Neurophysiological responses to stressful motion and anti-motion sickness drugs as mediated by the limbic system

Performance is characterized in terms of attention and memory, categorizing extrinsic mechanism mediated by ACTH, norepinephrine and dopamine, and intrinsic mechanisms as cholinergic. The cholinergic role in memory and performance was viewed from within the limbic system and related to volitional influences of frontal cortical afferents and behavioral responses of hypothalamic and reticular system efferents. The inhibitory influence of the hippocampus on the autonomic and hormonal responses mediated through the hypothalamus, pituitary, and brain stem are correlated with the actions of such anti-motion sickness drugs as scopolamine and amphetamine. These drugs appear to exert their effects on motion sickness symptomatology through diverse though synergistic neurochemical mechanisms involving the septohippocampal pathway and other limbic system structures. The particular impact of the limbic system on an animal's behavioral and hormonal responses to stress is influenced by ACTH, cortisol, scopolamine, and amphetamine

A Model for the Stray Light Contamination of the UVCS Instrument on SOHO

We present a detailed model of stray-light suppression in the spectrometer channels of the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) on the SOHO spacecraft. The control of diffracted and scattered stray light from the bright solar disk is one of the most important tasks of a coronagraph. We compute the fractions of light that diffract past the UVCS external occulter and non-specularly pass into the spectrometer slit. The diffracted component of the stray light depends on the finite aperture of the primary mirror and on its figure. The amount of non-specular scattering depends mainly on the micro-roughness of the mirror. For reasonable choices of these quantities, the modeled stray-light fraction agrees well with measurements of stray light made both in the laboratory and during the UVCS mission. The models were constructed for the bright H I Lyman alpha emission line, but they are applicable to other spectral lines as well.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, Solar Physics, in pres

The Power of Institutional Legacies: How Nineteenth Century Housing Associations Shaped Twentieth Century Housing Regime Differences between Germany and the United States

Comparative welfare and production regime literature has so far neglected the considerable cross-country differences in the sphere of housing. The United States became a country of homeowners living in cities of single-family houses in the twentieth century. Its housing policy was focused on supporting private mortgage indebtedness with only residual public housing. Germany, on the contrary, remained a tenant-dominated country with cities of multi-unit buildings. Its housing policy has been focused on construction subsidies to non-profit housing associations and incentives for savings earmarked for financing housing. The article claims that these differences are the outcome of different housing institutions that had already emerged in the nineteenth century. Germany developed non-profit housing associations and financed housing through mortgage banks, both privileging the construction of rental apartments. In the United States, savings and loan associations favored mortgages for owner-occupied, single-family house construction. When governments intervened during housing crises in the 1920/1930s, they aimed their subsidies at these existing institutions. Thus, US housing policy became finance-biased in favor of savings and loan associations, while Germany supported the housing cooperatives.La littérature comparée consacrée aux régimes de production et de protection sociale a jusqu’à présent négligé les différences considérables entre pays dans le domaine du logement. Les États-Unis sont devenus, au cours du XXe siècle, un pays de propriétaires vivants majoritairement dans des villes et dans des maisons individuelles. La politique américaine a soutenu l’endettement privé pour le logement avec une part de logement public résiduel. L’Allemagne, au contraire, est restée un pays de locataires avec des villes composées de bâtiments collectifs. La politique allemande a soutenu des associations à but non lucratif et une forte incitation à l’épargne logement. L’article envisage ces différences comme le résultat d’une histoire institutionnelle qui débute au XIXe siècle. L’Allemagne a développé des associations de logement à but non lucratif et a financé le logement par l’intermédiaire de banques hypothécaires, tous deux privilégiant la construction d’appartements locatifs. Aux États-Unis, les associations d’épargne et de crédit ont favorisé le recours à des prêts hypothécaires pour les propriétaires-occupants, et ce faisant la construction de maison individuelles. Lorsque les gouvernements interviennent au cours de la crise du logement dans les années 1920-1930, leurs soutiens au logement passent par ces institutions préexistantes. Ainsi, la politique américaine de logement tend-elle à privilégier les associations d’épargne et de crédit, là où l’Allemagne soutient les coopératives d’habitation.Zusammenfassung Die vergleichende Wohlfahrts- und Kapitalismusforschung hat bisher weitgehend die bedeutenden Länderunterschiede im Wohnungssektor vernachlässigt. So wurden auf der einen Seite die USA im Laufe des 20. Jahrhunderts ein Land von Hauseigentümern, die zumeist in Einfamilienhausstädten wohnen, und die amerikanische Wohnungspolitik wurde vor allem eine Förderung der privaten Hypothekenwirtschaft mit bloß residualem Sozialwohnungsbau. Deutschland, auf der anderen Seite, ist ein mieterdominiertes Land mit Mehrfamilienhausstädten geblieben. Seine Wohnungspolitik war eher auf die Subvention von gemeinnützigen Wohnungsgenossenschaften und auf die Förderung von Bausparen ausgerichtet. Der Artikel behauptet, dass diese Unterschiede auf schon im 19. Jahrhundert angelegte Unterschiede von Institutionen im Wohnungssektor zurückführbar sind. Deutschland entwickelte darin Baugenossenschaften und Hypothekenbanken, die beide tendenziell Mietwohnungsbau unterstützten, wohingegen sich in den USA Bausparvereine entwickelten, die tendenziell eigentümerbewohnte Einfamilienhausbauten unterstützten. Mit Einsetzen der ersten dezidierten Wohnungspolitiken in den 1920/30ern bauten die Staaten weitgehend auf den schon existierenden Institutionen auf. Auf diese Weise wurde die amerikanische Wohnungspolitik eine Förderung des privaten Hypothekenmarktes, die deutsche hingegen eine Subventionierung von gemeinnützigen

