Negotiating the Great Recession: How Teacher Collective Bargaining Outcomes Change in Times of Financial Duress

This article examines how teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), teacher salaries, and class sizes changed during the Great Recession. Using a district-level data set of California teacher CBAs that includes measures of subarea contract strength and salaries from 2005–2006 and 2011–2012 tied to district-level longitudinal data, we estimate difference-in-difference models to examine bargaining outcomes for districts that should have been more or less fiscally constrained. We find that unions and administrators change critical elements of CBAs and district policy during times of fiscal duress. This includes increasing class sizes, reducing instructional time, and lowering base salaries to relieve financial pressures and negotiating increased protections for teachers in areas with less direct financial implications, including grievance procedures and nonteaching duties

A Gamma Ray Burst with a 220 Microsecond Rise Time and a Sharp Spectral Cutoff

The Gamma Ray Burst GRB920229 has four extreme and unprecedented properties; a rise in brightness with an e-folding time scale of $220 \pm 30 \mu s$, a fall in brightness with an e-folding time scale of $400 \pm 100 \mu s$, a large change in spectral shape over a time of $768 \mu s$, and a sharp spectral cutoff to high energies with $\Delta E/E = 18$. The rapid changes occur during a spike in the light curve which was seen 0.164 s after the start of the burst. The spectrum has a peak $\nu F_{\nu}$ at 200 keV with no significant flux above 239 keV, although the cutoff energy shifts to less than 100 keV during the decay of the spike. These numbers can be used to place severe limits on fireball models of bursts. The thickness of the energy production region must be smaller than $\sim 66 km$, ejected shells must have a dispersion of the Lorentz factor of less than roughly 1% along a particular radius, and the angular size of the radiation emission region is of order 1 arc-minute as viewed from the burst center. The physical mechanism that caused the sharp spectral cutoff has not been determined.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to ApJ

Lessons for the Philanthropic Sector on the Use of Matching Contingencies

Many philanthropic institutions require prospective or current grantees to match all or part of the value of a grant in order to secure funding. Foundations use matching contingencies to recruit funding partners, build grantee capacity to raise funds, replicate program models, and exit from the field, among other purposes. In January 2014, Atlantic commissioned Mathematica Policy Research to evaluate its matching practices. The purpose of the evaluation is to document the utility and outcomes of Atlantic's use of matching requirements. The findings in this report provide information on the outcomes and effects of the use of matching contingencies to inform other philanthropic organizations about possible consequences of this funding practice

Gamma-ray bursts have millisecond variability

We have performed searches for isolated flares and for steady flickering in the initial ∼ 1 s of gamma-ray burst light curves on the microsecond to millisecond timescales. Two bursts among our sample of 20 revealed four isolated flares with timescales from 256 to 2048 μs. A wavelet analysis for our sample showed low-level flickering for all bursts on timescales from 256 μs to 33 ms, with the majority of bursts containing rise times faster than 4 ms and 30% having rise times faster than 1 ms. These results show that millisecond variability is common in classical bursts and not some exceptional activity by a possibly separate class of bursts. These fast rise times can be used to place the following severe limits on burst models. (1) The characteristic thickness of the energy generation region must be less than 1200 km along the line of sight. (2) The angular size of the gamma-ray emission region as subtended from the central source must be less than 42″. (3) The expanding ejecta must have a range of Lorentz factors along a radius line with a dispersion of less than roughly 2%. (4) Within the external shock scenario, the characteristic dimension of the impacted cloud must be smaller than 16 AU on average. (5) Within the collimated jet scenario, the collimation angle must be smaller than 42″

Who Lobbies the Lobbyists? Bureaucratic Influence on State Medicaid Legislation.

Understanding the ways in which public agencies attempt to influence policy is of critical importance to policy studies and to democratic theory. Most research on bureaucratic power focuses on rulemaking and policy implementation, but bureaucrats also engage in earlier stages of the policy development process. In this dissertation, I theorize and test a previously unexplored mechanism for agency influence on policy, asking whether, and how, bureaucrats enlist the help of interest groups in attempts to influence legislation. I focus this investigation on state Medicaid bureaucrats. Evidence from a novel survey of state-based health lobbyists in 25 states reveals that state Medicaid bureaucrats routinely conduct what I call “indirect bureaucratic lobbying.” Survey data also provide preliminary support for hypotheses about the conditions that increase the likelihood of indirect bureaucratic lobbying. In particular, I find a positive effect of bureaucrat-lobbyist agreement on specific Medicaid legislation. However, the effect of policy agreement also varies according to the levels of state agency capacity and state legislative capacity, and vice versa. For example, bureaucrats are more likely to request interest group support where state agency capacity is low, as long as a minimal level of bureaucrat-lobbyist policy agreement exists. I also find that indirect bureaucratic lobbying is more likely where governors have relatively weak formal budget powers, conditional on the existence of governor-bureaucrat agreement on specific Medicaid legislation. In addition, I build on my findings about the importance of policy agreement to explore the applicability of different theories of legislative lobbying, and to ask whether we can predict bureaucratic lobbying according to the content of Medicaid legislation. Overall, my findings have major implications for research on bureaucratic politics and on state health policy. In contrast with the conventional view of bureaucrats, I provide evidence of a specific way in which bureaucrats attempt to influence legislative decision-making, and I show that they do so regularly. This dissertation highlights the need for greater scholarly attention to bureaucrats' power, role in the policy process, and policy preferences. My findings also have practical implications for the effective dissemination and targeting of health services research evidence.PhDIndependent Interdepartmental Degree ProgramUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107219/1/kvdbroek_1.pd

「環太平洋の言語」日本班

初巻は別書誌『消滅に瀕した方言アクセントの緊急調査研究

State of Vermont Health Care Financing Plan Beginning Calendar Year 2017 Analysis

This report, prepared for the Vermont Agency of Administration, details the costs and coverage of a single-payer system in Vermont, and explained that the state must develop new financing mechanisms that raise $1.6 billion to fund single-payer. It was produced in partnership with Wakely Consulting Group Inc. However, on December 17, 2014, Gov. Peter Shumlin announced that now is not the right time to overhaul health care financing and delivery in Vermont

Automated prediction of mastitis infection patterns in dairy herds using machine learning

© 2020, The Author(s). Mastitis in dairy cattle is extremely costly both in economic and welfare terms and is one of the most significant drivers of antimicrobial usage in dairy cattle. A critical step in the prevention of mastitis is the diagnosis of the predominant route of transmission of pathogens into either contagious (CONT) or environmental (ENV), with environmental being further subdivided as transmission during either the nonlactating “dry” period (EDP) or lactating period (EL). Using data from 1000 farms, random forest algorithms were able to replicate the complex herd level diagnoses made by specialist veterinary clinicians with a high degree of accuracy. An accuracy of 98%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 86% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 99% was achieved for the diagnosis of CONT vs ENV (with CONT as a “positive” diagnosis), and an accuracy of 78%, PPV of 76% and NPV of 81% for the diagnosis of EDP vs EL (with EDP as a “positive” diagnosis). An accurate, automated mastitis diagnosis tool has great potential to aid non-specialist veterinary clinicians to make a rapid herd level diagnosis and promptly implement appropriate control measures for an extremely damaging disease in terms of animal health, productivity, welfare and antimicrobial use

Cognitive Behavior Modification and Exercise + Group Counseling for Patients After Bariatric Surgery

The growing obesity epidemic is paralleled by an increasing number of bariatric surgeries. Patients lose significant weight within the first 12-18 months post-surgery with corresponding resolution of many co-morbidities. However, weight loss stabilizes after 18-24 months and 50% or more of patients eventually regain weight (Bond, Phelan, Leahey, Hill, & Wing, 2009; Magro, et al., 2008). Weight regain after loss is associated with return of co-morbidities and deteriorations in health-related quality of life and mood (Karlsson, Taft, Ryden, Sjostrom, & Sullivan, 2007). The purpose of this pilot study was to analyze the effects of a post-surgical behavioral plus counseling intervention on bariatric surgery patients who are struggling to maintain their weight loss ≥ 2 years after surgery. Methods: Project REACH (Relearn how to Eat, increase Activity and Create better Habits) was a 12-week intervention designed to change psychosocial mediators of health behaviors and fitness variables. Patients met for 1 hr each week for cognitive behavior modification and exercise instruction and practice followed by 1 hr of a closed counseling session. Psychosocial variables and fitness were measured before and after the intervention. Descriptive statistics, paired-samples t-tests, and Cohen’s d were applied to the data. Results: Eight women aged 39-68 yr (M = 54.37, SD = 9.62), BMI range 24.4-50.5 kg/m2 (M = 38.16, SD = 7.61) self-selected into the program. At the pre-test, BMI was correlated with diet/lifestyle self-efficacy (r = -.913, p = .002), social support for exercise-friends (r = -.800, p = .017), and exercise planning (r = -.730, p = .040). Distance walked in 6 min (6MWT) increased for the 4 women who completed the post-test (p = .040, d = 1.68). Changes in some fitness (e.g., BMI: d = -0.77) and psychosocial variables (e.g., exercise planning: d = 1.02; dietary cognitive restraint: d = 0.73) had medium and large effects. Conclusions: Targeting exercise, nutrition, and psychological issues together in an intervention can have positive effects on fitness and psychosocial factors that may help patients more than 2 yr post-surgery manage their weight

Identifying associations between management practices and antimicrobial resistances of sentinel bacteria recovered from bulk tank milk on dairy farms

There is increasing emphasis on the need to reduce antimicrobial use (AMU) on dairy farms to reduce the emergence of resistant bacteria which could compromise animal health and impact human medicine. In addition to AMU, the role of farm management is an area of growing interest and represents an alternative route for possible interventions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of farm management practices and AMU on resistances of sentinel bacteria in bulk milk. Dairy farms from two, geographically separate locations within the British Isles were recruited as part of two study groups. Farm management data from study group 1 (n = 125) and study group 2 (n = 16) were collected by means of a face-to-face questionnaire with farmers carried out during farm visits. For study group 2, additional data on AMU was collated from veterinary medicine sales records. Sentinel bacterial species (Enterococcus spp. and E. coli), which have been reported to be of value in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) studies, were isolated from bulk tank milk to monitor antimicrobial susceptibilities by means of minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs). MIC data for both groups was used to generate an overall “score” for each farm. For both groups, this overall farm mean MIC was used as the outcome variable to evaluate the impact of farm management and AMU. This was achieved through use of elastic net modelling, a regularised regression method which also featured a bootstrapping procedure to produce robust models. Inference of models was based on covariate stabilities and bootstrapped P-values to identify farm management and AMU practices that have significant effects on MICs of sentinel bacteria. Practices which were found to be of importance with respect to Enterococcus spp. included management of slurry, external entry of livestock to the dairy herd, use of bedding materials and conditioners, cubicle cleaning routines and antibiotic practices, including use of β-lactams and fluoroquinolones. Practices deemed to be of importance for E. coli MICs included cubicle and bedding management practices, teat preparation routines at milking and the milking procedure itself. We conclude that a variety of routine farm management practices are associated with MICs of sentinel bacteria in bulk milk. Amendment of these practices offers additional possible routes of intervention, alongside alterations to AMU, to mitigate the emergence and dissemination of AMR on dairy farms