Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration

David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director, proclaimed the Small Business Administration a “billion-dollar waste—a rathole,” and set out to abolish the agency. His scathing critique was but the latest attack on an agency better known as the “Small Scandal Administration.” Loans to criminals, government contracts for minority “fronts,” the classification of American Motors as a small business, Whitewater, and other scandals—the Small Business Administration has lurched from one embarrassment to another. Despite the scandals and the policy failures, the SBA thrives and small business remains a sacred cow in American politics. Part of this sacredness comes from the agency’s longstanding record of pioneering affirmative action. Jonathan Bean reveals that even before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the SBA promoted African American businesses, encouraged the hiring of minorities, and monitored the employment practices of loan recipients. Under Nixon, the agency expanded racial preferences. During the Reagan administration, politicians wrapped themselves in the mantle of minority enterprise even as they denounced quotas elsewhere. Created by Congress in 1953, the SBA does not conform to traditional interpretations of interest-group democracy. Even though the public—and Congress—favors small enterprise, there has never been a unified group of small business owners requesting the government’s help. Indeed, the SBA often has failed to address the real problems of “Mom and Pop” shop owners, fueling the ongoing debate about the agency’s viability. Jonathan Bean, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and professor of history at Southern Illinois University, is the author of Big Government and Affirmative Action: The Scandalous History of the Small Business Administration and Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies toward Small Business, 1936–1961. Bean is a master of administrative history, not just of the SBA but of the tremendous expansion of American government, especially beginning with and then flowing from the New Deal. —American Historical Review [Bean] has a love/hate relationship with the SBA, and this tension is visible throughout his meticulously researched monograph. —Business History Claims that the SBA did not help truly disadvantaged businesses but its affirmative action programmes benefited politicians in both parties who used it for their own gains. —International Review of Administrative Sciences His careful analysis, his all-encompassing bibliography, and his inclusive endnotes make this the definitive monograph. —Journal of American History The first full-length academic assessment of the agency. At once a powerful argument for killing off the agency and a shrewd analysis for the political impulses that make its termination nearly impossible. —Wall Street Journalhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_science_american_politics/1035/thumbnail.jp

Stability of point defects near MgO grain boundaries in FeCoB/MgO/FeCoB magnetic tunnel junctions

Magnetic tunnel junctions employing FeCoB as the ferromagnet and MgO as a spacer layer exhibit high performance and are attractive for magnetic random access memory applications. On post-deposition annealing B is observed to diffuse out of the FeCoB layers inducing crystallization of FeCo. It is known that a large proportion of B escapes into the adjacent tantalum underlayer. While diffusion of B into bulk MgO is known to be unfavorable it is possible that B could diffuse into grain boundaries (GBs) in the polycrystalline MgO layer, affecting its electronic properties. In this paper density functional theory is used to investigate the stability and electronic properties of oxygen vacancy and B interstitial defects at MgO GBs. We show that both types of defects exhibit increased stability at the GBs and introduce electronic states in the gap that could negatively impact performance. These predictions are consistent with recent experimental results and we discuss further means to confirm the results experimentally using techniques such as x-ray or ultra-violet photoelectron spectroscopy

An Induced Natural Selection Heuristic for Finding Optimal Bayesian Experimental Designs

Bayesian optimal experimental design has immense potential to inform the collection of data so as to subsequently enhance our understanding of a variety of processes. However, a major impediment is the difficulty in evaluating optimal designs for problems with large, or high-dimensional, design spaces. We propose an efficient search heuristic suitable for general optimisation problems, with a particular focus on optimal Bayesian experimental design problems. The heuristic evaluates the objective (utility) function at an initial, randomly generated set of input values. At each generation of the algorithm, input values are "accepted" if their corresponding objective (utility) function satisfies some acceptance criteria, and new inputs are sampled about these accepted points. We demonstrate the new algorithm by evaluating the optimal Bayesian experimental designs for the previously considered death, pharmacokinetic and logistic regression models. Comparisons to the current "gold-standard" method are given to demonstrate the proposed algorithm as a computationally-efficient alternative for moderately-large design problems (i.e., up to approximately 40-dimensions)