The Political Economy of Homeownership: A Comparative Analysis of Homeownership Ideology through Party Manifestos

America’s ‘infatuation with homeownership’ has been identified as one cause of the latest financial crisis. Based on codings of 1809 party manifestos in 19 countries since 1945, this article addresses the question of where the political ideal to democratize homeownership came from. While conservative parties have defended homeownership across countries and time, centre-left parties have oscillated between a pro-homeownership and a pro-rental position. The former occurs in Anglo-Saxon, Northern and Southern European countries, while the latter prevails among German-speaking countries. Beyond partisan effects, once a country has a majority of homeowners and parties defending homeownership, larger parties are more likely to support it. The extent of centre-left parties’ support for homeownership is further associated with higher homeownership rates, more encouraging mortgage regimes and a bigger housing bubble burst after 2007. The ideational origins of the financialization of housing and private Keynesianism are, after all, not only conservative and market-liberal.1. Introduction 2. Theoretical background 3. Political career of homeownership through party manifestos post 1945 4. Variation in centre-left support for homeownership and its consequences 5. Conclusion Footnotes References Appendi

"Great De-Mortgaging": Der Rückzug der Lebensversicherer aus der Wohnungsfinanzierung im deutsch-amerikanischen Vergleich

Recent research in economic history has found that mortgage debt in relation to GDP has taken off in the historical long run (“great mortgaging”), as growing banking assets have been redirected into mortgage credit. This paper maps the parallel long-run investment history of private (life) insurance as the much overlooked second pillar of the financial system. Drawing on in-depth studies of the US and Germany, it finds that a “great de-mortgaging” took place in insurers’ portfolios, with mortgages falling from up to 90 percent in the 19th century to below 5 percent today in favor of fixed-income securities. A parallel shift to secondary mortgage bonds has hardly offset this decline, while direct real estate remained largely a residual investment class. Banks’ great mortgaging is thus partly an institutional substitution effect. The paper sees insurers’ asset shift itself as mainly driven by long-run changes in capital demand and competition with banks and pension funds. It extends these findings to other long-term institutional investors and other OECD countries in the historical long run

Private Spanner in Public Works? The Corrosive Effects of Private Insurance on Public Life

