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SMS texts on corruption help Ugandan voters hold elected councillors accountable at the polls

Many politicians manipulate information to prevent voters from holding them accountable; however, mobile text messages may make it easier for nongovernmental organizations to credibly share information on official corruption that is difficult for politicians to counter directly. We test the potential for texts on budget management to improve democratic accountability by conducting a large (n = 16,083) randomized controlled trial during the 2016 Ugandan district elections. In cooperation with a local partner, we compiled, simplified, and text-messaged official information on irregularities in local government budgets. Verified recipients of messages that described more irregularities than expected reported voting for incumbent councillors 6% less often; verified recipients of messages conveying fewer irregularities than expected reported voting for incumbent councillors 5% more often. The messages had no observable effect on votes for incumbent council chairs, potentially due to voters\u27 greater reliance on other sources of information for higher profile elections. These mixed results suggest that text messages on budget corruption help voters hold some politicians accountable in settings where elections are not free and fair

Anonymous shell companies: A global audit study and field experiment in 176 countries

To test whether firms behave consistently with international law prohibiting anonymous incorporation, we conducted a global audit study and field experiment, using data from 1639 incorporation firms in 176 countries. We requested anonymous incorporation and randomly assigned references to international law, threat of penalties, norms of appropriate behavior, or a placebo. We find a substantial number of firms willing to flout international standards and show that those in OECD countries proved significantly less compliant with rules than in developing countries or tax havens. Firms in tax havens displayed significantly greater compliance and were sensitive to experimental interventions invoking international law

Age of the Peach Springs Tuff, Southeastern California and Western Arizona

Sanidine separates from pumice of the early Miocene Peach Springs Tuff are concordantly dated at 18.5 ± 0.2 Ma by two isotopic techniques. The Peach Springs Tuff is the only known unit that can be correlated between isolated outcrops of Miocene strata from the central Mojave Desert of southeastern California to the western Colorado Plateau in Arizona, across five structural provinces, a distance of 350 km. Thus the age of the Peach Springs Tuff is important to structural and paleogeographic reconstructions of a large region. Biotite and sanidine separates from bulk samples of the Peach Springs Tuff from zones of welding and vapor-phase alteration have not produced consistent ages by the K-Ar method. Published ages of mineral separates from 17 localities ranged from 16.2 to 20.5 Ma. Discordant 40Ar/39Ar incremental release spectra were obtained for one biotite and two of the sanidine separates. Ages that correspond to the last gas increments are as old as 27 Ma. The 40Ar/39Ar incremental release determinations on sanidine separated from blocks of Peach Springs Tuff pumice yield ages of 18.3 ± 0.3 and 18.6 ± 0.4 Ma. Laser fusion measurements yield a mean age of 18.51 ± 0.10. The results suggest that sanidine and biotite K-Ar ages older than about 18.5 Ma are due to inherited Ar from pre-Tertiary contaminants, which likely were incorporated into the tuff during deposition. Sanidine K-Ar ages younger than 18 Ma probably indicate incomplete extraction of radiogenic 40Ar, whereas laser fusion dates of biotite and hornblende younger than 18 Ma likely are due to postdepositional alteration. Laser fusion ages as high as 19.01 Ma on biotite grains from pumice suggest that minerals from pre-Tertiary country rocks also were incorporated in the magma chamber

Information about service provision in Uganda is insufficient to affect voting behaviour

The quality of service provision in Uganda varies greatly across regions and between villages, and yet evidence suggests citizens’ are unable to assess these differences. A research experiment used SMS messages about public services to help Ugandans make informed voting decisions, but it found no effect on voting outcomes. Here is why information alone is sometimes insufficient to affect political behaviour

Individualized text messages about public services fail to sway voters: evidence from a field experiment on Ugandan elections

Mobile communication technologies can provide citizens access to information that is tailored to their specific circumstances. Such technologies may therefore increase citizens' ability to vote in line with their interests and hold politicians accountable. In a large-scale randomized controlled trial in Uganda (n = 16,083), we investigated whether citizens who receive private, timely, and individualized text messages by mobile phone about public services in their community punished or rewarded incumbents in local elections in line with the information. Respondents claimed to find the messages valuable and there is evidence that they briefly updated their beliefs based on the messages; however, the treatment did not cause increased votes for incumbents where public services were better than expected nor decreased votes where public services were worse than anticipated. The considerable knowledge gaps among citizens identified in this study indicate potential for communication technologies to effectively share civic information. Yet the findings imply that when the attribution of public service outcomes is difficult, even individualized information is unlikely to affect voting behavior

Unfrustrated Qudit Chains and their Ground States

We investigate chains of 'd' dimensional quantum spins (qudits) on a line with generic nearest neighbor interactions without translational invariance. We find the conditions under which these systems are not frustrated, i.e. when the ground states are also the common ground states of all the local terms in the Hamiltonians. The states of a quantum spin chain are naturally represented in the Matrix Product States (MPS) framework. Using imaginary time evolution in the MPS ansatz, we numerically investigate the range of parameters in which we expect the ground states to be highly entangled and find them hard to approximate using our MPS method.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Typos correcte

Hippocampal Functional Connectivity and Memory Performance After Exercise Intervention in Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment

Background: Exercise training (ET) has neuroprotective effects in the hippocampus, a key brain region for memory that is vulnerable to age-related dysfunction. Objective: We investigated the effects of ET on functional connectivity (FC) of the hippocampus in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and a cognitively normal (CN) control group. We also assessed whether the ET-induced changes in hippocampal FC (Δhippocampal-FC) are associated with changes in memory task performance (Δmemory performance). Methods: 32 older adults (77.0±7.6 years; 16 MCI and 16 CN) participated in the present study. Cardiorespiratory fitness tests, memory tasks (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and Logical Memory Test (LM)), and resting-state fMRI were administered before and after a 12-week walking ET intervention. We utilized a seed-based correlation analysis using the bilateral anterior and posterior hippocampi as priori seed regions of interest. The associations of residualized ET-induced Δhippocampal-FC and Δmemory performance were assessed using linear regression. Results: There were significant improvements in RAVLT Trial 1 and LM test performance after ET across participants. At baseline, MCI, compared to CN, demonstrated significantly lower posterior hippocampal FC. ET was associated with increased hippocampal FC across groups. Greater ET-related anterior and posterior hippocampal FC with right posterior cingulate were associated with improved LM recognition performance in MCI participants. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that hippocampal FC is significantly increased following 12-weeks of ET in older adults and, moreover, suggest that increased hippocampal FC may reflect neural network plasticity associated with ET-related improvements in memory performance in individuals diagnosed with MCI