2,475 research outputs found
American political affiliation, 2003–43: a cohort component projection
The recent rise and stability in American party identification has focused interest on the long-term dynamics of party bases. Liberal commentators cite immigration and youth as forces which will produce a natural Democratic advantage in the future while conservative writers highlight the importance of high Republican fertility in securing Republican growth. These concerns foreground the neglect of demography within political science. This paper addresses this omission by conducting the first ever cohort component projection of American partisan populations to 2043 based on survey and census data. A number of scenarios are modeled, but, on current trends, we predict that American partisanship will shift much less than the nation’s ethnic composition because the parties’ age structures are similar. Still, our projections find that the Democrats gain two to three percentage points from the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, though Republican fertility may redress the balance in the very long term
Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting the Research on Campaign Spending and Citizen Initiatives
The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue that the conventional finding is driven by the endogenous nature of campaign spending: initiative proponents spend more when their ballot measure is likely to fail. We address this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach to analyze a comprehensive dataset of ballot propositions in California from 1976 to 2004. We find that both support and opposition spending on citizen initiatives have strong, statistically significant, and countervailing effects. We confirm this finding by looking at time series data from early polling on a subset of these measures. Both analyses show that spending in favor of citizen initiatives substantially increases their chances of passage, just as opposition spending decreases this likelihood
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is a moderate-resolution spectrograph with unprecedented sensitivity that was installed into the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in May 2009, during HST Servicing Mission 4 (STS-125). We present the design philosophy and summarize the key characteristics of the instrument that will be of interest to potential observers. For faint targets, with flux F(sub lambda) approximates 1.0 X 10(exp -14) ergs/s/cm2/Angstrom, COS can achieve comparable signal to noise (when compared to STIS echelle modes) in 1-2% of the observing time. This has led to a significant increase in the total data volume and data quality available to the community. For example, in the first 20 months of science operation (September 2009 - June 2011) the cumulative redshift pathlength of extragalactic sight lines sampled by COS is 9 times that sampled at moderate resolution in 19 previous years of Hubble observations. COS programs have observed 214 distinct lines of sight suitable for study of the intergalactic medium as of June 2011. COS has measured, for the first time with high reliability, broad Lya absorbers and Ne VIII in the intergalactic medium, and observed the HeII reionization epoch along multiple sightlines. COS has detected the first CO emission and absorption in the UV spectra of low-mass circumstellar disks at the epoch of giant planet formation, and detected multiple ionization states of metals in extra-solar planetary atmospheres. In the coming years, COS will continue its census of intergalactic gas, probe galactic and cosmic structure, and explore physics in our solar system and Galaxy
A Collaborative Epidemiological Investigation into the Criminal Fake Artesunate Trade in South East Asia
Paul Newton and colleagues' international, collaborative study found evidence that counterfeit artesunate was being manufactured in China, which prompted a criminal investigation
Helping the Working Poor: Employer- vs. Employee-Based Subsidies
In the United States and Europe there has been renewed interest in subsidizing firms that employ disadvantaged workers as a means of addressing poverty and other social problems. In contrast, the prevailing practice is largely to provide social welfare benefits directly to individuals. Which approach is better? We re-examine the relative merits of employee- versus employer-based labor market subsidies and conclude there are good reasons to continue to rely on the direct, employee-based approach. In practice, low-wage workers are seldom either low-skill or low-income workers. Furthermore, workers who might quality for a firm-based subsidy are reluctant to so identify themselves for fear of being stigmatized or labeled as needy. Thus, employer-based subsidy programs have lower participation rates and correspondingly higher per capita expenditures than employee-based subsidy programs
Discovery of an intermediate-luminosity red transient in M51 and its likely dust-obscured, infrared-variable progenitor
We present the discovery of an optical transient (OT) in Messier 51,
designated M51 OT2019-1 (also ZTF19aadyppr, AT 2019abn, ATLAS19bzl), by the
Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). The OT rose over 15 days to an observed
luminosity of (), in the
luminosity gap between novae and typical supernovae (SNe). Spectra during the
outburst show a red continuum, Balmer emission with a velocity width of
km s, Ca II and [Ca II] emission, and absorption features
characteristic of an F-type supergiant. The spectra and multiband light curves
are similar to the so-called "SN impostors" and intermediate-luminosity red
transients (ILRTs). We directly identify the likely progenitor in archival
Spitzer Space Telescope imaging with a m luminosity of
and a color redder than 0.74 mag, similar
to those of the prototype ILRTs SN 2008S and NGC 300 OT2008-1. Intensive
monitoring of M51 with Spitzer further reveals evidence for variability of the
progenitor candidate at [4.5] in the years before the OT. The progenitor is not
detected in pre-outburst Hubble Space Telescope optical and near-IR images. The
optical colors during outburst combined with spectroscopic temperature
constraints imply a higher reddening of mag and higher
intrinsic luminosity of
() near peak than seen in previous ILRT
candidates. Moreover, the extinction estimate is higher on the rise than on the
plateau, suggestive of an extended phase of circumstellar dust destruction.
