Partisan Monetary Policies: Presidential Influence through the Power of Appointment

We investigate the channels through which partisan influence from a Presidential administration could affect monetary policy-making.Influence could be a result of direct Presidential pressure exerted on members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), or it could be a result of partisan considerations in Presidential appointments to the Board of Governors. To investigate these two channels of influence, we devise and apply a method for estimating parameters of monetary policy reaction functions that can vary across individual members of the FOMC Our results suggest that the appointments process is the primary mechanism by which partisan differences in monetary policies arise

Monetary Policy Preferences of Individual FOMC Members: A Content Analysis of the Memoranda of Discussion

The Memoranda of Discussion provide detailed records of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting deliberations. Procedures are developed for coding the textual data in the Memoranda and assessing the reliability of those codings. The codings are then used in the estimation of parameters of individual FOMC members\u27 reaction functions. Data from the 1970 to 1976 period are employed in the estimation. In the future, similar methods could be used to analyze newly released transcripts of FOMC meetings held after 1976

Strategies for Testing the Impact of Natural Flood Risk Management Measures

Natural Flood Management (NFM) is an approach that seeks to work with natural processes to enhance the flood regulating capacity of a catchment, whilst delivering a wide range of ecosystem services, from pollution assimilation to habitat creation and carbon storage. This chapter describes a tiered approach to NFM, commencing with strategic modelling to identify a range of NFM opportunities (tree-planting, distributed runoff attenuation features, and soil structure improvements), and their potential benefits, before engagement with catchment partners, and prioritisation of areas for more detailed hydrological modelling and uncertainty analysis. NFM measures pose some fundamental challenges in modelling their contribution to flood risk management because they are often highly distributed, can influence multiple catchment processes, and evidence for their effectiveness at the large scale is uncertain. This demands we model the ‘upstream’ in more detail so that we can assess the effectiveness of many small-scale changes at the large-scale. We demonstrate an approach to address these challenges employing the fast, high resolution, fully-distributed inundation model JFLOW, and visualisation of potential benefits in map form. These are used to engage catchment managers who can prioritise areas for potential deployment of NFM measures, where more detailed modelling may be targeted. We then demonstrate a framework applying the semi-distributed Dynamic TOPMODEL in which uncertainty plays an integral role in the decision-making process

Developing observational methods to drive future hydrological science: can we make a start as a community?

Hydrology is still, and for good reasons, an inexact science, even if evolving hydrological understanding has provided a basis for improved water management for at least the last three millennia. The limitations of that understanding have, however, become much more apparent and important in the last century as the pressures of increasing populations, and the anthropogenic impacts on catchment forcing and responses, have intensified. At the same time, the sophistication of hydrological analyses and models has been developing rapidly, often driven more by the availability of computational power and geographical data sets than any real increases in understanding of hydrological processes. This sophistication has created an illusion of real progress but a case can be made that we are still rather muddling along, limited by the significant uncertainties in hydrological observations, knowledge of catchment characteristics and related gaps in conceptual understanding, particularly of the sub-surface. These knowledge gaps are illustrated by the fact that for many catchments we cannot close the water balance without significant uncertainty, uncertainty that is often neglected in evaluating models for practical applications

Knowledge gaps in our perceptual model of Great Britain’s hydrology

There is a no lack of significant open questions in the field of hydrology. How will hydrological connectivity between freshwater bodies be altered by future human alterations to the hydrological cycle? Where does water go when it rains? Or what is the future space-time variability of flood and drought events? However, the answers to these questions will vary with location due to the specific and often poorly understood local boundary conditions and system properties that control the functional behaviour of a catchment or any other hydrologic control volume. We suggest that an open, shared and evolving perceptual model of a region’s hydrology is critical to tailor our science questions, as it would be for any other study domain from the plot to the continental scale. In this opinion piece, we begin to discuss the elements of and point out some knowledge gaps in the perceptual model of the terrestrial water cycle of Great Britain. We discuss six major knowledge gaps and propose four key ways to reduce them. While the specific knowledge gaps in our perceptual model do not necessarily transfer to other places, we believe that the development of such perceptual models should be at the core of the debate for all hydrologic communities, and we encourage others to have a similar debate for their hydrologic domain

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Evaluating the Effects of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Mutation D614G on Transmissibility and Pathogenicity.

Global dispersal and increasing frequency of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variant D614G are suggestive of a selective advantage but may also be due to a random founder effect. We investigate the hypothesis for positive selection of spike D614G in the United Kingdom using more than 25,000 whole genome SARS-CoV-2 sequences. Despite the availability of a large dataset, well represented by both spike 614 variants, not all approaches showed a conclusive signal of positive selection. Population genetic analysis indicates that 614G increases in frequency relative to 614D in a manner consistent with a selective advantage. We do not find any indication that patients infected with the spike 614G variant have higher COVID-19 mortality or clinical severity, but 614G is associated with higher viral load and younger age of patients. Significant differences in growth and size of 614G phylogenetic clusters indicate a need for continued study of this variant