From the bargaining table to the ballot box: political effects of right to work laws

Labor unions play a central role in the Democratic party coalition, providing candidates with voters, volunteers, and contributions, as well as lobbying policymakers. Has the sustained decline of organized labor hurt Democrats in elections and shifted public policy? We use the enactment of right-to-work laws—which weaken unions by removing agency shop protections—to estimate the effect of unions on politics from 1980 to 2016. Comparing counties on either side of a state and right-to-work border to causally identify the effects of the state laws, we find that right-towork laws reduce Democratic Presidential vote shares by 3.5 percentage points. We find similar effects in US Senate, US House, and Gubernatorial races, as well as on state legislative control. Turnout is also 2 to 3 percentage points lower in right-to-work counties after those laws pass. We next explore the mechanisms behind these effects, finding that right-to-work laws dampen organized labor campaign contributions to Democrats and that potential Democratic voters are less likely to be contacted to vote in right-to-work states. The weakening of unions also has large downstream effects both on who runs for office and on state legislative policy. Fewer working class candidates serve in state legislatures and Congress, and state policy moves in a more conservative direction following the passage of right-to-work laws

Revision of United States Drug Law

In this essay I will lay out two distinct but associated arguments that will show that United States drug policy on is both in principle and in practice unjustifiable. I will be focusing specifically on marijuana cocaine and heroin. While there are many controlled substances in the DEA schedules, I take it that showing current policy to be unjustifiable for these three substances will be sufficient to show that the policy of total prohibition and harsh punishment is wrong. The first section will normatively analyze the current policies of prohibition and punishment for use and sale of illicit substances. I will first show that our attitude towards certain psychoactive substances is hypocritical given our attitudes towards others. We allow the use of alcohol and tobacco, both substances that are deadly, addictive, and intoxicating, while disallowing the use of substances with similar levels of harm to the body. While there are many arguments that focus on the fact that some of these drugs (particularly marijuana) cause less organic damage to the body, I will argue that even if they are just as damaging as alcohol or tobacco, their prohibition is still unacceptable. As well, there are other dangerous but legal behaviors that we allow etiher because we think that people ought to be able to make their own decision knowing the risks or because we think a person has the right to do themselves harm if they wish

Odú in Motion: Afro-Cuban Orisha Hermeneutics and Embodied Scholarship, Life Reflections of a Lukumí Priest

The study of the Afro-Cuban Lukumí, the descendants of the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, and their religious practices, has long been of interest to anthropologists and religious studies scholars alike. Unfortunately, Western scholarship has too often relied on the juxtaposition between our rational and their irrational belief systems, explaining away, or acutely ignoring, emic interpretations of religious practice, severely limiting the kind of knowledge produced about these religious phenomena. My study focuses on three distinct processes of divination and their accompanying ceremonies and ritual ledgers, examining how these shape dynamic and formative pedagogies in the Lukumí initiate’s life. Through self-ethnography, and by engaging key theorists, I explore the ways in which the body, as site of religious experience, through divination and initiation, interacts with and is informed by communitas, understood as the very spirit of the community in action

Understaffed state Legislatures can give business theopportunity to gain an upper hand in the policymaking process

The recent announcement from high profile companies such as Google and Facebook that they will no longer be working with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has brought the role and influence of the group into sharp focus. In new research, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez finds that states with more conservative legislators and those that viewed business as a key constituency were more likely to enact ALEC bills. He also finds that states that spent less money on their legislatures, and those where legislators spent less time on legislation were also more likely to enact ALEC bills. He argues that this trend undermines the idea that these types of ‘citizen legislatures’ will be more independent and that they necessarily serve the interests of ordinary citizens

Dynamic Diffusion with Disadoption: The Case of Crop Biotechnology in the USA

Controversy over the use of genetically engineered (GE) crops may have induced some farmers to disadopt these seeds, making a traditional diffusion model inappropriate. In this study, we develop and estimate a dynamic diffusion model, examine the diffusion paths of GE corn, soybeans, and cotton, predict the adoption of those crops over the next two years, and explore the main determinants of the diffusion rate. Our estimates indicate that future growth of Bt crops will be slower or negative, depending mainly on the infestation levels of the target pests. Adoption of herbicide-tolerant soybeans and cotton will continue to increase, unless consumer sentiment in the United States changes radically.Crop Production/Industries,

Effects of the GM Controversy on Iowa Corn-Soybean Farmers' Acreage Allocation Decisions

Prior to the 2000 planting season, some industry observers predicted acreage of genetically modified crops would decline dramatically. However, actual 2000 plantings presented a puzzle. Farmers reduced their acreage of genetically modified corn, but concurrently increased their acreage of genetically modified soybeans. We demonstrate that it may be theoretically optimal for risk-averse farmers to reduce their corn acreage but not their soybean acreage. However, past experience, attitudes, and farm size explained planting decisions to a larger degree than did risk preferences.expected utility, genetically modified crops, two-limit tobit model, Crop Production/Industries,

Farmers Adoption of Genetically Modified Varieties with Input Traits

Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Quantum Emulation of Gravitational Waves

Gravitational waves, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity theory, appear as ripples in the fabric of spacetime traveling at the speed of light. We prove that the propagation of small amplitude gravitational waves in a curved spacetime is equivalent to the propagation of a subspace of electromagnetic states. We use this result to propose the use of entangled photons to emulate the evolution of gravitational waves in curved spacetimes by means of experimental electromagnetic setups featuring metamaterials.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Controllability properties for the one-dimensional Heat equation under multiplicative or nonnegative additive controls with local mobile support

We discuss several new results on nonnegative approximate controllability for the one-dimensional Heat equation governed by either multiplicative or nonnegative additive control, acting within a proper subset of the space domain at every moment of time. Our methods allow us to link these two types of controls to some extend. The main results include approximate controllability properties both for the static and mobile control supports

Stimuli‐Responsive Delivery of Antimicrobial Peptides Using Polyelectrolyte Complexes

[Abstract] Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are antibiotics with the potential to address antimicrobial resistance. However, their translation to the clinic is hampered by issues such as off-target toxicity and low stability in biological media. Stimuli-responsive delivery from polyelectrolyte complexes offers a simple avenue to address these limitations, wherein delivery is triggered by changes occurring during microbial infection. The review first provides an overview of pH-responsive delivery, which exploits the intrinsic pH-responsive nature of polyelectrolytes as a mechanism to deliver these antimicrobials. The examples included illustrate the challenges faced when developing these systems, in particular balancing antimicrobial efficacy and stability, and the potential of this approach to prepare switchable surfaces or nanoparticles for intracellular delivery. The review subsequently highlights the use of other stimuli associated with microbial infection, such as the expression of degrading enzymes or changes in temperature. Polyelectrolyte complexes with dual stimuli-response based on pH and temperature are also discussed. Finally, the review presents a summary and an outlook of the challenges and opportunities faced by this field. This review is expected to encourage researchers to develop stimuli-responsive polyelectrolyte complexes that increase the stability of AMPs while providing targeted delivery, and thereby facilitate the translation of these antimicrobials.P.F.-T. thanks the University of Birmingham for the John Evans Fellowship and the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte for a Beat-riz Galindo Award [BG20/00213]. F.C. acknowledges the National Healthand Medical Research Council Leadership Investigator Research Fellow-ship (grant no. 2016732). This work was supported by the Priestley JointPh.D. Scholarship from the University of Birmingham (UK) and The Uni-versity of Melbourne (Australia).Australia. National Health and Medical Research Council; 201673