Retained Foreign Body

Retained foreign bodies after surgeries or procedures are a rare complication with great consequences. The most commonly retained surgical items are guidewires, surgical sponges, and suture needles. The procedure at highest risk for retained foreign bodies is central venous catheterization. The literature regarding specific risk factors that increase the potential for retained surgical items varies. Evidence suggests that procedures with blood loss over 500 mL, lack of or an incorrect surgical instrument and sponge count, longer procedures, and unexpected intraoperative events all increase the risk of retained surgical items. There is conflicting evidence on the effect that elevated body mass index (BMI) or the emergent nature of a procedure has on retained surgical item risk. Interventions aimed at preventing retained foreign bodies include surgical counts, mandatory imaging after procedures, bar-coding of items used during surgery, and radiofrequency detection systems. These interventions have varying detection rates. Regardless of the safety measures used, none are perfect and a high index of suspicion must be maintained to prevent retained surgical foreign bodies

Origin of differences in the excess volume of copper and nickel grain boundaries

The excess volume associated with grain boundaries is one of the primary factors driving defect segregation and diffusion which controls the electronic, mechanical and chemical properties of many polycrystalline materials. Experimental measurements of the grain boundary excess volume of fcc metals Cu and Ni have shown a difference of over 40%. The difference in lattice constant between Cu and Ni is only 3%, therefore this substantial difference is currently lacking explanation. In this article we employ a high throughput computational approach to determine the atomic structure, formation energy and excess volume of a large number of tilt grain boundaries in Cu and Ni. By considering 400 distinct grain boundary orientations we confirm that theoretically there is a systematic difference between the excess volumes in the two materials and we provide atomistic insight into the origin of the effect

New Analysis Indicates No Thermal Inversion in the Atmosphere of HD 209458b

An important focus of exoplanet research is the determination of the atmospheric temperature structure of strongly irradiated gas giant planets, or hot Jupiters. HD 209458b is the prototypical exoplanet for atmospheric thermal inversions, but this assertion does not take into account recently obtained data or newer data reduction techniques. We re-examine this claim by investigating all publicly available Spitzer Space Telescope secondary-eclipse photometric data of HD 209458b and performing a self-consistent analysis. We employ data reduction techniques that minimize stellar centroid variations, apply sophisticated models to known Spitzer systematics, and account for time-correlated noise in the data. We derive new secondary-eclipse depths of 0.119 +/- 0.007%, 0.123 +/- 0.006%, 0.134 +/- 0.035%, and 0.215 +/- 0.008% in the 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 micron bandpasses, respectively. We feed these results into a Bayesian atmospheric retrieval analysis and determine that it is unnecessary to invoke a thermal inversion to explain our secondary-eclipse depths. The data are well-fitted by a temperature model that decreases monotonically between pressure levels of 1 and 0.01 bars. We conclude that there is no evidence for a thermal inversion in the atmosphere of HD 209458b.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Ap

Modelling polycrystalline materials and interfaces

Polycrystalline materials are ubiquitous and dominate the synthetic and natural worlds. They are characterised by the presence of defects such as grain boundaries in the crystal structure. Grain boundaries can significantly influence underlying electrical, magnetic and mechanical properties of materials. In this thesis interatomic potentials have been used to model grain boundaries in Fe, Cu and Ni. A high throughput computational approach is employed to determine the atomic structure, formation energy and excess volume of a large number of tilt grain boundaries in Fe, Cu and Ni. There is a systematic difference of ~0.2 Å between the excess volumes in Cu and Ni which is in agreement with experiment. It is predicted that the differences in the elastic moduli may give rise to larger differences in excess volume than expected. Novel plan-view high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and first principles calculations have been employed to provide atomic level understanding of the structure and properties of grain boundaries in the MgO barrier layer of a magnetic tunnel junction. Transmission electron microscopy images reveal grain boundaries in the MgO film including (210)[001] symmetric tilt grain boundaries and (100)/(110)[001] asymmetric tilt grain boundaries amongst others. First principles calculations show how these grain boundaries are associated with locally reduced band gaps (by up to 3 eV). The knowledge from the modelling of Fe, Cu, Ni and MgO is used to study interfaces of Fe and MgO to further understand magnetic tunnel junctions. The orientational relationship between the Fe and MgO is not known explicitly. Density functional theory is used to predict the energetic stability of Fe/MgO interfaces in different orientational configurations. It is found that the most energetically favourable interface between Fe and MgO is when the atomic columns are in registry