Democracy’s Discontents

Reviewing: Keith Bybee - How Civility Works; James Fishkin - Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics Through Public Deliberation; Sanford Levison & Jack M. Balkin - Democracy and Dysfunction; Jeffrey K. Tulis & Nicole Mellow - Legacies of Losing in American Politic

Democratic Exclusion: The Right to Vote in the United States, United Kingdom, and France

This research focuses on the forms of exclusion that democratizing processes have historically facilitated. The dynamics of democratization often lead political coalitions to change electoral rules to simultaneously extend and constrict the right to vote across different categories of persons, as well as to reinforce existing exclusions. This pattern occurred in all the \u27exemplary models\u27 of early democratization, and yet the historical narratives relied on by the comparative democratization literature neglect its exclusionary dimension, and thereby misinform comparative theory building. The dissertation empirically documents the dark side of democratization in the three paradigmatic cases of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, and develops and tests a theory explaining cross-national and cross-time variation. At key moments in a country\u27s development, political entrepreneurs advance ideas of community belonging for the purpose of securing a governing coalition. When successful the ideas of political community are embedded in new institutions and in public opinion, shaping the expectations of political agents across the political spectrum and resulting in higher costs of coalition-building and political mobilization across categories of people. The exclusions were thereby made resilient to subsequent democratizing processes. The dissertation advances research the role of ideas in social science by focusing on the micro-foundations of democratic exclusion. The model predicts various of political behavior that are integrally important to democratization, and is tested against debates, voting behavior, and correspondence in and outside of parliaments, legislatures, and constitutional conventions. The data draws on archival field work research, multiple datasets of legislator behavior, constituency demographics, and institutional change. These allow for the identification of stable patterns as well as change across time, and supplement a process tracing research design

Majority Tyranny

Reviewing: Louis Fisher, Congress: Protecting Individual Rights (University Press of Kansas 2016); Anna Harvey, A Mere Machine: The Supreme Court, Congress, and American Democracy (Yale University Press 2013)

A Model for Classical Space-time Co-ordinates

Field equations with general covariance are interpreted as equations for a target space describing physical space time co-ordinates, in terms of an underlying base space with conformal invariance. These equations admit an infinite number of inequivalent Lagrangian descriptions. A model for reparametrisation invariant membranes is obtained by reversing the roles of base and target space variables in these considerations.Comment: 9 pages, Latex. This was the basis of a talk given at the Argonne National Laboratory 1996 Summer Institute : Topics on Non-Abelian Duality June 27-July 1

Cell Surface Binding and Internalization of Aβ Modulated by Degree of Aggregation

The amyloid peptides, Aβ40 and Aβ42, are generated through endoproteolytic cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein. Here we have developed a model to investigate the interaction of living cells with various forms of aggregated Aβ40/42. After incubation at endosomal pH 6, we observed a variety of Aβ conformations after 3 (Aβ3), 24 (Aβ24), and 90 hours (Aβ90). Both Aβ4224 and Aβ4024 were observed to rapidly bind and internalize into differentiated PC12 cells, leading to accumulation in the lysosome. In contrast, Aβ40/4290 were both found to only weakly associate with cells, but were observed as the most aggregated using dynamic light scattering and thioflavin-T. Internalization of Aβ40/4224 was inhibited with treatment of monodansylcadaverine, an endocytosis inhibitor. These studies indicate that the ability of Aβ40/42 to bind and internalize into living cells increases with degree of aggregation until it reaches a maximum beyond which its ability to interact with cells diminishes drastically

Alfalfa : An Economic Alternative to Corn?

Production costs and returns of alfalfa for different levels of management and at different prices are compared to shelled corn and corn silage, the major crops grown on the Belle Fourche Irrigation District

Requirement of aggregation propensity of Alzheimer amyloid peptides for neuronal cell surface binding

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Aggregation of the amyloid peptides, Aβ40 and Aβ42, is known to be involved in the pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here we investigate the relationship between peptide aggregation and cell surface binding of three forms of Aβ (Aβ40, Aβ42, and an Aβ mutant).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using confocal microscopy and flow cytometry with fluorescently labelled Aβ, we demonstrate a correlation between the aggregation propensity of the Alzheimer amyloid peptides and their neuronal cell surface association. We find that the highly aggregation prone Aβ42 associates with the surface of neuronal cells within one hour, while the less aggregation prone Aβ40 associates over 24 hours. We show that a double mutation in Aβ42 that reduces its aggregation propensity also reduces its association with the cell surface. Furthermore, we find that a cell line that is resistant to Aβ cytotoxicity, the non-neuronal human lymphoma cell line U937, does not bind either Aβ40 or Aβ42.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, our findings reveal that amyloid peptide aggregation propensity is an essential determinant of neuronal cell surface association. We anticipate that our approach, involving Aβ imaging in live cells, will be highly useful for evaluating the efficacy of therapeutic drugs that prevent toxic Aβ association with neuronal cells.</p