James R. Killian, Jr., Sputnik, and Eisenhower: White House Science Advice and the Reformation of American Science Education, 1955-1958

This paper chronicles the often-overlooked relationship between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dr. James R. Killian, Jr., the first-ever appointed Presidential Science Advisor. Emphasis is placed on the role of Dr. Killian and the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) in advocating curricular reform in the fields of science and mathematics, a reformation which became doubly important following the successful launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I in 1957. This essay examines the efforts of Eisenhower and Killian to keep pace with the Russian scientific advances by improving American education in the scientific and technical fields. It concludes with a discussion of the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and Killian’s efforts to see the piece of legislation enacted

She Shall Be Saved in Childbearing: Submission, Contemplation of Conception, and Annunciation Imagery in the Books of Hours of Two Late Medieval Noblewomen

The role of the Book of Hours in female lay devotional life during the late Middle Ages has been investigated and analyzed by many scholars and art historians over the course of the past century. The general consensus has been that semi-literate medieval women valued these books greatly as instructional manuals on how to attain salvation, using the images contained within as spiritual aids meant to encourage individual contemplation and pious recitation. Prayers for mediation, protection, and guidance featured prominently within these books and many historians of both genders have come to the conclusion that Books of Hours were a source of comfort and spiritual nourishment for women living in a male-dominated and male-oriented world. [excerpt

Failure and Success: Paul R. Sieber, Nelson F. Fisher, and the Fifty-Year Struggle for the Gettysburg College Health Center

In the winter of 1954, four men and one woman set out to accomplish a goal that Gettysburg College had been pursuing for more than forty years. All five of them were trustees of the college, and together they formed a special committee within the Board of Trustees. They were the Infirmary Committee, a small body composed of Paul R. Sieber, Nelson F. Fisher, Mrs. Charles W. Baker, John H. Beerits, and Arthur Hendley. In 1954, following one of the most violent outbreaks of influenza ever to strike the college campus, Chairman Hiram H. Keller authorized Paul Sieber, a prominent alumnus, surgeon, and five-year member of the Board of Trustees, to chair a committee whose goal was to “bring in a report at the Annual Meeting in June as to the manner of raising money for the „Infirmary‟ Fund.” The establishment of this committee would prove to be the first step towards the erection of a new infirmary, a modern medical center that the college desperately needed. For years, the Infirmary Committee‟s predecessors on the Board of Trustees had attempted to raise funds for the purpose of establishing a permanent medical facility. However, the influx of funds proved inadequate, and the board was forced to put aside its plans for a new infirmary. Finally, in 1954, Dr. Paul R. Sieber was appointed chairman of the Infirmary Committee. He and Dr. Nelson F. Fisher, the vice chairman of the committee, would charge forth with renewed zeal, determined to lay the foundation of a new infirmary. Their efforts would result in the establishment of the Sieber-Fisher Infirmary, more commonly known as the Health Center. Today, their efforts are recognized on the eastern wall of the center‟s waiting room, on a prominent brown and gold plaque that bears their names. [excerpt] Course Information: Course Title: HIST 300: Historical Method Academic Term: Fall 2009 Course Instructor: Dr. Michael J. Birkner \u2772 Hidden in Plain Sight is a collection of student papers on objects that are hidden in plain sight around the Gettysburg College campus. Topics range from the Glatfelter Hall gargoyles to the statue of Eisenhower and from historical markers to athletic accomplishments. You can download the paper in pdf format and click View Photo to see the image in greater detail.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/hiddenpapers/1012/thumbnail.jp

Friendships, Rivalries, and Trysts: Characterizing Relations between Ideas in Texts