These results, enabled by the early discovery of M51 OT2019-1 and extensive
pre-outburst archival coverage, offer new clues about the debated origins of
ILRTs and may challenge the hypothesis that they arise from the
electron-capture induced collapse of extreme asymptotic giant branch stars.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, published in ApJ
Living alone and mental health: parallel analyses in UK longitudinal population surveys and electronic health records prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic
BACKGROUND: People who live alone experience greater levels of mental illness; however, it is unclear whether the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionately negative impact on this demographic. OBJECTIVE: To describe the mental health gap between those who live alone and with others in the UK prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Self-reported psychological distress and life satisfaction in 10 prospective longitudinal population surveys (LPSs) assessed in the nearest pre-pandemic sweep and three periods during the pandemic. Recorded diagnosis of common and severe mental illnesses between March 2018 and January 2022 in electronic healthcare records (EHRs) within the OpenSAFELY-TPP. FINDINGS: In 37 544 LPS participants, pooled models showed greater psychological distress (standardised mean difference (SMD): 0.09 (95% CI: 0.04; 0.14); relative risk: 1.25 (95% CI: 1.12; 1.39)) and lower life satisfaction (SMD: −0.22 (95% CI: −0.30; −0.15)) for those living alone pre-pandemic. This gap did not change during the pandemic. In the EHR analysis of c.16 million records, mental health conditions were more common in those who lived alone (eg, depression 26 (95% CI: 18 to 33) and severe mental illness 58 (95% CI: 54 to 62) more cases more per 100 000). For common mental health disorders, the gap in recorded cases in EHRs narrowed during the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: People living alone have poorer mental health and lower life satisfaction. During the pandemic, this gap in self-reported distress remained; however, there was a narrowing of the gap in service use. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Greater mental health need and potentially greater barriers to mental healthcare access for those who live alone need to be considered in healthcare planning
Evaluating the effectiveness and reliability of the Vibrant Soundbridge and Bonebridge auditory implants in clinical practice: Study design and methods for a multi-centre longitudinal observational study.
BACKGROUND: The Vibrant Soundbridge middle ear implant and the Bonebridge bone conducting hearing device are hearing implants that use radio frequency transmission to send information from the sound processor to the internal transducer. This reduces the risk of skin problems and infection but requires a more involved surgical procedure than competitor skin penetrating devices. It is not known whether more complex surgery will lead to additional complications. There is little information available on the reliability of these systems and adverse medical or surgical events. The primary research question is to determine the reliability and complication rate for the Vibrant Soundbridge and Bonebridge. The secondary research question explores changes in quality of life following implantation of the devices. The tertiary research question looks at effectiveness via changes in auditory performance. METHOD: The study was designed based on a combination of a literature search, two clinician focus groups and expert review.A multi-centre longitudinal observational study was designed. There are three study groups, two will have been implanted prior to the start of the study and one group, the prospective group, will be implanted after initiation of the study. Outcomes are surgical questionnaires, measures of quality of life, user satisfaction and speech perception tests in quiet and in noise. CONCLUSION: This is the first multi-centre study to look at these interventions and includes follow up over time to understand effectiveness, reliability, quality of life and complications
CMB-S4 Science Book, First Edition
This book lays out the scientific goals to be addressed by the
next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, CMB-S4,
envisioned to consist of dedicated telescopes at the South Pole, the high
Chilean Atacama plateau and possibly a northern hemisphere site, all equipped
with new superconducting cameras. CMB-S4 will dramatically advance cosmological
studies by crossing critical thresholds in the search for the B-mode
polarization signature of primordial gravitational waves, in the determination
of the number and masses of the neutrinos, in the search for evidence of new
light relics, in constraining the nature of dark energy, and in testing general
relativity on large scales
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Inflation and Dark Energy from spectroscopy at z > 2
The expansion of the Universe is understood to have accelerated during two
epochs: in its very first moments during a period of Inflation and much more
recently, at z < 1, when Dark Energy is hypothesized to drive cosmic
acceleration. The undiscovered mechanisms behind these two epochs represent
some of the most important open problems in fundamental physics. The large
cosmological volume at 2 < z < 5, together with the ability to efficiently
target high- galaxies with known techniques, enables large gains in the
study of Inflation and Dark Energy. A future spectroscopic survey can test the
Gaussianity of the initial conditions up to a factor of ~50 better than our
current bounds, crossing the crucial theoretical threshold of
of order unity that separates single field and
multi-field models. Simultaneously, it can measure the fraction of Dark Energy
at the percent level up to , thus serving as an unprecedented test of
the standard model and opening up a tremendous discovery space
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