Popular presidents can influence Congress with the State of the Union, but an unpopular president will simply be ignored

Next year, President Obama will face both a Republican House and Senate, potentially reducing significantly his power over the legislature. Could the increasingly unpopular Obama still exercise some degree of influence through his State of the Union address? Using more than 60 years of data on Congressional policy agendas and the State of the Union John Lovett, Shaun Bevan, and Frank Baumgartner find that the president is more able to influence congressional committees soon after the State of the Union, when they share the same party, and when the president is popular. They also find that this influence is greater over the House than the Senate

Rapid, Precise, and High-Sensitivity Acquisition of Paleomagnetic and Rock-Magnetic Data: Development of a Low-Noise Automatic Sample Changing System for Superconducting Rock Magnetometers

Among Earth sciences, paleomagnetism is particularly linked to the statistics of large sample sets as a matter of historical development and logistical necessity. Because the geomagnetic field varies over timescales relevant to sedimentary deposition and igneous intrusion, while the fidelity of recorded magnetization is modulated by original properties of rock units and by alteration histories, "ideal" paleomagnetic results measure remanent magnetizations of hundreds of samples at dozens of progressive demagnetization levels, accompanied by tests of magnetic composition on representative sister specimens. We present an inexpensive, open source system for automating paleomagnetic and rock magnetic measurements. Using vacuum pick-and-place technology and a quartz-glass sample holder, the system can in one hour measure remanent magnetizations, as weak as a few pAm2, of ~30 specimens in two vertical orientations with measurement errors comparable to those of the best manual systems. The system reduces the number of manual manipulations required per specimen ~8 fold

Electoral turnover has very little effect on the spending habits of Western democracies

Do new electoral brooms sweep clean the economic policies of the parties that went before? In new research that examines how incoming Western governments set their spending priorities, Derek A. Epp, John Lovett, and Frank R. Baumgartner find that budgets tend to be set with little regard to a government’s ideology, be it left or right. They argue that when setting budgets, incoming policymakers are constrained by social, economic and international realities that are largely beyond their control. This means that budgets are set consistently and inconsistently with what went before at roughly the same rate; left-wing parties do not necessarily favor “big government” nor to right parties always seek to reduce government spending

Replacing Members with Managers? Mutualism among Membership and Nonmembership Advocacy Organizations in the United States

Associations with a professional staff but no members (nonmembership advocacy organizations, or NMAOs) are the subject of lively debate. Many argue that their proliferation has allowed an expansion of advocacy without an accompanying growth in civic engagement. This article asks if there has been significant recent growth of NMAOs and if those organizations have displaced membership advocacy organizations (MAOs). The authors find no evidence for a proportional increase of NMAOs since the 1960s. Further, among all organizations in three populationspeace, women's issues, and human rightsNMAOs have not displaced MAOs. In particular, the authors find that MAO density shapes NMAO founding, as membership groups provide a base for professional advocacy. These findings challenge the notion that U.S. civic life has undergone a systemic transformation away from organizational forms that promote civic engagement

Consanguinity and rare mutations outside of MCCC genes underlie nonspecific phenotypes of MCCD.

Purpose3-Methylcrotonyl-CoA carboxylase deficiency (MCCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder of leucine catabolism that has a highly variable clinical phenotype, ranging from acute metabolic acidosis to nonspecific symptoms such as developmental delay, failure to thrive, hemiparesis, muscular hypotonia, and multiple sclerosis. Implementation of newborn screening for MCCD has resulted in broadening the range of phenotypic expression to include asymptomatic adults. The purpose of this study was to identify factors underlying the varying phenotypes of MCCD.MethodsWe performed exome sequencing on DNA from 33 cases and 108 healthy controls. We examined these data for associations between either MCC mutational status, genetic ancestry, or consanguinity and the absence or presence/specificity of clinical symptoms in MCCD cases.ResultsWe determined that individuals with nonspecific clinical phenotypes are highly inbred compared with cases that are asymptomatic and healthy controls. For 5 of these 10 individuals, we discovered a homozygous damaging mutation in a disease gene that is likely to underlie their nonspecific clinical phenotypes previously attributed to MCCD.ConclusionOur study shows that nonspecific phenotypes attributed to MCCD are associated with consanguinity and are likely not due to mutations in the MCC enzyme but result from rare homozygous mutations in other disease genes.Genet Med 17 8, 660-667

Session B6: Seeking Better Fishways: the Pump Fishway Program

Abstract: A surprising hiatus affects fish research and management. Those of us working in fish passage strive to move fish past barriers. Aquaculturists, on the other hand, move fish around fish farms safely and effectively. Marrying these two approaches presents an exciting opportunity for fishway development. Millions of fish-passage barriers remain in rivers globally, together with many under-performing and costly fishway investments, resulting in declining biodiversity and production of freshwater fish. Better approaches to fishway design are urgently needed to aid in halting this worldwide loss of connectivity. Multidisciplinary work at UNSW Australia aims to refine and test a pump fishway. This novel concept integrates technologies from fish passage and aquaculture to improve fishway performance and reduce costs. Fishways knowledge is being combined with pumping techniques routinely used in aquaculture to safely transport large biomasses of fish from across a broad size range. The pump fishway uses a helical fishway section to provide sufficient elevation for fish to be gravitated into a transfer chamber, which is then pressurized with water piped from the reservoir. This flow carries fish up a rising transfer pipe and a small auxiliary pump finally delivers fish into the reservoir. A pump fishway offers many potential benefits: effective upstream passage for migrant fish communities; lightweight, modular construction with few moving parts; applicability to diverse sites and barriers \u3e1.5 m high; energy-independence using hydraulic power from the reservoir to drive the system; continuous operation with brief transfer cycles; and potential barge-mounted use providing mobility, flood protection and fewer constraints due to tailwater levels. Large savings on capital and operating costs are predicted. Research and development are planned to optimise and validate the pump fishway design, using physical and computational hydraulic modelling and animal trials with wild, migrating fish