Understanding how ideas relate to each other is a fundamental question in many domains, ranging from intellectual history to public communication. Because ideas are naturally embedded in texts, we propose the first framework to systematically characterize the relations between ideas based on their occurrence in a corpus of documents, independent of how these ideas are represented. Combining two statistics --- cooccurrence within documents and prevalence correlation over time --- our approach reveals a number of different ways in which ideas can cooperate and compete. For instance, two ideas can closely track each other's prevalence over time, and yet rarely cooccur, almost like a "cold war" scenario. We observe that pairwise cooccurrence and prevalence correlation exhibit different distributions. We further demonstrate that our approach is able to uncover intriguing relations between ideas through in-depth case studies on news articles and research papers.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Proceedings of ACL 2017, code and data available at https://chenhaot.com/pages/idea-relations.html (fixed a typo

Tradable Rights to Emit Air Pollution

The use of cap-and-trade to regulate air pollution promises to achieve environmental goals at lower cost than traditional prescriptive approaches. Cap-and-trade has been applied to various air pollutants including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds in the United States and carbon dioxide in the European Union. This corresponds to what is likely to become the most expensive environmental undertaking in history—the effort to reduce the heating of the planet. However, the efficacy of a cap-and-trade policy for carbon dioxide depends in large part on the design of the program. In addition to the level of the cap, the most important decision facing policymakers will be the initial allocation of emissions allowances. The method used to allocate tradable emissions allowances will have significant influence on the distributional impact and efficiency of the program.cap-and-trade, emission allowances, allocation, auction, grandfathering, climate change, global warming, carbon dioxide

Climate Policy’s Uncertain Outcomes for Households: The Role of Complex Allocation Schemes in Cap and Trade

Uncertainty is a fundamental characteristic of climate change. This paper focuses on uncertainty in the implementation of climate policy, especially as it affects the level and distribution of the burden on households that results from the allocation of emissions allowances. We examine the Waxman–Markey bill (H.R. 2454), introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009, with bookend scenarios labeled optimistic and pessimistic. The scenarios illustrate varied outcomes associated with allocations to electricity local distribution companies, investments in energy efficiency, and technology development. We introduce a third scenario for comparison, which allocates a substantial portion of allowance value directly to households as lump-sum payments. We find the average net household burden in 2016 in the optimistic scenario to be $133 with a CO2 allowance price of$13.19. In the pessimistic scenario, the net household burden rises to $418, with an allowance price of$23.41. While the burden varies by income group, the relative impacts stay roughly the same in the optimistic and pessimistic cases, thus the uncertainty in average burdens does not carry over to uncertainty in the distribution of those burdens. Both scenarios impose the greatest burden as a percentage of income on middle-income households. Allocation of allowance value directly back to households as a lump-sum payment imposes an average net household burden of $206 with much less uncertainty in outcome; the distributional impacts are highly progressive.cap and trade, allocation, distributional effects, cost burden, equity, regulation,local distribution companies

Do leukotriene inhibitors/modifiers reduce symptoms associated with Nasal Polyps?

Objective: The objective of this systematic review is to determine how well leukotriene inhibitors/modifiers reduce symptoms associated with nasal polyps. Study Design: The studies included in this review are three randomized controlled trials. Data Source: The three RCTs in this review were obtained by performing a PubMed search using the keywords “nasal polyp”, “leukotriene”, and “Montelukast”. All articles were published in English and in peer-reviewed journals. Outcomes Measured: The three studies determine whether there was significant improvement of symptoms in patients with nasal polyps who were treated adjunctively with leukotriene inhibitors/modifiers. The symptoms were measured before and after the treatments using three different symptom score guidelines. Results: Patients who were diagnosed with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis who were given Montelukast (leukotriene inhibitor) as adjunctive therapy demonstrated statistically significant reduction in symptoms, p\u3c0.05. In all three studies, Wu et al10, Yelverton et al11, Suri et al12 the symptom scores decreased significantly in comparison to patients who received no Montelukast adjunctive therapy. Conclusions: Based on the systematic review of the three randomized controlled trials, one can decisively say that leukotriene inhibitors/modifiers (Montelukast) can reduce the symptoms associated with the presence of nasal polyps. All three studies verified statistically significant reduction in symptoms compared to the control groups