Contemporary societies are not only “risk societies”, but also insurance societies. While the shift of systemic risks from the community to the individual is a distinctive trait of modernity, research on the consequences of this process has focused almost exclusively on welfare state responses aimed at re-collectivizing societal risks. Individual-level reactions associated with the need for a private safety net against the uncertainty brought by risk societies have been largely overlooked. What happens to a society and its individuals when private insurance becomes commonplace? Focusing on Germany, we use the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984–2018) to investigate the attitudinal antecedents and consequences of contracting private insurance. As one of the most important sources of private welfare, life insurance attracts risk-averse individuals who are highly concerned with public economic affairs and see the market-based solutions of conservative parties as the best way to safeguard their economic security. While short-term attitudinal effects are absent, a longitudinal approach reveals that becoming insured gradually increases economic security but also entails withdrawal from public life and aversion to parties that support social redistribution. The loss of dynamism of a society may thus be related not only to public welfare but also to a private institution at the heart of the financial markets, which moreover has privatizing, welfare-eroding effects. The paper argues for a more general sociology of insurance.1 Introduction: The unknown world of private economic security 2 The origins and consequences of private insurance: Theoretical framework 3 A longitudinal approach: Data and methodological elements 4 Descriptive, average and dynamic effects: Results 5 Discussion: The public costs of private virtue 6 Toward a sociology of insurance: Conclusion Acknowledgments Open Research Supporting Information Reference

Is the Left Right? The Creeping Embourgeoisement of Social Democracy through Homeownership

Recent decades have been marked by the rise of populism, the emergence of New Labour and decline of social democratic parties. The dominant explanation for these trends is a shift in cultural attitudes but leaves open where such a sudden shift comes from. Advancing recent cross-sectional work on the political economy of housing, this paper suggests that slow-moving underlying processes as materialized in the expansion of homeownership can help explain the observable cultural shift and recent macrotrends. Taking a longitudinal micro-perspective of individuals’ housing and political trajectories in Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom since the 1980s, we find that the transition into homeownership has made voting for social democrats and populists more likely. The influence never comes as a shock but extends over decade-long anticipation and socialization intervals. Rather than strengthening traditional conservative parties, expanding homeownership, we argue, has contributed to the gradual embourgeoisement of the left.New partisan swings and the role of homeownership: Introduction Partisan preferences and homeownership: Theoretical framework Operationalizing the longitudinal perspective: Data and methodology Main and heterogeneous attitudinal trajectories: Empirical findings Non-shocker: Discussion It takes time: Conclusion Acknowledgements Supporting information Reference

Identification of the Coronal Sources of the Fast Solar Wind

The present spectroscopic study of the ultraviolet coronal emission in a polar hole, detected on April 6-9, 1996 with the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer aboard the SOHO spacecraft, identifies the inter-plume lanes and background coronal hole regions as the channels where the fast solar wind is preferentially accelerated. In inter-plume lanes, at heliocentric distance 1.7 \rsun, the corona expands at a rate between 105 km/s and 150 km/s, that is, much faster than in plumes where the outflow velocity is between 0 km/s and 65 km/s. The wind velocity is inferred from the Doppler dimming of the O VI $\lambda\lambda$ 1032, 1037 \AA lines, within a range of values, whose lower and upper limit corresponds to anisotropic and isotropic velocity distribution of the oxygen coronal ions, respectively.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, Accepted by ApJ Letter

Housing Market Regulation Has Contributed to the Worldwide Triumph of Home Ownership

The present report presents new historical data based on country comparisons and research results regarding rent control and its long-term effect on the home ownership rate in 27 countries. Policy measures of rent control, protection against eviction, and housing space management have been widespread in most of the countries studied—particularly in continental Europe—in the past 100 years. At the same time, the rate of home ownership in those countries has steadily risen in the long term. The present analysis shows that in the past century, the triumph of home ownership has not only been the result of relevant incentive measures and financial market liberalization. Indirectly, it is also due to rent control