Partisan competition undermines legislative efficiency in state legislatures only in very specific situations.

With legislative gridlock at the national level, recent years have seen state legislatures take new prominence in putting forward and enacting often controversial legislation. But how does partisan competition affect how legislatures process new laws? In new research, which examines lawmaking in 48 state legislatures over two decades, William D. Hicks finds that when a minority party in a state legislature is large, and when polarization is high, it can significantly reduce the number of bills adopted. On the other hand, a strong majority party, when facing a governor from an opposite party, will tend to push through more legislation in order to put political pressure on the governor

Redistricting does little to change which party people vote for, which can make partisan gerrymanders more effective.

Every decade US state legislators redistrict the congressional districts in their state based on new census information. Over the decades redistricting has become another means by which a political party can gain electoral advantage. In new research using Pennsylvania’s redistricting as a case study, William D. Hicks and Seth C. McKee find that voters in redrawn districts did not change their voting preferences, and that changes in their incumbent candidate or an electoral tide towards the Democratic Party had little or no effect on these choices

Party competition is the primary driver of the recent increase in restrictive voter id laws in the American states

The lead up to the recent midterm elections was marked by contentious debates over the effects on turnout of voter ID laws passed in several American states. In new research William D. Hicks, Seth C. McKee, Mitchell D. Sellers and Daniel A. Smith find that there has been a large increase in the number of states that have adopted voter ID laws since 2001, and in these states the level of partisan polarization in voting on these laws is very high. They find that not only is the introduction and passage of stricter voter ID legislation influenced by the number of Republican lawmakers in a state legislature, but how electorally competitive the environment that those legislators find themselves in is important as well

External Enrichment of Minihalos by the First Supernovae

Recent high-resolution simulations of early structure formation have shown that externally enriched halos may form some of the first metal enriched stars. This study utilizes a 1 comoving Mpc$^3$ high-resolution simulation to study the enrichment process of metal-enriched halos down to $z=9.3$. Our simulation uniquely tracks the metals ejected from Population III stars, and we use this information to identify the origin of metals within metal-enriched halos. These halos show a wide range of metallicities, but we find that the source of metals for $\gtrsim$ 50\% of metal-enriched halos is supernova explosions of Population III stars occuring outside their virial radii. The results presented here indicate that external enrichment by metal-free stars dominates the enrichment process of halos with virial mass below $10^{6}\,M_\odot$ down to $z=9.3$. Despite the prevalence of external enrichment in low mass halos, Pop II stars forming due to external enrichment are rare because of the small contribution of low-mass halos to the global star formation rate combined with low metallicities towards the center of these halos resulting from metal ejecta from external sources mixing from the outside-in. The enriched stars that do form through this process have absolute metallicities below $10^{-3}\,Z_\odot$. We also find that the fraction of externally enriched halos increases with time, $\sim 90\%$ of halos that are externally enriched have $M_\mathrm{vir} < 10^6\,M_\odot$, and that pair-instability supernovae contribute the most to the enrichment of the IGM as a whole and are thus are the predominant supernova type contributing to the external enrichment of halos.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap

The Effector Domain of MARCKS Is a Nuclear Localization Signal that Regulates Cellular PIP2 Levels and Nuclear PIP2 Localization

Translocation to the nucleus of diacylglycerol kinase (DGK)– ζ is dependent on a sequence homologous to the effector domain of Myristoylated Alanine Rich C-Kinase Substrate (MARCKS). These data would suggest that MARCKS could also localize to the nucleus. A single report demonstrated immunofluorescence staining of MARCKS in the nucleus; however, further experimental evidence confirming the specific domain responsible for this localization has not been reported. Here, we report that MARCKS is present in the nucleus in GBM cell lines. We then over-expressed wild-type MARCKS (WT) and MARCKS with the effector domain deleted (ΔED), both tagged with V5-epitope in a GBM cell line with low endogenous MARCKS expression (U87). We found that MARCKS-WT localized to the nucleus, while the MARCKS construct without the effector domain remained in the cytoplasm. We also found that over-expression of MARCKS-WT resulted in a significant increase in total cellular phosphatidyl-inositol (4,5) bisphosphate (PIP2) levels, consistent with prior evidence that MARCKS can regulate PIP2 levels. We also found increased staining for PIP2 in the nucleus with MARCKS-WT over-expression compared to MARCKS ΔED by immunofluorescence. Interestingly, we observed MARCKS and PIP2 co-localization in the nucleus. Lastly, we found changes in gene expression when MARCKS was not present in the nucleus (MARCKS ΔED). These data indicate that the MARCKS effector domain can function as a nuclear localization signal and that this sequence is critical for the ability of MARCKS to regulate PIP2 levels, nuclear localization, and gene expression. These data suggests a novel role for MARCKS in regulating nuclear functions such as gene expression

A cross-sectional analysis of HIV and hepatitis C clinical trials 2007 to 2010: the relationship between industry sponsorship and randomized study design

