In the New York state legislature patronage earmarking is alive and well

In New York State this year, the legislature has already seen the resignation of its Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority leader over allegations of corruption. But how prevalent are legal forms of patronage in the government of the Empire State? In new research which looks at earmarking in New York, Yonghong Wu and Daniel W. Williams find that the smaller Republican controlled Senate has allocated far more money than the Democratic controlled Assembly

Using Socialization and Personalization Strategies to Mitigate Intrusiveness of Social Network Advertising

As the rapid expansion of social network advertising (SNA), advertising intrusiveness becomes a constant challenge to marketers, platforms and users. Normally, socialization (i.e., anthropomorphism cues, reference group cues and social endorsement cues) and personalization advertising strategies are employed to minimize SNA intrusiveness. However, limited theoretical insights have been provided by prior research. Hence, this study aims to shed light on the influence of socialization and personalization from a information processing perspective. A 4 × 2 experiment was designed and conducted on the self-developed system. By doing these, this study significantly advances the literature on socialization and personalization in the context of SNA, and provides theoretical and managerial insight

Root vacuolar Na+ sequestration but not exclusion from uptake correlates with barley salt tolerance.

SummarySoil salinity is a major constraint for the global agricultural production. For many decades, Na+ exclusion from uptake has been the key trait targeted in breeding programs; yet, no major breakthrough in creating salt‐tolerant germplasm was achieved. In this work, we have combined the microelectrode ion flux estimation (MIFE) technique for non‐invasive ion flux measurements with confocal fluorescence dye imaging technique to screen 45 accessions of barley to reveal the relative contribution of Na+ exclusion from the cytosol to the apoplast and its vacuolar sequestration in the root apex, for the overall salinity stress tolerance. We show that Na+/H+ antiporter‐mediated Na+ extrusion from the root plays a minor role in the overall salt tolerance in barley. At the same time, a strong and positive correlation was found between root vacuolar Na+ sequestration ability and the overall salt tolerance. The inability of salt‐sensitive genotypes to sequester Na+ in root vacuoles was in contrast to significantly higher expression levels of both HvNHX1 tonoplast Na+/H+ antiporters and HvVP1 H+‐pumps compared with tolerant genotypes. These data are interpreted as a failure of sensitive varieties to prevent Na+ back‐leak into the cytosol and existence of a futile Na+ cycle at the tonoplast. Taken together, our results demonstrated that root vacuolar Na+ sequestration but not exclusion from uptake played the main role in barley salinity tolerance, and suggested that the focus of the breeding programs should be shifted from targeting genes mediating Na+ exclusion from uptake by roots to more efficient root vacuolar Na+ sequestration

Chain stiffness effect on the properties of topological polymer brushes and the penetration by free chains using MD simulation

Molecular dynamic simulations are carried out to study the static and dynamic properties of topological polymer brushes by taking into account chain stiffness and their topological feature. It is found that chain stiffness plays an important role in topological polymer brushes, and there exists scaling laws for the radius of gyration against chain stiffness and topological feature, indicating that bending interaction is as important as topological constraint. An empirical finitely extensible nonlinear elastic force in terms of chain stiffness and topological features is also obtained by fitting related parameters. A simulation on the invasion of free polymer chains from environment into a ring polymer brush shows that under pressure, such kind of penetration depends largely on chain stiffness, in contrast to the minor influence of topological structure, which seems to be suppressed

The Fluid-like and Kinetic Behavior of Kinetic Alfvén Turbulence in Space Plasma

Kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) are the short-wavelength extension of the magnetohydrodynamics Alfvén-wave branch in the case of highly oblique propagation with respect to the background magnetic field. Observations of space plasma show that small-scale turbulence is mainly KAW-like. We apply two theoretical approaches, a collisional two-fluid theory and a collisionless linear kinetic theory, to obtain predictions for the KAW polarizations depending on β p (the ratio of the proton thermal pressure to the magnetic pressure) at the ion gyroscale in terms of fluctuations in density, bulk velocity, and pressure. We perform a wavelet analysis of Magnetospheric Multiscale magnetosheath measurements and compare the observations with both theories. We find that the two-fluid theory predicts the observations better than the kinetic theory, suggesting that the small-scale KAW-like fluctuations exhibit a fluid-like behavior in the magnetosheath although the plasma is weakly collisional. We also present predictions for the KAW polarizations in the inner heliosphere that are testable with Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter