Odious Debts or Odious Regimes

Odious regimes have always been there. That there is no silver-bullet solution that will prevent odious regimes from arising, or stymie them once they do, is evident from the plethora of responses employed by the international community once a regime\u27s odiousness becomes clear. Current odious debt doctrine dates back to a 1927 treatise by a wandering Russian academic named Alexander Sack. The Sack definition contemplates a debt-by-debt approach to questionable borrowing. If a loan is used to benefit the population--to build a highway or water-treatment plant, for instance--the obligation would be fully enforceable, no matter how pernicious the borrower regime. Here, Bolton and Skeel attempt to fill the vacuum: a regime is odious if it engages in either systematic suppression or systematic looting

Spectro-Perfectionism: An Algorithmic Framework for Photon Noise-Limited Extraction of Optical Fiber Spectroscopy

We describe a new algorithm for the "perfect" extraction of one-dimensional spectra from two-dimensional (2D) digital images of optical fiber spectrographs, based on accurate 2D forward modeling of the raw pixel data. The algorithm is correct for arbitrarily complicated 2D point-spread functions (PSFs), as compared to the traditional optimal extraction algorithm, which is only correct for a limited class of separable PSFs. The algorithm results in statistically independent extracted samples in the 1D spectrum, and preserves the full native resolution of the 2D spectrograph without degradation. Both the statistical errors and the 1D resolution of the extracted spectrum are accurately determined, allowing a correct chi-squared comparison of any model spectrum with the data. Using a model PSF similar to that found in the red channel of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectrograph, we compare the performance of our algorithm to that of cross-section based optimal extraction, and also demonstrate that our method allows coaddition and foreground estimation to be carried out as an integral part of the extraction step. This work demonstrates the feasibility of current- and next-generation multi-fiber spectrographs for faint galaxy surveys even in the presence of strong night-sky foregrounds. We describe the handling of subtleties arising from fiber-to-fiber crosstalk, discuss some of the likely challenges in deploying our method to the analysis of a full-scale survey, and note that our algorithm could be generalized into an optimal method for the rectification and combination of astronomical imaging data.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, emulateapj; minor corrections and clarifications; to be published in the PAS

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

Connecting physical resonant amplitudes and lattice QCD

We present a determination of the isovector, $P$-wave $\pi\pi$ scattering phase shift obtained by extrapolating recent lattice QCD results from the Hadron Spectrum Collaboration using $m_\pi =236$ MeV. The finite volume spectra are described using extensions of L\"uscher's method to determine the infinite volume Unitarized Chiral Perturbation Theory scattering amplitude. We exploit the pion mass dependence of this effective theory to obtain the scattering amplitude at $m_\pi= 140$ MeV. The scattering phase shift is found to be in good agreement with experiment up to center of mass energies of 1.2 GeV. The analytic continuation of the scattering amplitude to the complex plane yields a $\rho$-resonance pole at $E_\rho= \left[755(2)(1)(^{20}_{02})-\frac{i}{2}\,129(3)(1)(^{7}_{1})\right]~{\rm MeV}$. The techniques presented illustrate a possible pathway towards connecting lattice QCD observables of few-body, strongly interacting systems to experimentally accessible quantities.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, equivalent to published version, added two appendices and a figur

Abstracts from Spring 2019 Research and Creative Activities Day Presentations

This is a summary of abstracts from the poster and oral presentations made by undergraduate students during Research and Creative Activities Day at West Chester University in April of 2019. The abstracts describe research and creative activities that the students conducted in collaboration with their faculty mentors who are listed with the abstracts. For more information about the study or the creative activity, please contact the mentor directly using the contact email address. Student Authors Included: Emily Rodden, Alissa Grady, Joyce Pour-Azar, Lauren Stricker, MacKenzie Holm, Samantha Bobst, Joelle Buenaventura, Julianne Duko, Angel Jacabella, Taylor Stuart, Liam Pierson, Kathleen Shultz, Amanda Johnston, Justin Gibson, Taylor Potts-Gordon, Sofia Vanderhyde, Ryan Manzo, Natha Helfrick, Olivia King, Rebecca Burr, Mary Ann Blumenthal, Zachary Weaver, Keriann Mosley, Alyssa Allen, Dominique McQuade, Amelia Oberholtzer, Jacquelyn Redmond, Terrence Riley, Kelly O’Donnell, Megan Ray, James Palmer, Tiffany Kennedy, Samantha Walsh, Kateri Sload, Colin Mancini, Erin Walsh, Ali Donohue, Ashley Nielsen, Adam Vanluvanee, Rebecca Spackman, Jenna Cummings, Garrett Compton, James Devor, Emily Feldman, Brady Barley, and Cassidy Tennit

Property Tax and School Choice in Pennsylvania K-12 Education

For many years now, Pennsylvanian lawmakers have debated the merits of changing the funding method of public schools, with the elimination of property taxes drawing headlines in the media but never being realized through legislative amendments to the school funding formulas. Still today, legislation is being proposed to eliminate property tax as a funding source. The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is demographic or geographic support for these efforts among those who budget and utilize these funds: school board members. The theoretical framework employed will be that of social choice theory. A survey was conducted among school board members from the 501 individual districts in Pennsylvania to determine if there was support for a change to sales and income taxes in lieu of property taxes for school funding and subjected to analysis using SPSS via independent samples Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann Whitney-U testing, along with Crosstab analysis. Additional questions explore support for school choice and voucher systems with Pennsylvania K-12 education. The findings of this study showed that there exists support among certain geographic and demographic groups for these concepts