7,037 research outputs found
Memory of Enlightenment: Accounting for Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association
Produced by The Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, The Frank Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts and The School of Social Sciences, The university of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas for The Study for Disability Studies
Tissue-Derived Stem and Progenitor Cells
The characterization and isolation of various stem cell populations, from embryonic through tissue-derived stem cells, have led a rapid growth in the field of stem cell research. These research efforts have often been interrelated as to the markers that identify a select cell population are frequently analyzed to determine their expression in cells of distinct organs/tissues. In this review, we will expand the current state of research involving select tissue-derived stem cell populations including the liver, central nervous system, and cardiac tissues as examples of the success and challenges in this field of research. Lastly, the challenges of clinical therapies will be discussed as it applies to these unique
cell populations
Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment
Although the secret ballot has long been secured as a legal matter in the United States, formal secrecy protections are not equivalent to convincing citizens that they may vote privately and without fear of reprisal. We present survey evidence that those who have not previously voted are particularly likely to voice doubts about the secrecy of the voting process. We then report results from a field experiment where we provided registered voters with information about ballot secrecy protections prior to the 2010 general election. We find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens without records of previous turnout, but did not appear to influence the behavior of citizens who had previously voted. These results suggest that although the secret ballot is a long-standing institution in the United States, providing basic information about ballot secrecy can affect the decision to participate to an important degree.
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Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis in experimental necrotizing enterocolitis: alterations in inflammation, innate immune response, and the microbiota.
BackgroundProbiotics decrease the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). We sought to determine the impact of Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis (B. infantis) in the established rat model of NEC.MethodsRat pups delivered 1 d prior to term gestation were assigned to one of three groups: dam fed (DF), formula fed (FF), or fed with formula supplemented with 5 × 10(6) CFU B. infantis per day (FF+Binf). Experimental pups were exposed to hypoxia and cold stress. Ileal tissue was examined for pathology and expression of inflammatory mediators, antimicrobial peptides, and goblet-cell products. Ceca were assessed for bacterial composition by analysis of the 16S rRNA sequence.ResultsAdministration of B. infantis significantly reduced the incidence of NEC, decreased expression of Il6, Cxcl1, Tnfa, Il23, and iNOS, and decreased expression of the antimicrobial peptides Reg3b and Reg3g. There was significant microbial heterogeneity both within groups and between experiments. The cecal microbiota was not significantly different between the FF and FF+Binf groups. Bifidobacteria were not detected in the cecum in significant numbers.ConclusionIn the rat model, the inflammation associated with NEC was attenuated by administration of probiotic B. infantis. Dysbiosis was highly variable, precluding determination of the precise role of the microbiota in experimental NEC
Ab initio calculation of the anomalous Hall conductivity by Wannier interpolation
The intrinsic anomalous Hall effect in ferromagnets depends on subtle
spin-orbit-induced effects in the electronic structure, and recent ab-initio
studies found that it was necessary to sample the Brillouin zone at millions of
k-points to converge the calculation. We present an efficient first-principles
approach for computing the anomalous Hall conductivity. We start out by
performing a conventional electronic-structure calculation including spin-orbit
coupling on a uniform and relatively coarse k-point mesh. From the resulting
Bloch states, maximally-localized Wannier functions are constructed which
reproduce the ab-initio states up to the Fermi level. The Hamiltonian and
position-operator matrix elements, needed to represent the energy bands and
Berry curvatures, are then set up between the Wannier orbitals. This completes
the first stage of the calculation, whereby the low-energy ab-initio problem is
transformed into an effective tight-binding form. The second stage only
involves Fourier transforms and unitary transformations of the small matrices
set up in the first stage. With these inexpensive operations, the quantities of
interest are interpolated onto a dense k-point mesh and used to evaluate the
anomalous Hall conductivity as a Brillouin zone integral. The present scheme,
which also avoids the cumbersome summation over all unoccupied states in the
Kubo formula, is applied to bcc Fe, giving excellent agreement with
conventional, less efficient first-principles calculations. Remarkably, we find
that more than 99% of the effect can be recovered by keeping a set of terms
depending only on the Hamiltonian matrix elements, not on matrix elements of
the position operator.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
Scientometric Analysis and Density-Equalizing Mapping
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is characterized by the increase of the mean
pulmonary arterial pressure in the lung circulation. Despite the large number
of experimental and clinical studies conducted on pulmonary hypertension,
there is no comprehensive work that analyzed the global research activity on
PH so far. We retrieved the bibliometric data of the publications on pulmonary
hypertension for two periods from the Web of science database. Here, we set
the first investigation period from 1900 to 2007 (t1) due to the cited half
life of articles and the relating difficulties to interpret the citation
parameters. The second evaluation period (t2) covers the time interval from
2008 onwards including the year 2015. The data were analyzed and processed to
density-equalizing maps using the NewQIS platform. A total number of 18,986
publications were identified in t1 that come from 85 countries. The US
published the highest number of publications (n = 7,290), followed by the UK,
Germany, Japan and France. In t2 19,676 items could be found worked out by 130
countries. The raking started just the same with the USA as most publishing
nation with 7,127 publications on PH, followed by the UK and Germany. Japan
fell back on 6th place, whereas China came into view on the 5th position.
Analyzing the average citation rate as a parameter for research quality,
Mexico reached the highest value in t1 and Ireland in t2. While, the country
specific h-index underlined the leading position of the US research in both
evaluation periods again. The average number of international collaboration
items was expanding from none in 1978 to 530 items in 2015 with the USA as the
country with the highest number of collaboration articles. The present study
is the first large scale density-equalizing mapping and scientometric analysis
of global PH research activity. Our data draw a sketch of the global research
architecture in this field, indicating a need for specific research programs
in countries with a lower human development index
Self-interest, beliefs, and policy opinions: understanding how economic beliefs affect immigration policy preferences
Research on how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on labor market effects, concluding that, because workers’ skill levels do not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly versus low-skilled immigration. Although cultural factors are important, our results suggest that previous work underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of immigration policy preferences and attitudes more generally
Ballot secrecy concerns and voter mobilization: new experimental evidence about message source, context, and the duration of mobilization effects
Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group’s mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long term participation
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