Sticking Together Because We're Stuck Together: Solidarity, Indivisibility, and Collective Action in the European Union

Starting from the premise that popular support is increasingly a necessary condition for European Union initiatives, this paper utilizes the concept of solidarity to attempt to better specify the nature of “we feeling” in Europe and its relationship to support for institutionalized collective action through the EU. Building on the Europeanization literature’s examination of the socialization of individuals toward European norms, the paper distinguishes between shared identities and common fate, arguing that the literature has tended to privilege the former over the latter. Using recent Eurobarometer public opinion surveys, this paper explores the different measures of identity and common fate and their apparent relationship to support for collective action across a range of issue areas

Decoupling is in the Eye of the Beholder? European Parliament Voting and Perceptions of Economic Indivisibility in Europe

The rise of Euroskeptic or anti-­‐European Union (EU) parties in the European Parliament (EP) has been popularly attributed to citizens’ frustrations with economic stagnation and an out-­‐of-­‐touch, pro-­‐EU political elite. The EU’s defenders have, in turn, argued that policies promoted by anti-­‐EU parties, such as leaving the euro or rolling back the EU’s single market, are economically irrational due to the deep interdependence of EU economies. Do voters actually perceive their national economy to be linked to that of the EU, and do pro-­‐EU parties fare better or worse in countries where such a linkage is more extensively perceived? This paper examines the conceptual and empirical contours of Euroskepticism in EP elections, and assesses the possible effects of publically perceived economic interdependence on these election results. The paper ultimately aims to speak to the EU’s popular legitimacy and the status of Robert Schuman’s goal to attain “concrete achievements which…create a de facto solidarity.

A Geospatial Analysis of CDC-funded HIV Prevention Programs for African Americans in the United States

Given the increase in HIV/AIDS infection rates among racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans, this study was undertaken as part of a larger research effort to examine the distribution of HIV prevention services focusing on African American populations within the United States. Data were gathered via a national survey of community-based organizations (CBOs) funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A geocoded national database was constructed to identify, locate, and map these HIV prevention programs. A total of 1,020 CBOs responded to the survey, yielding a response rate of 70.3%. These CBOs administered a total of 3,028 HIV prevention programs. Data describing intervention types and persons served, combined with the address and service area of responding CBOs, were integrated with census data (2000) and analyzed by using a geographic information system (GIS). The results of our national level analysis show that HIV prevention services for African Americans have fair coverage where African Americans comprise a substantial proportion of the population in urban areas in northeastern states, but that HIV prevention services for African Americans are inadequately distributed in the southeastern states. A local-level analysis was conducted for Alabama, where 68% of HIV/AIDS cases are among African Americans. Specific interventions such as street and community outreach, health communications, and public information are fairly well provided to African Americans in more urban cities in Alabama, however, individual- and group-level interventions have poor coverage in rural areas where a large percentage of African-Americans live. Overall, our study illustrates that the use of GIS adds value when used with other data sources to provide prevention services that are accessible to the populations most in need

SMURF1 as a Novel Regulator of PGC-1a

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by the impairment and/or death of the dopaminergic neurons in the area of the brain that controls movement, and is diagnosed in roughly 60,000 Americans each year. Low levels of the protein PGC-1α have been linked to this disease, but efforts to find a chemical that causes higher production of PGC-1α. Therefore, the focus must change to determining whether or not it is possible to reduce the degradation of PGC-1α without impacting the production rate of PGC-1α, thereby increasing PGC-1α levels. Prior studies have shown that the protein CDC4 causes PGC-1α to be degraded through ubiquitination, which could make CDC4 a possible target for deletion in order to increase PGC-1α levels. However, CDC4 is a tumor suppressor gene, making it a poor target for deletion, as this could cause other problems for the patient. As a result, it has been deemed necessary to find another ubiquitin ligase protein that also happens to be an oncogene, as this would not cause as many side effects for a patient if this were deleted. Initial studies have shown that the protein SMURF1 may be a ubiquitin ligase which targets PGC-1α for degradation, and it is likely an oncogene. This is believed to be the case because an increase in SMURF1 levels in cells causes a decrease in the levels of PGC-1α within these same cells. However, it is possible that this effect is due to an increase in SMURF1 levels causing a change in the physiology of cells or some other nonspecific effect. Therefore, the next step in this study will be to determine whether or not PGC-1α and SMURF1 bind directly to each other through co-immunoprecipitation experiments

