Ronald V. Dellums v. George Bush (D.D.C. 1990): Memorandum Amicus Curiae of Law Professors

This joint memorandum is submitted to the court hearing Dellums v. Bush. This amicus brief advocates that the President may not order American armed forces to make war without consultation with and approval by Congress. The brief also argues that the case is justiciable

\u3cem\u3eRonald V. Dellums v. George Bush\u3c/em\u3e (D.D.C. 1990): Memorandum \u3cem\u3eAmicus Curiae\u3c/em\u3e of Law Professors

This joint memorandum is submitted to the court hearing Dellums v. Bush. This amicus brief advocates that the President may not order American armed forces to make war without consultation with and approval by Congress. The brief also argues that the case is justiciable

Genetic association study of QT interval highlights role for calcium signaling pathways in myocardial repolarization.

The QT interval, an electrocardiographic measure reflecting myocardial repolarization, is a heritable trait. QT prolongation is a risk factor for ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death (SCD) and could indicate the presence of the potentially lethal mendelian long-QT syndrome (LQTS). Using a genome-wide association and replication study in up to 100,000 individuals, we identified 35 common variant loci associated with QT interval that collectively explain ∼8-10% of QT-interval variation and highlight the importance of calcium regulation in myocardial repolarization. Rare variant analysis of 6 new QT interval-associated loci in 298 unrelated probands with LQTS identified coding variants not found in controls but of uncertain causality and therefore requiring validation. Several newly identified loci encode proteins that physically interact with other recognized repolarization proteins. Our integration of common variant association, expression and orthogonal protein-protein interaction screens provides new insights into cardiac electrophysiology and identifies new candidate genes for ventricular arrhythmias, LQTS and SCD

Integrated Economic and Climate Modeling

This survey examines the history and current practice in integrated assessment models (IAMs) of the economics of climate change. It begins with a review of the emerging problem of climate change. The next section provides a brief sketch of the rise of IAMs in the 1970s and beyond. The subsequent section is an extended exposition of one IAM, the DICE/RICE family of models. The purpose of this description is to provide readers an example of how such a model is developed and what the major components are. The final section discusses major important open questions that continue to occupy IAM modelers. These involve issues such as the discount rate, uncertainty, the social cost of carbon, the potential for catastrophic climate change, algorithms, and fat-tailed distributions. These issues are ones that pose both deep intellectual challenges as well as important policy implications for climate change and climate-change policy

Corruption and its Alternatives: A Takeoff Theory of Good Governance

Corruption is a function of its return relative to engaging in productive activities. This paper presents an approach for thinking about the institutional features of societies and the resulting amount of corruption. The empirical results suggest that political competition is more important than competition in information-producing industries. The rent-seeking view of the relation between government and corruption is rejected in favor of the Becker (1983) model of political competition. The paper suggests that societies that continually stay open to productivity-enhancing activities will eventually enter a takeoff stage of anti-corruption efforts analogous to the eventual improvement in income distribution that occurs in successful industrialization