Medicaid Expansion: The Choice Afforded to States by the Affordable Care Act

The issue I studied is the decision states have been afforded to expand Medicaid with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I was curious to determine the health and economic impact on states that have and have not chosen to expand Medicaid. Specifically, I targeted Kentucky (expansion state) and Tennessee (non-expansion state). Tennessee and Kentucky are similar populations, have similar political inclinations, and are both very rural states. At its core, Medicaid expansion is an opportunity to improve health for lower-income and disabled Americans. However, there are economic implications associated with Medicaid expansion as well. The goal of this research is to determine if there are economic benefits associated with states choosing to expand Medicaid. If so, this is information that needs to be communicated with states that have not chosen to expand. The majority of the data collection for this study is administrative data. The administrative data will show the Medicaid enrollment numbers in each state and how they have changed since the ACA and Medicaid expansion, but it will also show other factors pertaining to individual’s well-being in each state such as earnings and employment for all counties in each state on from the period of 2010-2018

Genetic and physiological aspects of photosynthetic gene function

The regulation of photosynthetic gene function was investigated in soybean and in the cyanobacterium Anacystis nidulans. Restriction endonuclease fragment analysis was used to elucidate the mode of transmission of chloroplast DNA in Glycine max and G. soja. Maternal inheritance was demonstrated for progeny of reciprocal crosses of three G. max and one G. soja genotypes. Two related projects were undertaken to examine genetic and physiological effects of several loci conditioning chlorophyll retention or degradation. The mode of inheritance of 153 green-cotyledon genotypes was characterized. Chloroplast DNA from 15 cytoplasmically inherited genotypes was analyzed by using restriction endonucleases, to assess heterogeneity among the genotypes. With the enzymes employed, no differences were detected in the fragment patterns of the 15 genotypes. In the third project, the genetic interaction of five loci was investigated in relation to chlorophyll retention in leaves, mature cotyledons, and seed coats. To this end, several isolines containing various combinations of recessive and dominant alleles were constructed. Chlorophyll content was measured at five developmental stages. The results suggested that either both proteins containing chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b were stabilized in green seeds, or only proteins containing chlorophyll b;Cells of A. nidulans were grown in the presence of sublethal doses of herbicides to assess changes occurring in the thylakoid membrane during adaptation. Total polar lipids and phycocyanin content increased in herbicide-adapted cells relative to control cells. Chlorophyll fluorescence indicated that the additional phycocyanin was incorporated into existing phycobilisomes

More than Just War: Narratives of the Just War Tradition and Military Life, by Charles A. Jones

Pedestrian forms of philosophical in- novation often involve the application of old ideas to new cases. It should there- fore come as no surprise that the creative bulk of what is published today on the ethics of war achieves its novelty —when it does at all—by applying the just war tradition to hitherto- unexamined aspects of contemporary warfare, for example, drones and unmanned systems, cyber warfare, intelligence and covert operations, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism

Enzyme-substrate interaction significantly affects activity loss during enzymatic hydrolyis of cellulose.

Rising concerns about dependency on fossil fuels in the 21st century has sparked a growth in research for renewable energy sources. One renewable energy production process of interest is the reduction of cellulose into fermentable sugars by means of enzymatic hydrolysis. The reaction requires a residence time on the order of seven or more days and usually does not achieve complete conversion. The slow reaction rate and incomplete conversion is generally attributed to loss of enzymatic activity during the reaction. Deactivation of the enzyme is classified here as either substrate related deactivation or nonspecific deactivation. The general term of nonspecific deactivation refers to any activity loss of the enzyme not attributed to interaction with substrate. Reasons for deactivation due to enzyme-substrate interaction are still uncertain and deactivation may possibly be attributed to factors such as poor desorption of enzyme from the substrate and product inhibition. In this research, the nonspecific deactivation was quantified by activity measured following enzyme incubation in a substrate-free buffer for 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, 48, or 72 hours, followed by a second incubation of one hour with 2.0 grams of substrate. Testing for enzyme-substrate interaction was performed by adding an initial substrate load to the first incubation in the amount of 0.1, 0.2, or 0.4 grams, and then substrate was added during the second incubation to bring the total in all cases up to 2.0 grams. The amount of enzyme in the solution was held constant at 0.6 mL, for all cases. Two substrates of different crystallinity, filter paper (CrI = 45%) and dewaxed cotton (CrI = 90%) were studied here. The cellulase enzyme showed slight deactivation after incubating for varying times during the initial incubation in a substrate-free buffer. Enzyme-substrate interactions also resulted in deactivation and generally contributed to more of the overall deactivation than did nonspecific deactivation. Deactivation was seen to depend on the initial incubation time, substrate load, and substrate type (crystallinity). There did not appear to be a consistent trend in relative percent deactivation for nonspecific deactivation and deactivation due to enzyme-substrate interaction for initial incubations less than 24 hours for either substrate, but the relative amount of nonspecific deactivation appeared to increase between 24 and 72 hours. However, the enzyme-substrate interaction still contributed to more than fifty percent of deactivation for all but one case. The lack of a trend prior to 24 hours is likely attributed to glucose concentrations that are within the range of error of the YSI analyzer

