating how unelected administrators and specialized organizations monitor and identify problems that undermine the effectiveness of government programs.Includes bibliographical reference

Influence of Winter Cow Feeding Strategies on Cow Response

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of the primary maternal prepartum dietary energy source (forage vs. concentrate) during mid- and late-gestation on dam body weight (BW), body condition score (BCS), pregnancy rate, and economic responses

Comparison of Winter Cow Feeding Strategies on Offspring Performance and Meat Quality

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of maternal prepartum dietary energy source (forage vs. concentrate) during mid- and late-gestation on offspring growth performance, carcass characteristics and meat quality

Monitoring biological wastewater treatment processes: Recent advances in spectroscopy applications

Biological processes based on aerobic and anaerobic technologies have been continuously developed to wastewater treatment and are currently routinely employed to reduce the contaminants discharge levels in the environment. However, most methodologies commonly applied for monitoring key parameters are labor intensive, time-consuming and just provide a snapshot of the process. Thus, spectroscopy applications in biological processes are, nowadays, considered a rapid and effective alternative technology for real-time monitoring though still lacking implementation in full-scale plants. In this review, the application of spectroscopic techniques to aerobic and anaerobic systems is addressed focusing on UV--Vis, infrared, and fluorescence spectroscopy. Furthermore, chemometric techniques, valuable tools to extract the relevant data, are also referred. To that effect, a detailed analysis is performed for aerobic and anaerobic systems to summarize the findings that have been obtained since 2000. Future prospects for the application of spectroscopic techniques in biological wastewater treatment processes are further discussed.The authors thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit, COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and the project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. The authors also acknowledge the financial support to Daniela P. Mesquita and Cristina Quintelas through the postdoctoral Grants (SFRH/BPD/82558/2011 and SFRH/BPD/101338/2014) provided by FCT - Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio