Racing away? Income inequality and the evolution of high incomes

This Briefing Note provides an analysis of the characteristics of high-income individuals and how their incomes have evolved over time. We begin by setting out recent trends in overall income inequality and why these lead us to focus on the pattern of income growth at the very top of the income distribution. We then present some basic facts about high-income individuals and how they compare with the rest of society (for example, what is their average before-tax income, what is their average tax rate, how much of total personal income do they receive, in what industries do they tend to work?). We then discuss recent trends in their incomes over time and how this pattern compares with that for the rest of the income distribution. We then briefly summarise some recent research on longer-term trends in high incomes. Appendix A will undertake a brief comparison with other sources of information - compensation of executives and measures of personal wealth

An Abelian Alphabet?

A curious problem may be stated very simply for those familiar with the language of mathematics. Consider the free group on the 26 letters of the alphabet, with transposals as relations; is the group Abelian

TALON - The Telescope Alert Operation Network System: Intelligent Linking of Distributed Autonomous Robotic Telescopes

The internet has brought about great change in the astronomical community, but this interconnectivity is just starting to be exploited for use in instrumentation. Utilizing the internet for communicating between distributed astronomical systems is still in its infancy, but it already shows great potential. Here we present an example of a distributed network of telescopes that performs more efficiently in synchronous operation than as individual instruments. RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) is a system of telescopes at LANL that has intelligent intercommunication, combined with wide-field optics, temporal monitoring software, and deep-field follow-up capability all working in closed-loop real-time operation. The Telescope ALert Operations Network (TALON) is a network server that allows intercommunication of alert triggers from external and internal resources and controls the distribution of these to each of the telescopes on the network. TALON is designed to grow, allowing any number of telescopes to be linked together and communicate. Coupled with an intelligent alert client at each telescope, it can analyze and respond to each distributed TALON alert based on the telescopes needs and schedule.Comment: Presentation at SPIE 2004, Glasgow, Scotland (UK

Long-range orbitofrontal and amygdala axons show divergent patterns of maturation in the frontal cortex across adolescence.

The adolescent transition from juvenile to adult is marked by anatomical and functional remodeling of brain networks. Currently, the cellular and synaptic level changes underlying the adolescent transition are only coarsely understood. Here, we use two-photon imaging to make time-lapse observations of long-range axons that innervate the frontal cortex in the living brain. We labeled cells in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) and imaged their axonal afferents to the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). We also imaged the apical dendrites of dmPFC pyramidal neurons. Images were taken daily in separate cohorts of juvenile (P24-P28) and young adult mice (P64-P68), ages where we have previously discovered differences in dmPFC dependent decision-making. Dendritic spines were pruned across this peri-adolescent period, while BLA and OFC afferents followed alternate developmental trajectories. OFC boutons showed no decrease in density, but did show a decrease in daily bouton gain and loss with age. BLA axons showed an increase in both bouton density and daily bouton gain at the later age, suggesting a delayed window of enhanced plasticity. Our findings reveal projection specific maturation of synaptic structures within a single frontal region and suggest that stabilization is a more general characteristic of maturation than pruning

SkyDOT (Sky Database for Objects in the Time Domain): A Virtual Observatory for Variability Studies at LANL

The mining of Virtual Observatories (VOs) is becoming a powerful new method for discovery in astronomy. Here we report on the development of SkyDOT (Sky Database for Objects in the Time domain), a new Virtual Observatory, which is dedicated to the study of sky variability. The site will confederate a number of massive variability surveys and enable exploration of the time domain in astronomy. We discuss the architecture of the database and the functionality of the user interface. An important aspect of SkyDOT is that it is continuously updated in near real time so that users can access new observations in a timely manner. The site will also utilize high level machine learning tools that will allow sophisticated mining of the archive. Another key feature is the real time data stream provided by RAPTOR (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response), a new sky monitoring experiment under construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).Comment: to appear in SPIE proceedings vol. 4846, 11 pages, 5 figure

Fostering Sustainable Collaboration within Indigenous Communities through Community Based Participatory Research