Net Shore-drift of Thurston County, Washington

Geomorphic and sedimentologic variations in coastal landforms were used to determine the direction of net shore-drift and delineate the boundaries of drift cells along 178 kilometers of the southern Puget Sound coast fronting Thurston County, Washington. The net shore-drift indicators used along the Thurston County coast were, in descending order of observed frequency, gradation in mean sediment size, beach width, foreshore offsets at drift obstructions, spit development, bluff morphology, beach slope, diversion of stream mouth outlets, plan view of deltas or intertidal fans, oblique bars, beach pads, and identifiable sediment. Wind from the south-southwest prevails over Thurston County. Fetch is the major limiting variable in the development of waves along the Thurston County coast. Because of the abundance of open water channels and fetches oriented sub-parallel to the prevailing wind direction, wind-generated waves that approach from the southwest have the greatest influence on net shore-drift direction. The result is that 76 percent of all net shore-drift along the Thurston County coast has a northward vector component and 24 percent has a southward vector component. Seventy-five drift cells have been identified and described along 52 percent (92 kilometers) of the Thurston County coast. Areas with no appreciable net shore-drift comprise about 42 percent (74 kilometers) of the coast. The remainder of the coast (approximately 12 kilometers) consists of zones of divergent net shore-drift. Human modification of the Thurston County coast interrupts the process of shore drift and alters net shore-drift patterns. Modified areas include Olympia Harbor and numerous small-boat marinas and oyster farms developed along the coast. Shore defense structures such as bulkheads and groins are reducing or eliminating wave erosion of bluff material as a source of beach sediment available for shore drift

The environment and host haloes of the brightest z~6 Lyman-break galaxies

By studying the large-scale structure of the bright high-redshift Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) population it is possible to gain an insight into the role of environment in galaxy formation physics in the early Universe. We measure the clustering of a sample of bright (-22.7<M_UV<-21.125) LBGs at z~6 and use a halo occupation distribution (HOD) model to measure their typical halo masses. We find that the clustering amplitude and corresponding HOD fits suggests that these sources are highly biased (b~8) objects in the densest regions of the high-redshift Universe. Coupled with the observed rapid evolution of the number density of these objects, our results suggest that the shape of high luminosity end of the luminosity function is related to feedback processes or dust obscuration in the early Universe - as opposed to a scenario where these sources are predominantly rare instances of the much more numerous M_UV ~ -19 population of galaxies caught in a particularly vigorous period of star formation. There is a slight tension between the number densities and clustering measurements, which we interpret this as a signal that a refinement of the model halo bias relation at high redshifts or the incorporation of quasi-linear effects may be needed for future attempts at modelling the clustering and number counts. Finally, the difference in number density between the fields (UltraVISTA has a surface density ~1.8 times greater than UDS) is shown to be consistent with the cosmic variance implied by the clustering measurements.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, accepted MNRAS 23rd March 201

Processing and Transmission of Information

Contains reports on two research projects.National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NsG-334)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NGR 22-009-304

The clustering and bias of radio-selected AGN and star-forming galaxies in the COSMOS field

Dark matter haloes in which galaxies reside are likely to have a significant impact on their evolution. We investigate the link between dark matter haloes and their constituent galaxies by measuring the angular two-point correlation function of radio sources, using recently released 3 GHz imaging over $\sim 2 \ \mathrm{deg}^2$of the COSMOS field. We split the radio source population into Star Forming Galaxies (SFGs) and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), and further separate the AGN into radiatively efficient and inefficient accreters. Restricting our analysis to$z<1$, we find SFGs have a bias,$b = 1.5 ^{+0.1}_{-0.2}$, at a median redshift of$z=0.62$. On the other hand, AGN are significantly more strongly clustered with$b = 2.1\pm 0.2$at a median redshift of 0.7. This supports the idea that AGN are hosted by more massive haloes than SFGs. We also find low-accretion rate AGN are more clustered ($b = 2.9 \pm 0.3$) than high-accretion rate AGN ($b = 1.8^{+0.4}_{-0.5}$) at the same redshift ($z \sim 0.7$), suggesting that low-accretion rate AGN reside in higher mass haloes. This supports previous evidence that the relatively hot gas that inhabits the most massive haloes is unable to be easily accreted by the central AGN, causing them to be inefficient. We also find evidence that low-accretion rate AGN appear to reside in halo masses of$M_{h} \sim 3-4 \times 10^{13}h^{-1}$M$_{\odot}$at all redshifts. On the other hand, the efficient accreters reside in haloes of$M_{h} \sim 1-2 \times 10^{13}h^{-1}$M$_{\odot}$at low redshift but can reside in relatively lower mass haloes at higher redshifts. This could be due to the increased prevalence of cold gas in lower mass haloes at$z \ge 1$compared to$z<1$.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, accepted by MNRA