Abstract Background The proportion of clinical research sponsored by industry will likely continue to expand as federal funds for academic research decreases, particularly in the fields of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C (HCV). While HIV and HCV continue to burden the US population, insufficient data exists as to how industry sponsorship affects clinical trials involving these infectious diseases. Debate exists about whether pharmaceutical companies undertake more market-driven research practices to promote therapeutics, or instead conduct more rigorous trials than their non-industry counterparts because of increased resources and scrutiny. The ClinicalTrials.gov registry, which allows investigators to fulfill a federal mandate for public trial registration, provides an opportunity for critical evaluation of study designs for industry-sponsored trials, independent of publication status. As part of a large public policy effort, the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) recently transformed the ClinicalTrials.gov registry into a searchable dataset to facilitate research on clinical trials themselves. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 477 HIV and HCV drug treatment trials, registered with ClinicalTrials.gov from 1 October 2007 to 27 September 2010, to study the relationship of study sponsorship with randomized study design. The likelihood of using randomization given industry (versus non-industry) sponsorship was reported with prevalence ratios (PR). PRs were estimated using crude and stratified tabular analysis and Poisson regression adjusting for presence of a data monitoring committee, enrollment size, study phase, number of study sites, inclusion of foreign study sites, exclusion of persons older than age 65, and disease condition. Results The crude PR was 1.17 (95% CI 0.94, 1.45). Adjusted Poisson models produced a PR of 1.13 (95% CI 0.82, 1.56). There was a trend toward mild effect measure modification by study phase, but this was not statistically significant. In stratified tabular analysis the adjusted PR was 1.14 (95% CI 0.78, 1.68) among phase 2/3 trials and 1.06 (95% CI 0.50, 2.22) among phase 4 trials. Conclusions No significant relationship was found between industry sponsorship and use of randomization in trial design in this cross-sectional study. Prospective studies evaluating other aspects of trial design may shed further light on the relationship between industry sponsorship and appropriate trial methodology

Adaptive Modeling, Engineering Analysis and Design of Advanced Aerospace Vehicles

This paper describes initial progress towards the development and enhancement of a set of software tools for rapid adaptive modeling, and conceptual design of advanced aerospace vehicle concepts. With demanding structural and aerodynamic performance requirements, these high fidelity geometry based modeling tools are essential for rapid and accurate engineering analysis at the early concept development stage. This adaptive modeling tool was used for generating vehicle parametric geometry, outer mold line and detailed internal structural layout of wing, fuselage, skin, spars, ribs, control surfaces, frames, bulkheads, floors, etc., that facilitated rapid finite element analysis, sizing study and weight optimization. The high quality outer mold line enabled rapid aerodynamic analysis in order to provide reliable design data at critical flight conditions. Example application for structural design of a conventional aircraft and a high altitude long endurance vehicle configuration are presented. This work was performed under the Conceptual Design Shop sub-project within the Efficient Aerodynamic Shape and Integration project, under the former Vehicle Systems Program. The project objective was to design and assess unconventional atmospheric vehicle concepts efficiently and confidently. The implementation may also dramatically facilitate physics-based systems analysis for the NASA Fundamental Aeronautics Mission. In addition to providing technology for design and development of unconventional aircraft, the techniques for generation of accurate geometry and internal sub-structure and the automated interface with the high fidelity analysis codes could also be applied towards the design of vehicles for the NASA Exploration and Space Science Mission projects

Hierarchy of Lifshitz transitions in the surface electronic structure of Sr2RuO4 under uniaxial compression

Funding: We gratefully acknowledge support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Grant Nos. EP/T02108X/1 and EP/R031924/1), the European Research Council (through the QUESTDO project, 714193), and the Leverhulme Trust (Grant No. RL-2016-006). E.A.M., A.Z., and I.M. gratefully acknowledge studentship support from the International Max-Planck Research School for Chemistry and Physics of Quantum Materials. N.K. is supported by a KAKENHI Grants-in-Aids for Scientific Research (Grant Nos.18K04715, and 21H01033), and Core-to-Core Program (No. JPJSCCA20170002) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and by a JST-Mirai Program (Grant No. JPMJMI18A3). APM and CWH acknowledge support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - TRR 435 288 - 422213477 (project A10). We thank Diamond Light Source for access to Beamline I05 (Proposals SI27471 and SI28412), which contributed to the results presented here.We report the evolution of the electronic structure at the surface of the layered perovskite Sr2RuO4 under large in-plane uniaxial compression, leading to anisotropic B1g strains of εxx − εyy = −0.9 ± 0.1%. From angle-resolved photoemission, we show how this drives a sequence of Lifshitz transitions, reshaping the low-energy electronic structure and the rich spectrum of van Hove singularities that the surface layer of Sr2RuO4 hosts. From comparison to tight-binding modelling, we find that the strain is accommodated predominantly by bond-length changes rather than modifications of octahedral tilt and rotation angles. Our study sheds new light on the nature of structural distortions at oxide surfaces, and how targeted control of these can be used to tune density of states singularities to the Fermi level, in turn paving the way to the possible realisation of rich collective states at the Sr2RuO4 surface.Peer reviewe