Fostering Sustainable Collaboration within Indigenous Communities through Community Based Participatory Research It is essential to support Indigenous children’s well-being in culturally responsive ways. One important approach is to collaborate with members of the community who understand the strengths of their culture, values, and language to support their children, particularly in Montana, where the rates of Native American students attempting suicide were nearly double that of their White peers (Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 2019). In this paper, we introduce community based participatory research (CBPR) and its importance in Indigenous communities, particularly for research addressing children’s mental health. In CBPR, researchers actively engage with the community, as members provide guidance and knowledge towards a solution (Walters et al., 2008). Within indigenous communities, CBPR plays a fundamental role in cultural resurgence. Tribal nations utilize self-determination to combine Indigenous knowledge and ways of being with Western research (Atalay, 2012). CBPR connects research to community sustainability by focusing on collaboration, and developing partnerships that build sustainable community models for positive change, which can help decolonize research. In CBPR, researchers create meaningful relationships with members of the community, which allow them to build trust in order to foster the relationships important for social change (Tobias, et. al., 2013). Researchers must recognize that the process will be more interactive and prolonged, yet essential to effectively provide culturally responsive programs to support Indigenous youth. In order to partner with communities to address children’s mental health, researchers should: (1) recognize privilege and empathize with the community’s struggles, (2) respect the other view, (3) acknowledge community strengths, (4) allow both parties to share ideas openly, and (5) integrate traditional views (Walters, et. al., 2008). CBPR is beneficial for children’s mental health, as it bridges their culture to the research that affects their future

B mu G@Sbase-a microbial gene expression and comparative genomic database

The reducing cost of high-throughput functional genomic technologies is creating a deluge of high volume, complex data, placing the burden on bioinformatics resources and tool development. The Bacterial Microarray Group at St George's (BμG@S) has been at the forefront of bacterial microarray design and analysis for over a decade and while serving as a hub of a global network of microbial research groups has developed BμG@Sbase, a microbial gene expression and comparative genomic database. BμG@Sbase (http://bugs.sgul.ac.uk/bugsbase/) is a web-browsable, expertly curated, MIAME-compliant database that stores comprehensive experimental annotation and multiple raw and analysed data formats. Consistent annotation is enabled through a structured set of web forms, which guide the user through the process following a set of best practices and controlled vocabulary. The database currently contains 86 expertly curated publicly available data sets (with a further 124 not yet published) and full annotation information for 59 bacterial microarray designs. The data can be browsed and queried using an explorer-like interface; integrating intuitive tree diagrams to present complex experimental details clearly and concisely. Furthermore the modular design of the database will provide a robust platform for integrating other data types beyond microarrays into a more Systems analysis based future

A scalable machine-learning approach to recognize chemical names within large text databases

MOTIVATION: The use or study of chemical compounds permeates almost every scientific field and in each of them, the amount of textual information is growing rapidly. There is a need to accurately identify chemical names within text for a number of informatics efforts such as database curation, report summarization, tagging of named entities and keywords, or the development/curation of reference databases. RESULTS: A first-order Markov Model (MM) was evaluated for its ability to distinguish chemical names from words, yielding ~93% recall in recognizing chemical terms and ~99% precision in rejecting non-chemical terms on smaller test sets. However, because total false-positive events increase with the number of words analyzed, the scalability of name recognition was measured by processing 13.1 million MEDLINE records. The method yielded precision ranges from 54.7% to 100%, depending upon the cutoff score used, averaging 82.7% for approximately 1.05 million putative chemical terms extracted. Extracted chemical terms were analyzed to estimate the number of spelling variants per term, which correlated with the total number of times the chemical name appeared in MEDLINE. This variability in term construction was found to affect both information retrieval and term mapping when using PubMed and Ovid

Predicting New Product Success or Failure: A Comparison of U.S. and U.K. Practices

We propose a model that allows managers to assess new product development (NPD) projects, combined with the anticipated strategy, prior to introduction and to estimate a probability of success. This model allows for an evaluation and prioritization of resource commitments. A test of this model that compares companies within the United States (U.S.) and the United Kingdom (U.K.) is provided