We Are Forgotten. Framing Disaster via Twitter in the Aftermath of Hurricane Maria: Implications for Social Work Policy Practice

This work presents a comprehensive study of the disaster discourses generated by key social media user groups in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria, the third most destructive hurricane in American history, resulted in billions of dollars in damage and the loss of nearly 3,000 lives. Disasters result in widespread geophysical impacts as well as social, political, and economic upheavals for individuals, families, communities, and nation-states in the storm’s wake. The discourses that emerge on social media are significant in how they frame public narratives in the aftermath of disaster. The social construction of disaster points to the contested nature of these frames as they vie for dominance in the public sphere, including social media communicative spaces. The literature suggests that there are numerous key interpretive communities and narratives present at any given time. The current study explores six of these communities (individuals, government, military, media, nonprofits, and others) and their corresponding disaster narratives as communicated via Twitter. By utilizing a social constructionist/critical theoretical framework, the prevalent frames embedded in the disaster discourses are identified. These frames include the political frame, destruction frame, victim/hero frame, military/humanitarian aid frame, and counter-narratives

Evidence from Patents and Patent Citations on the Impact of NASA and Other Federal Labs on Commercial Innovation

We explore the commercialization of government-generated technology by analyzing patents awarded to the U.S. government and the citations to those patents from subsequent patents. We use information on citations to federal patents in two ways: (1) to compare the average technological impact of NASA patents, other Federal' patents, and a random sample of all patents using measures of importance' and generality;' and (2) to trace the geographic location of commercial development by focusing on the location of inventors who cite NASA and other federal patents. We find, first, that the evidence is consistent with increased effort to commercialize federal lab technology generally and NASA specifically. The data reveal a striking NASA golden age' during the second half of the 1970s which remains a puzzle. Second, spillovers are concentrated within a federal lab complex of states representing agglomerations of labs and companies. The technology complex links five NASA states through patent citations: California, Texas, Ohio, DC/Virginia-Maryland, and Alabama. Third, qualitative evidence provides some support for the use of patent citations as proxies for both technological impact and knowledge spillovers.

Molecular dynamics study of structure and reactions at the hydroxylated Mg(0001)/bulk water interface

A molecular level understanding of the aqueous Mg corrosion mechanism will be essential in developing improved alloys for battery electrodes, automobile parts, and biomedical implants. The structure and reactivity of the hydroxylated surface is expected to be key to the overall mechanism because (i) it is predicted to be the metastable surface state (rather than the bare surface) under a range of conditions and (ii) it provides a reasonable model for the outer corrosion film/water interface. We investigate the structure, interactions, and reactivity at the hydroxylated Mg(0001)/water interface using a combination of static Density Functional Theory calculations and second-generation Car–Parrinello ab initio molecular dynamics. We carry out detailed structural analyses into, among other properties, near-surface water orientations, favored adsorption sites, and near-surface hydrogen bonding behavior. Despite the short timescale (tens of ps) of our molecular dynamics run, we observe a cathodic water splitting event; the rapid timescale for this reaction is explained in terms of near-surface water structuring lowering the reaction barrier. Furthermore, we observe oxidation of an Mg surface atom to effectively generate a univalent Mg species (Mg+). Results are discussed in the context of understanding the Mg corrosion mechanism: For example, our results provide an explanation for the catalytic nature of the Mg corrosion film toward water splitting and a feasible mechanism for the generation of the univalent Mg species often proposed as a key intermediate

Remote capacitive sensing in two-dimension quantum-dot arrays

We investigate gate-defined quantum dots in silicon on insulator nanowire field-effect transistors fabricated using a foundry-compatible fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) process. A series of split gates wrapped over the silicon nanowire naturally produces a $2\times n$ bilinear array of quantum dots along a single nanowire. We begin by studying the capacitive coupling of quantum dots within such a 2$\times$2 array, and then show how such couplings can be extended across two parallel silicon nanowires coupled together by shared, electrically isolated, 'floating' electrodes. With one quantum dot operating as a single-electron-box sensor, the floating gate serves to enhance the charge sensitivity range, enabling it to detect charge state transitions in a separate silicon nanowire. By comparing measurements from multiple devices we illustrate the impact of the floating gate by quantifying both the charge sensitivity decay as a function of dot-sensor separation and configuration within the dual-nanowire structure.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 35 cites and supplementar