344 research outputs found
Social Security Privatization: An Ideologically Structured Movement
We document the cumulative change in expressions of support for Social Security\u27s social insurance ideals to privatization,from the late 1970s through 2007. Social Security\u27s basic structure and principles generally were supported by the United States government and in amendments to the original Act of 1935. However, in the 1980s market arguments began to proliferate in government alongside pension privatization projects by international governmental organizations and conservative think tanks. Although in 1983 Commission members concluded the Social Security system is sound in principle.. and... structure, four members wrote a supplemental statement that emphasized market rationalism. By 1994 dissension in Congress was apparent. The history of Social Security privatization reveals an increasing ideological alignment on the political agenda among transnational organizations, financial institutions, conservative think tanks, Congress, Presidents, and the Social Security Commission and Board of Trustees. Our research denotes the ideological alignments that formed thefoundation for a politically motivated social movement
The ferroelectric Mott-Hubbard phase of organic (TMTTF)2X conductors
We present experimental evidences for a ferro-electric transition in the
family of quasi one- dimensional conductors (TMTTF)2X. We interpret this new
transition in the frame of the combined Mott-Hubbard state taking into account
the double action of the spontaneous charge disproportionation on the TMTTF
molecular stacks and of the X anionic potentials
Women, Health and Aging: Building a Statewide Movement
Provides an overview of current policy and program environments that affect the state's most vulnerable elder population, and considers some effective strategies to address the growing needs of older persons in California
Mitochondrial DNA Evidence and Evolution in Varanoidea (Squamata)
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72302/1/j.1096-0031.2001.tb00118.x.pd
The need for fresh blood: understanding organizational age inequality through a vampiric lens
YesThis article argues that older age inequality within and across working life is the result of vampiric forms and structures constitutive of contemporary organizing. Rather than assuming ageism occurs against a backdrop of neutral organizational processes and practices, the article denaturalizes (and in the process super-naturalizes) organizational orientations of ageing through three vampiric aspects: (un)dying, regeneration and neophilia. These dimensions are used to illustrate how workplace narratives and logics normalize and perpetuate the systematic denigration of the ageing organizational subject. Through our analysis it is argued that older workers are positioned as inevitable ‘sacrificial objects’ of the all-consuming immortal organization. To challenge this, the article explicitly draws on the vampire and the vampiric in literature and popular culture to consider the possibility of subverting existing notions of the ‘older worker’ in order to confront and challenge the subtle and persistent monstrous discourses that shape organizational life
Spin-2 spectrum of defect theories
We study spin-2 excitations in the background of the recently-discovered
type-IIB solutions of D'Hoker et al. These are holographically-dual to defect
conformal field theories, and they are also of interest in the context of the
Karch-Randall proposal for a string-theory embedding of localized gravity. We
first generalize an argument by Csaki et al to show that for any solution with
four-dimensional anti-de Sitter, Poincare or de Sitter invariance the spin-2
excitations obey the massless scalar wave equation in ten dimensions. For the
interface solutions at hand this reduces to a Laplace-Beltrami equation on a
Riemann surface with disk topology, and in the simplest case of the
supersymmetric Janus solution it further reduces to an ordinary differential
equation known as Heun's equation. We solve this equation numerically, and
exhibit the spectrum as a function of the dilaton-jump parameter .
In the limit of large a nearly-flat linear-dilaton dimension grows
large, and the Janus geometry becomes effectively five-dimensional. We also
discuss the difficulties of localizing four-dimensional gravity in the more
general backgrounds with NS5-brane or D5-brane charge, which will be analyzed
in detail in a companion paper.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figure
Fluctuating Viability Selection on Morphology of Cliff Swallows Is Driven by Climate
The extent to which fluctuating selection can maintain evolutionary stasis in most populations remains an unresolved question in evolutionary biology. Climate has been hypothesized to drive reversals in the direction of selection among different time periods and may also be responsible for intense episodic selection caused by rare weather events. We measured viability selection associated with morphological traits in cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) in western Nebraska, USA, over a 14-year period following a rare climatic event. We used mark-recapture to estimate the annual apparent survival of over 26 000 individuals whose wing, tail, tarsus, and bill had been measured. The fitness functions associated with tarsus length and bill dimensions fluctuated depending on annual climate conditions on the birds’ breeding grounds. The oscillating yearly patterns may have slowed and occasionally reversed directional change in trait trajectories, although there was a trend over time for all traits except tarsus to increase in size. The net positive directional selection on some traits, despite periodic climate-associated fluctuations, suggests that cliff swallow morphology in the population is likely to keep changing and supports recent work contending that selection in general does not fluctuate enough to be an effective driver of stasis
A new species of <i>Pluridens</i> (Mosasauridae Halisaurinae) from the upper Campanian of Southern Nigeria
The Upper Cretaceous of Africa has produced a diverse fauna of mosasaurs, including the highly specialized, long-jawed Pluridens. The type of Pluridens walkeri comes from the Maastrichtian Farin-Doutchi Formation of Niger, with a second, referred specimen coming from the Campanian section of the Campanian-Maastrichtian Nkporo Shale near Calabar, in southern Nigeria. Comparisons of this referred specimen with the holotype suggest that it represents a distinct and more primitive species. The Calabar jaw resembles P. walkeri in being long and narrow anteriorly with a shallow subdental shelf, and in having small, numerous, recurved teeth with medially positioned replacement pits. However, it lacks many of the derived features that characterize Pluridens walkeri, such as the extremely long and straight jaw, the extreme lateral protrusion and subcircular section of the dentary, strong transverse expansion of the dental thecae, and extreme reduction and increase in number of the teeth. The Calabar Pluridens is therefore referred to a new species, Pluridens calabaria. Following recent studies, Pluridens is considered to represent a highly derived member of the Halisaurinae. The marked differences between the Campanian and Maastrichtian species of the genus underscore the rapid pace of mosasaur evolution during the Cretaceous.</p
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