How Democrats can build on their 2017 victories to win in 2018

Democrats met with resounding success this week in elections across the country, including retaining the governorship of Virginia and gaining it in New Jersey. But what do these victories mean for the Congressional mid-term and state elections in November 2018? Jaclyn J. Kettler writes that President Trump's poor approval rating has mobilized more Democrats to run for office, campaign and ..

Building Efficiency and Indoor Air Quality - You Can Have Both

Providing ventilation for acceptable indoor air quality per ASHRAE Standard 62-1989 does not require large increases in utility costs. Building efficiency does not have to be sacrificed for a healthy building. The ASHRAE 62- 1989 requirement for office ventilation is 20 cubic feet of fresh air per occupant. However, the Standard also allows various controls strategies to achieve the same result. This paper will describe the methods and application of several of these options. However. due to length restrictions, systems design criteria and comparisons will not be addressed. The simplest and most commonly used method is reducing the fresh airflow based on building occupancy, or demand control ventilation. This is currently done with carbon dioxide sensors controlling inlet dampers or fan control systems. As the people load varies causing changes in carbon dioxide level, the controls can vary the amount of ventilation air entering the building. A second method is removing the contaminants with added or special filtration. This allows more air to be recirculated but has specific limitations. Filters can remove large particulates and some chemical contaminants by changing the filter media. However, a minimum amount of fresh air, approximately 20% to 30%of the full 20cfm per person. is still required to remove the carbon dioxide and other contaminants not removed by the filters. Another group of methods is energy recovery systems including; sensible heat wheels, desiccant heat wheels, heat pipes, and run around loops. These methods can be used on some packaged equipment but is normally provided on makeup air units and central air supply systems. These built up units offer opportunities to combine heat recovery, special filtration, humidity control and demand control operations

Buying Their Way in: Redistribution of Campaign Resources as a Path to State Legislative Leadership for Women

Women continue to be underrepresented in legislative leadership. This is concerning in U.S. legislatures, where leaders have substantial control over resources and policymaking. As an outgroup, women face additional barriers to power in politics, making it difficult to become a legislative leader. How can women gain influence within their political party? I argue one potential path for overcoming these barriers is the redistribution of campaign resources to other party actors, which helps facilitate connections in the party. These relationships help candidates gain influence, and they can draw on them for support in the legislature. Do women candidates redistribute funds to other actors? If they do, is it an effective path to leadership positions in their state parties? I address these questions using social network analysis and campaign contributions from the 2012 elections in six states. I find that by establishing connections to other party actors through the redistribution of their campaign resources, women candidates can increase their influence in the party and their likelihood of becoming a legislative leader. Moreover, traditional paths to power like seniority help men but not women obtain leadership positions. Even though constraints on power still exist for women in politics, this research highlights an alternative path to influence for women in state legislatures

Arka Chattopadhyay. Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Review of Arka Chattopadhyay. Beckett, Lacan and the Mathematical Writing of the Real. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 209 pp

The Impact of Language Translation on the Internal Structure of a Rating Scale: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in Spanish

The purpose of this study was to compare the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire SDQ a 25-item behavioral screener with the English version Participants included in this study were 363 English-speaking parents and 334 Spanish-speaking parents of preschool age children ages 3-5 who took part in the Children s Hospital of Orange County University of California Irvine Initiative for the Development of Attention and Readiness CUIDAR program from 2004-2008 This study used data from the CUIDAR program to explore mean rating differences between the English and Spanish versions of the SDQ along with coefficient alpha as an indicator of reliability at the scale and composite level and factor analytic evidence of score validity Mean ratings of the scales and the Total Difficulties scale were very similar across language forms Reliability coefficients indicated alphas were higher for scores derived from the English forms compared to the Spanish forms at the scale and composite levels although neither form produced scores with adequate reliability at the scale level Finally the Five First Order Factor Model was the best-fitting and most valid representation of all 25 items of the SDQ regardless of the language of the for

There is more pollution when Congress and state governorships are under Republican control

Republican politicians have been portrayed traditionally as having less concern for the environment, but what does the evidence say about the GOP and pollution? In new research, Luke Fowler and Jaclyn Kettler examined 20 years’ of data on state-level toxic waste releases

More U.S. cities are paying to lobby Congress and they have astrategy to maximize their influence

The influence of lobbyists and lobbying by corporations and interest groups has become a fact of life in Washington D.C. In new research, Matt W. Loftis and Jaclyn J. Kettler find that U.S. cities have now also started to lobby Congress in a significant way, spending $150 million on the practice between 1998 and 2008. They argue that cities choose when and how to lobby based on their individual needs and their strategic opportunities; for example, cities with high unemployment rates were almost twice as likely lobby as cities with relatively low unemployment rates

Lobbying from Inside the System: Why Local Governments Pay for Representation in the U.S. Congress

Why do cities spend scarce resources lobbying the federal government? The hierarchy of U.S. government provides various pathways for local representation. Nevertheless, cities regularly invest in paid representation. This presents a puzzle for American democracy. Why do cities lobby, and do they lobby strategically? We quantify for the first time the extent of this phenomenon and examine its determinants using new data on 498 cities across forty-five states from 1998 to 2008. We find that economic distress pushes cities to lobby, but does not impact expenditures. Cities in competitive congressional districts, and therefore crucial to national politics, spend more on lobbying