Elections, Ideology, and Turnover in the U.S. Federal Government

A defining feature of public sector employment is the regular change in elected leadership. Yet, we know little about how elections influence public sector careers. We describe how elections alter policy outputs and disrupt the influence of civil servants over agency decisions. These changes shape the career choices of employees motivated by policy, influence, and wages. Using new Office of Personnel Management data on the careers of millions of federal employees between 1988 and 2011, we evaluate how elections influence employee turnover decisions. We find that presidential elections increase departure rates of career senior employees, particularly in agencies with divergent views relative to the new president and at the start of presidential terms. We also find suggestive evidence that vacancies in high-level positions after elections may induce lower-level executives to stay longer in hopes of advancing. We conclude with implications of our findings for public policy, presidential politics, and public management

Despite Obama’s actions on gun control, there is little he is able to do to change the status quo.

In the two weeks since President Obama announced his latest tranche of executive orders on guns, many Republicans have accused him of making a dramatic power grab over the legislature. Alex Bolton and Sharece Thrower disagree, writing that there is little guarantee that any of Obama’s instructions will actually be executed, and those that are may be overturned by the courts. They argue that Obama’s actions actually exemplify the constraints faced by presidents who try to make policy without Congress

How spending more money on Congress helps check the President’s executive power

In the past year, President Obama has been roundly criticized by the Republican Party over his use of executive actions. While Obama has claimed that he has taken such actions because of Congress’ inability to act, his critics argue that he is being excessive and maybe even unconstitutional. In new research, Alexander Bolton and Sharece Thrower find that presidents’ use of executive actions became more constrained after World War II – something that they attribute to the allocation of more resources that could be brought to bear on executive oversight

Measurements of the Cosmological Evolution of Magnetic Fields with the Square Kilometre Array

We investigate the potential of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) for measuring the magnetic fields in clusters of galaxies via Faraday rotation of background polarised sources. [...] We find that about 10 per cent of the sky is covered by a significant extragalactic Faraday screen. Most of it has rotation measures between 10 and 100 rad/m/m. We argue that the cluster centres should have up to about 5000 rad/m/m. We show that the proposed mid frequency aperture array of the SKA as well as the lowest band of the SKA dish array are well suited to make measurements for most of these rotation measure values, typically requiring a signal-to-noise of ten. We calculate the spacing of sources forming a grid for the purpose of measuring foreground rotation measures: it reaches a spacing of 36 arcsec for a 100 hour SKA observation per field. We also calculate the statistics for background RM measurements in clusters of galaxies. We find that a first phase of the SKA would allow us to take stacking experiments out to high redshifts (>1), and provide improved magnetic field structure measurements for individual nearby clusters. The full SKA aperture array would be able to make very detailed magnetic field structure measurements of clusters with more than 100 background sources per cluster up to a redshift of 0.5 and more than 1000 background sources per cluster for nearby clusters, and could for reasonable assumptions about future measurements of electron densities in high redshift clusters constrain the power law index for the magnetic field evolution to better than dm=0.4, if the magnetic field in clusters should follow B ~ (1+z)^m.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, accepted by MNRAS, minor correction to eq (5

Prediction of Random Incidence Transmission Loss based on Normal Incidence Four-Microphone Measurements

The use of the four-microphone standing wave tube to assess the acoustical properties of sound absorbing materials is becoming increasingly popular. The objective of the present work was to demonstrate that it is possible, under certain conditions, to predict the random incidence transmission loss of sound absorbing materials based on normal incidence measurements in a four-microphone standing wave tube. If a porous material may be modeled as being isotropic and either perfectly rigid or limp, it may be characterized as an effective fluid in terms of its complex density and wave number. The latter quantities may then be used in conjunction with plane wave theories to predict random incidence properties. That procedure is demonstrated here by using two different porous media. Good agreement was found between the estimated and directly measured random incidence transmission losses. The accuracy of the procedure may however, be limited at both low and high frequencies. At low frequencies, the estimated material properties may be affected by the constraint of the sample around its edge. At high frequencies, higher order mode propagation within the sample may affect the results owing to the typically subsonic wave speeds in porous media

G-protein–gated TRP-like Cationic Channel Activated by Muscarinic Receptors: Effect of Potential on Single-channel Gating

There is little information about the mechanisms by which G-protein–coupled receptors gate ion channels although many ionotropic receptors are well studied. We have investigated gating of the muscarinic cationic channel, which mediates the excitatory effect of acetylcholine in smooth muscles, and proposed a scheme consisting of four pairs of closed and open states. Channel kinetics appeared to be the same in cell-attached or outside-out patches whether the channel was activated by carbachol application or by intracellular dialysis with GTPγS. Since in the latter case G-proteins are permanently active, it is concluded that the cationic channel is the major determinant of its own gating, similarly to the KACh channel (Ivanova-Nikolova, T.T., and G.E. Breitwieser. 1997. J. Gen. Physiol. 109:245–253). Analysis of adjacent-state dwell times revealed connections between the states that showed features conserved among many other ligand-gated ion channels (e.g., nAChR, BKCa channel). Open probability (PO) of the cationic channel was increased by membrane depolarization consistent with the prominent U-shaped I-V relationship of the muscarinic whole-cell current at negative potentials. Membrane potential affected transitions within each closed-open state pair but had little effect on transitions between pairs; thus, the latter are likely to be caused by interactions of the channel with its ligands, e.g., Ca2+ and Gαo-GTP. Channel activity was highly heterogeneous, as was evident from the prominent cycling behavior when PO was measured over 5-s intervals. This was related to the variable frequency of openings (as in the KACh channel) and, especially, to the number of long openings between consecutive long shuttings. Analysis of the underlying Markov chain in terms of probabilities allowed us to evaluate the contribution of each open state to the integral current (from shortest to longest open state: 0.1, 3, 24, and 73%) as PO increased 525-fold in three stages

In Virto Fertilization: Hope for Childless Couples Breeds Legal Exposure for Physicians

The recent successes with in vitro or extracorporeal fertilization ( IVF ) in both England and the United States have led to increased interest in this new medical technique. For a large number of women, IVF represents the most promising opportunity for reproduction. This breakthrough makes it possible for infertile couples to experience for the first time the joys of natural parenthood that fertile or normal couples take for granted. Pioneers in the field are therefore to be commended for their work. Unfortunately, like other innovative medical services, the IVF procedures also breed legal concerns which will demand resolution in the not-so-distant future. This note will explore these legal concerns and various ethical concerns, set forth the history of the IVF technique, and describe the medical procedure in use today